Guild Wars 2

Ghotistyx.6942:

I don’t know. I still see a few new posts about “I don’t want sub-classes” and that’s basically it. I don’t know what they don’t like, what they do like, concerns or alternate proposals. In addition, I see this in a few posts about other ideas that aren’t so sub-class oriented.

More than likely because most proposals for sub-classes either lack the detail that is where the problems arise, or its so obvious that they cause power creep or mass extinction of build diversity that we don’t want to sit here pointing it out like broken records when we’re mostly confident the point has been made .

Also, class balance as a whole affects each individual’s ability to kill Plains Wurms. Not affecting change because we’re afraid of allowing someone to kill their Plains Wurm faster would be to completely stop any form of balance and leave the game as it stands.

That is what you come away with from reading the Wurm test?

Its a simple example of an overall constraint – there are ways of measuring your performance. If you want to avoid power creep you have to be aware of the boundaries you want the system to operate in and not breach them. In a relatively simple one-axis test like how much DPS can you dish out against a non-threatening opponent, yes, of course the classes will have variations between them because the other aspects of their performance aren’t being strained in that test, but you can still measure them meaningfully against themselves to see if something new has pushed behavior out of bounds.

So, yes, while many of these changes will affect the actual power of different builds, I don’t know if the game will ever get to a point where we can just say “Balance is finished”. At least with more options, there can be more depth and discovery instead of stagnation. (leaning towards the hyperbolic in this argument).

Do I really strike you as a proponent of stagnation ?

There is still such a vast range of new and interesting things that can be done in this game without falling back on the crutch of power creep to incentivize the journey.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Is there any timeline to the changes we are discussing?

Did you read the very first post in the thread?

I’ve fought much longer and harder to get 1% improvement in other MMOs. In my experience a 5% jump in anything is kinda… HUGE.

Major bonus points for working in Rooba and C.L.E.A.N. . I strongly approve of building on our existing lore through these new journeys.

I think both Halloween events have shown ways “questing” can be delivered with a GW2 twist. Some of that tracking is managed through Achievements, and a few achievement points along the way is probably a plus.

one thing that occurred to me when I mentioned buying an unlock code with real money was that the code would only give you the skills/traits/weapon access but the titles, skins and other non-mechanical recognition associated with each mastery would still require playing the content.

I think we also need to consider something very important that hasn’t come up (that I saw)…

What about Alts?

Once I unlock a Mastery for my Guardian, do I have to repeat that journey on all of my Guardian alts before they can benefit? Because that throws up big “GRIND INCOMING!” warning lights and claxons in my mind.

I had hoped/expected/envisioned that advancing my Renown in an Order would be a shared process for all of my characters in that Order. I hope something similar can be done for class-based progressions.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Interesting, but there is one concern.

I’d almost like to see less of letting player classes pick up other weapons not normally available to their classes and more of just expanding on the uses of weapons which are already there.

This has been hashed out somewhat in quite a few posts early on in this thread. I can probably find some links, but I don’t have the focus just now (getting late here ). I suspect its in the first ten pages. You might use your browser to search for the word “technique” as that’s how I was describing managing such functionality through Traits, but a number of other methods were also discussed.

The New Masters’ options would mean you have no idea if that Engineer has the expanded mastery unlocked and you aren’t facing a standard set of options. It means having absolutely no idea what that thief can do with the dagger until the Extra Skill is dropped on you.

It could give build diversity, but at the cost of this very quick, at-a-glance awareness in PvP situations.

To be completely honest, my opinion is screw ‘em. Let them find out what I’m capable of when I do it. To me uncertainty adds far more to the pulse-pounding nature of PvP than being able to deduce 7/10th of my build at the edge of draw distance. And if anything it reduces the (unfair) advantage Asuras have, since you can hardly see their weapons anyway…

HORIZONTAL SPECIALIZATION – ARCHETYPES

((DISCLAMER: I do not feel this is necessary or even advisable. This is simply my best attempt to satisfy the impulse without wrecking what I feel is already an elegant and robust system of player-directed build creation.))

Players may acquire alternate choices for their 5th Trait line.

At its most basic level, nothing changes – all existing characters are in an Archtype now:

Elementalist – Arcanist – 5th Trait Line: Arcana (Boon Duration/Attunement Recharge)
Engineer – Experimenter – 5th Trait Line: Tools (Crit Damage/Tool Belt Recharge)
Guardian – Paragon – 5th Trait Line: Virtues (Boon Duration/Virtue Recharge)
Ranger – Beastmaster – 5th Trait Line: Beastmastery (Healing Power/Pet Attributes)
Mesmer – Illusionist – 5th Trait Line: Illusions (Condition Damage /Shred Recharge)
Necromancer – Reaper – 5th Trait Line: Soul Reaping (Crit Damage/Life Force Pool)
Thief – Trickster – 5th Trait Line: Trickery (Condition Damage /Steal Recharge)
Warrior – Myrmidon – 5th Trait Line: Discipline (Crit Damage/Burst Recharge)

However, new Archetypes can be made available (see pages of journeys discussion ), with visiting a class trainer allowing you to switch between those you have available. These would swap out the entire 5th trait line. They could also include alterations to the class mechanic – A new “Packmaster Archetype (Character & Pet Speed) for Rangers could have 3 slightly weaker pets on the field simultaneously, but have a more limited selection of pets to choose from (“Get them, my flock of Moas!!). Alternatively Rangers could access a “Lone Stalker” Archetype (Stealth Duration) that has No Access to pets whatsoever, but has passive benefits that offset this. The attribute bonuses for the fifth line would be adjusted, replacing the “bonus to pet stats” with benefits tuned for the altered class mechanic or new theme.

These two mechanics (multi-pets and zero pets) would obviously conflict if they could be taken simultaneously, but the limitation on choosing a single archetype at any given time prevents the conflict. In the same vein a “Technique” trait within the Packmaster Archetype trait line could change the skills gained form main-hand Axe (buttons 1-3) into new effects suited to the Packmaster playstyle while the Lone Stalker could offer a different axe “Technique” Trait that changed those same buttons to something else. Again, conflict avoided because of mutually exclusive pools of traits being attached to each Archetypes line.

Some classes would need existing traits shuffled into or out of their fifth line. This could be a good thing: I personally feel a substantial part of the problem with my enjoyment of my Ranger is that the pet is entangled in way too many traits scattered across way too many lines. A warrior can largely ignore their class mechanic and still function. Rangers can’t get away from that kitten dog/spider/jellyfish/whatever .

One advantaged of swapping out an entire trait line is that it doesn’t have to wait until level 80. Archetypes could be introduced at almost any point. The selection of a 5th Trait line has impact and meaning as early as level 11.

And again, I can see ways to do ALL of that through more ambitious and daring use of the current Trait system (requiring chiefly the ability for selecting a technique trait to block conflicting techniques from being selected until the first technique has been deselected). I also expect frustration that parts of the separate Archetype trait pools would be made incompatible not because they represent irresolvable mechanical conflicts, but because someone decided where to put them based on themes that any particular player may not share, understand, or agree with. I would much prefer to maximize the flexibility of any new traits and the best way to do that is to distribute them within the lines we have now.

timmyf.1490:

Furthermore, extra trait points is not horizontal progression. Somebody get Nike on the phone so he can tell us about the Plains Wurm. ;-)

Actually the plains-wurms have filed a complaint with Support (they are apparently better typists than I would have given the credit for…) – they feel they are being unfairly griefed by 80th level players murdering them en masse while other players stand around with stop-watches. Can’t say I blame them .

Cliff.8679:

Perhaps Nike mentioned something like this in his “New Masters” thing I keep seeing thrown around that I need to sit down and check out, though!

The New Masters was an attempt to bundle up a couple of different ideas into a working release. Follow the link. Its a bit of a read, but I hope you’ll find it inspiring. (And yes, I can describe what all of those skills mentioned in the post would do in general terms )

I’d also mention this post by Chuggs as having both an excellent summary of the concept and some intriguing ideas for expanding on the framework – both in terms of stages of progress and added value after the core mechanical goodies are unlocked.

Mesmer Mantra-Healers push some of the highest green numbers per minute in the game. I find them even stronger healers than the often pointed to Elementalist in Water attunement.

I’ve built potent, effective healers out of every class except Thief, and I’m still working on that one . The new heal-venom opened up some opportunities there.

Thing is you only benefit from a healer over other roles in a very select number of scenarios, WvW being probably the most prominent. So with healers basically decreasing your effectiviness in many situations, and being poorly rewarded or skipped over entirely by game mechanics that track damage done and nothing else…. there’s not a lot of energy going into exploring that part of the system.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Do you feel like if we asked you to do 90 different events in a month, and that allowed your ranger to say become a Druid, you’d feel like that was a cool system?

Sure! but only IF…

• It was thematic (90 Dynamic Events chosen from a pool that make sense as training towards being a druid)

• It was well messaged. If there were NPCs (existing trainers, new Masters) or a location (Whisper’s Apple Cellar, Lion’s Arch Lionguard Barracks) that acted as a dispatch hub that told me where to go. As the month goes on I’d want to be able log in, check-in, and go directly to the content I need to pursue to advance my goal. Long journeys are fine as long as they never make me feel like a fool fumbling in the dark.

• The rewards at the end are something that I can put to my own purposes, not lock me into someone else’s idea of heroism.

Druid is a great theme that can inspire and organize a bundle, but a locked bundle will only give me just one thing I can do. I’ll always be dozens of times more excited at receiving a collection of separate parts to further refine my Backwoods Trapper (a build devoted to countering and anhilating Thieves) or my Dreamtime Walker – a Ranger every bit as mystical as a “Druid” but inspired by Australian folklore instead of Northern European.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Difficult to balance out correctly perhaps, but overall more rewarding to see your choices actually impact your character rather than “meh, it doesn’t matter which order I join”.

“Meh, it doesn’t matter which race I choose.” was a great idea, and even that doesn’t adequately inform people of the differences in Racial skills before the irrevocable choice is locked in.

I have no problem with Order advancement opening up masteries – as long as all of the gameplay-altering tools are available through all three Orders. The Journeys can (and should) be different, but players cannot be frozen out of masteries because they picked an Order ignorant of the consequences.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Thanks folks lots of really great ideas, concepts and discussion here!

It has been a great read and its been nice to see people play off of each other’s ideas and to go back and refine their own ideas in the face of thoughtful, constructive criticism.

I think the biggest thing I was trying to get at with my question is: what should the journey towards an alternative system of horizontal progression really be like?

Oh… I think that can be summed up easily …

Fun.

Or at least not un-fun.

Folks talked a lot about different ways you could say acquire skills other than the current system, but that’s really more a change to an existing skill acquisition system, as opposed to the journey of unlocking something like an advanced profession (or masteries) as some of you discussed.

Say for example, we decided to allow your profession to gain an additional mastery as Nike and Chuggs in particular discussed above. I think we have a lot of fun ideas in here for the journey unlock specific aspects of that mastery, but what if you first had to unlock the core “mastery” track, which then allowed you collect the smaller components? What kind of experience do you think would be compelling here as an over-all journey?

Then I’d have to ask myself is wanting to try out a new Mastery I’m interested in on Tequatl’s face tonight with the guild make the journey pleasant or frustrating?

While there’s an obvious Developer-desire to have the design work they’ve done prompt as many hours of play as possible, its easy to go too far and turn the journey into drudgery and grind. Looks at ascended armor – one set of skins and some minutely bigger numbers trying to encourage us to gather and farm for weeks. For many it was too little butter scrapped over far too much toast.

Can folks think of anything else that’s a bit more outside the box for something bigger?

I did a quick search of the thread so I’m 99% certain no one has brought up the idea that’s the most inside-the-box.

Paid Expansion.

No one who loves this game can be unaware that there is significant competition lurking just around the corner. I for one would like it that when my fellow gamer goes into the store and starts puzzling over how to spend his gaming dollars that there be a box with the GW2 logo on sitting in a place-of-prominence on the shelf. A box that isn’t 18 months old… A reminder to lapsed players and an enticement to new Tyrian heroes.

Noting the usual concerns of splitting up your playerbase into haves and have-nots, maybe we could see a hybrid expansion… Consider a rich set of new character options: 3 new weapons per profession, 12 new skills per class including 3 elites, the full array of an Adept, Master, and Grandmaster trait added to all 5 Trait Lines of all 8 professions (120 in all). And the OPTIONS to gain all that by working through the journeys offered by 24 new Masters (3 per profession) or the ability to BUY a master unlock code off a store shelf physical or virtual.

There is nothing wrong with the people who don’t give a skritts’ bumm about story and journey and just want to take to the Mists in open war or have a good time with their guildmates bashing Tequatl’s face with the new Masteries. Tonight. Immediately. Now. For a modest real-world fee. And nothing prevents them from coming back and playing through those journeys later – the content is still there welcoming them to the challenge.

(or is that just too Pay to Win?)

Ah, the “forced” argument. And the willful misunderstanding that so often comes with it.

Let me see if I can help – when people say ‘forced’, its with the expectation that the reader can fill in the “to achieve my goals” part. I know, implicit statements are tricky.

…as in “I am forced to get Ascended gear to achieve my goal of having a stats-complete character”

…or sometimes “Forced” as in “there are no alternatives while pursuing that goal.”

And yes, anyone can overcome that whole “forced” part by abandoning their goals… which is pretty much the exact moment any sane person moves on to a new game.

I’d rather not lose people so easily. Or casually. It tends to degrade my play experience over time .

“No one is arguing the need for a plan… Its just that your plan is stupid and won’t work.”

My favorite line in the game . I don’t hear that in the game so much, but it goes through my head quite often as I deal with Real Life .

(“Bear approves of you. I can feel her little tail wagging in my heart” being my second most favorite line.)

I don’t so much mind the repetition of lines as the repetition of voice actors. Drives me to distraction that so much of this game is voiced by so few, and a few I already know far too well from anime dubbing.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Since the threads weren’t moved back into their original sub-forums, are we supposed to repost stuff? Or are we supposed to, when something has come up before (and it has pretty much all come up before at this point) just shut up about it?

…Or you could just try it and see what happens.

I think you’re giving WAY too much credit to the idea that the moderators remember everything that was posted in the Suggestions forums over 24 hours/two pages ago .

Yoh.8469:

Regeneration should just straight up scale better with Healing Power. Lower the base amount of Regeneration, and vastly increase the scaling. If your going to pour into Healing Power, you should get a lot of bang for your buck.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

So that you’d become invincible? If you have good healing on yourself AND a good self-heal, what will kill you then? There are a lot of possibilities to keep Regen running most of the time / permanent.

I’d say if you have good regen on you, deplete your selfheal. Both combined is just too powerful imho.

I’m just trying to imagine the caterwauling that would spring up instantly when someone realizes that my putting a Regeneration boon on them is depleting the effectiveness of their on-demand self-heal. Just thinking of it makes my ears hurt . No amount of math or logic would stop people from shrieking that they are being de-buffed by another character that’s on their own team . I don’t know that I’d even blame them as ultimately I am usurping their agency in their own survival, even if doing so helps them survive.

But I do feel strongly that the base values of many heals need to be lowered and the coefficients attached to Healing Power need to be increased so that at some middling value (400ish? 500?) the total remains the same, but dedicated Heal Power builds become more appealing and purely offensive builds experience greater risk. 1,000 Healing power doesn’t need to be double its current effectiveness, but 10-15% more effective than it is now (and 0 Healing power being 10-15% less effective…) might introduce some actual thought into the process of setting up your stats; present some meaningful dilemmas. Amongst other things it might prompt a few well trained max-DPS death-dealers to actually smile when I say “My banners give regen – hang near the curtains if you need to catch your breath” or “I have Battle Presence – you’ll get some green ticking just by being near me.”

Knighthonor.4061:

Bad move… imo

Noted. But the people whose livelihood is at stake clearly disagree.

Its a move. lets see how it plays out in practice before we judge it. I can’t say I see going back to the old system of shoveling suggestion threads into a yawning abyss was something to cling to…

Antara.3189:

The graphics and art designed for GW2 simply dominate any other MMORPG in the market today.

Out of curiosity, how many other current MMOs have you played for more than 100 hours?

…and for good measure the cheeky tart is a sword/shield Mesmer. I am very jealous of that .

Subdue.5479:

Six pages of whining and not a single person, including the OP, has come up with a single thing in this game that requires ascended gear. Who would have guessed?

Competitive play in small groups in WvW requires it. When skill levels are similar, gear quality determines the outcome.

Character completeness requires it.

That these things don’t hold special weight for you doesn’t mean they don’t impact the experience of many, many players.

I’ll make the comparison and hope no moderator type gets offended~

I still feel the Lord of the Rings Online has THE best mapmakers in the industry.

Guild Wars 2 is still amongst the uppermost tier. It is a lovely piece of work.

Brutal Arts.6307:

Maybe they just don’t want our suggestions, after all their game is clearly flawless.

Or maybe its ludicrous to expect every department to trawl through an undifferentiated mass on the off chance of striking gold relevant to their area of responsibility.

John Smith clearly reads the black Lion forum. Things have happened because of it, such as the detection and correction of a bug in salvage rates. He steps in with commentary and occasional revelations of data or process that are very helpful to our understanding of what’s going on. The entire premise of him also having to scan the entirety of the Suggestions Forums is faulty.

Letting us put our suggestions directly in front of the relevant developer is a HUGE improvement over maintaining the graveyard of dying dreams that the Suggestion forum became.

On Vanquishing:

I wonder if we couldn’t get some sort of nice Vanquish Mode by setting them inside Dungeon maps rather that open world zones.

In addition to keeping the size of space to be cleared more manageable, it also gives solo players a chance to actually see and explore some of this terrain that might otherwise be going to waste for that player. Leverage existing assets for use by another segment of the player-base.

Basically remove or downscale/replace the boss encounters with single-player appropriate challenges and give people the chance to really explore these spaces without the worry that the instance owner is about to leave and the whole thing will shut down and boot you out. It even allows some of the features built into the Dungeon maps to be better used than they are now: I believe some of them have mini jump puzzles in them that don’t actually do anything. Make those puzzles part of the Vanquish mode with a veteran critter or a chest (or both ) at their conclusion.

Rewards could be unique to each map as suggested for vanquisihing outdoors, and you could potentially grant a small number of dungeon tokens – not anything like a full 5 man run, but enough to help the player feel like they’re involved and making progress. Maybe around 5-10 tokens depending on the estimated amount of time the vanquish run will take. Or even incorporate a time trial: finishing get you 5 tokens. Finishing really fast gets you 10 .

DarkWasp.7291:

Boast challenges — In certain parts of the world you may partake in boast challenges that hinder your character while you attempt to do normal content. Currently we have added two challenges to Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateu.

The challenge in Wayfarer Foothills involves disabling downed state (if you would get downed you get defeated instead) while attempting to survive combo kills. Every time you draw fire from five or more enemies and defeat them you gain a point. But watch out! Competive norn will sneak up and ambush you during your most stressful moments.

The charr in Diessa Plateu are seeking out the toughest cook of all time. Accept their challenge and you’ll find yourself dressed like a chef with only a frying pan for a weapon. With greatly reduced armor levels and a unique set of frying pan skills you must vanquish 50 enemies of 7 different varieties before the time is up. Complete the task in record time for a greater reward.

Temporarily, the rewards for completing boasts are one, two or three champion loot bags depending on how well you did.

---

Wasp’s notes:
Boast challenges were an idea I had a month or so after release because I felt we needed an open world alternative to hardmode that does not separate you or the zone instance from the other players fighting normal enemies. I would suggest filling the worlds with these until they can be incorporated into a 200% world completion system.

While flavorful and entertaining… they’re also easily abused/side-stepped/trivialized by having a friend or six along with you doing the heavy lifting after you’ve hit the necessary critters hard enough to get kill credit. You also don’t want the boaster getting frothing mad when another player in the zone just happens by and pitches in. When the point is being able to boast of your prowess, you want to be very sure no one can second guess that it was really you who did the deed…

I have to wonder if car manufacturers regularly get hounded over the contents of a 5 year old commercial.

As a general sentiment, I’d prefer anything that permanently unlocks character gameplay affecting benefits (new skills, new weapons, heck, maybe even new runes) to mostly confine itself to individual segments of 3 hours or less. It would be painfully easy to separate the greater body of players from a perceived Elite (no matter how balanced and equivalent the new options might be) with long paths of activity. I say 3 hours on the idea that once a player learns about the new thing to pursue, keep in the realm of “a full afternoon” of play to access it.

Other rewards can and should be tied to longer journeys, but we’ve already seen the discontent spawned by the length of path involved in acquiring items from the Ascended tier. I’d rather not perpetuate that. Long paths to look the way you want are established fair game. Getting your character set up to work the way you want shouldn’t be a chore.

I’d also mention vehement opposition to unique Order skills. It would be too easy to place players in a position of uninformed and irrevocable choices. It’s tolerable to have uniformed choices if they are easily altered later. It can be interesting to have irrevocable choices as long as they are well-informed. But both at the same time gets you people still pressing a year later for the ability to swap race because it meant a lot more to how their characters play than the character creation screen actually explained.

Counter-intuitive like when I nuke the area a burglar is hiding in for half their life they don’t so much as yelp?

Consider it a trivial price to pay for stealth that isn’t broken by damage.

Guhracie.3419:

However, your point about Lost Witch and the fantastic summary-tracker thread is noted and entirely valid. That thread is the main reason I mentioned the idea of community moderators.

I imagine Chris Whiteside is experiencing relief that people are stepping up to assist in the process. Community support, chroniclers so far, is something I believe should be explored in the next Process Evolution.

I think we’re still at a point were support roles remain to be discovered; that we still have benefits to reap from remaining informal. I had my own issues getting stomped on for pushing the boundaries. I’d prefer to set no more of them than are strictly necessary – not because I know what wonderful thing could come of allowing that freedom, but because I don’t know .

Only a week for discussion? I could see limiting some of the in-depth discussion threads (Sub-classes, for a direct example from my proposal) to a week, but I’d feel gutted over these vast topics even getting so little as 2 weeks of attention.

And as the sophistication of the discourse has grown, I’m with you… But.

To me its one of the great stumbling blocks of the process that every thread reaches a length that works against it. They become so long that people feel embarrassed to contribute because they haven’t read 20-30 pages. Some master their discomfort and post anyway, but I think some really good insights are simply gone, lost to silence before a mountain of text that is terrifying. I say a week to ten days not because that’s the right amount of time, but because that seems about average for the length to reach the level where it becomes an impediment to discussion.

With branching threads and shorter windows I dream of an outcome where we see the same posts, but the Dev-Host comes in on page 12 and says “well what about this?” launching a new thread right there, running in parallel. We get the same posts (and more really) but they’re gathered under separate headers so the first thread can continue to promote discussion of the ‘first page topic’. Those who follow the branch stay focused on the newer topic… The second thread doesn’t end up laced with “I just read page 1 and have to say” posts after the tide has shifted. Hopefully never again does someone have to apologize for “I want to be a part of this, but I haven’t read the last 30 pages and I hope this is still of interest.” The first thread is still open and undivided if its the opening post that drew them into the exchange, and they have the newer threads if those are the topic/title that caught their eye.

I don’t know that it can be solved. I know it won’t be solved in one try. But I’m confident we can make it better .

I’m genuinely curious about how you perceive these initiatives- do you see them as brainstorming sessions? (I mean this in a polite tone, I hope that is coming through.) I see them as a sort of Socratic Circle, which I suppose aren’t lengthy by definition, but that’s always how I imagine them- sort of a lengthy refining process.

To me it’s music. Improvisational music. Jazz. I’m not shy about throwing ideas out but I also enjoy trying to introduce basic terms with an eye towards building a shared language that helps us all communicate better. I’m very pleased/proud that in the Horizontal Progression thread my fellow posters feel comfortable referring to “the plains-wurm test” when framing their own arguments and opinions. If the CDIs are Jazz, then that’s working the drums, offering a beat that helps the other musicians play together.

To stretch the analogy, I’d also say that when its showtime, the stage-hands may be unseen, the lighting crew invisible to the audience, but their craft is essential to the performance. Chroniclers and other friends of the CDIs make us all look better.

Edit
I know the CDI process evaluation is next, but without knowing when that will be, and with my general impatience (as I am usually bursting to share my ideas), this thread was born. But I hope it doesn’t seem disrespectful of the process, because that was never my intention.

Sharing your thoughts and putting them up for scrutiny can only enhance your performance when it comes time to step on the big CDI stage, draw forth your chosen instrument, and play like you mean it .

Ronah.2869:

Corpus Christi.2057:

These chat codes have been out there for a long time now. Craftable precursors is something that is certain to be out pretty soon.

Crafting? Now you ruined the joy for all of us non – crafters

I always expected “crafting” precursors to involve throwing 4 items in the Mystic forge…

The next CDI is apparently going to be a process evolution thread where this will be front and center for discussion .

I tend to agree with calving off new threads after major topic shifts. The current thread is the first beneficiary of this, having emerged from a thread that was even broader but came to focus on Ascended gear as a single aspect of vertical progression.

While a certain amount of patience is required in light of the holidays which I think lead to the current thread running on as long as it has, I’d very much like to see threads have a shorter window they are open (‘shorter’ meaning 7-10 days in my perfect world). As new threads branch off they run on a fresh timer.

But, I disagree with shuffling them all into a separate forum while they’re active. I think their significance and even existence is still too new of a thing to demand that those with fresh viewpoints also be so knowledgeable as to wander into a sub-forum quite apart from the proper home of those topics that interest them.

I will point out the irony that if…

Guhracie.3419:

• Make a CDI forum. Please. It’s time. Only developers (maybe community moderators?) can start topics in this forum. A subforum will be a generalized idea, like what we’ve been doing thus far with the threads themselves. So, for example, we’d have an open subforum called CDI: Character Progression- Horizontal Discussion, and one discussion created with the same title, more or less. That’s where we start from. Maybe sticky the master thread, if necessary.

…were to be enacted this thread itself would be impossible to launch in the same forum as the CDI thread/discussions it refers to. Likewise the separate poster-maintained tracker thread could not have been started, flourished, and eventually received the official nod.

I favor we continue to have the latitude to start threads like this . It may be a bit rambunctious, but vitality often is.

Malchior.5042:

First, my opinion is going to differ greatly from any of the previous voices concerns/suggestions.

(snip)

• I’m gonna get some serious hate, but introduce Diminishing Returns on champion loot on a per-zone basis. If a person farms Queensdale for more than an hour, no more champion bags from Queensdale for that day. If said person loves champion farming, they’ll have to go to another zone. This first step will show how repetitive play is punished. It’s still possible, but players have to explore new zones, form new champ farms, etc…

I think you can avoid the most frustrating part of Diminishing Returns, its INVISIBILITY, with something very upfront and obvious. Maybe when you open the map of a zone there’s a really blatant Champion Bag Counter just under the list of things you’ve located on that map. The counters starts at 25 and it goes down by one for each champion you kill. When it reaches zero you can’t get any more champion bags in that zone until the counter refreshes with the daily reset. You can choose which champs you go after, you can kill the same one 25 times if that’s your fancy, you can run loops a couple of times with no worries, but after 25 bags FIND A NEW ZONE.

Its a much higher cap than one per champ per day. It can be tuned after release by adjusting the number (possibly on a map-by-map basis). It allows the player to pick which champs they want to go after and doesn’t punish you because someone else killed one that might otherwise been the last one you could still farm. It doesn’t judge the details, but does judge the overall habit.

With that in place, add improved incentive for playing a variety of content. Players like maximizing time, and just about every human on earth likes to “get a good deal” or save time/money. Along with daily achievements, add hourly bonuses (not necessarily achievements) that can be messaged by the event panel/LW panel area. Only one bonus would be active at a time on all servers, and would rotate either every hour or every few hours. It might pigeonhole players, but honestly, if people are farming Queensdale, what’s the difference in just moving them around?

Something like…

• “50% bonus xp for completing events in Fireheart Rise.” – 60 min
• “50% bonus Karma from events in Mount Maelstrom.” – 60 min
• The Call to War! “50% bonus WvW experience!” – 60 min

I like that idea quite a lot .

ellesee.8297:

Nike.2631:

…there were goals other than ‘kill the other guys’. Goals that allowed me to out-plan my enemies. Goals that rewarded discipline over bloodlust. Goals that allowed me to die like a chump to three hostile players… but in doing so have lured them so far out of position chasing me that my teammates rolled the map objectives near unopposed.

sounds like gw2 pvp. especially the last sentence.

While that may be true, it certainly hasn’t given me that impression in my few forays into the experience.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Harbard.5738:

Why group events suck though
I just wish there were no more group-only events, because they stay dead unless a zerg or something runs the whole chain in 10 mins and flips it and then it stays dead for hours, maybe days again. All solo events should scale to prevent all the facerolling, but no events should be group-only. It kills the spontaneity that’s the best part of DEs: You’re just exploring and bump into one guy doing some event, and another guy joins you and stuff scales and you end up on the other corner of the zone with 10-15 people and everyone had fun, as opposed to “begged in chat for an hour to get enough people to run a temple and was glad I was done with that crap”.

I wholeheartedly agree, I haven’t thought of this before but it’s 100% true. I also claim that champions should scale down to 1 player (not so much health) since it takes forever to bring them down when you’re alone.

It’s still equally as difficult when the champ would have 1/4 of it’s health since attacks are just as strong and you would have to know how to avoid those. Doing this for 20+ minutes though is just not fun.

I’m reminded of an older post I had about champions – a new buff for them:

ROUSED TO RAGE

All Champions have a new ability called Roused to Rage – for each unique player character that attacks them they gain 1 stack of this buff for 2 minutes, which provides a small amount of power and condition damage and a moderate amount of toughness. The buff may stack to 25 and dissipates while not in combat. Player controlled pets and minions to not contribute to RtR stacking.

(the two minute limit is so griefers who put one shot into the champ and then move on don’t leave a permanent stack.)

Champ farming just needs to scale faithfully to the number of number of players present. Make the fights more of a struggle when the kill is going to produce 28 champ lootbags instead of 3…

ColinJohanson.2394:

What other systems would excite you that don’t fall into the “sitting in front of your keyboard” pressing buttons options? Keep in mind they need to be easy to learn so we can teach them to new players, accessible, and not overly complex/tedious, and hopefully not something with a path of least resistance that leads to degenerate game play.

I think it’s worth remembering some of our existing ‘general’ measures of progress may still be appropriate and sensible even if they’re a bit degenerate presently.

Assume for a moment we have expanded on the concept of a personal space within our neighborhood or perhaps have a nook in a guildhall we can call our own. A place that can serve as a showcase of our accomplishments, but also a testament to our particular tastes.

We might have a very outdoorsy and heroic set of activities that liberates a famous painter who now feels indebted to us and becomes available as a vendor in our neighborhood who can provide us with hi-res account-bound pieces of the game’s concept art as paintings we can hang in our showcase area…

…Its not unreasonable that those paintings would still have to be paid for with gold coin. Maybe quite a few gold coins.

The pure Trading Post baron doesn’t have access to the vendor, but the pure adventurer may have to do a bit of scrimping and saving to get the painting he wants even after liberating the painter.

The final piece that’s actually on display shows your aptitude in both realms, and further, reveals your taste through what images you’ve chosen to display in a limited amount of space.

Skill points, gold, & karma still reflect a lot of time spent in the world and could be part of the unlocking process. With new ways to use those currencies, the pleasure of amassing them is renewed.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Reading through a lot of the comments on various class diversification (or just stronger trait/skill diversification) concepts, one of the things that seems to be missing is a discussion on how you’d actually earn/unlock these additional abilities to make it a progression system.

One of the goals of progression, in this case horizontal, is to create an extended sense of game play and thus = reward for playing it.

For example, we’ve added more skills to the game recently, but those simply unlock with skill points, which basically means -> play any part of the game that gives exp, or kill champs to get skill point books. That’s ok as systems of unlocking horizontal progression go for the extended class diversification, but game play wise it generally means find the easiest place to get XP/champ-loot and do it over and over again for a large % of players, since folks most often gravitate towards the path of least resistance.

What sort of systems of horizontal progression unlocking would you like to see that’d accompany a system like extended class progression?

Well, I stand by my initial thoughts in The New Masters, as a workable example with NPCs that act as a mini quest-hub for all characters but with added benefits for character’s of the corresponding class. Going to the mentor allows you to set off a series of Dynamic Events that support the narrative of helping the mentor/gaining their trust/proving your worthiness as appropriate to their personality. The climax of the sequence is a mini-dungeon as seen in several places in the game already – in fact some of the existing ones could gain additional purpose, being the place a nearby mentor sends you. The revelation of skills comes from completing the mentor’s task-chain but there is also a skill point cost component that encourages players to unlock them in the order of their interest as their stock of skill points allows.

Directing players to these mentors is probably best accomplished by having the Skill Trainers in the various cities point them out to players via dialogue and the sort of zoom-out-zoom-in map guidance used to introduce Dungeons (or possibly the voice-over and map-panning seen when dealing with Scouts).

I think the Skill Trainers need to gain functionality providing new tutorials and click-and-confirm auto-fill-in of sample builds. Making them the “herald” for all things pertaining to your specific profession could dovetail with that nicely. The hooks are already in place to introduce players to the Skill Trainers, this would just expand their role throughout your Character’s level progression.

We’ve seen that already. The Tower of Nightmares and undodgeable damage ticks from perma-Toxin did a fine job of carpeting the ground with the corpses of glass cannon ‘zerkers, while my tough-love perma-regen Warrior just sort of strolled through the place. I’d also say the general reduction of vigor across all professions was a direct attempt to curb ’zerk’s monopoly on all-damage stats with dodge as the universal panacea defensively. And while the complete immunity to crits some world bosses enjoy stabs quite a few gear-sets in the eye, its not a coincidence that ’Zerker is highly penalized under those conditions.

Its a problem they’re clearly aware of. I see those things as experiments – the hammer hasn’t actually come down yet.

Because I don’t feel like sPvP offers enough opportunities for old age and treachery to beat youth and reflexes .

I played SWtOR PvP fairly competitively, but there were goals other than ‘kill the other guys’. Goals that allowed me to out-plan my enemies. Goals that rewarded discipline over bloodlust. Goals that allowed me to die like a chump to three hostile players… but in doing so have lured them so far out of position chasing me that my teammates rolled the map objectives near unopposed.

VOLKON.1290:

You don’t need to break combat to fix that, you need to grab the mobs by the throat, shake them around a few times until they pay attention, then teach them some new tricks such that “press 1 to win” will no longer apply in PvE.

If you just heard cheering as if from a great distance and in the direction of California…

That was me.

Yes, but to select that new Signet Elite you must give up the EIite you are already carrying.

Its a well understood principle in constructed card-games that adding new cards will always lead to some evolution of decks even if the cards are individually on the fixed plane of performance simply because some of them fit better in the composite engine of the deck. And the net result can still be constrained within the overall limits you want the system to perform within. The new healing skills are pretty awful individually, but competitive combination are emerging (at least for some professions…).

It’s certainly possible to create a new Signet Elite that does not result in faster plains wurm kills than other builds available to that profession, but does elevate some builds that were doing far worse than peak performance to something closer to the acceptable limit.

I have to admit, when I saw the topic line my first thought was “pretty far if you line him up with a cliff behind him…”

I typically just play an alt for the first 20-30 minutes each day for the extra XP from knocking out the dailies. Once the 5/5 Daily is done I swap on to an 80 if I’m intent on some endgame gameplay that day.

Chrispy.5641:

These are all what-ifs and what-hows, none of which should be a concern right now.

Actually, I responded to it because it got into the details where the Devil lives and illustrated my concerns beautifully . Pardon my error of Beastmastery vs. Nature Magic, but I’d be just as confused or skeptical as to why I needed to pour points into Nature Magic to dual wield better. Doubly so if I knew that 4-6 months earlier somebody could have instead worked that mechanic into a Trait that would more likely have demanded the specific allocation 20 of my precious 70 points instead of 60 of them. I might want to dual wield because I’m pursuing my image of a dual-wielding ‘sword-dancer’ rather than a swashbuckler, but because that wasn’t on the designer’s mind when they carved up the designspace I’m paying an extra 40 points for it. Under this system I’d be out of luck, where a free-form system would have let me come (much) closer to my ideal.

I think maybe two out of my nine 80th-level characters have two trait lines at 30 in their day-to-day builds. The other six function quite competitively, but would not be eligible for the new toys. This is the exact assault on diversity I dread unleashing.

And we still need to be mindful of power creep. If Sub-classes provide anything that’s “in addition to” what we have now, its vertical progression and in many ways leads to all the frustrations and lack of challenge issues or mandatory time sinks before being at your final, finished capabilities that prompted so many people to say “please, no more tiers of gear”.

Chrispy.5641:

There. That’s my idea.

Unfortunately its pretty much all vertical progression. Every time the payoff is you kill plains-wurms faster or more safely.

It also locks together things that have no connection. If I want to be better at dual wielding (your “Swashbuckler” benefit) I have to pour 30 trait points into Beastmastery? I realize its just one way of setting things up, but any Sub-class systems becomes so reliant on the particular vision of just the designer(s), when the purpose is to serve a million-plus players who may hold wildly different expectations of what a swashbuckler does and how to go about becoming one.

Finally it hoses every possible build that doesn’t commit 30 points to two trait lines. They are now the old and inferior – second class citizens for not following ‘the format’.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

In short I would like to see if the CDI group thinks it is a relevant part of Horizontal Progression at this stage of GW2’s life?

Well, in some respects if Sub-Classes exist at all, they had better be horizontal progress… because I’m not sure the game can absorb a lot more vertical progression under any heading. I think its a real and pressing complaint that the game is not very challenging. I think that those parts that were still challenging are rapidly being trivialized by the introduction of the Ascended tier, and I think IF Sub-Classes go down that easy, seductive path of offering even more potency in the name of theme or effort to acquire, they will shred what challenge remains. That’s not a knock against sub-classes, that’s a plea to focus on horizontal gameplay development over vertical.

Personally I like the idea behind sub classes and see quite a few of the counter arguments based upon assumptions around balancing etc. Where possible we should try not to make decisions around feasibility of ideas through assumptions.

I feel that one of their greatest strengths is also their curse: They give you a sense of certainty that you are on the right path. The curse being in a game that has miraculously managed to offer us such flexibility that all professions can be molded to serve in all roles, sanctifying ‘right paths’ strangles all other paths.

My Support guardian is build around extremely high crit rate, fast cycling attacks, extremely long might-boon-duration and the Empowered Might. I can maintain 6-15 stacks of might party-wide forever and still radiate Battle Presence along with it and hit pretty hard all things considered (since nearly every attack is a crit…). Is it a brilliant build for a party otherwise stuffed with genuinely skilled Zerker-Greatsword-Dodgerific Warriors…? Yeah, actually its not bad. But put it in a random pug and it inserts a spine of Deldrimor steel into folks that might otherwise get pulverized.

No one will ever make a Sub-class that fits my tastes in support (and I don’t expect them to), but right now no one is shuffling me off to the ‘dust-bin of non-supported builds’ either.

My DPS Necro uses +95% vulnerability duration and an axe as her primary weapon. I’ve had conversations on these boards where the almighty groupthink that so loves their one true build couldn’t even begin to grasp what I’d done and why it turns some very formidable enemies to dust.

Should I expect the Necro Sub-classes to cater to lateral thinking solutions that required 3 pairs of runes to pull off or to best serve the obvious approach and those who flock to them?

Right now the game spends the entire band from levels 31-80 teaching you about Traits. It’s the most complicated player-decision system in the game and it could still benefit from better explanations and tutorials. That sense of confidence – that you are on at least a sound path could very much be improved. That is where I think these ideas of theme and iconic names are best used.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I would love to see you guys close out this particular area by either putting a sub class proposal together (Sentence detailing how it would work) or deciding as a group that it isn’t relevant at this point.

Their other strength – the one thing they can potentially do that Traits as they exist now can’t is introduce conflicting effects. For example you cannot have two Traits that completely replace weapon skills with different weapon skills for the same weapon unless both of them are Grandmaster Traits in the same tree. You can do that with Sub-classes, because you can presume that a Warrior will never be a “Duelist” and a “Gladiator” at the same time. making “Sub-classes” into a separate set of Grandmaster traits is something I outlined earlier (didn’t seem to get much attention, but hey, its a crowded room ). I’ve had another thought on how to approach it, but I want to do a bit more research before I present it. Hopefully a solution that addresses the perils I see – not the threat of power creep from poor implementation, but the damage to the versatility and openness of the build-space we enjoy now.

I’ll try to boil that down to one sentence and get back to you.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Certainly in my mind I am imagining the journey being centered around existing core journey mechanics or evolved mechanics and systems like Marcus’s map progression idea or by many ‘journey’ ideas yourself and others have made.

With each of my suggestions I also imagine the theme of each type of character progression have a huge impact on the ‘flavor’ of the journey that pertains to each. Also note that in two of my examples they are not considered progression ‘end’ points. Instead they are bridges leading to more journeys.

Indeed – while task and reward are not intrinsically connected, having that thematic tie – that ‘sense of rightness’ – is essential in the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Any of these horizontal advances could be accessed through spending gold, but for only some of them does that feel right.

But just as recently as the release of Ascended Armor, there’s strong evidence that multiple pathways should be considered to support the same ends. If new flourishes become available for your home neighborhood perhaps some should be purchased through karma and some crafted… …And there should be some items that can be acquired both ways to create a system inclusive to multiple playstyles .

I think it’s been good to trust that playstyle can be matched to each of these horizontal systems. I’m just mulling out loud that where possible, multiple journeys should be matched to each destination so long as they both/all are richly thematic.

The recent Antitoxin #6 skill is a perfect example – it can be bought with skill points OR it can be bought with mats + coin.

I guess I’m just reminding myself how important that OR can be. Something I can use to improve my proposals in the future.

Therefore in short I think a journey CDI would be awesome and whilst it is awesome to read these ideas in this CDI, i do not believe that Journey is the primary discussion in this topic, however important it may be.

Fair enough. I agree it is a separate topic. I was more thinking that meditating on the activities we have in game already might inspire horizontal progress ideas not yet uncovered. Following the bridge the other way .

I really enjoyed the ‘torch races’ in Divinity’s Reach during the jubilee. That was fun to me. So I was thinking rather than “here’s something I want: what’s the best way to get it?” I was hoping asking “Here’s something I enjoy doing: what’s an interesting new reward for mastering it?” would spark the imagination. Maybe if you accomplish a set of 6 really tough footraces in a zone all the waypoints in that zone are discounted 10%? Horizontal progression ! And it’s building on existing systems because we know from the Captain’s Council election that waypoint costs can be modified. Perhaps only universally (for now) but there’s potential there…

Don’t mind me. I’m off in the underbrush turning over stones. Just sharing how I think sometimes. I’ll come back to the main trail momentarily .

Vatlaaw Fierceshot.5713:

I’ve read a lot of your posts throughout this CDI and I’d have to say that a lot of your ideas sound extremely fun and cool.

Thank you . Credit where it is due: many of my posts are as much synthesis and polish as they are independent suggestions. Ideas playing of off each other are a huge part of open brainstorming like this.

Keep em’ comming; I hope Anet is taking notes!

Will do! And I’m sure this thread will be discussed at length once the troops are back from holiday. There are quite a few veins of gold running through this dialogue .

I think you mean “Because the Devs over there happen to share my tastes – which is to say ‘I like dungeons’. Or at least their press releases lead me to think so.”

The part of ‘the community’ that is me thinks dungeons are all right, but barbaric Ratchet-&-Clank graphics designed to run on the lowest common denominator dinosaur of a rig don’t do much for me. I hope you find your fun there when it stops being boundless, ethereal potential and resolves into an actual game come launch day.

While the wheel is handy, its also a bit misleading. I’m fairly certain each dye is made up of (at least) two colors – a primary color and an undertone. Most of the colors exclusive to the seasonal/Living Story dye packs use a strong contrast between their two colors to bring out details in the surfaces painted with them. Illumination dye is one of the few examples of this from the main dye set.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Note this CDI will only end when we are happy for it to do so ( and by we I mean all of us).

Ever the optimist .

What I would like us to do is pick ONE idea that you would hold above all others as it relates to the community as a whole.

While the answers have been illuminating, I think we’re also looking at a little bit of a false dilemma…

— 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.

…Are for the most part Rewards for play. These are the incentives to spend time in Tyria. They are ‘ends’, though Role Diversification also represents some new ‘means’.

I think each of those categories for the most part represents different teams that work in parallel. The Balance Team won’t be bogged down scripting in new racial titles. The map designer’s creating the framework for guild-halls won’t delay the creation of new armor skins. And beyond our individual preferences for one proposal over the other, I’d bet good money nearly all of us agree that some progress needs to take place on ALL of these fronts to keep GW2 in a strong, competitive, and innovative position relative to an interesting year for gamers who like to check out new things …

I’m suspicious the choke point could end up being the means of accessing these goodies. New gameplay. The sub-set of design most people mean when they throw around the vague-to-the-point-of-meaningless “Content”. In our lust for shines, are we overlooking gameplay? Or are simple ideas like ‘re-clearing maps with additional challenges’ and vague hand-waving alluding to ‘new mini-dungeons’ adequate?

I can list lots of things I’d play for. I’m not sure I’ve given enough thought to what else I’d like to be doing during that journey…

You mean like the anniversary sale?

So to round out the implementation of these titles, you’d need a new “Racial” achievements category, with 5 sub-headers (1 per race of course ). You could see all 5 from any character, but a nice touch would be a small warning “You may not advance these achievements on this character” when viewing any of the 4 tabs that do not align with your current race. Then you’d need a separate achievement for each title with the meta-achievement for the total collection. Finally, many of these achievements need the “Checklist format” that would have kept the whole ‘Stop Scarlet’s invasions in every zone’ achievement from turning into the book-keeping disaster that it did – none of this blind ‘X out of Y completed’ junk when it’s looking for exact and precise tasks – LIST THEM OUT WITH A CHECK-OFF FOR EACH ONE. If that means 50 check boxes to prove you’ve done each and every difficulty level of Fractals with a character of that race, then do it.

Sprinkle it with some achievement points and maybe a few tiers to break up the process into stages and watch us go.

I have to believe that this project has positively miniscule Development and Coding overhead compared to the amount of play time it encourages .