Guild Wars 2

dimgl.4786:

Cancer.9065:

Part of the problem, I think, is that many lock down on 1 weapon set (or 2 if you toon can swap) and call it a day. I have started to carry different weapons to switch them around for diff situation. Also combos are nice to pull off and give variety since they change depending on how you accomplish it.

I think the possibilities are there.

This is a horribly annoying system. If the game was meant to be played this way, give us more slots to equip weapons of kind. If not, we need to do inventory management every time we want to switch weapons around.

Yeah you could have it set up so you can keybind what weapons you want to switch. Like for example F1 could be greatsword, F2 could be sword and shield, F3 could be hammer, F4 could be sword and mace. (Weapons would be completely customizable of course and you could pick what weapons you want in each of the slots.)

This would make the combat more interesting and skillful. However, it doesn’t negate the fact that a lot of the abilities in this game are stale and overused and uninteresting and some only do things like cripple.

Another fix could be to make weapons have 10 abilities instead of 5 and keep the current 2 weapon swap system.

I’m going to go a little off topic here so try not to make the rest of this thread about whats below

People keep saying “Oh, play an elementalist” or “Oh, play an engineer.” I have a level 80 elementalist and a level 80 engineer. Engineer kits don’t well on their own because their abilities don’t work together as a kit. They don’t. You have to use an all kit build or don’t use kits at all. Because of the way kits are designed (very poorly I might add) you need to constantly be switching kits to get what you want from each one because the kits can’t stand on their own because the abilities don’t work together as a kit. They are all random scrambled abilities that don’t really work with eachother. You can’t have a toolkit, elixer, turret build because tool kit (and every other kit) doesn’t really do anything on its own. You either need to have all kits or no kits at all unless you wanted one kit for a very specific situation (I.E. Grenade kit for WvW tower fights).

The elementalist is a bit more interesting but I just don’t like how its designed really…. Its also very specific and its not like i can go from staff to dagger dagger in combat. If you’re playing staff in WvW and then you get into a small skirmish its going to be nowhere near as effective as dagger dagger. I mean this is understandable but the weapons are extremely situational and with the situation constantly changing you don’t have time to go into your inventory and switch weapons on the fly…

Ordika.9513:

A Warrior with a rifle is a kiting machine.

Add bola’s and charge as two of your skills and you can effectively make a champion chase you around never getting a swing in (while applying vulnerability).

I did this very thing with a Jotun Champion in Dreadnaught Cliffs. I basically had him chase me around in a circle while 3 other players killed him.

Your issue may be with the job not the tool.

In a way I am agreeing, as I am not a fan of every professions abilities. Warrior is great for me as I can control my abilities thru my weapon selection and that is a huge pool to choose from. But elementalist or engineer with such a limited selection can be a bit boring (though engineer does make up for this with kits).

Its a cool kiting tool yes. But is it fun? In certain people’s eyes, yes. But its not an interesting weapon. Two of the weapon’s abilities only apply conditions (and do a little damage but what doesn’t in this game?). There should not be abilities in this game that only apply conditions… Conditions and buffs are something that should be incorporated into interesting abilities, not be abilities on their own.

The game is still relatively new. They could just revamp the classes weapons to have a lot less abilities like aimed shot and brutal shot that really only do one thing and are completely uninteresting. Who would complain? I strongly feel like conditions and buffs should be incorporated with interesting abilities and not just be abilities on their own.

ecthelion.6794:

To this day, I just don’t understand why they didn’t just go with the same skill system they used in GW1.

It’s a proven system. Basically, it’s the system from Magic the Gathering. Huge bank of possible skills, but only 8 to choose. And then there was the Elite slot as a limiter that actually make it more intriguing.

And thus GW1 had the same replayability that Magic does because there’s always a “build” to experiment with. That was the core endgame for most people.

People say there’s no Endgame in GW2, this is one of the primary reasons why.

We need that system back, or at least the ability to swap out weapon skills. This game will not survive the year otherwise; people will just go back to playing pandas.

Yeah I didn’t see myself getting bored of guild wars 2 one month into launch but I am… It feels like there was no real attempt to come up with interesting abilities and only being able to use 15 abilities at once really emphasizes on how boring they are. Also its not like you can pick any set of abilities to use. No you’re locked down to whatever abilities are on that weapon. Hammer = CC, greatsword = damage, ect. Wouldn’t be as much of a drag if they were some interesting, creative, and fun abilities… But they really are just sub par, recycled abilities.

Traits are another disappointment. Most of the traits are just stat increases like “6% extra damage against burning foes” or something generic like that. Every class has the “20% reduced cooldowns” trait for nearly every weapon. Nothing really too interesting.

It’s bad enough you only have access to 15 abilities at a time but when those 15 abilities are uninteresting, recycled abilities you’ll see in any other MMO it gets really boring really quick. The abilities don’t even attempt to be interesting. We’ll take the warrior’s rifle for example:

• Aimed Shot – Small damage and cripples… yay?
• Volley – Pretty much a channeled auto attack that shoots faster… Also in just about every MMO
• Brutal shot – Slightly more damage than an auto attack and makes the target take 5% more damage. Boring standard MMO ability.
• Rifle butt – Knocks back.

You only get 5 abilities on a weapon. This kit is completely uninteresting. Things like cripples and vulnerability should be tied to other interesting abilities. They shouldn’t be abilities all on their own.

This problem isn’t just for the warriors rifle. Its practically for every weapon in the game. I feel like that’s why this games combat feels so stale. Theres not really any original ideas, just a bunch of sub par, one purpose recycled abilities from every other MMO.

I say these things because I do love guild wars 2 and I want to see it get better and become the amazing game it could be.

There is absolutely no reason vengeance shouldn’t have a 100% chance to rally if you kill something in PvE. I shouldn’t need to waste 20 trait points to get something that should be baseline anyway. We don’t get to choose our downed abilitys. No other class has a “If I press this button I die” so why should we? Our other two downed abilities are pretty worthless and the only one thats worthwhile kills us. Its ridiculous.

I can understand why you shouldn’t have the 100% chance to rally in PvP without it being traited but in PvE its absolutely ridiculous for it to be a random chance.

I know there are people who don’t enjoy duels and getting spammed with duel requests but theres very simple solutions to that. You could simply add an option to disable duel requests so that people couldn’t challenge you to one.

Some people don’t like seeing the crowds of people dueling (for whatever reason…) so there could be designated places for duels in starter zones. Dueling was one of my favorite things to do in WoW and watching people duel was a very fun thing to do and it brought the community together in PvP oriented servers. It also allows people to test out builds and practice their playstyle. It’s a very important thing to have in any MMO that is centered around combat.

Right now I don’t understand why there isn’t dueling in Guild Wars 2. It wouldn’t be a hard thing to add and you most definitely don’t need to and shouldn’t balance around it. People who don’t like duels or getting duel requests could simply disable duel requests and it would be a win for everyone.

Arenanet, please bring one of my favorite pass times to this MMO. It definitely needs it.

Wait…. Are you Dungeon Rob? Hiya! We talked during the betas about college and how I could get a job in game design. When the game launched it didn’t show you on my friends list however… Did you make a new account or something?

I agree that the absence of trinity has been a part of why this games dungeons have failed in my opinion… Generally poorly designed encounters are the other part… Seriously some bosses literally just auto attack… No other mechanics. The fights with mechanics normally have about 3 very simple, cliche mechanics. Some of the bosses just have recycled abilities from playable classes like the huntsmen in honor of the waves just uses ranger abilities.

Sporadicus.1028:

If you think that you’re only tagging folks and not doing enough damage, then your style seems more suited for a condition build. You’ll want to find armor and weapons that increases Precision and Condition damage, with upgrades that do the same thing.

Your traits should focus more on conditions. Explosives increase Condition duration, while Firearms increase Condition damage and precision. I normally choose only 10 points in Explosives for the burn on crit chance, with 30 points in Firearms to max out condition damage and precision, and 30 elsewhere (usually a defense-aligned trait).

You want your third to be defensive, either with vitality or Toughness. Vitality will help you overall and especially help you vs other condition users, while Toughness is specifically for direct damage.

Ironically the flamethrower doesn’t really have condition damage. It has the 3/4 of a second burn on the last hit but really can we do anything besides laugh at that? The combo field also burns but who with a brain actually stands in those things?

Some even completely lack mechanics. They literally just auto attack. The dungeon bosses that do have mechanics only have about 3 and are very simple and cliche. Caudecouses manor was a huge let down and don’t even remind me of Zhaitan… Lets look at honor of the waves for example.

First Boss (Forgot the name): The boss’s abilities wern’t telegraphed well enough. Red circle outlines that overlap eachother is a bad way to show where to stand and where not to.

Second Boss (Forgot the name): This fight was probably the best designed boss in the whole dungeon and thats not saying much. It was a somewhat dull fight but atleast it had mechanics that were identifyable…

Honor’s Voice: No mechanics at all, absolute tank and spank.

The Huntsman: Neither the huntsman nor his pet had any unique abilities or mechanics. All of the huntsman’s abilites are recycled Ranger abilities. His pet had a breath like all drakes do and he had a skelk pool ability. For such a dull fight with recycled mechanics why was he a Legendary mob and why did he have such a huge health pool?

The trash mobs in this dungeon weren’t very exciting or challenging either…

Everyone is going to be at my neck for this comment but World of Warcraft did good on their boss mechanics in raids. They were unique most of the time and weren’t recycled abilities from playable classes… I was hoping to have a similar if not better experience here but the dungeons in this game are sub par and poorly designed… I hope they get a rework.

I also feel like dungeons are a bit too chaotic and its impossible to have complex mechanics without having tanks and healers in the game…

Its not too hard to think of more out of the box abilities… Riot (They made league of legends) does it a lot.. I know its a different genre but the ideas can be transferred over and it shows that new ideas are possible… Right now Guild Wars 2 doesn’t really bring anything new or interesting ability wise to the MMO genre.

It’s just WvW I’m fine in PvP where there was a mass of people at one of the dragon events. Before this patch I was fine. Its not FPS lag… People start running in whatever direction they were facing and i cant use my skills for a second until it clears up but then it goes right back into lagging… I don’t know what changed…

Quartz.3462:

I think you should experiment and be more creative with the kits. I initially tried only using one kit and sticking to it but then they really are mediocre except for the grenade kit. But when used in combination with your normal weapon or other kits and you swap regularly they are fantastic. Engineers do not have a cooldown on kit swaps like weapon swaps do. Once I had gotten used to the bindings and could somewhat keep an idea of the cooldowns on various abilities in my head I started to shine with kits.

Elixir gun is great with kit refinement to drop the water (I think??) combo field and had some nice utility for PvP and dungeons. It’s not meant to make you a ‘healer’. But applying a permanent weakness can be very useful and condition removal will really save a lot of health for your party.

Tool kit – I thought this was useless but it’s quickly becoming one of my favourites in PvE and PvP. The gear shield is brilliant at stopping predictable burst damage and magnet is useful for pulling ranged from some ledges in sPvP. Scatter nails is weak but is ok for running away – especially if you hit speedy kits and drop the nails. Pry bar has some nice damage to it but I’ll never intentionally get into melee against another melee just to use this. And throw wrench is brilliant with static discharge for those who like bursty engineers (I’ve only had mixed results though)

Flamethrower – I agree the first two skills can be annoying in that they are difficult to hit. But the low cooldown knockdown is really handy and so is the instant blind. I rarely drop the firefield in the middle of a fight but if I see the enemy coming at me I’ll drop it beforehand and combo fields are always useful in groups.

I still need to experiment with bomb kit. I consider myself to be an average engineer but I still see kits as being great things to switch to depending on the situation and then switch back. I would never stick with a kit just to spam (except grenades underwater). I switch to a kit to use an ability or two that the situation calls for, and switch to another kit or back to my standard weapon.

I still have a lot to learn with the kits but I’m having fun doing so and the depth to the engineer is both challenging and rewarding. I highly recommend trying more creative approaches with kits.

Perhaps you’re right… But the kits on their own aren’t very exciting or interesting or unique…

Creature.9476:

Sounds to me someone wants to switch to a kit and then not switch out.

I use, generally, my flamethrower to build might stacks, lob a pot shot of Flame Blast at someone or drop a Napalm (#4). Then, I switch to my rifle to dominate with CC abilities.

Pulled an add or two? Well, back to the thrower I go. Pop my Elixir U and burn everything to a crisp. Whatever is alive gets knocked back with Air Blast (#3) and while I use that skill I backpedal then immediately a Flame Blast (#2) again because it tends to explode right at the range they are at (if I backpedaled). Switch back to my rifle and Net someone, focusing on the other adds. Incendiary Ammo popped and switched to my Grenade Kit. Start tossing grenades like a madman, usualy cackling at my computer and generally worrying my girlfriend.

Pop heals on cooldown and drop a Supply Crate if things get really crowded. To be honest, I rarely run with one kit, I usually use two kits on my bar and then a few self buffs and I switch non stop between all three: my two kits and my weapons.

Well I feel like you should be kit swapping as an engineer but i don’t feel that means you should make the kits all garbled… kits should flow well together and hopefully have interesting, unique abilities something I feel this game lacks…

I never meant to compare elixer gun with grenades. I’m sorry if it came across that way. However I do feel like Tool Kit is absolutely useless. Flamethrower is a huge disappointment. It should be highly damage based with some CC (see my thread! I think the napalm spread is a great idea) but instead right now its just a bunch of random abilities that don’t flow together at all and its very frustrating.

Edit: After several of your posts I decided to try a weapon kit build that involved a lot of kit swapping and it proved to be quite powerful. It would seem kits on their own are useless but if you take what you need from a kit when you need it and switch to whatever you need afterwards it can be quite powerful. Thanks for all the feedback everyone!

The only truly useful kit is the grenade kit and its not even a very exciting kit… Then again none of the kits are very exciting…

Useless kits:

The flamethrower has absolutely no idea what it want’s to be. Its first ability is damage, its second ability is complete garbage and will almost never be used right in a practical situation, the third ability is crowd control, the fourth ability is support, and the fifth ability is damage mitigation… Completely scattered kit that doesn’t flow well together AT ALL. (see my thread on the flamethrower here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Making-the-Engineer-flamethrower-more-interesting-and-useful/first#post279712)

The Bomb Kit is pretty much just a bunch of other engineer abilities in bomb form… The kit in itself is a neat idea but its not very fun and again it will never be practical unless you’re kiting a melee mob by yourself… its useless especially in comparison to the grenade kit otherwise.

The Tool Kit is an absolutely useless kit that I will never use.

Semi-useful kit:

The Elixer Gun The idea is nice however it really doesn’t support very well… This goes for most support builds in this game… You can heal but your heals are barely felt by your party and the cooldown is too long to actually be used as a heal… the condition removal is nice, however the bouncing cripple + speed really doesn’t feel practical at all unless you’re only using it for the cripple. It’s not like you can target an ally and just launch the speed directly to them. The acid leap is kinda nice but its not even a support ability and it rarely ever gets used since you’re supposed to be in the back anyway.

All of the kits are pretty poorly designed and the grenade kit outshines everything the engineer has… Which is kind of sad considering the grenade kit isn’t very exciting or as fun to use as it is frustrating.

It makes it very hard to use many downed abilities, for example the thief teleport… I also simply just don’t understand why it zooms in? For what purpose? To irritate people? There is really no other reason.

I agree that the legendaries other than the greatsword and the shortbow are pretty lackluster….

I have a level 80 elementalist, a level 80 engineer, and a level 44 ranger… None of them really make me want to stay committed to them… They all seem to have things wrong with them that really turn me off.

Well I do miss raids. This game’s dungeons are severely lacking. They have really bad mechanics if they have any at all (some boss fights literally have no mechanics, no abilities, no anything, just tank and spank.) Even fights that do have mechanics are extremely generic… Theres no uniqueness about it. The last boss in honor of the waves uses ranger abilities nothing else, literally just recycled ranger abilities. The 3rd boss literally has no abilities at all, its just tank and spank. Theres a lot of boss fights like this in guild wars 2 and its depressing.

I’d say that ranger suffers from this the most… A lot of abilities just aren’t very exciting, interesting, or unique… Nothing really makes me think “Wow thats a really interesting ability, I can’t believe they thought of that!” It all feels kind of generic and bland…

How do you guys feel about the abilities and combat in guild wars 2?

My biggest quarrel with the flamethower is that it has no idea what it wants to be. The 1st ability is pure damage based (sub par damage at that), the 2nd ability is pretty useless and a kitten to aim, the 3rd ability is control, the 4th ability is support, and the 5th ability is defensive. It has NO clue what it wants to be.

In my opinion it should be fairly damage based… Thats what anyone would want and expect from a flamethrower not this random compilation of abilities…

A lot of the engineer needs work.

William Fairfield.1428:

Hello Everyone.

There is currently a problem with Zhaitan’s attacks during his final phase.
An upcoming patch will address this issue.

Thanks for your patience

Thank you William. I hope the fight will be much more interesting and complex… I really feel like the whole fight needs to be redone. Please don’t let it be another “kill mobs, fire cannons” encounter… While those fights were great for the dragons before Zhaitan. We want to fight zhaitan himself. Not his minions. We spent the entire leveling process doing that.

Edit: My biggest problem is that the flamethrower has NO idea what it wants to be. (I feel it should be very damage based) It’s first ability is damage, it’s second ability is complete garbage and you’ll almost never use it to its full effect, the third ability is crowd control, the fourth ability is support and the fifth ability is damage mitigation…

I was quite disappointed when I pulled out my flamethrower and it only had 2 real DPS abilities. With the 2 ability being much harder to get the full effect and only doing a bit more damage than the full channel of the auto-attack, its pretty useless.

When I swap to my flamethrower I don’t want to be a support / utility build. I want to melt peoples faces with my flamethrower. I believe what anyone would expect from a flamethrower is high damage and lasting burns.

I don’t care how you change it as long as its more damage based and interesting than it is now. The 4 and 5 ability need to be completely thrown away and the second ability needs to be adjusted or discarded. Here are some suggestions;

Flame Jet (auto-attack): Let me first off start by saying that this isn’t automatically set to auto-attack and it needs to be. It doesn’t make sense that this ability only burns on the last hit and that it only burns for one tick of burn damage. I think that the last 3 hits should stack burn duration.

Flame burst (2nd ability): Make the existing ability explode when it hits its target rather than at a set distance.

Flame vent (new ability): Engulfs the area around the engineer in flames. Much like the elementalist’s Flame Burst ability (Staff, 3rd ability, fire attunement) except instead of being put on the targeted enemy it comes out from the engineer and damages people around him. This ability could also stack vulnerability.

Napalm spread (new ability): Spread out sticky napalm in the targeted area. This ability would place multiple flame nodes that would damage foes and slow them when they run over them. Much like landmines if you will. The flame nodes would disappear after they have been ran over. Engineers could kite people through these fields.

If I think of more abilities I’ll add them here but currently the flamethrower is sort of boring and not what you would expect

I really hope Arenanet can come in here and shed some light on this. It was extremely disappointing. I was looking forward to the zhaitan fight ever since I first heard about elder dragons…. That was just a huge let down…

Well its kind of lame that getting dungeon gear means grinding the crap out of the same bosses doing like 38 runs of the same content… Its pretty boring and tedious… Not that I agree speedrunning should exist… There should just be a more fun and less tedious way to get dungeon gear.

I have to agree that grinding the same dungeon over and over is extremely tedious… There should be a more creative and fun way to get the gear besides fighting the same bosses 38 times.

Really? The “Dragons-be-attackin-your-ship” fights were my favorite part of the dungeon.

Yes. The level 30 dungeon is hard. Have you done the level 40 dungeon? Its an absolute joke. A lot of parts in other dungeons are absolute jokes as well. I believe this is what they are targeting with the patch.

Everything leading up to the Zhaitan fight was fantastic and had me on the edge of my seat. But when we actually got to fight Zhaitan it was incredibly anti-climatic and boring. Getting on the cannons and pressing 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 wasn’t really my hopes for the end game main boss.

How I pictured the fight being:

Lets rewind to when we hit Zhaitan with the mega laser and go from there. Hitting zhaitan with the laser would have made him start to fall from the sky. He would grab onto the side of the ship with his hand and pull himself onto the front of the ship with his head and wings being the only thing above the ship (Crappy halfkitten concept art: http://i.imgur.com/FRHB6.jpg his hands would be holding onto the sides of the ship behind the wing) The players would then have to run up and fight Zhaitan’s tentacle-mouth-head-things. The heads could have some mechanic that makes one grab hold of a party member and deal damage to them and everyone in the party would have to switch targets and hit it to free him. When a head is defeated it could be sucked back into the green thing on Zhaitan’s head that they call come out of and would lower the damage the party is taking as a result… His wings could also shoot projectiles that explode in an AoE. The entire time you’re fighting Zhaitan’s tentacles and the adds he’s spawning the mega laser would be charging up. Once the laser is fully charged it would fire at Zhaitan’s head and knock him off the ship.

He would then enter a flying mode where he flys by the side of the ship (Its random which side he comes by each time and he can come from the back or from the front) firing some undead projectiles at the ship. The players have to then shoot the projectiles with the cannons before the projectiles hit the cannon. If one of the projectiles hit a cannon it would break the cannon and spawn adds. You would then have to protect an engineer from the adds while they fix the cannon. After a certain amount of times he’s flown by (say 3 for example) he will fly up by the ship and the players will have to shoot at his wings to damage him. (insert additional mechanics for this phase here. Also here is some more crappy 5 minute concept art to show what it would be like http://i.imgur.com/hwRMO.jpg ) They’ll be able to do this for a certain amount of time before he flys off and starts shooting projectiles again. After he reaches a certain HP his wings will turn red (like they did in the current version) and he will fall once more.

In a desperate attempt to keep himself from falling to the ground and probably dying he desperatly grabs on to the ship again, but this time he impales himself on the spike on the ship (The same spike thats in the first picture and thats actually on the current model of the ship.) He will then try to use his wings to push himself off the ship. The players then run down his wings and onto his impaled chest. The players then need to attack his wings in an attempt to sever them from his body. His tentacle heads will be attacking the players once more (with new mechanics… I can’t think of any atm but will add some if I think of some) Globs of zhaitan’s blood could attack the players (insert more new mechanics for globs, its late here.) Once all the wings have been severed some of the helicopter-heads seen before in the dungeon will come to pick up the players and another one or two on the top of the ship for the NPCs and the unmanned ship would then fly zhaitan into the building he was clinging to in the current version of the dungeon to kill him.

This is just something I thought up after the fight… I think its decent. But the current version of the fight really needs to be replaced. Its sort of a huge let down… Don’t get me wrong the rest of the dungeon was absolutely amazing. I just think that Zhaitan should be the most interesting and complex fight within the launch phase of the game. (before expansions)

Thanks for reading my thread! I look forward to your feedback and if I’m lucky, a response from Arenanet.

Alviss.1256:

So you’d be a Charr who had a Silvari’s storyline?

What’s the point of race specific traits at that point?

Not to mention it completely removes race specific stereotypes. IE Norn are supposed to be viewed as the viking drunkards while asurans are the tinkering gadget makers.

So you’d pick a Norn, pick his warrior spirit, what he did at that party, and then run around the map there after as an Asuran?

I don’t like this idea, it kills the entire feel of the fantasy world you are supposed to be a part of, and completely eliminates Race specific benefits.

IE norn get to shapeshift as part of their racial benefit. Asuran get to conjure up golems. What you are suggesting would allow anyone to visual look how they want and then choose what traits they benefit from, which completely goes against the whole “choice” methodology the game is founded on.

If this was ok, then people would ask that they be allowed to wear whisper agent armor as a vigil member. Again, this shouldnt be allowed. The whole point is you make a choice and reap the benefits of those choices. If you want to look different, or be a part of a different order, make a new character and experience the game from a different viewpoint.

It’s not like classes are restricted by race. If you want a Charr warrior, go make one. Asking for a way to reskin your asuran character as a charr just because you got bored will only ruin the games look and feel.

Please read the original post before asking questions, as I have already addressed the majority of your concerns. Thank you. It wouldn’t ruin any feel for anyone. If your guildmate changes from asuran warrior to charr warrior it wouldn’t ruin YOUR game or even effect it at all. The only people it would be effecting is the people who buy it and they are buying it because that is what they want.

The only thing I care about is that the kits aren’t automatically set to auto attack. That needs to be addressed.

Kaveck.1532:

Searingarrow.4637:

Liraz.8062:

I don’t know about a race-change, but I would really like to be able to alter appearance and character name post-creation like I coul d in GW1.

Whats wrong with race changing?

Do you know how hard that is going to be? You have a personal story to consider and the intial choices.

Expansions will be coming with content packs, adding a race change feature will guarantee that bugs will be present as people start to get their previous race’s “DE Hero” talking to them as if they were still that race.

Either way, it is a huge thing to ask for with the personal story / world. How are you going to make those level 10/20/30 choices in the personal story? Especially the 10/20 choices which focus on your bio questions.

I am all for a character re-customisation, such as new skin tones, face, hair maybe even gender but race would be near impossible and would cause more problems than fix.

Are you really asking me this? I’ve said this atleast 3 times in this thread… It would restart your personal story. It would be the same as making an entirely new character except instead of being level 1 it would be level 67 or whatever level your character was before, Your map completetion would remain the same, and you’d keep your inventory and whatnot…

The only things that would change are the race and personal story… Please read my comments before you tell me theres something wrong with them. Thank you!

Liraz.8062:

I don’t know about a race-change, but I would really like to be able to alter appearance and character name post-creation like I coul d in GW1.

Whats wrong with race changing?

Half Tooth.1867:

This is quite a tricky one to sort out really.
Chaning races is problematic for the game, particularly as it keeps track of your choices and your character’s past. Restarting your personal story is no different to making a whole new character. If you’re worried about crating levels and skill points you’ve collected, they’re easy to do as you go along with your character. i.e. there’s no point keeping your crafting level at 200, if everything else is reset because then you couldn’t get to the area’s where you farm the correct level crafting materials. If you meant that you keep your level also, then the resetting of your personal story would just be a load of quests aimed at a lower level then you.
Quite… problematic already and that’s without all the coding, and game mechanics that the programmers would have to sort out.

Name changes I feel should be limitted, like you get one free name change on each character, any more than that you have to pay for with gems.

Appearance ought to be free, apart from ingame gold. It could also be ingrained into the game. As in to change your appearance you go to a hairdressers as a human or something.

It has been bothering me that as a sylvari, in all the information I read about them priot to release it seemed they grew their bodies into hair, armor, specific shapes that they could then cut off and regrow. I would have liked it if this was reflected in the game more, like when you go to a sylvari cultural armorer instead of selling you armor they give you a book with instructions of how to grow your body into different shapes.

That would probably take some work implimenting since it might confuse some players. But as a keen roleplayer I and others like myself would certainly enjoy a feature like this.

Bit side tracked there…. :p

…. Changing your race has nothing to do with crafting… EVERYTHING would be the same except for personal story and your characters race… Nothing else would change… Sigh… I don’t understand why this is such a hard concept for you all to grasp.

different icons… No. I don’t really see anything wrong with them except that retaliation and fury can be a little hard to distinguish for new players.

Longer duration? No. Then you’re messing with balance.

daemonlama.5413:

Searingarrow.4637:

Logan.1458:

Delhart.7891:

Hello! I think this game should have duels because it is pvp-oriented game and players want to test their builds in real fight or at least find out who is stronger, call it whatever you like.

Wow-style arenas would be great addition too imo. Original GW had same fashioned pvp-mode (4 vs 4 arenas). Some people don’t like it – but there only would be more options! It is win/win. Some people like wow arenas, some like sPVP 5v5 matches. Play what you want.

Anyways this game needs some duel options, even if you don’t like wow arenas you should agree with that!

I hope arena.net will hear me and people who are thinking like me!

With duels…

To keep it balanced, Anet can have locations where players can duel each other but they get a choice of 3 weapons. This allows Anet to keep things balanced as they can adjust your health if they wish but the fighting will be with weapons they choose for the duel location.

This would be better then simply allowing players to fight each other with their present weapons. This would become a form of dueling mini game, where certain theme duel weapons are found in certain zones. Heck,…you could build a ranking zone on this if you want and player enjoy it.

Are you freaking kidding me…? What the hell kind of suggestion is this? People duel people to test their skills out or just have fun with friends… Duels aren’t required to do ANYTHING in the game… They are just for fun. Why would they completely ruin this by trying to balance around it, let alone make it into some stupid mini-game with different sets of skills…

I think what he is trying to do with this is help avoid a certain percentage of people who would duel and then try and say x class is OP or nerf cries or buff demands etc….

Thats going to happen in every single game ever made… That doesn’t mean you should completely ruin dueling because some stupid kids are going to cry over it…

Kal.2376:

Searingarrow.4637:

Kal.2376:

Searingarrow.4637:

Are you kidding me? This idea is horrible. Perhaps if you wanted to make the game dull and break immersion then sure. But this would make downed state incredibly boring…

Next lets give every profession the same skills when they aren’t downed! Yaaay!

I’m really glad most of you will never be in game design.

Downed state is the same state for all. There are no passives that affect you there, there are no different weapon skills, no different skills slots that you can choose. Everyone is pretty much “equal” when they are downed… Or at least, they should be.

However, we have different skills that make some downed skills better than others. Why is that? I could understand it if we were given a range of skills we could choose to configure our downed state. That way, sure! having different skills and options is fine. But we can’t. It’s a fixed stated with fixed stats that is given to everyone. So it should be an equal state for all (or at least very close) since we cannot modify it ourselves.

And that is a basic rule of game design… It’s called balance. Downed states currently feel unbalanced between them.

Well then balance them… You don’t need to completely remake them to all have essentially the same abilities…

Exactly, and one way to balance them, is to make them equal. Thanks for your support.

I know what you are saying, but it’s not as easy. Again, we have a fixed state where everyone has the same HPs, and only 4 skills. We can’t move, we can’t change weapons, we can’t modify the state. Since that mode is very simplistic, then we need to have very simple skills. Since we cannot “balance” it ourselves by choosing skills, or gear, then it has to be balanced in its “factory default” setting.

This is a temporary mode. We are not meant to be in a downed state for long, so it is fine if it is “boring”, or equal for all. I see no problem with that in such a mechanic.

If you intentionally make a mechanic in the game boring then you have failed in game design…

Logan.1458:

Delhart.7891:

Hello! I think this game should have duels because it is pvp-oriented game and players want to test their builds in real fight or at least find out who is stronger, call it whatever you like.

Wow-style arenas would be great addition too imo. Original GW had same fashioned pvp-mode (4 vs 4 arenas). Some people don’t like it – but there only would be more options! It is win/win. Some people like wow arenas, some like sPVP 5v5 matches. Play what you want.

Anyways this game needs some duel options, even if you don’t like wow arenas you should agree with that!

I hope arena.net will hear me and people who are thinking like me!

With duels…

To keep it balanced, Anet can have locations where players can duel each other but they get a choice of 3 weapons. This allows Anet to keep things balanced as they can adjust your health if they wish but the fighting will be with weapons they choose for the duel location.

This would be better then simply allowing players to fight each other with their present weapons. This would become a form of dueling mini game, where certain theme duel weapons are found in certain zones. Heck,…you could build a ranking zone on this if you want and player enjoy it.

Are you freaking kidding me…? What the hell kind of suggestion is this? People duel people to test their skills out or just have fun with friends… Duels aren’t required to do ANYTHING in the game… They are just for fun. Why would they completely ruin this by trying to balance around it, let alone make it into some stupid mini-game with different sets of skills…

Kal.2376:

Searingarrow.4637:

Are you kidding me? This idea is horrible. Perhaps if you wanted to make the game dull and break immersion then sure. But this would make downed state incredibly boring…

Next lets give every profession the same skills when they aren’t downed! Yaaay!

I’m really glad most of you will never be in game design.

Downed state is the same state for all. There are no passives that affect you there, there are no different weapon skills, no different skills slots that you can choose. Everyone is pretty much “equal” when they are downed… Or at least, they should be.

However, we have different skills that make some downed skills better than others. Why is that? I could understand it if we were given a range of skills we could choose to configure our downed state. That way, sure! having different skills and options is fine. But we can’t. It’s a fixed stated with fixed stats that is given to everyone. So it should be an equal state for all (or at least very close) since we cannot modify it ourselves.

And that is a basic rule of game design… It’s called balance. Downed states currently feel unbalanced between them.

Well then balance them… You don’t need to completely remake them to all have essentially the same abilities…

Garenthal.1480:

I don’t think we should be able to change a character’s race, gender or profession. Those sort of decisions should be permanent as far as I’m concerned. Any character re-customisation should be limited to adjusting a particular character’s appearance and name. Otherwise it just cheapens the game.

Please explain to me how it “cheapens the game”. It doesn’t effect you at all if you don’t choose to race change. If someone else race changes it has ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT on you whatsoever.

Nozgeth.9638:

What if you change race while in the middle of a quest? log out in a personal instance and do it? without knowing the structure of the code there could be all kinds of weird bugs waiting to happen by messing with these things.

And asides from the purely technical issues the game is built around having a personalized RPG and narrative feel. This would be shattered by basically “starting over” If you really wanted to see all the stories, just make a new character. The only reason I can think of to change race are a bit lazy; not wanting to re-level up a craft or just log into another character that can make what you need… and not wanting to re-collect way points. Granted that latter is a bit of a pain, but I don’t feel like it worth the complications.

I’m all for changing gender and looks though!

It could just teleport you out of the instance… The reason people would want a race change is because they are tired of the race they are playing… For example at the time I was making my engineer I thought a human would be pretty cool… around level 30 i decided it would be much better to be a charr and that that race was what I really wanted my engineer to be. It would still be a personalized RPG your character would just restart personal story as the race they chose… Think of it like this, its the exact same as making a new character except instead of being level one they are level 67 or whatever level they were before the change and they retained their items… It doesn’t break immersion… It doesn’t break anything. It’s just an added option for people who made a mistake or are tired of their race…

Think about it. It doesn’t effect you AT ALL if you don’t choose to use the feature… So your guild mate changed races. How does this effect you? It doesn’t. They payed for it because they wanted it. Who are you to say this shouldn’t be added when it doesn’t effect you?

There could be a complete different option to just change the appearance of your character without changing race or gender.

Seriously stop being selfish…

praeclarus.6321:

Oh yeah, the wall is pretty useless if you’re solo, I just plant it right in front of me against melee for a little extra damage. But if you are in a team, especially a ranged team, you will see the burning numbers go a lot higher than your puny 1s flamethrower. Smoke vent could definitely be improved though, maybe a shorter cooldown or stealth or something

The thing is you don’t even need smoke vent because we have air blast… its a completely pointless ability.

I completely agree.

Are you kidding me? This idea is horrible. Perhaps if you wanted to make the game dull and break immersion then sure. But this would make downed state incredibly boring…

Next lets give every profession the same skills when they aren’t downed! Yaaay!

I’m really glad most of you will never be in game design.

praeclarus.6321:

Personally, I love the ideas for 1 and 2, but the rest of the skills are pretty awesome the way they are. Love airblast, love combo field wall, hate that the recharge on the smoke vent is so high, but still usable

Well the combo field wall is pretty useless for engineers by themselves… Unless you wanted to throw it down and switch to your rifle or pistols and shoot through it… But it’s just not as cool or practical of an ability. Smoke vent is kind of lame as well and somewhat useless considering you don’t want to be point blank with the flamethrower anyway… Air blast is great which is why I don’t want them to touch it. I just want to feel powerful when I switch to my flamethrower. But instead I feel like I have a bunch of abilities that don’t fit well together as a kit.

bumping for more feedback