Guild Wars 2

I wanted to start a discussion and compile a list of changes which could be done in a very short time by a developer but would make a massive difference to the enjoyability of the game.

We’d all mostly love culling to be fixed, or dungeons to be tuned, or Zhiatan to be made meaningful- but those things take a lot of effort, skill, and time. In the meantime: what have you seen ingame which could be added almost immediately but would make a significant difference in terms of having fun ingame- be it bug, UI fix, or whatever.

Meowwilson.5106:

I actually will just go through and send individual mails to everyone. though.. the guild i am in is only 28 members.. only takes 5 minutes or so after typing out my message elsewhere.

I think you’ll find what you said is incorrect.

Max limit for mail is 2 per minute, after that you are prevented from sending mail to people.

As such, doing nothing but staring at the mail screen with an egg timer besides you, it would take 14 minutes to send a mail to everyone in your guild.

The guild I’m currently managing has 287 members, and I don’t think spending over 2 hours of my time for a basic level of communication is a valuable workaround.

Communicating with guild members when your guild is a secondary guild (most members don’t rep the guild) is a nightmare at the moment.

Something as simple as the ability of a guild leader to mass mail all members is a sorely lacking feature which could give a basic level of informing members from differing timezones of what is happening and what should be looked out for.

This could of course be done via an external forum, but many guilds exist that are not setup to be the major guild that individuals represent, and if the system allows for such guilds, the features that ensure these guilds can operate at a basic level should be provided.

Currently I have to scroll through each name, and paste a private message to them once I see them online. This isn’t how things are supposed to be for a major league MMO.

A leaderboard for each individual achievement
As a way to expand the use of achievements, and give guidance to players who may be sick of traditional content (without a huge continous developer investment), I suggest implementing leaderboards for achievements.

UI Intergration
This would attach a small button and a checkbox next to every achievement, allowing individuals to pin that achievement on their story tab in the top right hand corner.

Worldwide optional competition
Players could then redo that achievement an infinite amount of times throughout the day, and the top 10 achievers for that individual achievement would show up on a leaderboard.

Small rewards
Those who get the top spot would be awarded a laurel after the day has ended.

This would encourage truly competitive play outside pvp, and would be truly inclusive as any achievement could be focused on, meaning all styles of play could be potentially rewarding.

Increasing Game Depth
It would also give incentive for individuals to truly think about the game and it’s mechanics as absolute efficiency would be required to best everyone else on all servers.

jweltsch.1832:

Risingashes.8694:

You seem to be viewing tommorrow’s daily achievements.

Check your timezone setting and make sure your computers clock is set to the right time.

Once updated the achievements should update within 20 seconds.

The date and time is set correctly on my system, but I am unable to update those achievements, but all others work. If your theory was correct NONE of my dailies should update, but they all do except those two.

The daily display and the daily achievements are currently not connected to one another.

When the achievements display it looks at your achievements and fills in any that have been achieved. This means that any common achievements for the previous day will be counted as completed even though you will be unable to complete any of yesterdays achievements that are not also todays achievements.

This is a display issue, you can still complete today’s achievements and get the chest even without ever seeing today’s display (as long as you know what they are).

Changing the clock forward (or backwards if you are seeing tommorrow’s achievements) will fix the display issue.

Cannydog.1038:

Risingashes.8694:

The way the daily display works is that is checks your computers clock. If it is set to 11am + timezone it displays todays achievements, otherwise it displays yesterdays.

Currently your computer is telling GW2 that it is yesterday.

Check which timezone your computer is set to, and if the correct time is set.

Well its nice to see you changed your story. In that other thread you were saying that we were seeing “Tomorrow’s Daily Achievement List”. Now you are saying that the client thinks its “Yesterday”, which at least makes sense.

The problem is that my computer’s clock is spot on. And I even checked my BIOS to make sure there wasn’t a conflict. So wherever you got this information… IT IS INCORRECT!

I haven’t changed my story at all.

You are seeing tomorrow’s Achievements, these people are seeing yesterdays.

It’s the same issue from a different angle.

You’ll see that they are seeing a different set of achievements than those mentioned in the other thread.

I’m trying to help people work around the bug and you seem to be trying to paint me as someone who coded the game and purposefully tried to ruin your day.

You seem to be viewing tommorrow’s daily achievements.

Check your timezone setting and make sure your computers clock is set to the right time.

Once updated the achievements should update within 20 seconds.

The way the daily display works is that is checks your computers clock. If it is set to 11am + timezone it displays todays achievements, otherwise it displays yesterdays.

Currently your computer is telling GW2 that it is yesterday.

Check which timezone your computer is set to, and if the correct time is set.

Ranger is horrible in pvp. The only viable build is a 1v1 beastmaster and that’s only in WvW.

Thief is best in WvW.

Warrior is best for sPvP, and has an advantage over thief for pve (although all classes work adequetely for pve so no need to take that in to consideration).

The achievement points related to HoM tinkering have already been removed a few patches ago (the patch that made everyone’s points not add up correctly for half a day).

The two remaining infinite achievement catagories will not be counted when granting people ‘crowns’. At the time of conversion the remaining infinite achievements are going to be removed along with the points attached to them.

Auesis.7301:

Nobody is forcing you to do them.

Let’s get real here. Humans are fairly simple machines, if it’s the easiest path to something then it’s the only path that’s being travelled down.

Look at Fractals. It comes along and everyone deserts Orr so that it’s a (pun) ghosttown. That’s the result of giving a single shard per however-many fractal shards.

I love Fractals, the concept (always thought different difficulty levels would add longevity to dungeons) is great, but a lot of people just grind it while hating it.

Currently 100% of the people who pay attention to achievements love them. This is because there is no external motivation to do them other than achievements themselves and those that don’t care for achievements simply don’t participate.

With rewards, people who have no interest in the activity itself will be encouraged to partake, and suddenly the activity is filled with people who have a negative attitude and feel angry at the activity for forcing them to be there (see Fractals for shards/weapons, WvW for Legendaries, Orr for karma).

Firegoth.6427:

Risingashes.8694:

the rewards seem to be cosmetic only.

I wouldn’t call obsidian shards or gear packs cosmetic.

Well then I’m even more worried about the changes. Achievements, as a system, have always been so appealing to a certain type of gamer because of their ultimate meaninglessness. They’re a way to guide your behavior and enhance content rather than a forced grind in order to get +1 on your +2 sword of demon slaying.

Forcing people to do achievements just makes people despise achievements. No one wins.

Erasculio.2914:

Now that they will become almost a currency

ANet have already said that the infinite achievements are being deleted once the changeover happens.

Not only do I not get any ‘currency’ but I also lose the points.

I’m annoyed (I’m human), but this was something I always thought was inevitable. At least they’re finally expanding the achievements to be meaningful instead of the current 3 month stagnation that currently exists.

Overall this will be a positive change. Giving rewards for achievements is worrying, as it tends to encourage perverse player behavior- it would be great if they just stuck with meaningless recognition but expanded the system in terms of complexity and depth, but atleast the rewards seem to be cosmetic only.

@ColinJohanson: So you’re saying that my 15 thousand points from Entropy arn’t going to be recognised?

Clearly discrimination against the salvaging underclass.

You’ll take our materials to build your ivory towers, but when it comes time for recognition it’s empty hands as per usual.

Edit: On a more serious note- can you try to get retention of the number of salvages (or any achievement) beyond the max cap as part of the new system.

The max can be 5 thousand, and no further rewards are given beyond that- but give the player a way to see how many times they’ve done the thing so that someone who has killed 500 thousand undead is able to differentiate between someone who has killed 5001.

insanemaniac.2456:

for one thing, just 1, and its on the supply escort issue because its the most unreasonable….

you fail to consider the bottom half of the rankings with this idea. its ridiculous to assume all servers can field enough people to have escorts. this would flip the tactics of the lower tiers to the upper and vice versa. the inability to complete upgrades foments a zerg mentality. there is no point to defending when you can take 2 towers in the span of time it takes to defend 1 unsuccessfully. the lower tiers dont have the manpower to babysit upgrades, so none would ever be completed.

in the upper tiers however… you achieve the desirable gameplay of eliminating zerg mentality (to an extent).

i would argue that having desirable gameplay in the lower tiers instead of the higher ones creates a better overall experience. because you snowball towards equal distribution rather than superservers.

You should have taken the time to actually read my post past point 1 and you’d see this has been totally addressed.

One of my suggestions was that keeps should start fully upgraded. ‘Babysitting upgrades’ no longer happens. All a losing side needs to do is have a few people escorting the Dolyaks, have everyone bound to their few keeps and teleport back once one of them is seiged.

Due to the Dolyak mechanics the losing side will be able to commit more people to defense and the keep will have all defensive upgrades available as the losing side will only need to have escorted a few Dolyaks to maintain maximum supply.

These changes help all levels of play. It means that lower tiers will always have clear points of interest that they should be focusing on, and that each member will be making a real (and noticeable) contribution to their side by choosing one of many playstyles which will have a lot of variety.

Mystic.5934:

The ideas I had:
-able to open a second TP window
-a ‘back’ and ‘forward’ button

this thread should be moved to the suggestions forum. a mod probably will do this soon

The suggestions forum is full of people who don’t care about the TP. Doing so would make the thread mayaswell not exist.

Plok.6145:

This statement is so utterly wrong in concept, design and execution, it makes all the other walls of text you wrote completely irrelevant.

My ‘wall of text’ is a clear and detailed explanation of my position, what I think it wrong, and how to fix it.

You’ve made a general statement that indicates you think something but are unable to actually explain your position.

Can you take out a piece of paper and actually try and write down why you think the things you do?

Star Lancer.2901:

if your suggestion for rewarding kills is implemented, how would support-geared characters get their fair share? Right now the current system really supports people who gets exp because they tagged someone.

I agree with what you’re saying. My change was really only focused on reducing the frustration of bags of loot.

Rewards should really be focused on objectives rather than kills, the problem being rewarding kills is important to avoid people gaming the system or just ignoring enemies, but at the same time rewarding support also tends to easily lead to mix-max behavior where people will go around AE healing people when doing such isn’t actually helpful.

Ulysses.4765:

Badges of Honor need to be thought over.

But it’s not the most important thing.

WvW at the moment, for someone just hot joining is boring.

It’s boring because there is no structure, there is no clear sign of where to go other than the commander tag.

Supply Dolyaks just wander from point to point, you can kill them for personal gain but the impact that makes on the enemy team isn’t noticable or intuitive. Defending involves standing on walls and trying to ninja siege control. Using siege means just spamming 1 button over and over.

Engaging assaulting teams is impossible as people just die and then have to run all the way across the map again.

The majority of WvW, as designed, is just standing around and auto attacking for individual players. Every now and again you overextend and the other zerg picks you off. Sometimes your zerg runs in to a bigger zerg and everyone dies. Sometimes you go fort to fort and rack up points. But who cares?

WvW doesn’t feel real, it doesn’t feel intuitive, and it doesn’t feel like anything you do makes any difference.

This is not a necessity of the style of game, it’s a complete failing of design.

Edragor.9164:

Additional suggestion:
Its never bad to have both Lifetime & Repetetive Achviements.
Lifetime ones like who killed the most ettins since release tend to cater mostly to veterans (..and exploiters!) and after a while get percieved as “undoable” by newbies to the game.

Therefore and always in addition to the lifetime-achievement ladder there should be a ladder which gets reset after a while. i.E.
Who killed the most ettins this week?

This way you get both players…
At any point a newbie can take part in the weekly/monthly competition and still a veteran doesnt get bored by this weekly competition for being able to go for the “lifetime-competition” after some time instead.

Every Ettin needs 2 carrots, one for each head!

That’s a really good suggestion- to the point that I’ll adopt it if this topic ever comes up again.

The ability to get your name up in lights is an important thing is MMOs. It’s why the Onyxia head was so important back in WoW, and why people grind Microsoft achievement points on rentable games that no one else has heard of.

AirlineDlx.5203:

Totally agree, and i’d also add some kind of browser to be able to choose the page you want to go to in the transactions, just to avoid having to click on the next page until you’re finally on the one you’re looking for.

That’s a good suggestion. I’ll add it to the main post.

The problem is one of connivance. Currently it’s almost impossible to keep track of things using the current UI.

Whatever solution they put in would be a huge help.

MyGWAccount.7325:

or add a web interface that would make browsing our transaction more smooth than in game. or add in a search functionality for past items to be able to sort thru all the other transactions we have done.

Yeah, the same thing that is done with the inventory currently. If I’m searching for how many Mini Wombats I’ve sold, I shouldn’t have to scroll through 82 pages of Cotton Scraps.

JaironKalach.4938:

Seems like maybe ANet agrees

The way I read that post is that what he is talking about is again content. New quests to make the areas feel alive. New npcs singing songs. New weapon skins.

Things that will be redundant within a week of going live..

I’d love to be proven wrong. But the phrasing leads me to think that their priorities are still on static consumable content, instead of systems which would enhance communication and the effectiveness of already available content.

Imagine if every voice actor, modeler, and script writer that was kept on to work on Lost Shores was fired and that money was used to give a dedicated systems programmer massages and candy (and perhaps a salary).

He’d only have to put gw2lfg.com in to an ingame menu akin to the trading post and then we’d at least be making some progress. Then we’d of at least eliminated one useless stream of consciousness from LA shout chat. That’d take 2 hours for a test model and 2 weeks of extensive testing. Then we’d be in to improvements instead of being stuck at step 0.

No, making capturing keeps further from your spawn harder is required in WvW to maintain balance. That’s what obvious.

The current implementation punishes deaths by forcing you to run through an empty map for 5-10 minutes.

It fails to actually succeed because if a zerg is next to you they just mass res anyone who died, meaning that the mechanic only really punishes the losing side.

The suggestions I offered above instead making it harder for a winning side to hold more keeps by requiring a more intense level of coordination to keep supply levels high enough to stop keeps degrading, while also allowing individual players to fight against larger zergs without the punishment of running through an empty map.

This balances challenge for a side vs the enjoyment of the individual. While the current system throws out enjoyment of the individual in exchange for failing to properly balance steamrolling a weaker side.

Gaudrath.6725:

…You have to pay tax in EvE as well. Sure, it is not as brutal as here, and you can get it to something really low, like ~3%, but when you have billions up on the market, it adds up.
With no tax on sell orders, everyone would just relist them endlessly and profit margins would snap shut really quickly.

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Market_guide

Looks like the real rate is 1% for a new character, and reducible to 0.5% for veteran traders.

If my calculations are right, that means you were off by 200-500%.

5% vs 0.5%.

For a group of people who think a single copper is a significant amount of money, I’d think getting your figures right would be important.

4) Keep Defense is boring

4a) Physically getting in to a keep allows you to bind to that keep, giving that keep a waypoint which can be used upon death

4b) Waypointing to a keep costs supply in that keep

4c) Getting it to a keep requires a 3 second interruptable (with damage) cast time on the door of the keep.

Currently keep defense likely has you sitting on a piece of siege for hours, hoping that someone comes along, at which point you spam 1 or 3 for 10 minutes and either they die or they don’t.

Not having siege is even worse. Hardly any spells can be used to hit people on the ground due to the Z axis counting towards range, and jumping down is suicide against any competant or numerous zerg.

Allowing waypointing means that people can actually go out of the keep while still covering it for defense. Requiring supply highlights the importance of supply escorts. Requiring a cast time for entry means that sides actually need to coordinate attacks in order to allow entry, and the waypoint respawns means that such attempts can be made without forcing failure to require a boring 10 minutes walk back across the map.

5) Keep Offense is boring

5a) Add a new siege weapon that creates a barrier around an area which prevents projectiles from coming in and going out

5b) Make attacking with normal weapons do ZERO damage

5c) Allow Siege Weapons to be bought from any Keep

5d) Allow sieged keeps to sound a graphical alert on the map

5e) Firing siege weapons use the supply of the keep when within keep limits

5f) Dramatically reduce the damage siege weapons to do fully upgraded keeps

5g) Increase the amount of supply used to repair doors

5h) Increase the amount of damage siege weapons do to downgraded keeps (lack of supply)

5i) Larger keeps would allow entry by enemy forces to the lower levels if defending forces do not cover all entrances (something like a 30 second interuptable cast timer on the doors, after a keep has been under siege for 10 minutes already).

The new siege weapon forces defenders to leave their walls. Meaning that enemies actually need to engage with people on the ground. Keep Waypoints means that such small battles are not overly detrimental. Reinforcements can be called in via the map, and escorters can teleport back immediately. Getting people in to the keep will actually be challenging, and defending the door from entry will be viable.

Siege weapons can come from an Attack Dolyak that has been converted from a failed supply run, or from any nearby keep.

Attacking a well supplied keep will be an epic encounter, while attacking a downgraded keep will be substantially easier as a punishment to the owner for lack of resource management.

The new siege weapon requires communication so that allied siege can go out once the shield is let down, while enemy siege is still repelled.

6) Badges of Honor

6a) Remove Badges from Jumping Puzzles

6b) Remove loot bags and have badges act like a currency that is automatically added on a kill

7) Death State

7a) Remove finishing states, it encourages zerging and means outnumbered battles can never be truly won

7b) Black out the screen upon death and bring up the map so the person can choose where to respawn (base or their bound keep)

7c) Remove item damage completely from WvW maps, it frustrates people, instead just lower the amount of money received from objectives and kills

Conclusion: I believe, with these changes, that people can intuitivly know what to do at every moment of WvW, and be able to get there quickly and engage as soon as they arrive.

Defense will no longer be a chore which needs to be done. Escorts will no longer be a joke that no one does. Attacking will not be standing around meleeing a door while prepared people do all the work for you and they running up a ramp in order to get a reward.

Combat will be more constant and more understandable. Failure will be recoverable, and stronger teams will need to work harder in order to completely dominate.

The things people are rewarded for and the things that help the team will be brought far closer together, and no one will need to do boring things in order to help their side to victory. Fun and victory will be one and the same.

I hate WvW, not as a concept but in it’s current implementation.

For solo play, information on what to do is unavailable.

For group play, objective flipping is boring and grindy, while keep taking is grindy and unimaginative. Keep defending is one of the most boring things I’ve ever done, ingame or out.

Fixes are fairly straight forward, most involve simple gameplay adjustments to encourage competitive behavior instead of mindless objective zerging, while inserting stratagy and order in to what is currently a mindless and chaotic mess.

1) Supply Causes Static Defense

1a) Spawn Supply Dolyaks at Keeps instead of Camps

1b) Make unescorted Supply Dolyaks always fail (spawn light npc ambushes)

1c) Make Dolyaks require a 10 second interuptable (with damage) finish move after their softdeath that cannot be bursted through.

1d) Keeps decay over time without supply, rather than using supply to upgrade their facilities.

Current keep defense is incredibly static as a scout it forced to sit in a keep or roam in a pattern in order to keep intel relevent for keep defense. No gameplay element, designed correctly, should force people to do boring things in order to play properly.

Spawning Dolyaks at keeps means that defenders have a chance to escort Dolyaks on their runs. Making unescorted dolyaks fail, and make supply important to keeping keeps defendable means that defenders must escort the dolyaks. Spawning light npcs means that even if no players engage the dolyaks the escorts are still not mindlessly boring. Making Dolyaks require a finishing move means that bursting down a Dolyak is no longer viable, a group needs to defend the Dolyak, but they also need to be completely defeated (or be pushed back) by the attacking side in order to fail the supply run. Keeps degrading rather than upgrading moves people out of the static position of designated keep upgrader, and instead focus players on open map control. This will also lessen the nightcapping issue, as fully upgraded keeps no longer will be an expensive endevour requiring 24 hour support, but instead a starting point which over time- due to lack of maintenance, falls apart.

2) Supply escorts are meaningless for attacking sides

2a) After being Finished Supply Dolyaks respawn on the killing persons side, as either a supply if the opposite objective is owned by the killing realm, or an attack Dolyak that spawns items similar to the recently implemented Last Stand mechanic (free siege, semi powerful npc) if both neighboring objectives are owned by enemy teams.

2b) Repeated flipping of the caravan leads to an increasingly powerful Dolyak/Caravan up to a reasonable cap and balanced against exploitative flipping.

3) Supply Favors the winners

3a) Total supply grantable by Dolyaks is a fixed amount across all available Dolyaks

3b) Supply loss of keeps is fixed, meaning more keeps requires a higher amount of total supply

3c) To maintain a whole map at full upgraded status a side must successfully capture every Dolyak every time.

Currently winning sides continue to win, and it becomes easier and easier for them to do so. This continues until a new batch of players log on and the old ones log out. Losing feels hopeless, because winning sides have more supply, more weapons, and bigger zergs.

If a side owns one keep, by ensuring that escorting their 1 Dolyaks keeps that keep upgraded fully means that they are unlikely to be stuck flipping one keep the whole night, getting more and more bored and disheartened. Forcing the winning side to escort more and more Dolyaks to keep Keeps upgraded means that either the losing sides can take degraded keeps easier, or that winning sides truly require superior play and communication is order to dominate, not just higher numbers.

Red Falcon.8257:

In regards of Guilds.
1) If a leader is not able to fill the roster with loyal people then his leadership failed and he shouldn’t be running a guild to begin with. …
2) Good Guilds don’t need an in-game calendar either, …

I understand your point. If a member can’t even log on to a forum, why are they a member of a guild anyway?

I just see things differently. I care about my guild, but I hate logging on to the forums and sifting through irrelevant posts in the hope that an event is listed for GW2 specifically.

Forums have the problem that even if all members check them, you can never be sure that 100% of the people online have read your specific post.

Using the UI you can ensure that every person online is made aware immediately that an event is beginning, and it then becomes up to them whether to participate or not.

Yes, chat can serve that function- just as chat can serve the LFG function, just as chat can serve the function that the Trading Post does- but chat is essentially an unordered mess that never feels like part of the game.

Give leaders the ability to put Go to Lion’s Arch, Kill 10 Rats, Dance, Speak to 5 Children in the top right hand corner of every guild members screen, give each member the ability to ignore that popup and all future popups for that event, and you will give leaders an invaluable tool for guild management and community building.

Third party calendars, forums, teamspeaks are all great tools, but they are tools used specifically to get around a failure of ingame communication. UI can do better, it should do better, and unless intrusive we shouldn’t use bad AI as a trial that ‘bad’ guild leaders have to overcome to prove they are ‘bad’.

Also remember that not all guilds are created equally. The guilds you talk about are generalist guilds suited to overall gameplay and cooperation. Many guilds in GW2 are specialised guilds that have members who don’t represent them yet are formed as a sort of extended friends list. I’m in a Fractals LFG guild and the maintenance of it is terrifying. We have to advertise via word of mouth, we have posts on forums, etc- but if someone is sitting in Lion’s Arch and says “Gee I wish there was a guild specific to Fractals, or a top level pvp guild, or a roleplaying guild” they would have no way ingame to find them.

That seems ridiculous to me. That the game could do that, but it’s not there. People pm me, I represent the guild, type /ginvite, then rerepresent my main guild again. That’s illogically cumbersome, and tiring. Why not a /gjoin function, why not a UI menu?

If your guild doesn’t want to recruit ingame, then just don’t flag yourself as recruiting. Let the ‘bad’ guild leaders fail and come begging on their knees to join the ‘proper’ guilds that don’t need silly UIs to get things done.

(Think I lost my train of thought somewhere in there.)

LinkR.6190:

For gods sake the game’s barely been out for 4 months. Give it time!

Time is exactly what the game doesn’t have.

Lack of communication and community will kill a game faster than anything.

I’m not saying ‘endgame’ is missing, or ‘we need a new dungeon’. I’m not bored.

UI Systems are what drives the rest of the content forward. There is a plethora of content in the game, but what good is CM when you can’t find the other 4 people who want to do it with you?

What good is an extensive world completion, when you have to do it solo, or your guild has already done it and you can’t find a newer guild that has members that want to do it with you?

What good are achievements if the only way to keep track of them is via 3 submenus?

What good are guilds if managing new and old players, organising events, and keeping track of people is so hard to be frustrating?

And what good is ‘waiting’ when the only changes to the game so far have been balance and content.

It may well be that ANet are under the false assumption that their UI is acceptable- that’s it’s completed. What good would waiting do us then?

Name a single UI improvement to a current UI system since release?

To me UI design is the lifeblood of an MMO, UI systems make the game manageable beyond the day-to-day grind of killing Wombats and running AC.

But what are the UI systems of GW2 and what major and necessary systems are sorely missing? One, the LFG console, is an obvious one that most people know. But many other systems are sorely missing and most players may not even know it.

LFG
www.gw2lfg.com has done a wonderful job of highlighting just how silly having a game with no LFG method beyond local chat is. GW2 allows cross server grouping, meaning that at any time atleast 5 people are willing to do whatever it is you’re doing. The problem is that GW2 currently has no way to actually bring these people together.

What is needed: A replication of gw2LFG ingame. No autojoin, no extra rewards, no instant grouping. Just a simple message board type menu that has multiple general categories (dungeon, zone, misc), some subcatagories (AC, Char Starting, Wombat Farming), a list of groups LFM and players LFG with room for a comment.

Guild Search

Many guilds are dying, while others are thriving. This is the nature of post-release MMOs. Yet a communication problem exists as to what guilds are available and what they offer in terms of culture and membership.

Some people want small, tight-knit groups, some want focused guilds for specific purposes, some want large communities where someone is always on. Regardless of what type of guild someone is looking for, they cannot find it within GW2.

What is needed: The ability to set your guild to closed or recruiting and then have recruiting guilds show up on an ingame menu with information such as: Name, Description, Current number of members, Average Playtime, Focus, and Timezone. Allow requirements to be set via specific achievements (minimum 1 level 80, minimum rank 2 PvP, minimum 10000 Wombat kills) and then have applicants appear in a list in the guild panel for acceptance, rejection or further interviewing.

Guild Calendar
Organising events is the main way to build guild loyalty, and GW2 offers no help in this regard.

What is needed: Standard guild calendar. Integration with StoryMode side panel, so leaders can create custom quests with rewards (Kill 50 Wombats, 50 Players, Gather 10 Copper Ore Nodes: Get 10 silver, 10 guild points).

Achievement Tracker
Currently, to keep track of achievement progress you need to navigate 3 menus and go through several scroll bars.

What is needed: Integrate with StoryMode sidebar. 4999/10000 Wombats Killed. Easy.

Conclusion: All these systems are bringing things people do externally in to the game, where people actually need it. People visiting external sources to do something ingame is a complete failure of a game, especially when systems like those listed are fairly straight forward to implement.

Their absence is an indication of poor priorities. Programmers are scuttled in exchange for voice actors, modelers, and script writers. Systems are what make a game work longterm, not a 1% increase in the number of events, not 2% increased landmass. Systems allow people to play the game with other people, they build community, and community is what makes online games shine.

Above are only a few of the major systems that are sorely lacking from GW2, systems are those things which bring information together within the game and make it available to all. If you have further systems which you believe necessary please leave a response.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

The thing is, if we were allowed free reposts, that would open up more complaints from the same people who think 1 copper is different than 1 copper on another item.

At least with the current system, there are some checks and balances with having to pay the 5% each time you post or repost.

I’d thank you to not put words in my mouth.

I’d have no problem with free relisting. I simply don’t think it’s a practical request as it goes against ANet’s intention.

The solution I suggested maintains the gold sink (same under both solutions), balances casual traders vs power traders (power traders would be infinitely more powerful under free relisting), and limits the strain on the TP servers (relisting would increase the strain many fold on the servers).

I could ask ANet to give us candy and rainbows, but then I’d just be throwing words in to the void.

Gaudrath.6725:

Competition is there to be destroyed. It’s just a game, we can afford to be evil, unscrupulous banksters, no bad karma is involved and nobody will lose a job and have to sleep under a bridge.

There’s a difference between competition where buyers benefit and competition where a seller gains an advantage over another without giving anything up.

I’m not saying 1c undercutters are evil, I’m a 1c undercutter. I’m simply saying that the longevity of the system needs this to be addressed.

In EVE you could at least relist your orders for free. The problem is the fixed listing fee combined with the ability to gain primacy with 0.00000001% of a transaction price.

If you’re attitude is that nothing matters because it’s a game- why are you even here? This is a game forum not the United Nations, this is where we talk about ultimately meaningless things.

Not to be rude. But who exactly do you think would come out ahead in this new regulated environment?

Smart people who have already made massive amount by ‘manipulating’ the market, or you?

Currently the interface is both cumbersome and ultimately unhelpful, this is due to a variety of poor design decisions that (while understandable for a rushed release) should have been fixed long before now.

Items I’ve Bought and Items I’ve Sold both display single unit transactions out of a stack transaction

This results in a stack taking up to 25 pages of results (often 10-15 for commodities in practice). All of this will be the same information repeated over and over again. This will happen even if you’re not buying two different stacks of items at the same time and the 25 pages are just the same item, at the same price, repeated again and again.

This morning I had to go through 75 pages of the same item repeated just to find my purchase price of an item I bought 6 hours ago.

Solution: Group items in the Items I’m Buying and Items I’m Selling that are the same item and the same price.

Even with the above change, finding a specific item in any of the transactions menus is a nightmare

I’m buying a Mini Snow Leopard at the moment. Trying to find it within my 120 pages of buy orders, and eventually trying to find it within my 34780 pages of buying history is not worth it.

I’m far more likely (as with the majority of items) just to place a new buy order at the market price and then resell the duplicate once the transaction goes through.

This is not the type of behavior players should be pushed in to.

Solution: Add a search feature, just like the inventory search feature, so item history of a particular item can be found immediately, and orders for a particular item can be located immediately.

Even with the above changes, knowing whether your orders are still relevant is a nightmare

So- I have an order for a Mini Snow Leopard since yesterday. It isn’t in my Receive Items tab, so it must be still up there. I open my Items I’m Buying tab and luckily it’s up the top and not 500 pages back. I see the price I listed it at. I click the item, see that someone has 1c overcut me, I go back to the transactions tab, change to Item’s I’m Buying, click cancel order. Go to the item pickup tab, click receive. Go to the Buy Items tab, type in Mini Snow Leopard, click the only result, click Place a Buy Order, type in the amount, click place order.

Solution: Multiple redundancies in this process, but the most obvious one is the fact that current highest listing price is not an available column in the Item’s I’m Buying tab. This information would remove the necessity for jumping between tabs and I’m always amazed it isn’t there. The decision to cancel an order shouldn’t require jumping away from the tab where the action to cancel is made, that’s just poor design.

My Transactions is a single button

This is a big one, but such a minor fix.

Currently there is tons of empty space on the TP sidebar, yet people are forced to go directly to Items I’m Selling when this option is unlikely to always be what people are after. Instead of wasting time the My Transaction should be 4 separate buttons on the TP sidebar, taking the user directly to whichever view they are after.

Moving 10 transactions at a time (as suggested by AirlineDlx.5203)

Allow people to type in the page number they wish to go to, if nothing else in this thread is done. That would at least allow people to guesstimate where in the thousands of transaction pages the relevant information is and jump right to it.

Simple change, but would remove a great annoyance when trying to get achievements.

@OmniPotentes.4817

If this was put in I would be made obscenely rich. So thank you for giving me a chill.

But from a practical standpoint, less supply means higher prices, and binding goods on pickup from the TP would certainly lead to less supply.

While there are traders who makes money from rising prices, there are just as many who make their money from falling prices. Killing one of these kinds of traders will lead to the others running rampant.

@Imperatora.7654

What possible advantage could someone gain from ‘keeping’ an item at 600g? They’ve already listed their item, so someone else lists theirs for 599g99s99c. Do you really think anyone would buy an item out, and relist it? Costing them 90g in total? For a profit of minus 89g99s99c?

What kind of world do you think we’re living in.

Now let’s say the limit was 1%, they’d lose 83g99s99c. 5%, they’d lose 59g99s99c. 10%, they’d lose 29g99s99c. 15%, they gain a single copper piece.

How exactly are these monopolists in your example operating? The absolute most anyone suggested (something likely way too high) for a 5% minimum undercut, even under this extreme point the monopolist still loses 10% of the money he puts in.

Astraea.6075:

Can you point out an example where the price of an item has been consistently dropping over time by small 1c increments?

Twilight: Currently two sell orders. 1 for 2999g99s99c, 1 for the low low price of 2999g99s98c. Clearly the lower price is a far better deal for the consumer, who can use that 1c to cover 0.1% of a local waypoint fare.

Astraea.6075:

If you want to sell fast, price to sell fast. Why are you so against this? If you don’t care about selling fast, price to make profit. If you don’t care about either, why aren’t you just selling to a vendor and leave those of us who want to make gold the freedom to do so!

The reason I’m against this is that these are not truly the options open to us. 1c undercutters can always take the exact same profit that first comers do, and will simply 1c undercut regardless of if the original seller ‘prices to sell fast’, or ‘prices to profit’.

If a person chooses a 200% profit the 1c undercutter can take 199.99999%, if they choose 10% profit the 1c undercutter can take 9.9999999%, if they choose 1%, the 1c undercutter can take 0.9999999%. The only possible thing that will deter the 1c undercutter is to take a loss- and that’s not a proper market. That’s not what the system should give as the only choice to sellers.

Smooth Penguin.5294 is a troll and is just trying to stir up trouble.

This entire post is just trying to make fun of the 1c thread.

He does not actually want anything he described in the original topic (as can be easily seen in his posting history). Don’t waste your time trying to have a reasonable discussion with him, and certainly don’t bother raging at him for what is a ridiculous suggestion- it’s what he wants.

MrMacAndCheese.3907:

It sounds like you just want the game changed so that you don’t lose as much, because maybe you aren’t good at playing the game.

I spend most games just sitting in the middle lobbing kegs in to the goal while my team and the other team zerg around trying to 2 the person with the other keg.

But aside from that, once more than 1 person logs on that knows how to lob the game becomes silly.

There is no reasonable method to prevent/intercept lobs as they are currently implemented. I know because I’m the one lobbing.

You may think you’re the best player in existence because you’re abusing an overpowered move that the majority are clueless about, but I have more self awareness.

Keg Brawl is awesome.

But certain balance changes really need to be added if it’s going to be taken seriously.

The lob is nessesary as otherwise it’s just a zergfest, but intercepting the lob needs to be made far more intuitive.

1. Make the lob have a shallower angle, so that people can run in front of lobs to intercept, and intercept them on the way down.

2. Give the lob a reasonable cast time, 2 seconds is insane and does not allow teams to properly organise. 4 seconds would mean far more skill.

3. Make goal keeping more viable. The hitbox for the npc is so wide at the moment that having a goalie protecting against lobbers is not very effective. Team games require more than zerging and lobbing. Change a useless ability to a stand still protective barrier that can prevent wide field lobs from being an instant score. Make the bubble interuptable or counterable or something so a player is encouraged to go offensive.

4. Give the 1 pass a higher angle and a faster travel speed. Currently fumbles are far too easy, and aiming is far too difficult on moving teammates that endless back and forth lobbing is the only real meta strat.

I’ve tried to reasonably move the conversation forward, unfortunately Smooth Penguin’s only reply is always 1c less is 1c less.

Even after conceding that point and asking for further discussion the reply is always, 1c less is 1c less.

This is always followed by: “well I guess that’s settled, let’s close the discussion”.

I hope everyone understands that there is no real reason to reply to him anymore, and I suggest others stop also until he actually addresses the points we come across.

1c less is 1c less, that’s a given.

The problem is that 1c less, for some items, is insignificant.

1c undercutting on Mithril Ore is significant (5%), 1c undercutting on Dawn is insignificant (0.0001%). Yet the game currently awards the same privilege for 1c undercutting on both items.

But I know what the response will be: “1c less is 1c less, don’t you understand that?”

Put 1c aside for every item bought and see how fast it piles up.

The change is specifically targeted to items where 1c is truly insignificant. It would not apply to items that are sold in bulk. You’re creating a strawman that is nonapplicable to the situation.

I’ll put 1c aside for every precursor I sell in a month, and I’ll have 1 copper. That’s what is happening here.

If an item is overpriced, 1c undercutting doesn’t matter.

1c undercutting just means that if a buyer comes along willing to pay whatever the price is they will buy the 1c undercut item instead of the original item. The undercutter gets 99.999999% of the original asking price, the buyer pays 99.999999% of the original asking price and the original seller has to wait longer than otherwise.

The alternate situation is not the original seller getting money, it’s that the undercutter has to undercut by a noninsignificant amount, the buyer gets the item for cheaper, the undercutter gets money but not as much and the original seller waits.

That is fair, the undercutter is giving something up to the buyer in order to be more appealing and getting a faster sale. Currently buyers are getting screwed because undercutters are gaining a market advantage without actually competing.

If the original price and the 1c undercut price is so high that no buyers buy the item before someone legitimately offering a lower selling price comes along, then the original and the 1c undercutter gets nothing. That is market forces at work, that’s fair. The change isn’t at all meant to reward people who post at high prices, it’s supposed to move the market towards equilibrium by requiring actual competition between sellers- not just exploitative 1c undercutting (on items where 1c is insignificant).

Smooth Penguin.5294:

People who complain about the 1 copper undercutting don’t understand that 1 copper less, is still less than their price.

You keep saying less, less, less, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, as if we all don’t understand what you’re saying.

No one is saying that 1c less isn’t technically less than 1c more. That’s a fact, we’d be insane to state otherwise.

The point is that 1c less is such a small proportion less that it’s effectively nothing.

The buyer certainly doesn’t noticeably benefit from it, and the undercutter certainly isn’t noticeably disadvantaged by it.

It turns what should be the benefit of competition (lower prices, increased supply) in to a duopoly like situation, where price drops only occur sporadically and only when price setters obtain items and then list them.

A healthy system should require that people actually compete with other sellers in order to gain an advantage over them. The current system does not have such a requirement.

Undercutting is not the problem, competition is not the problem. 1c undercutting is the problem, as it provides a benefit to the 1c undercutter at no real cost, to the detriment of the buyer who isn’t benefiting from competition, and the original seller who has to wait longer for their item to be sold when their price was clearly reasonable to whoever bought the 1c undercut item.

You also keep telling us ‘smart’ strategies for dealing with 1c undercutting, all of which essentially sum up to “1c undercut also”, we are not idiots. The majority of people know how to 1c undercut, and most likely do. The difference is that we recognise that we’re simply screwing over both the buyers and the guy who was unlucky enough to waste their 5% posting chronologically before us. We believe people should actually need to compete in a market economy, not just exploit a design oversight to get a costless advantage.

Please feel free to continue with your guild, but be aware that there is already a well established Fractals LFG guild.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/13irp4/fotm_guild_created_another_option_to_look_for/

T1 has 400 members, T2 250, T3 100, so your guild would really be competing needlessly.

Currently the ranking are setup as levels, with each tier being split off to a new guild to account for the max 10 rank limit.

But under the new system the ranks will be based on the amount of resistance a character has. 5,10,15,20,25,30 respectively. Your current plan of 1-4 and 1-4 infused will not be very helpful, as a person forming a group will only need to know how much resistance a person has, not their level. And (infused) doesn’t really give party leaders enough information, one infused item is very different in a level 30 fractal than a character with 30 total agony resistance.

This is all assuming the that agony will remain the same mechanically now that all levels are allowed entry to the higher levels.

Malvagite.3254:

How can you genuinely equate breaking down a leather glove to killing Sinin in Arah path 4 for Dungeon Master?

Personally I loved Dwayna/Simin, and never tried to equate the two. I’m very proud of my Dungeon Master title and have displayed it since I got it.

My entire post was devoted to highlighting the problems with the achievement system, and suggesting possible solutions that would be fair to everyone. But, yet again, you’ve tried to turn this in to an ‘us vs them’ battle where I’m apparently sitting atop a pile of gloves laughing at the rest of the players.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

teaspoon.1357:

I remember when games required strategy and skill for these things.

Really? Tell us of this magical time- because I’ve been playing games for a fair while and all achievement points have ever been is a way to engender system loyalty by awarding points for nothing more than game completion.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

And it would be nice if they stopped having it so that the next tier takes 10x the previous tier in a lot of cases. Like in the WvW achievements. You use up 1,000 supply for repairs and complete tier 2. For tier 3? You need to use 10,000.

I think this is one of the things they did right. Not the number, wvw achievements require way too much. But the progressively longer tiers give people guidance as to what is being tracked early on and then requires more effort to reach the max cap.

If all achievements were the same amount per tier then tiers would become useless. You’d be better off throwing tiers out completely and just having 1 bar.

Malvagite.3254:

macroing your way to 20K points by using HoM reward skins

I certainty didn’t do that, and I’d appreciate you not casually chucking around unfounded accusations of cheating.

Malvagite.3254:

20k, achievement points isnt remotely possible if you were to have completed every achievement possible minus the infinity ones.

Which is fixed by point 1 and 2 of my original post.

Malvagite.3254:

How does someone look at your points and go wow, you really have accomplished alot

I’ve spent over 1000g getting those points. I’ve salvaged 1.4 million items, spent a fair amount of time doing it. Essentially I’ve put in as much time, effort, money, and ingenuity that someone getting a Legendary weapon has. Yet for some reason you keep insisting, without reason, that somehow what I’ve done doesn’t qualify as an achievement.

Malvagite.3254:

belittles the true achiever point total

I think removing my points would do a wonderful job of belittling the achievement point system, something you’ve asked for in every thread I’ve posted.

I’ve entered in to the system and acted in good faith, that the infinite points were an intended feature of the system. To suggest that the points should just be blanket removed seems needlessly vindictive to me. Why not try and improve the system so that it truly represents all play styles instead of suggesting punishing people who you claim not to personally have anything against?

Leo Paul.1659:

Dont you wanna be able to spend those points at least? Maybe unlock some special skins if you get a certain amount of achievement or something?

Nah. Skins can be gotten through other methods. If you attach ingame rewards to achievements you’re just going to encourage destructive behavior.

xROOx.7316:

heh, i just made a post last night about my 5k, good to see im not the only one whos interested in having a high amount of achievement points.

Grats man. 5k is more than all but 2 people that I’ve run across. Nothing to sneeze at.

As to the profit, since a few months ago the salvaging game has become increasingly cutthroat, so no- no tips. I doubt anyone could do much more than breakeven until a few more people drop out and demand peters down a bit.

Leo Paul.1659:

WTF?! I only have 2k achievement points. I wish you’d get something special from all of that achievement really.. It’s a big feat regardless.

I think getting rewarded for achievement points goes against the spirit of the system. The points are really just there for bragging rights, and for tracking personal progression.

There are plenty of avenues for getting rewards, most of them are completed at the same time as achievements. No need to double-dip.

http://i.imgur.com/zhGsO.jpg

So that’s that.

My 5 point plan to make the system work properly

1. Make infinite achievements require +1% each time they complete.

Doesn’t sound like much but, through the magic of compound interest, my 1.4 million salvages would only achieve 425 levels of Entropy instead of the 14000 it currently does.

Level 1: 200 required
Level 2: 202 required
Level 100: 540 required
Level 425: 13728 required

2. Add infinite achievements to the majority of playstyles

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Achievements-should-be-expanded-on/first#post754937

Currently the infinite achievement unlocks are weirdly limited in scope. They should be added to all achievements, so that people who just want the unlocks can get the cap and stop, but people who specialise in particular areas get some kind of feedback as to what they’re doing.

Without the achievement I would of never known the ridiculous amount of items I’ve sacrificed to the God of Chaos and Entropy, and that brings a tear to my eye to think of all the half-robots that have no idea how many undead they’re killed to date.

C. Add achievement leaderboards

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Achievement-Leaderboards/first#post970117

With the newly added infinite achievements, you can now compare yourself to the rest of the gaming population. Those who think achievements are stupid are unaffected, and those that play in specific areas get to find kindred souls out there in the wilderness.

5. Add an achievement tracker

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Achievement-Tracking/first#post865805

Currently seeing how many badgers you’ve killed (or more appropriately how many types of creatures you have left for the daily) is cumbersome. Adding a checkbox next to achievements that displays a completion bar under the story progress panel (top right) would allow people to see how they’re going without scrolling through 4 different screens.

_____________________________________

FAQ: “You think you’re the best WvWer/PvPer/PvEer in the game? Ha. Look at your <insert symbol on screenshot here>”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/15k-Achievement-Points/first#post891169

I screenshotted the character screen for a particular reason. I don’t think I’m a better player than anyone. I’m also not ashamed of my achievement points. I think it’s fun, and it gets far more attention than a legendary weapon.

But in terms of skill, calm down. Never implied I was better than anyone- only that I have more achievement points than anyone- which I do. That’s a fact bub.

“You’re a hacker/loser/exploiter/cheater, and achievement points are meaingless, lol, what a loser/nolife”

(Not playing the victim here, I’ve made two posts- one at 10k and one at 15k, and a fair number of people tried to tear out my throat.)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/15k-Achievement-Points/first#post890992

Calm down. It’s a game, my achieving something in it doesn’t make your existence any less meaningful. Belittling it doesn’t make you better in comparison, it just makes you look jealous of something you really shouldn’t be jealous of.

“Wat?! That isn’t possible.”

Salvaging, nothing special.

“You must have spent so much on this”

Not really. Legendaries cost 5500g nowadays or something don’t they?

“You must be so rich”

Not really. I do have about 300k silk on the trading post though. Does anyone want to purchase enough silk to murder a small town?

“Why is the title In My Opinion:?”

The forum mods are a tad overspecific. Apparently I can’t just assume I’m the first to 20k achievement points, , and refuse to actually check. So unless I personally interview every person that has ever played I have to qualify the title.

No books. Just add an achievement, no reward unnecessary.

Could I suggest that instead the buy order screen have a checkbox “Send to this character” that once the buy order is completed makes that item only appear in the purchasing characters item pickup tab and no others?

This would avoid the situation where people have a tab full of items and no way to get at the item they want, as they could just log on to their main TP character and clear the queue until only character specific items remain.

While I agree with the intention of your suggestion: that crafting would benifit from a bit more variety (as currently all it seems to have are recipies designed to reach 400 and then some token top stat gear), I think adding the above would just suffer from the same issues that currently exist for crafted gear.

Because everyone has a max level crafter, and a lot have 400 level of every profession, the competition is so high that final products tend to be around the same price as their components.

All these new recipes will do will add new options to people that they may as well just buy off the TP than to craft as it would cost them (at most) 10% more to do so.

Until a proper solution to crafting abundance is put in, there is really no point in adding more recipes.

Edragor.9164:

I like this idea.
After all, on the long run its about competition…and you CAN select which “Grinds/Competitions” you are interested in…

…unlike gear spiral which force ALL player to participate. (Hint: Get rid of AG stats…)

Exactly. Completely optional, user generated content. The only reward being bragging rights amoungst those that are interested in achievement farming.

For people who do care, like myself, it adds a near infinite life to the endgame- while not disadvantaging people who don’t care about achievements.