Guild Wars 2

Deadcell.9052:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Septemptus.7164:

4. THINGS THAT MONEY CAN’T BUY – legendaries and all that
Everyone will tell there are things that money can’t buy but relaying on RNG is the worst possible way.
I pointed it already so I will write it shortly.
We need stuff that aside from new skins added to the game will be only obtainable by doing certain things.
First of those would be new legendaries. Those needs to require a lot of effort but the effort you have to do by your own. You need to get rid of T6 mats, lodestones and all those items or make certain (maybe time gated) ways to get them with 100% accuracy.
So we could know that doing something for example 150 days will get us legendary item but it won’t be random. It will be something certain. You can add some RNG to it that could reduce basically the time, but you have to get certain results.
I think that you should get it tied with dungeons, challenges, titles, maybe achievements, karma and all those bound currencies and items.
The idea is that when you have a legendary item, you earned it time wise and challenge wise and it shows that you are at least decent if not awesome.
(not like current legendaries that can be bought or you can both mats for them because getting them by yourself is a RNG pain).
This can also be used for other items/skills etc.

Technically you have to do a lot of content already to earn your Legendary. The Gift of Battle makes you play WvW, the Gift of Exploration makes you do World Completion,…

BUT all this was mutilated by the decision to make the Legendaries tradeable.

You don’t need to actually play WvW anymore to get the Legendary stuff done, you just need map completion. The achievement chest give out badges by the hundreds.

It’s useless if you don’t have to do any hard stuff and can bypass it by gold.
Please tell me what is hard in making legendary outside from gathering gold (not buying one but making one).
I see only 2 things:
- map completion (I know people who don’t like it and its kittenly for them)
- getting clovers just because it’s RNG.

Other stuff is like “go buy that”, farm champions, play TP, run from any content that needs any thinking, planing or effort in general. Just farm for hours or pretend to play by doing TP all the way and sit in LA for a whole day.

Valderro.6389:

2) Introduce a range of runes/sigils that give bonuses specific to certain areas of the game e.g. WvW or Fractal themed and that can be only be placed in ascended armour and weapons, but are not more powerful than other runes/sigils. Players can then differentiate themselves, along the lines of generalist (exotic gear and normal runes/sigils), WvW player (ascended gear with WvW runes/sigils) or Fractal player (ascended gear with fractal runes/sigils).

How many people uses different sigils and runes for killing undeads?
Just look on the price in TP.
Nobody.

We would probably could go to unlock some sigils or stats to ascended gears that you can hot swap, but really everyone prefers sigils that work for any encounter without endless grind to make weapon sets or replacing sigil/runes with next versions of them just to fight certain boss…

Valderro.6389:

3) Remove stats from back items so appearance can be changed more easily. Same could be done with aqua breathers. Useless getting a load of back items and not being able to swap them.

No.
Really stats have a meaning. The thing that you need is more ways to change items looks and that will be done.

Valderro.6389:

4) Rework ascended items so they have the same stats as exotic, but act as account-wide unlocks. Once an ascended item is obtained, any number of copies of it can be accessed on one character or on alts. This is an example of horizontal progression, the longer the game is played, the more options accessible to the player and can be changed between at the click of a button.

You can’t just take away the fact that a lot of people just worked hard towards those few points more. We had a lot changes like that already (last fractal update)
What we need is so more means to get items across alts and making them more usable like unlocking nice features for those items aside from stats boost. Like the idea to make them able to unlock stats after some effort from player.

Valderro.6389:

5) Or how about adding solo bosses around the world (in small instances), in fractals or dungeons, that can be challenged and if you defeat them you get to unlock a new stat set for your ascended gear. It would be something similar to how elites were captured in GW1. Every time a new stat set is added, a new boss is added too. Maybe theme each challenge to the stat set that will be unlocked. It could be further split by weapon type and armour slot, e.g. boss A drops soldier’s gloves, boss B drops soldier’s helm. Add some distinct cosmetics to it too.

*We need more content that would focus players on doing groups and guilds fights *(no zerg stuff and no solo content, there is a lot of that already and nothing from that helps the game.)

Valderro.6389:

6) Copy the cosmetic system from Rift. Or Lotro. Or TSW. This should have been priority number one after launch, a year later and still not on the horizon.

I think that you should write more about it.

Valderro.6389:

7) Add fractal armour with exotic stats, but which can be upgraded in appearance not stats as the player gets higher in fractals. Not just shiny effects, but if the armour appearance started off as basic and that everyone could get at ~level 20, then adding more dye channels, more detail and decoration and layers, more effects as the player progressed that would be horizontal progression.

This is a cool idea, but it should be done for more than just fractal armor. Cultural armors should be used for that reason I think and maybe some other selected cross race armors.

Valderro.6389:

8) Having the new heal skill costing 25 skillpoints is too much, 8-10 would be more appropriate. If players have too many skillpoints, reduce the drop rate of scrolls or add more consumables that require them. Future utility skills should cost the same.

Agreed.
You should not block players that don’t farm champions because you need a SP sink. Make them convertible for gold or something, but not skills for 25 SP each time.

Conski Deshan.2057:

I feel this can be done by either Choices, or Skill gates on any progression.
In choices you can pick A or B but not both, in skill gates you may be good enough to get both, you may be good enough to get A or B , or you may be unable to acquire either.
The basics elements of a game include challenge, competition and no guarantee of victory (in this context getting what you want).

I can agree on choices only on one condition.
They have to resetable like traits we have.

HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION (part 2)

4. THINGS THAT MONEY CAN’T BUY – legendaries and all that
Everyone will tell there are things that money can’t buy but relaying on RNG is the worst possible way.
I pointed it already so I will write it shortly.
We need stuff that aside from new skins added to the game will be only obtainable by doing certain things.
First of those would be new legendaries. Those needs to require a lot of effort but the effort you have to do by your own. You need to get rid of T6 mats, lodestones and all those items or make certain (maybe time gated) ways to get them with 100% accuracy.
So we could know that doing something for example 150 days will get us legendary item but it won’t be random. It will be something certain. You can add some RNG to it that could reduce basically the time, but you have to get certain results.
I think that you should get it tied with dungeons, challenges, titles, maybe achievements, karma and all those bound currencies and items.
The idea is that when you have a legendary item, you earned it time wise and challenge wise and it shows that you are at least decent if not awesome.
(not like current legendaries that can be bought or you can both mats for them because getting them by yourself is a RNG pain).
This can also be used for other items/skills etc.

5. VERTICAL ABILITIES PROGRESSION
I pointed that out many pages ago, I really would like WvW alike progression with skills and abilities. The skills you get in WvW are amazing and I think all players in there feel like they progress and get stronger without leveling and gearing.
Of course getting new skills is very needed. I love those new healing skills.

6. DYES
There should be a way to unlock certain dyes for entire account. Those are also means of progression, there will be those who want to have all of them but due to many characters nobody will invest hundreds of gold into them.
This is also a goal so please think about it. Tie it for some achievements/quests for some people to spend their time on.

HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION (copy from old thread so it can be here)

1. TITLES:
Create master title similar to GWAMM that would describe how good someone is by defining certain achievement that would bump the title to another title, I described it earlier.
In here you could also support a bit more old GW1 players to recognize their effort in playing GW1 and getting those up to 11 titles.

2. SKINS:
- Create wardrobe system that would allow players to unlock skins and use it at least few times. Maybe use some kind of Mystic forge recipe to create skin from base item and the store skins in wardrobe?
As I proposed ascended items should have an ability to unlock skins and a way to add skins to the item by achievements and recipe.
For example adding dungeon skins by doing dungeon but karma skin by recipe.
If you have a skin bought from gem store it should be unlocked for all ascended items and also wardrobe. Legendaries would also require to unlock gem store skins by purchase and would also need some effort to get skins from Black Lion Specialist.
Unlocking old gem store skins could be done by Mystic Forge recipe.
Wardrobe could work like achievement skins: you can get as many of them as you want, so I can model my look on lvl one and just run through the whole game having it just because I like it.

3. TRIBES/ORDERS/RACES SUPPORT
I think we really need a way to contribute to many existing orders that are in Tyria.
Those could unlock special skins and abilities that they use.
If you will support skirts you will get some item skirt themed and for example some special bonuses towards skirts oppressors. like +1-5% more dmg/def against destroyers.
I also pointed race in here because I really think that we should be able to cross race cultural stuff. The idea is to create a way for char to get in favor of humans so much that they will acknowledge him as great guy and one of the despite where he was born and will make custom armor especially for him that will say: “we love you!”
The armor needs to be an account bound item without race requirement. It might cost more money, but it has to be for every class/race as long as you will prove that you earned it by race support.
The way I see it works is make it like a 200 points system.
Each account starts with 0 points and on 20 points you will have cultural T1, on 50 T2, on 100 you will have cultural T3, and later maybe more items and titles.
If you log in as certain race you will be able to buy race limited items and unlocked those that are unlocked by your playing (in another tab).
Points has to be earned for account or it won’t work.

Gulesave.5073:

Letting players swap out skills on a weapon isn’t appropriate for GW2.

First of all, would you rather new weapon skills be placed on existing weapons, or would you rather get those skills on whole new weapons? ’Cause my thief really wants to use a staff as a melee pain-stick.

Secondly, keeping weapon skills locked is important for balancing the game – let’s not make it more complicated than it already is.

If my warrior could use at least some guardian skills on GS I would love it.

jweez.7214:

Ideas for horizontal progression

1. Dodge Animations | First off I didn’t come up with this. I heard about this while watching a VisualWood podcast. Imagine an elementalist that dodges with a crack of electricity, or a mesmer who just disappears shortly when dodging. For simplicity’s sake these wouldn’t add any additional effects, unless of course you have traited for it. I am sure the last thing the Devs want to do is add another component to the game that needs to be balanced.

That’s not a a progression, but I would love it.

jweez.7214:

2. Mounts | Yes I did indeed open this can of worms. People hate this idea and I understand why IF that would mean inclusion of mounts means waypoints were effected. These two systems could work entirely independently of one another.

I think that waypoints are a great option for those busy people who like to instantly travel from place to place. I completely sympathize with you guys. If you only have two hours a week you want to get as much as you can out of those two hours. I however hate waypoints. I only use them when I need to travel very far distances.To me zipping from point A to point B ruins immersion. I would much rather use a mount for short to medium distance, and wps for long distance. And I think that people would enjoy collecting mounts. It gives another layer to horizontal progression aside from cosmetic gear.

If you make like 2-3 WP on new maps (hopefully reduce some WP’s form original maps – especially in ORR) and add mounts that would boost players speed to 150% it would work just fine.

I love the idea for ranger to catch all my pets. It was easy but great fun.
You can do the same with mounts, but they would require fighting them and taming them. Maybe similar to ogre personal story part. Of course it would need to need a bit more time. Maybe mounts would be champions that you need to kill solo in small instance and then do some quests to make them obey you. THIS WOULD ROCK!!

jweez.7214:

3. Player Housing/Guild Halls | This would be cool but I am not sure what exactly it should consist of.

Everyone says that we need that so I will just hope it’s coming soon.

FlipSide.4765:

I miss the heroes from GW1 and I don’t play dungeons because I have to group with other people. Would it be possible to unlock heroes that could be used instead of living players to run dungeons. Perhaps scale rewards by the number of real players. I mostly just want to see the content… not necessarily for the rewards.

I will oppose any hero system.
The game needs social aspects and make people to learn playing with others.

Now it’s more like do everything on your own.
People do personal story solo, maps solo, most of LS solo.

We lack a major boost to group content that can make guilds worth something.
Now it’s just poor and people don’t bother and don’t see a reason to even be active in guild aside from 1 guild mission once a week.

We need guild houses, guild wars (GvG), and all things that are done best in the guilds.
The game is GUILD wars for crying out loud…

Many people left it already because of lack of good and many guild activities.
Many people were hyped by guild missions but it dies after 3-4 months, because those missions aren’t that great.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Nike.2631:

THE NEW MASTERS
“I haven’t seen that trick before!” — famous last words

The fighting spirit of Tyria has lead to countless styles and techniques, handed down through the centuries, mixing and flowing across the years like 10,000 streams of courage. Its time for you to drink of these waters. Welcome as Guildwars 2 reveals the next level of horizontal gameplay in this permanent Living World release.

Just Something I Picked Up
‘Class Mentors’ have been added to the world.

I can’t say how much I love this suggestion, lore relations is something I really miss in GW2. It’s not perfect (because skills still rely on skillpoints instead of exploration) but kitten close. I hope they do something like this when implementing new weapons.

Let writers do the writing, personally I don’t care if there are no voice-overs when you have a lore-rich environment instead.

You can replace some of SP with them.
I would also delete like 1/3 of WPs that are on the map to make people run a bit more and new maps should have like 2-3 WPs. Over time few more, but still very little WPs. Southsun is great for that. You just have to run in there and only few camps are accessible by WPs.

Normal maps have way too many WP and that partly destroys the climate.

Zaoda.1653:

For example, you could take 2 shoulder pieces and combine them so it isn’t just on 1 side, but both sides (as I photoshopped an example for your viewing pleasure below), or even take the fluffy trim of Braham’s chest armor and apply it to a different heavy armored chest piece. The potential of customisation epicness here is HUGE.

That is a bit of offtopic, but yes.
I hate all those not similar shoulder pieces. They look so bad most of them are irregular, that would look so great if only we could get them on both shoulders. Like Arah shoulders…

Please pass it to designers…

xarallei.4279:

One thing about Factions. I did not put it on my list because I am very wary of Factions. The game is kind of grindy enough and adding rep grind to the mix could be disastrous. I just think about other games and having to do rep grind on every single character…..ugh. It’s just really miserable to me. If it was account wide maybe I wouldn’t mind it, but per character? No….just no.

If it was introduced it would need to be bound to account or it will be a major disaster.
That also shouldn’t be too high. Making it like goal for next 6+months per fraction would also make people very unhappy.

Mixchimmer.7230:

Ronah.2869:

Mixchimmer.7230:

It would be another time consuming difficult PvE activity to do that’s completely different than dungeons, and it lets players enjoy all of the zones in new and exciting instanced ways.

as if the open world zones would be too populated nowadays, we need a new instanced version. No thank you. Better find other ways to add Hard Mode to the game but not instanced

Yeah, that was sort of my biggest concern with it as well, which is why I stated in that same post:

“The biggest problem I see with this though, is that it would prevent players from spending time in the real zones, which is already a goal of Anet.”

:)

I would say rewamping zones and adding to them is important. I already wrote that I love the idea of regional achievements, but new zones should be really a priority. It’s just because many people like me feel like suffocating when we run the same zones over and over again and for half of the year I had to revisit almost all of them to do some LS that forced me to repeat the same things on various maps.

So I would say new zones, them please add some regional achievements so we have something fresh and some new things to do in spare time if we want. Not like “it’s the only thing you will get so zones can be reused”, I think we all are past that.

xarallei.4279:

1) weapon/armor skin locker. The current transmog system is terrible and clunky. It should be very easy for me to switch around looks and it just isn’t.

The idea that I like is to make it part of ascended gear so people could use ascended gear like upgradeable gear.
It costs a lot and then you spend time to upgrade it with new looks, new stat combos and all that you want/need.

It would allow it to be kinda like limited legendary item that you can spend time on to upgrade it.

It would show nice goals for many people to make. instead of going for legendary grind, they would go for some challenges or some other options to play to upgrade their items.

Conner.4702:

Region Achievement lines

…

- Cheaper waypoint costs within the region
- Cheaper merchants
- Region exclusive titles
- Armor sets
- Cheaper waypoints within a zone
- Free waypoints within a zone
- Different dialog from npc’s when reaching certain tiers. ie being addressed with more respect for one.
- Final tier titles something along the line of: conqueror of orr, protector of kryta, sentinel of meguuma.

I would say those are excellent ides, but I have a request in here.
If you will do it, please plan some way of rewarding people who already spend a lot of time in those zones.

I have 7 characters that have over 90% of the world map done.
If you now introduce a reason for me to run around the map with nothing to do on those maps, because I already finished them on all those characters I will be really disappointed.
I guess most people who unlocked major chunk of maps will.

So please make it like a reason to visit map if you haven’t done it, but if you did, allow it to be obtainable will little effort, since you already put your effort in there.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

• 25 damaging condition stack cap per attacker and not per monster attacked. All damage condition builds are useless in pve unless you solo or do in two people tops. Again killing horizontal progression that is already there, just unchain it from the floor.

This would be a game changer for many classes. Now it’s like get one necro per party and he will do all bleeds. You can’t go for condi warrior or ranger or even mesmer, because you will just damage the way party operates…

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Something that hasn’t been addressed yet:

Progression for new players

There are a few things in the game that aren’t really explained in-game, and really require the use of the wiki to figure out. I don’t think that’s okay. I don’t think the wiki should be required for anything. This mostly relates to crafting.

For new players, I think the whole agony system could be explained better. Figuring out how to infuse all your equipment, and upgrade it all, requires a lot of searching on the wiki. Something so important to your vertical progression, should have a proper tutorial. That also goes for a lot of the more obscure crafting recipes. I realize that the intent is to have players figure these out through experimentation. But I’m stuck at level 47 now, with no clue what to discover next. I’m basically required to look it up on the internet.

While you are right, and there could be done more in that matter, we kinda talk about
progression after level 80. That is why I would say that progression up to level 80 should stay as it is. After level 80 there should be new ways, sub classes and all that we can think of to kinda let us progress on the “master” level based more on skills, specializations, and new ways of playing instead grinding for new equipment.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Adding more and more skills will inevitably lead to balance disaster — unless all old skills are obsoleted by power creep. But no one wants power creep.

So copy Magic: the Gathering’s Type II/Standard play: have a regular schedule where old skills expire and new skills are introduced to replace them. The number of skills available to each player is always constant, and thus easier to balance.

Interesting idea.

Yoh.8469:

I’m sorry, but I couldn’t for the life of me wrap my head around Nike’s rant against sub-jobs/classes was. What was the problem again?

I think it all depends on how you do it.

First we should note that we do need new skills/traits/weapons. What we have really isn’t all the much. However, we should also be very cognisant of the fact that Arenanet really want to avoid over complicating the system and blow out the balance, as they did in GW1. Too many skills is not a good thing evidently.

Sub-jobs could be a good way of keeping a very tight rein on the balance, while still offering players a great deal more content to work with.

-
Say a Memser has two Sub-jobs, Dualist and Illusionist.
(unlocked as say lvl 60)
Each have all the exactly same skills/traits/weapons etc, of the base profession, +additional stuff of their own. And like traits, you can respec and switch between sub-jobs.

The Dualist gains a main hand Pistol, and a Rifle, and new traits and utilities that specialize more in interruption and damage.

The Illusionist on the otherhand gains a main hand Dagger, and a Shortbow, with new traits and utilities centered around deception, like a couple more stealth skills.

-
Each have their own specialization, and the total amount of new skills/traits/weapons the profession has access to has increased overall, but with less of the potential over complication. If that makes any sense.

While this wouldn’t give as much raw diversity as just flatly adding in new skills/traits/weapons etc, it would allow Arenanet to leverage the riskes and maintain balance.

I thought about this sub-class idea and I think it can work pretty well.

I would point few things thou:

• Sub classes should be switchable so if mesmer picks up duelist, he can progress being a duelist but he can switch to illusionist and progress in that specialization, then come back to duelist and progress some more in this.
• We would need preset trait lines for each subclass. (side note: WvW should have different traits combos also).
• Progression in sub class should be on the level 80 and should not count levels. You can add some points on each level and those points could progress your skill/traits levels in your specializations. I should not use skill points for it, but rather system similar to WXP (progression without use of xp and skill points).
• Specialization should change some of your traits or grant another tier of traits (preferred, maybe 3 basic traits and 2 trait threes for specialization?)
• I would also look to make a difference between basic class and specialization class: Let use use only some of basic class weapons (limit some, duelist can’t use stafs and focuses) and on the other hand add 1 or 2 new weapons that only that subclass can use. It would make interesting new combos (duelist can use 2 pistols, ranger specialization that can use shotguns, etc).

I would see it like this:
Personally this could work if it goes as horizontal progression, without level cup. You will became a good mesmer, ranger, guardian… while leveling and when you are good you will try new options for yourself to become even better.

Malediktus.9250:

I would pay 2k gems for a permanent one, but temporary ones are of no interest to me.
This was already suggested when the passes were available last time, but looks like Anet ignored the suggestion.

+1 to you!
Yet I would prefer to work on home instance to make it similar to it.

Regenerator.7326:

Will a gem item that lets the character use all teleports free of charge breaks the economy? personally i would pay 2k gems for it if it exists.

I would say if it was an account upgrade (for all characters).
It would be a great convinience item and I would buy it.

Behellagh.1468:

Right now it’s a minor gold sink and a large time sink to unlock them all. If the item only grants you “free” waypoints I could see them offering one but to unlock them all without initially “discovering” them, never.

You are right. There are so many gold sinks that this item would not break anything.

I personally would love to get unlimited bank access golem, but this might never happen.

Szamsziel.5627:

First of all – 1 specific weapon for each class which only that class can use.
Second – 1 specific weapon for each race which only that race can use.
Third – allow all other weapons be used for all classes – If Id like to have axe/dagger

1. Just no.
2. Never, there are problem with armors, no more of that please.
3. For sure, it will be great for horizontal progression.

Last time I checked two handed weapons had better damage and stats but they miss a slot.
No, one handed stat’s don’t sum up but count the higher one, so I would think its at least fair that you can’t get 2nd upgrade slot.

Since legendaries are only for cash and farming or playing TP instead of going with the challenges I would say its the greatest thing to not give any title for that.

If we ever get Legendaries createable by BTA stuff that would require actual play instead gold gathering, then the title would actually mean something.

So be proud and have fun with those 5 items.
There are still many people that think it means something.

TFeldt.4560:

Gamblit.5041:

Now i can finnaly swap my 20% Gold Bonus Infusion with 20% Magic Find one.

Thank you Anet.

Now I get it. I actually came to this forum to ask what I was missing with the extractors. I’ve been meaning to move a set of rune of the traveler to another character but in no way, form or shape could I justify using the extractors since the price would be higher than simply buying another set of runes. You know what they say, two travelers traverse more than one.

Really didn’t understand who the target audience for these were, now I do. They’re for timegated laurel gear. Which makes sense. I’m somewhat disappointed, I had hoped they were going to be on the cheap side (if they were 50 gems I’d buy them in bulk, now I’ll just buy new runes instead) but even this implementation is awesome. I wouldn’t want to destroy my 20 laurel amulet infusion either.

Thank you anet, this adds player choice. Which is fantastic.

Well I would say that they should reduce the price and they, they would get more cash by selling many of those instead making an item, for only few people who don’t want to loose laurels.

Newbkakes.4971:

Devona’s Rest = Very High population.
Reality = Very Very Very Low population.

Hello all.
I’m also on Underworld and I can say just the same.
ANet counts dead accounts into the server population.

WvW is deserted, empty, if we have 30-50 at evenings its best we can get, in daytime there are maybe 5-10 people (we are constantly outnumbered).
I rarely see anyone on world map.
World bosses have not more than 30 people on them (no mater the time of the day).
LA… Even after last update I never got kicked to overflow in LA. Thats sick.
Many people left us before WvW Season 1 and now it’s truly dead/deserted server.

Yet we are still VERY HIGH population server.
What’s with that?!

People who don’t log in after 3-4 months should be disconnected from the server so they can choose server again when they come back and that would give us free spots on every server there is.

I know statistics will look way worse, but people already say in the open that those server loads are very untrue.

EgonVenkman.1907:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

VOLKON.1290:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

This is my last day at work before the holiday season and I am going to be very busy!

Once I am on vacation I will have more time to respond and engage.

I am therefore going to postpone the focused discussion on Horizontal Progression until tomorrow. I will catch up post page 36 today (or at least try).

Meanwhile I have a question. This thread is BIG. Would the folks who have already commented on Horizontal want a new thread which is just based on Horizontal or should we just carry on with this thread?

Regarding my reminders from you about comments on some kind of reward for the Fractal reset, I am still thinking about feelings around it.

Chris

Chris, I believe that horizontal chatter will explode and therefore will be worthy of it’s own thread. I’ll wager 23 copper that it grows larger than this one.

Oof! High roller! Hehe

He’d bet more, but spent it all trying to craft ascended items.

I know how you feel…

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Meanwhile I have a question. This thread is BIG. Would the folks who have already commented on Horizontal want a new thread which is just based on Horizontal or should we just carry on with this thread?

I would say: lets make new one, everyone will do a summary of their thoughts in there and we will start from there.

Morinmeth.9823:

Khunvyel.3972:

7.) Cultural Armor and Weapons being rare instead of exotic is outright insulting as it blatantly tells you “go to the shop and buy a trans-crystal.” This has nothing to do with progression towards a desired item but milking money out of players.

Oh come on. It’s a company and one main source of their income, is gems. No one forces you to buy cultural armor, if you don’t like how it’s given to you, don’t buy it. That’s whining for no reason.

You are wrong in one thing.
They should give more and more items skins and such but not this kind of force people to buy yo took decent.
I have a lot of issues with it but for now I will remain silent and wait for the outcome of propositions to allow ascended to swap looks.

Khunvyel.3972:

8.) Our character progression becomes more and more solo and ego-focused, or rather “solo in a big blob of people.” You continue to remove the incentive to play together. The two worst things you’ve done was adding more and more parts for the daily quest to complete which are giving out achievement points. You would be surprised how many people are chasing those points like mad and most of them are better off done alone. The other thing is, you are continuing to alienate bonded players by forcing activities into a non-groupable pvp set.

Please cap the achievement points obtainable for the daily reward chest to 5. The other way would be to remove achievement points from dailies to and monthlies altogether and do that retroactively as well. Completing a daily is not worth mentioning to be an “achievement” at all.

This is very true.
I wrote about the problem with achievement points and I would add to it:
- cap total amount of dailies/monthlies, please
- remove those leaderbords for achievment point, because that drives people to play only for those points.
We really need more group content to play with and that is the very fact.
I see it more and more in guilds. People at most talk to each other when they solo something… World bosses, dungeons, maybe together from time to time, but hardly ever together…
This has to change.

Lheimroo.2947:

Yes, I wish they would just give us a ‘no more vertical progression.’ statement instead of always adding qualifiers to the sentence.

Twice now.. three, if you count the AR change, they’ve blindsided us with horridly grindy vertical progression systems, and both times the player base just rebels and I think they’re surprised by the strength of the rebellion.

I have to agree. And from the 3 AR is the worst there is.
No wonder people don’t do it.

But on the other hand people also learn and ANet is not some mystic evil like many try to write in their posts. It’s a company with people working in there. It’s good they learn and those CDI is the best proof for that. So for now I will be full of hope.

HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION (part 2)

4. THINGS THAT MONEY CAN’T BUY – legendaries and all that
Everyone will tell there are things that money can’t buy but relaying on RNG is the worst possible way.
I pointed it already so I will write it shortly.
We need stuff that aside from new skins added to the game will be only obtainable by doing certain things.
First of those would be new legendaries. Those needs to require a lot of effort but the effort you have to do by your own. You need to get rid of T6 mats, lodestones and all those items or make certain (maybe time gated) ways to get them with 100% accuracy.
So we could know that doing something for example 150 days will get us legendary item but it won’t be random. It will be something certain. You can add some RNG to it that could reduce basically the time, but you have to get certain results.
I think that you should get it tied with dungeons, challenges, titles, maybe achievements, karma and all those bound currencies and items.
The idea is that when you have a legendary item, you earned it time wise and challenge wise and it shows that you are at least decent if not awesome.
(not like current legendaries that can be bought or you can both mats for them because getting them by yourself is a RNG pain).

This can also be used for other items/skills etc.

5. VERTICAL ABILITIES PROGRESSION
I pointed that out many pages ago, I really would like WvW alike progression with skills and abilities. The skills you get in WvW are amazing and I think all players in there feel like they progress and get stronger without leveling and gearing.

Of course getting new skills is very needed. I love those new healing skills.

6. DYES
There should be a way to unlock certain dyes for entire account. Those are also means of progression, there will be those who want to have all of them but due to many characters nobody will invest hundreds of gold into them.
This is also a goal so please think about it. Tie it for some achievements/quests for some people to spend their time on.

HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION (kinda summary)

1. TITLES:
Create master title similar to GWAMM that would describe how good someone is by defining certain achievement that would bump the title to another title, I described it earlier.

In here you could also support a bit more old GW1 players to recognize their effort in playing GW1 and getting those up to 11 titles.

2. SKINS:
- Create wardrobe system that would allow players to unlock skins and use it at least few times. Maybe use some kind of Mystic forge recipe to create skin from base item and the store skins in wardrobe?

As I proposed ascended items should have an ability to unlock skins and a way to add skins to the item by achievements and recipe.
For example adding dungeon skins by doing dungeon but karma skin by recipe.
If you have a skin bought from gem store it should be unlocked for all ascended items and also wardrobe. Legendaries would also require to unlock gem store skins by purchase and would also need some effort to get skins from Black Lion Specialist.

Unlocking old gem store skins could be done by Mystic Forge recipe.

Wardrobe could work like achievement skins: you can get as many of them as you want, so I can model my look on lvl one and just run through the whole game having it just because I like it.

3. TRIBES/ORDERS/RACES SUPPORT
I think we really need a way to contribute to many existing orders that are in Tyria.
Those could unlock special skins and abilities that they use.

If you will support skirts you will get some item skirt themed and for example some special bonuses towards skirts oppressors. like +1-5% more dmg/def against destroyers.

I also pointed race in here because I really think that we should be able to cross race cultural stuff. The idea is to create a way for char to get in favor of humans so much that they will acknowledge him as great guy and one of the despite where he was born and will make custom armor especially for him that will say: “we love you!”

The armor needs to be an account bound item without race requirement. It might cost more money, but it has to be for every class/race as long as you will prove that you earned it by race support.

The way I see it works is make it like a 200 points system.
Each account starts with 0 points and on 20 points you will have cultural T1, on 50 T2, on 100 you will have cultural T3, and later maybe more items and titles.
If you log in as certain race you will be able to buy race limited items and unlocked those that are unlocked by your playing (in another tab).
Points has to be earned for account or it won’t work.

Forst.5863:

Also: Normalise dyes.
On one character I can wear pieces of six different armours, all made of metal. On these pieces I can use nothing but one single dye and still look like a patchwork-jester. Each dye should have one look on one material. This is currently preventing mix-and-match in many instances – and prevents points 1 and 5.

This would be major change for me.

Vorch.2985:

• Skin management needs to be redone. I think you guys are working on it… work faster

You forgot to add one word: “please”.

“I think you guys are working on it…” please “work faster”

Seriously. I really look forward for skin managing in GW2.

Hello Chris.

I’m sorry to to write it so late, but I couldn’t do it faster.

Here are some answers from my perspective:

A review of current RNG metrics.

I think those should be highly random and hard to get – probably as they are now.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

Yes, at least for limited amount to still maintain legendaries more special.
I really like the idea to upgrade ascended item to add stats combos to the by playing and if possible to add them skin menus also (like stat combos menu) would ROCK!

Basically make ascended upgradeable items, exotic base locked items, legendaries maxed up in any way.
I will rewrite what I wrote before:
Exotics (looks and stat changed by gem store tokens)
Ascended (adding stat combos and looks to menu by game achievements in mystic forge – item + dung tokens + fer skill points)
Legendaries (have it all from the start – both stats and looks all to choose)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The ability to build up to Ascended Gear through drops rather than just relying on RNG.

It could be added but I would not make it like better way from crafting. You might add a way to make them in Mystic Toilet by 2 times as much mats as you need in crafting (for those who don’t want to craft them but would still get mats by playing).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ascended Gear mats dropping more equally across the game, for example WvW.

WvW is balanced as I see it. Overall revamp might not be good for the system. You could always increase the quantity a bit, but I’m personally would look into it better to don’t throw away peoples current efforts to trash by making it a lot easier later.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

No more new Gear tiers that make the existing tiers obsolete.

Absolutely.
If you want to increase level cap, legendaries and ascended should be both always the highest level items. Exotics should remain on the level I think.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts.

Absolutely.
I will still hope to reduce crafting costs with more items that you create. Or maybe some unlocks?
One thing is certain for me. Alts need to be geared as good as main characters in terms of items tiers or people will fill punished for having them.
Please remember that.

I hope it will help.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

While I could see how ascended gear feels like our focus as been on vertical progression I don’t feel like that is the case we spend a lot more time adding many things I would consider horizontal progression. I feel like new stat combos, skins, skills, traits, crafting recipes, mini pets, achievements, ect… are all horizontal progression and we have spent a lot more time and resources on expanding those systems by far.

You are right, but that doesn’t feel like we progress in something.
Especially achievement system is so broken… (I wrote about it before if You don’t recall)
For now we had first skill update (I won’t count the useless toxic spray), ale those are VERY GOOD, I love them and I count for more those updates.
Sigils and runes are also nice.

I wrote in my previous post that you could use WvW progression system in PvE.
That would rock to the core because we would feel that the time we spend is not onlt transferable to gold to buy some skins or farming champions to get skill scrolls or mats.

The PROBLEM in HERE is that all we do is transferable to gold, and that NEVER should be the case.

Don’t get it wrong, all skins should be sellable – that was a great move, but as I mentioned earlier, legendaries should be obtainable by BTA mats that are obtainable by fixed amount, not RNG. Like Dung tokens, bloodstone dust/dragonite ore/imperial fragments, karma, etc.

cesmode.4257:

Hi, I encourage everyone to read this thread which was recently created.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-if-hearts-were-repeatable-for-T6/first#post3386694

The OP had an amazing idea to get players back into the open world, and provide players with another method of T6/end game materials (or can be designed to include actual gear) acquisition which I feel is relevant to this topic.

Summary: At max level, have each map/renown heart completable once per month. The hearts reward T6 materials(the quantity is up for debate). Full map completion in a zone(hearts only…) would reward something substantial like a core, 5 ects, and whatever else.

Heck, extend this idea to Dynamic Events. "Complete 10 events for X items, 25 for X+X items, 50, 100, and so on.

This entire idea serves multiple purposes:
1. Gets players into the open world, into any zone(really, all zones because once you’ve re-completed all the renown hearts in one zone, you can go onto the next zone of your choosing…same thing with the Dynamic Event idea I proposed).
2. Rewards max level players for simply playing the game.
3.Whether youre creating a legendary, ascended armor/weapons, or whatever..you could be working toward character progression.

I love this idea…the rewards have to be just right. One T6 item for a renown heart won’t work, but this can be debated.

This is not a bad idea for people who like to explore in the game.
At least making an alt and exploring would be worth something.

Behellagh.1468:

It may not be true but if your goal is to acquire that mini, then that’s the only way. But those with that logic can’t ignore the fact they are still getting gems that they can spend or trade for gold.

But what if you don’t want or need them?
How many gems can you have stored for a time then something useful comes out?

I have plenty and if they introduce another deal like this when you can’t use gems or time to spend money disregards that you bought gems 2 month before you still have I will loose all remains or respect for people in there.

I also don’t want to transfer them to gold.
I play the game (not TP) and gold comes just like that.
I don’t need another boost to gold. I intend to play and slowly get my legendary (last thing to finish my alts to the point I’m happy with them).

This would help a lot.
Also WvW could use another set of gears or way to change their stats once you go WvW.

Khisanth.2948:

Septemptus.7164:

We really need flat rewards in WvW so it won’t be even more damaged (and I personally think it’s damaged beyond repair for months now thanks to WvW S1).

On the other hand the S1 rewards have shown that none of it really mattered. It was still just the same old thing about the scores.

For me that was the best thing that happened.
I also loved whole that reward rage on forums. I really enjoyed it.

I hope this will teach people to play and have fun instead of betraying servers and grind for some imagined rewards. The rewards can’t be the reason you play or you will burn out sooner or later.
That is why I enjoy more and more skins that we get. I almost never use them, but the variety of options is the best thing for me. That is why I love it and it’s not rewarding in terms of gold and legendaries and all that people equal to wealth.
It’s rewarding because I have more options to play with and some people asked me – what is that cool looking green book on my necro’s back and I could tell them: “I have this because I played 1st Halloween event”.
If something in this game feels exclusive – it’s that feeling – I was there when it happened.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Well the crafting gating we added was actually for a different reason then gating the speed in which someone can craft ascended gear. We wanted to make people who level up crafting able to do something to gain gold each day. The time gate here goal is much more focused around making gold then limiting crafting as you can bypass it with gold. This does break down when someone has a lot of characters and has an endless demand for these mats. This problem I put under alt problem and we just need to brainstorm more ideas on how to make life easier for people with lots of characters.

I finally think that someone is looking at me, just slightly…
I wrote from very beginning how much it sucks for me that I enjoy playing different styles by having all alts on lvl (earned without PvP tomes). Now I basically can’t go ascended even though I could with probably 1 character and why I just can’t do it.

I would really, really, REALLY love to hear any answer to by proposition of crafting mastery I introduced…

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

cesmode.4257:

Im still waiting on some response about future progression in terms of

1. Ascended runes and sigils — Will they ever be in the game?
2. Will Ascended runes and sigils be only allowed on ascended weapons and armor? <-- thus forcing the player to craft the ascended armor first before being able to utilzie the ascended rune or sigil.

Dyin’ to know this one.

Edit: I know you all are busy and/or could be formulating a proper response to it Just waiting!

Hi Cesmode,

This is one for Izzy for sure. I am sure he will respond tomorrow. In all honesty I set a bad example in terms of my presence on the thread and I think that skews expectations on members of staff who aren’t workaholics (-:

Chris

hi chris!

i want all gear to be able to unlock stats skins and swap to them. i know a lot of other people want this too. will this be considered? thanks!

for example,
unlock armor stats one by one, swap armor stats
unlock runes one by one, swap runes

unlock weapon stats one by one, swap weapon stats
unlock sigils one by one, swap sigils

unlock armors skins one by one, swap armors skins
unlock weapons skins one by one, swap weapons skins
unlock trinkets inventory icons one by one, swap trinkets icon

unlock and swap various infusions too.

Hi Deimos,

I have definitely read this and sorry for not discussing it sooner. This is not something I cannot comment on currently. Sorry.

Chris

Basically if there are more things you can’t comment now, please take your time to write that because that one statement assures you you hear what we say and you consider it at least.

Gingelyr.3648:

Chris,

I’m not sure you realize this, but a lot of us posting to this CDI would be incredibly gratified to have you pick and respond to one of our posts.

It’s thoughtful of you to try and engage with one particular player over his feelings about whether this CDI is worthwhile—but from the perspective of the rest of us, it feels like we’re “doing it wrong,” because it looks like we’d get more attention if we vented our emotions instead of sticking to the topic and being constructive.

I agree to this statement, but you have to remember it’s very hard to answer so many people and even thou Chris hardly ever responded to me and almost every 3nd or 4rd post of Nike, it’s OK.

I really think you need to remember:
1. He is only a human
2. He has limited time
3. He was kind enough to write to us in weekend
4. I personally think he is a great guy and if you look like that on Him, it will help you.

What I lack the most is summaries after CDI that would say – we will go this direction thanks to what you wrote.
All CDIs end like this: “It’s great you took the time and effort for answering us, we will now think about it” and then silence…

What I would love to get is something like last PvP road map when they stated what we will experience in months to come or PvE statement about the end of Scarlet.
That gives me something to long for instead of being in some kind of ideas fog after each CDI.

EDIT: Make that every 2nd post of Nike at times.
Chris, it would really be great if you would look more people to answer to. I know its hard and all, but many of us would love to her more from you.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

i’ll say this again.

allow us to have horizontal progression in our gear.
allow each gear to unlock stats one by one, swap stats when out of combat via a menu.
allow each gear to unlock skins one by one, swap skins when out of combat via a menu.

best horizontal gear progression ever!
thank you.

please help to spread and support.

also, please remove level cap increase off the table.
please also remove higher tier than ascended off the table.

this means the maximum level 80 will not be increased, ever. and the highest tier ascended will not be any higher. ever. please. yes. thank you.

I would love the idea to kinda divide ascended and legendaries like this:
Legendaries- you have everything like you want:
- stats change (full list)
- looks change (similar list with all possible looks from this kind of a weapon)

Ascended items:
- quest, do LS, dungeons, fractals, etc – to unlock stats change on the item one by one.
- quest, do LS, dungeons, fractals, etc – to unlock skin change on the item one by one.

Exotic items:
- pay for transmutation crystals to change look one time
- pay for stat change crystal to change stats one time.

I personally would go very much for it and I would have real means for progression.
The system would also give legendaries value of the ultimate item and ascended would be really between exotics and legendaries.
Basically this would ROCK BIG TIME! (for me)

Still new legendaries should be creatable only by BTA items (aside from those already in TP)

Malediktus.9250:

Septemptus.7164:

Malchior.5042:

Septemptus.7164:

Malediktus.9250:

Changing stats should stay legendary exclusive. Otherwise there is no reason to go for legendary if you dont like the skin.

Stats could go for ascended.
Legendaries were supposed to be accomplishment or cash farm as we see now, there is nothing exclusive in them anymore.

Yes there is, stat-changing :P

They specifically added that functionality to give legendaries a little more of a meaning, even with their skins being completely awesome.

But you could make ascended to have like 2 or 3 stats possible (chooseable on soulbinding) and legendaries would always have everything.

Still a terrible idea. How many people need more than 3 stat combinations? There really are only 2-3 truly best in slot stats for each class.

There is a lot people who experiment with builds and would use way more than 2-3 stats combos.

It’s not only solder or berserker, there is knight, carion, rabid, settlers and many more good stat combos for various builds and it shows the most on classes that switch between condi and pure dmg. Elementalist shows it the best.

Maybe you don’t have much experience in this field?
Thats what I’m guessing.

moronwmachinegun.3815:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Samhayn.2385:

I like this idea of higher drop rates for harder content but it still neglects wvw so I would like to add. Higher drop rates in wvw from Player kills modified by the players rank. Higher rank = better chance to get something good from them. In theory higher rank players should have more experience and thus be more difficult to fight.

Interesting idea.

Chris

How about this?
– Increased drop rate for currently winning server +X% vs both other servers
– Increased drop rate against highest-ranked server +X/2% for 2nd&3rd place rank
– Increased drop rate against highest-scored server +X/2% for 2nd&3rd place score

This makes it easier to encourage people to come out to WvW, and splitting it this way encourages the two weaker servers to band together to fight the stronger server, making for a more interesting match all around.

PLEASE DON’T add more reasons for people to leave weak WvW servers.

We really need flat rewards in WvW so it won’t be even more damaged (and I personally think it’s damaged beyond repair for months now thanks to WvW S1).

Dingle.2743:

New item concept:
[Ascension Crystal]
Consumable, account-bound, ascended quality.
Begins the process of ascension, allowing a piece of equipment to reach its true potential. Double-click to apply this item to any piece of exotic equipment.

Acquisition:

• Crafting at rank 500. Vision Crystal + x Dark Matter. Each crafting profession crafts vision crystals that work only for equipment types that profession can craft.
• Laurels. Less than the cost of an amulet.
• Dungeon tokens. Around 400-500.
• Badges of Honor. Around 300.
• Guild commendations vendor. 6 commendations.
• Pristine Fractal Relics, 5
• The intention of the price is to be lower than regular ascended items from that source, as after usage the player still needs to do more work.

This could work and the idea is not bad, but I would prefer to make it like dungeon tokens would add statistic change options for ascended items, like:
- X(based on item type) CoF tokens would add to an item berserker stats
- X(based on item type) AC tokens would add to an item solder stats
…etc

Nike.2631:

Suggestion for small correction to Ascended Weapons crafting Recipes:

2-Handed weapons remain unchanged. They fill 5 skill slots and effectively require 500 dragonite ore, empyreal shards, and bloodstone dust.

Off-hand Only weapons (e.g. focus or torch) replace the Vision Crystal with a Lesser Vision Crystal. They fill 2 skill slots and require 200 dragonite ore, empyreal shards, and bloodstone dust.

Main-hand weapons replace the Vision Crystal with a new “Medium Vision Crystal”. They fill 3 skill slots and the new crystal is made with 300 dragonite ore, empyreal shards, and bloodstone dust.

This brings parity to the effort required to craft 2-h weapons vs. 1-h/off-hand builds. Using a main hand weapon in an off-hand slot is slightly overpriced using a 100-mats-per-skill-slot model, but its still far more forgiving than the 1,000 mats it takes now.

Last step in a perfect world would be to refund the excess 200 (for main hand) or 300 (off-hand) of each combined material via mail. These could be returned in their 100:1 forms (ingots, stars, and bricks).

If the system can track ‘chest’ weapons vs. crafted weapons they could be excluded, though there is a case to be made that a chest should always grant 1 weapon and the appropriate ‘left over’ mats to prevent chests always being converted into 2-h weapons…

+1 to this, yet for me it is “at least change this”.

Malchior.5042:

Septemptus.7164:

Malediktus.9250:

Changing stats should stay legendary exclusive. Otherwise there is no reason to go for legendary if you dont like the skin.

Stats could go for ascended.
Legendaries were supposed to be accomplishment or cash farm as we see now, there is nothing exclusive in them anymore.

Yes there is, stat-changing :P

They specifically added that functionality to give legendaries a little more of a meaning, even with their skins being completely awesome.

But you could make ascended to have like 2 or 3 stats possible (chooseable on soulbinding) and legendaries would always have everything.

Malediktus.9250:

Changing stats should stay legendary exclusive. Otherwise there is no reason to go for legendary if you dont like the skin.

Stats could go for ascended.
Legendaries were supposed to be accomplishment or cash farm as we see now, there is nothing exclusive in them anymore.