Guild Wars 2

Andrige.5609:

TheDaiBish.9735:

There are a few mini-dungeons out in the world for levels below 30:

• Flame Temple Tombs
• Provernic Crypt
• Goff’s Bandits
• Beggar’s Burrow
• Don’t Touch The Shiny
• Tears of Itlaocol
• Old Oola Lab
• Verarium Delves
• Windy Cave

Thanks. However, don’t you think its odd that you’d probably have to look at a wiki using the right search-word to know there are mini-dungeons in this game?

I’m very happy that they exist and aren’t advertised (joy of exploriation, and I’m an explorer-type player myself), but they might as well not exist for newcomers to the game. And for those savvy min-maxing players, I’m also going to bet that their rewards are sub-par/not enough and thus, not really interesting to them while levelling.

I think a dungeon that is properly advertised at early levels have a much, much better chance of forming groups of players that might stick together while they level.

Eh, I dunno. Personally, I think the less advertising the better:

1. It encourages exploration, which also helps with immersion.
2. It encourages the community to interact through asking where certain things are.
3. Failing that, it doesn’t spoil the sense of exploration for those who don’t want big stars and arrows pointing where to go, while those who want the ‘wham, bam, thank you ma’am’ approach have a source to get the locations from.

Pro’s

• If heavy limitations are placed on how many can be used and where it can be used (say, one per boss fight in a single dungeon), it can give people who died for reasons beyond their control (say, a lag spike) a second chance.

Con’s

• It’s still toeing the line even with heavy limitations places.
• Poorly implemented, they’d be well within the realm of P2W. For example, being in WvW, you get killed in the keep, then use this item when they go, and suddenly you can portal a group of people in.

There are a few mini-dungeons out in the world for levels below 30:

• Flame Temple Tombs
• Provernic Crypt
• Goff’s Bandits
• Beggar’s Burrow
• Don’t Touch The Shiny
• Tears of Itlaocol
• Old Oola Lab
• Verarium Delves
• Windy Cave

And if they did implement a mandatory sub and continuous vertical gear treadmill, chances are more than just you would stop logging in.

nexxe.7081:

And btw, NCSoft will fund Wildstar with gem purchases in GW2. Those sales don’t even go directly to GW2. lol.

Exactly like how money from other games (Lineage, Aion) went into making GW2.

1. Create Individual Scaling Formula’s tied to the Mechanics of that Boss.

A large part of the zerging is caused by mechanics being able to be ignored, simply because of the large amount of people. For example, take Shadow Behemoth’s Portals. Regardless if there are 10 or 100 people, 3 portals will always spawn at fixed locations. It’s also quicker to take down them 3 portals with 100 people than it is 10.

This suggestion would cause mechanics such as these to scale depending on the amount of people. For example, 3 portals would spawn in ‘random’ places within a defined area if there were 10 players in the area. For every 3 players, an extra mob spawns out of each portal. When there are 21 players, an extra portal will spawn during this phase.

This will hopefully make all participants in the event to take note of the mechanics.

2. Get Inventive with the Fail Conditions

As it is, time is the main one.

Instead of time, get a bit more creative with the fail states.

For example, The Shatterer has been lured down and trapped with a Gravity Anchor, an Asuran invention that intensifies the gravity in an area. This area is created by a number of pylons (which scales with the number of people) which need to be defended. If half of the pylons go down, then the event fails.

3. Have Multiple, Separate Objectives happening at the same time.

As it is, these big events have a single objective at any one time. This doesn’t help to break the zerg up at all.

Make it so the meta event has multiple events going on. You could also tie it so if one of these events fail, then the meta-event fails.

For example, as a pre-event to the Shatterer, we could use building the pylons. At separate locations you could have a defend the engineers event, while another group of players hunt the Shatterer down and lure him into the trap.

Hopefully having the big event divided into multiple smaller events will break the zerg up a bit, alongside the need for communication.

4. Show me the Bootay!

• Have each successful fight spawn a vendor that sells recipes for themed skins (much like Corrupted weapons) with no stats attached. Crafting this skin requires max crafting, and makes it unlockable in the Wardrobe system that’s in my head. These skins also have a chance to drop.
• Have each boss chest have the chance to drop a themed Ascended weapon, alongside guaranteed tokens OR add an achievement progress for each meta fight (kind of like the repeatable events that give bags of loot) that when you reach a certain number, you can pick a weapon of your choice (tied to that boss, of course), with the stats of your choice as well.
• General improvement of loot.

Except you’re wrong.

Carbine Studio’s are creating Wildstar, not Anet.

NCSoft, however, is their publisher as well as ANet’s.

Firstly, what’s the future like?

Secondly, what pistol fires depends on what skill you’re using (So 1 – 3 is you’re mainhand [so the right] and 4 – 5 is your left hand [your left pistol]). It’s merely the animation, and there isn’t much you can do about that.

Third, you unlock Utilities at levels 5, 10 and 20. That’s where you select the turret skills, which are bought with Skill Points.

Finally, as for tips: Here’s a good list to start you off.

Happy hunting!

Ashabhi.1365:

Ashabhi.1365:

Echo!

/requisite 15 char

Echo!

/requisite 15 char

Echo!

/requisite 15 char

Fixed

For me, it wouldn’t be a specific skill, but a specific type of skill: Weapon Spells (Brutal Weapon, Great Dwarf Weapon, Splinter Weapon ect).

Nalora.7964:

For me, the aforementioned Panic. (great call Tiger)

But one thing I miss not from Guild Wars but from COH is a taunt.

MY KINGDOM for a taunt skill to get stuff OFF my light armor team mates.

Providing your class has it: Knock back / Pull / Knock-down (give them chance to run)

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 477 now, with no clue what to discover next. I’m basically required to look it up on the internet.

I think there’s a fine balance between ‘pointing in the right direction’ and ‘hand-holding through everything’. Not to mention how things like this could help with community building (Asking people vs going on the net).

For example, maybe when you reach L10 Fractals, the game will tell you to talk to whatserface in the Fractals, who’ll walk you through the basics of Infusions. However, it won’t tell you how to make them, with regards to specifics.

Same with crafting. Personally, I loved levelling cooking. It was like a giant puzzle, mixing and matching things until they fit. Maybe they could give you a basic Sigil / Rune that you could craft (much like the gear at level 1) to give a rough idea as to what you need, without actually telling you how to craft all of them.

Draco.2806:

Actually, “Trinity” is a mechanism of encouraging teamwork between players.

Take it out, and you get The Zerg.

GW2 had an opportunity to replace very rigid class roles (which are the one downside of Trinity and such) with dynamic or universal ones – but it didn’t. As a result, teamwork is non-existent in majority of everything, and effectiveness of most classes comes down to: do you want to play in a fun and enjoyable way, or an actually effective one?

If you have to make that choice, you’re playing a poorly-balanced game.

I personally view the Trinity as simply another gating mechanism.

While in the encounter, each individual role is exactly like how GW2 encounters; you focus only on what you’re doing, with little awareness of your team-mates (unless a mechanic requires you to know where your team-mate is, and then that tends to be a mechanic that doesn’t require the Trinity to implement).

I’d also say that it’s an issue more with encounter design, as well as a few select mechanics such as Defiant, that cause the lack of team-work. Not the combat system itself. Look at the Lover’s fight. That could have been a prime example where mechanics required teamwork (awareness of your allies location, what they’re doing ect) without specific roles. However, it suffers from the ability to brute force it.

On your final point, I’d agree with you were forced into playing it one way in order to complete content.

BeoErgon.9107:

You can’t win against other players. Sure. But you can win the best rewards, the best items… you can win them; or buy them…

PVE is always about your own objectives. When you get them you win. Don’t have any objectives? Well, then it is normal you win nothing.

Except that’s dependent on the player; both the goals and their mentality.

What if my objective is to get all of the dungeon skins? Or certain achievements? Or Ascended gear? I have to play the game in order to do that.

And then you got to ask yourself ‘have you really won if you bought them?’

LordByron.8369:

Any objective comparison between a P2W and Gw2 will result in a positive answer to the question.

I’d say this depends on the individual’s definition of Pay to Win.

For me, it’s any item available in the cash shop that gives a massive advantage over other players, that isn’t available by any other means.

LordByron.8369:

FIRST CASE:
For example…in many games you can “enchant” your weapon….the more you enchant it the more you risk to lose enchantments or similar.

But there is a store item that will avoid this effect.

Now at a certain point the effort to enchant it becomes so extreme, that you actually need the shop item…..

In Gw2 we have exactly the same….now with the gem becoming out of reach due to the system that is clearly designed to make gem unaccessible the more time pass…

Is this pay to win though?

If you’re replacing a Sigil or Rune, it’s going to be for a reason, surely? There’s no risk involved at all. It’s a calculated decision by the player. Not to mention this could be circumvented by simply slotting the upgrade into a different set of gear.

As for upgrading Infusions, I’d say it’s more a case of Pay for Convenience, so you don’t have to create 3 of the same Infusion to get the next tier of Infusion.

LordByron.8369:

SECOND CASE:
There are indeed pve items in the shop that gives you a HUGE advantage.

RESS orbs repair canister are just a couple example.

Ress orbs give you 1 HP. The only time they’re ever useful is if you’re in the world, alone, with no mobs around.

Repair canisters are convenience. Not to mention if you die so much that you require the use of a repair canister to repair fully broken gear, then chances are all the repair canisters in the world won’t help.

LordByron.8369:

THIRD CASE:
What about another famous example of P2W games?
Craft booster
20 level scroll
level scroll

Its a common item in P2W games

That’s a logical fallacy right there. Just because an item is in a P2W game, doesn’t make the item itself inherently P2W.

Not to mention these are available in-game as well.

LordByron.8369:

FOURTH CASE:
In a game where GOLD is the universal way to acquire BEST EQUIP……
Changing real money with GOLD is actually the best way to WIN…..

Alongside having to actually play the game as well?

It’s not a case that you get gold from Gems and you automatically got the best gear. You still got to collect Bloodstone, Dragonite, Empyreal ect.

Chances are that you’re going to get gold while collecting these materials.

Gods Knight.4936:

You can’t classify GW2 as an MMORPG, it’s just not.

And why is that exactly?

Last I looked, MMORPG stood for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.

Gods Knight.4936:

- No PvE end game. (and no grinding boring no challenge dungeons over and over and over is not end game. Undefeatable raid bosses are end game)

- No gear progression at launch.

- Pay to win.

Triple fail. They should have charged a sub and implemented good PvE content at launch. Yes not having the trinity was a huge mistake also. It’s like all these new fail games are trying to fix stuff that isn’t broken. One things for sure they won’t get any more of my money unless they do a huge overhaul of the game, not likely to happen.

Except the Trinity is somewhat broken, or the aggro mechanic part of it at least. The tank charges in, and can keep threat indefinitely, despite higher damage coming from other sources, and someone keeping that meat shield that the boss keeps hitting alive. Now, if tanking didn’t rely on aggro control, rather body-blocking attacks and CC / damage mitigation, I’d agree.

In my opinion, the Trinity doesn’t represent true teamwork. Tell me, what sounds more like teamwork to you:

• Boss fight, healer goes down half way through, fight automatically fails.
• Boss fight, Player A gets Downed. Player B knocks the boss back and Immobilises, while players C and D get Player A back on their feet.

And while a lot of things aren’t ‘broken’, they could definitely be improved.

- Since when does a game have to have raids to become an MMO? If all you’re going to do is instanced content that divides the player base up, wouldn’t that make it more like a lobby game?

- Again, why is this a must?

- This phrase has lost all meaning. How exactly is GW2 pay to win? Do you ‘win’ when you get to level 80? Or when you get Ascended? I suppose it does depend on the individuals’ definition of ‘win’.

OP, the only thing I can say is that I feel there are a few main things that are fault more than the actual combat system itself:

• Event Scaling – Most big bosses only scale in damage, as opposed to mechanics, and that’s up to a maximum amount of players. Thus, you don’t need to pay attention to mechanics, thus zerging.

• Encounter Design and Mechanics – Most mechanics a) don’t utilise, or detriment, other aspects of combat, such as control or buffing, or b) these mechanics can simply be brute-forced by damage.

Zaxares.5419:

TheDaiBish.9735:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

He’s dead though O_o….. Like Mimizu pointed out, you can visit their graves.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be Nic of old.

Amaranth is an NPC who wishes to travel all over Tyria, for an example.

That’s just what I was going to suggest. Amaranth could easily fill the role of the Traveller, but what exactly would she collect? Junk items were designed for players to instantly vendor for a small bit of cash. Forcing them to hoard them seems counterproductive.

Unless you’re thinking about having her collect unwanted items, like “I’m feeling lucky today! Bring me 10 Black Lion Chests!” and then watch the supply on the TP drain to almost nothing within an hour. XD

Well, this could give Junk a dual purpose: Sell for cash now, or save up in the event she wants them.

Add in Material Upgraders (for example, you can trade 10 Chipped Claws for 1 Tiny Claw) and you have another reason again. Suddenly, junk isn’t useless loot anymore.

Instead of suggesting to split up the open world population:

• Less on-rails dungeons and more open layouts.
• Dungeons that cater to exploring (hidden tunnels, rooms ect).
• Vanquish mode for dungeons.

A new thread, title change and a TLDR on the first or last page would probably be best.

Inspired.6730:

With fractured what was really removed was content. The fractal levels over 30 that had existed over 30 were removed from the game. And while this is definitely something to complain about, it is not first time its been an issue with GW2.

Content removal is not the same as progress removal which this is presented as by those who were most affected. Fractal level was always presented as simply a measure of the highest level fractal that a given player had access to. When the higher fractals were removed their levels were reset to the highest newly existing fractal they had done.

Nothing was lost because their access level changed to 30. However, they lost what was a lot to many because content they previously liked doing was removed from the game. Big difference, but that doesn’t mean it matters to those affected.

What content was removed? The content is still there to do, and mechanics were added to them after 30. Nothing was ‘removed’, simply ‘added to’ or ‘changed’.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’re holding the leaderboard for now to see if we can’t decide on a better way to help differentiate people on it who are all at the same tier, other than just the first who got there specifically. Once we have decided that, we’ll need to code, test, and vet it and then update the leaderboards to reflect the new tracking.

Time taken to complete individual Fractals?

HiddenNick.7206:

You are talking like Vertical Progression is the next bad thing after meteor shower! And why it’s so bad? And why do you think that Horizontal Progression is vastly superior to it? You’re not playing an ordinary game. You’re playing an MMO game. And that’s the kind game of game that grows vertically and endlessly (or to the moment when people stops playing it) whether you like or not. And characters should grow with it.

Personally, I see horizontal more as growth of options, whereas vertical is simply numbers going up.

As such, I prefer a focus on horizontal since allowing players more options allows for more varied mechanics, whereas vertical is more a case of ‘I did 10 damage now I do 12’ so the growth of options isn’t there, thus encounter mechanics have to stay within the limit of the tools the player has.

DeathPanel.8362:

What you are talking about is complicated system that the devs will most likely never even consider implementing due to the dev hours and QA hours involved.

Not entirely sure how it’s complicated:

• You add an item that records the progress of this second tier. Let’s call this item The Journal of the Local Hero.
• You add an additional tier to Hearts that functions like repeatable achievements, with a cap that triggers if that particular heart has been recorded in The Journal of the Local Hero.
• You add an NPC that calculates how many of the second tier’s have been done (+1 point for each heart done), along with how many second tiers are in the same map, how many maps have had their second tiers completed completely and what level these maps are (all of which add a multiplier bonus. Number of maps completed scales linearly [so 1 map completed would add 2 to the multiplier score], the map levels would have a single number assigned (so 1 – 15 areas would have 2, while 70 – 80 would have 7). Something along the lines of: Points = Hearts * (Multiplier 1 + Multiplier 2 + Multiplier 3). This would be behind the screen, so the player wouldn’t actually see how many points they have.
• After calculating, each reward has a point requirement. Obviously the more points, the better the reward(s).

It’s more or less the system that was used in GW1, with the addition of bonuses for completing a variety of maps, rather than simply the easiest of Hearts.

Then you could introduce other Journals to record the DE’s you’ve done in that area, another one recording the story of Destiny’s Edge (story-mode Dungeons).

DeathPanel.8362:

Redoable hearts has 2 problems.

First of all hearts go towards map completion so it would be difficult to modify the system to account for that.

You make it so re-doable hearts only activate when a map is cleared.

DeathPanel.8362:

Secondly, it would encourage people to camp certain hearts that are easier to do than others, which will lead to a lot of stagnant gameplay.

a) Randomise the hearts that need to be done in order to get the reward. These can be picked up at a bill-board at the home cities.
b) Introduce log-books, where players complete hearts, and receive rewards based on how much of the book they complete, with bonuses based on a) completing an entire map, b) number of maps completed and c) the level of the maps completed.

If there wasn’t the whole legal issue of ownership and making money out of it, I’d have said make a competition out of redesigning them.

They could implement the book filling system from GW1. Just have a book for:

• Hearts
• DE’s
• Jumping Puzzles
• Mini-Dungeons
• Story Mode Dungeons

And so on, with rewards based on how much of the book you fill in, with each map having it’s own page.

As well as mats, filling in a complete page of Hearts reduces the cost of items from vendors / unlocks new items with Heart vendors (both in that map and with the home city associated with that map), with a complete DE page reduces the waypoint costs of that map permanently to a limit.

Since when have world bosses been immune to conditions?

I can’t remember where, but I’m pretty sure they’re bundling all the features into one patch after the last 4 content patches dealing with Scarlett.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

He’s dead though O_o….. Like Mimizu pointed out, you can visit their graves.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be Nic of old.

Amaranth is an NPC who wishes to travel all over Tyria, for an example.

HELLruler.4820:

I don’t wanna sound like a jerk, but try and improve your writing skills, you can say a lot more with less words sometimes

Healing is in a bad spot now imo. The game was made so every class has a way to heal himself, so party heals are weak. Curiously, Protection reduces damage by 33% – that’s so much extra defense that healing again seems to be terrible
So yeah, dealing damage is way more effective than being supportive in most cases

Improving the combat log would be excellent, adding some colors too would help

I personally see healing not has healing, but as a form of reactive damage mitigation alongside other buffs / debuffs (protection reduces, say, 1,000 damage to 666 damage, the spot healing from either skills or the regen buff goes a lot further)

Oswaldzl.3652:

hmm but sounds wrong vampiric means to sap

And you do, when they hit you :P

Functionally, I haven’t tried it yet (although I could imagine it being useful in DS-focused builds for healing while taking no damage), but the concept is there.

Thief has the attack one already.

The signet is like a revamp and mash-up of Insidious Parasite and Order of the Vampire from GW1.

In terms of the concept, I see it as a vampiric aura that drains health from anyone that attacks you.

Ventrue.5731:

TheDaiBish.9735:

A personal damage meter that no-one else has access to? Sure.

I’ve heard there is one made, but arenanet confirmed that using it would be an offense, as it is a third party software. A personal recount would indeed allow people to be able to learn what stat combinations/skill rotations benefit them more. Albeit, its hard to actually judge effectiveness when you can’t constantly compare it to other people. If every one could see recount people would become aware of situations were they are doing some thing wrong, do it less, and help arenanet seriously balance classes to be more in line with each other.

The flip side of that being if everyone can see recount, I’d wager the majority of dungeon runners would kick the person who isn’t doing enough DPS, rather than help them.

Maybe if the recount didn’t actually show the names of the people, instead simply the damage (taken and received) in order of highest to lowest, then whoever is doing the lowest / receiving the highest can evaluate what they’re doing wrong.

If people want to collaborate in number-crunching, they can do so simply by speaking to each other. A shared recount isn’t needed for that.

A personal damage meter that no-one else has access to? Sure.

BeoErgon.9107:

Sure, there are ways to make incremental levels not being a chore.

But again, if we don’t know if they plan it, how can we fully discuss on Character progression? Knowing about eventual higher tiers and levels in the future is essential to fully discuss the different proposals in this topic.

Even if we don’t know their plans (heck, they might not be planning it at the moment, then suddenly they’ll implement something that would benefit from a level-cap raise), we can always discuss the concepts and plan what they could / should do in the event they raise the level cap / tier cap.

Even if they just file it away somewhere, it’s still worth discussing so the ideas are in place for proper implementation so we don’t end up with another Ascended expletive-storm.

BeoErgon.9107:

Hi,
I don’t know if my previous post was lost, but I would really appreciate an answer about these two questions:
- Is ascended the latest tier to ever appear in GW2?
- Is the level cap going to be increased one day?

Without answering those two questions I firmly believe this topic is useless.

The developers affirm that ascended is a wanted (required?) gear level between exotics and Legendary. We are making all these proposals with that in mind. If there is to be a higher tier later, this topic has no value. If level cap increases and lvl90 exotics or lvl90 ascended appears for example, this topic is useless too.

Without having a clear view of what you plan for the future how can we help you?

I dunno. While i’m not a fan of vertical progression, and I can’t see the point of raising the level cap, it can be done in such a way that it doesn’t completely negate your effort from before. For example:

• Content tasks that use your current gear as the ‘base’ of the upgrade. For example, you have Exotic gear, you buy a Gift of Ascension, then it turns into Ascended.
• That one piece of gear scales with level, and is improved horizontally by unlocking more options (stat combos, runes, aesthetics ect) on it.

Lord Kuru.3685:

So any comments about the Magic: the Gathering model (Type II/Standard)? IMO it’s a great way to keep the game fresh.

I did say earlier, but I think it’s a bad model, simply because it removes progression made.

Nike.2631:

TheDaiBish.9735:

• For OWPvE players, make use of jumping puzzles, mini-dungeons ect alongside world bosses.

Ok, I know I mis-read this initially, but I have to share:

Imagine a jump puzzle to climb the Shatterer DURING the fight. You go back to the tail and start jumping. It’s narrow. It’s tricky. Things try to eat your face. You have broad ledges you must reach and cling to when the Shatter takes off.

Anyone who reaches the top gets the Achievement and a chest, but the FIRST person to the top during each event gets to smash a crystal on the back of the Shatterer’s head that immediately inflicts damage equal to 10% of its total life and gets some modestly awesome prize (like an extra 25 Dragonite ore) for coming in first on this crazy race .

((Yes, I play a lot of platform-puzzle games on my consoles. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus rule. God of War and Castlevania have both done really good monster climbs too!))

You know…I’ve always wanted to play Shadow of the Colossus, but never got around to it.

Sounds pretty cool, although I can think of a few issues:

• Competitiveness in an event that is supposed to be co-operative.
• Norns and Charr either need to go on a diet, or the Asura need to drink more milk and grow a bit.

Aeonblade.8709:

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Aeonblade.8709:

I feel like this is completely the wrong direction. All the stats should be unlockable via something in the game mode you play in, not forcing you to do supposedly optional stuff like crafting.

I’m glad you like the idea, but what you said would actually turn me AWAY from that kind of system.

So you would prefer different accomplishments to unlock each combination within each play style? How far would you take that? Just WvW vs PvE? Then you still have the problem of WvW roamers vs WvW zergers vs WvW defenders. In PvE there’s a whole myriad of play styles: dungeon runners, harvester/crafters, farmers, fractal runners, explorers, role-players, achievement hunters, living story focused players, etc, and they will all inevitably complain if they’re forced outside their usual play area. If you try giving all play styles a way to unlock everything by only doing one thing, you’ll end up giving them nothing but a grind.

I feel like the larger grind would be giving people stuff to do that they hate doing. For instance, I’d rather get 10,000 WvW kills for an achievement than have to kill1,000 PvE mobs. I feel like the 1000 PvE mobs is the bigger grind for me.

What about activities that require dedication from a particular game mode?

For example:

• For crafting, alter crafting so Ascended can be made at 450. At 475, Infusions, Runes / Sigils can be added to a piece of gear. At 500, Inscriptions / Insignia’s can be added.
• For WvW, allow players to unlock something on their piece of armour every X ranks. For example, after rank 50: every 5 ranks an Infusion, every 10 ranks a Rune / Sigil, every 25 ranks a stat combination, with one of each unlockable as soon as you hit 50.
• For Fractal runners (who have reached Level 10) and dungeon runners (who have unlocked Dungeon Master), they have to find the hidden bosses in a set of Fractals / along each path, with one in each Fractal / path. Each boss gives an item. 3 of these items can be used to unlock a stat combination, with dungeon tokens / Fractal Relics unlocking Runes / Sigils and Infusions.
• For OWPvE players, make use of jumping puzzles, mini-dungeons ect alongside world bosses.

Well, it totally depends on investment in time and cost to rework the game to be compatible on the OS, vs how many people would actually buy it.

I mean, it’d be hardly worth it if only a few hundred people buy the game for SteamOS.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Brainstorm statement.

I am assuming that you wouldn’t want a progression system in which new skills and traits superseded/replaced existing skills and traits.

What’s wrong with this? IMO this is the way to go: regular introduction of new skills and expiration of old ones — exactly like Type II/Standard play in Magic: the Gathering.

• The game stays fresh — even old content, as they can be revisited with new skills.
• Balance is possible as the number of skills remains fixed.
• Only egregiously OP skills need to be nerfed as they’ll be rotated out anyway.
• Interesting mechanics can be experimented with — if they’re no good, they rotate out anyway. If they’re good, bring them back in the future.
• Skill releases can be themed to tie with the current LS.
• Dev team creates more skills more regularly, making them better at balance over time.

Of course this means people will be changing builds regularly, which means gear grind needs to completely go away.

I’d really like to know why you prefer not to go in this direction.

However, it removes any progression the player has made in terms of unlocking skills if they were to disappear a month later.

Note

> – Horizontal Progression
^ – Vertical Progression

Looking to the Future

Personally, here’s my thoughts on the direction progression mechanics should take:

No Level Cap Increase

No More Tiers of Gear

Adjust Current Systems to Allow for Deeper > Progression

Implement New Systems for > Progression

That’s my take on some things that could be implemented to improve the horizontal progression while not completely negating the vertical progression up until now.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A question to help direct the discussion a bit:

What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in others? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?

For me, Final Fantasy Tactics is one I loved, where I was able to continue to unlock new jobs and advanced professions for my characters, as well as level up their abilities within those professions. It remains one of my all time favorite games, and one of my favorite systems of progression in any game. I’m also pretty darn fond of that Guild Wars game and skill collection.

As much as I like FF Tactics, having that system would kinda put a wrecking ball into alts and character slots bought.

Path of Exile

• Skills are equipped via Gems into a weapon
• That weapon may also have additional slots that allow you to customize that skill. For example, you could slot a gem that increases the size of the AoE while reducing the damage, a gem that grants that skill the ability to produce multiple projectiles, or a gem that increases the effect of that skill.

This could possibly be modified by:

• equipping upgrades to skills, thus changing the skill. For example, the multiple projectiles upgrade attached to Fireball would turn the skill into Lava Arrows with does more damage, but over 3 hits, and has a greater range.

• Earning the upgrade through doing a task.

The game also has a Sphere Grid-like system, although that’d come more under vertical progression.

GW1

• Having to hunt skills down.
• The Infusion mechanic – get an item, take it to a guy, he infuses your gear against Spectral Agony. It’s not so much a favourite as it’s worth mentioning and would probably fit better as a process for Fractal runners.

GW2 – Initial Trait Design

• Having to hunt down traits, with the task being tailored to the theme of the profession. This could also be applied to hunting skills down.

Appropriate use of skills

I can’t say I’ve seen a game that does this, but what about unlocking skills and traits through appropriate skill use?

For example, using CC to interrupt X amount of times would unlock a weapon skill that, say, applies a hefty amount of Vulnerability or Blind to stunned foes? Or maybe it has the inherent effect that it doesn’t trigger Defiant?

Another point would be that less focus should be placed on traits for certain effects, and added to skills, thus encouraging better use of skills, but that’s another thing altogether.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

the suggestion would be: create something like this ingame:

http://www.guildwarsinsider.com/backend/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/d9U7R-300x206.png

It’s a bit small :P

Swagger.1459:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Swagger.1459:

horizontal character progression…

I’ve never played gw1, but many have consistently mentioned that it had a great amount of profession options and flexibility. this game is in desperate need of profession development, so mirroring what was offered in your original game would be a good start.

in addition to the above, gw2 could use more buttons to press on the bar. I suggest something like this…
*#1-10 would be used for individual or multiple weapon skills.
*f1-f4 mechanics bar
*f5 heal skill
*f6 aoe/team heal skill
*f7-f10 utility skills
*f11 &f12 elite skills

a 3rd weapon swap option would be great as well.

last but not least, get rid of combat movement suppression and provide an option to pan out the camera more like you do for certain encounters.

thanks and make it so!

So 22 skills available at any one time? What would it add to the game?

yes. far superior build variety and more abilities at hand to make combat more engaging.

If you increased the amount of skills, you’d also have to increase the amount of skills you can slot. Build variation also depends totally on how you balance them skills, thus more skills can easily run into the same issues as we have now with build variation.

As for engaging, it depends on whether the encounters would require all of them skills to be used, as well as the skill design.

You could easily add more variation and engagement by adding more skills, as well as revamping the skill design so that there’s less reliance on traits for certain effects – i.e. extra damage and such – to the current system that we have.

Personally I’ve played other games where I’ve had 30+ skills to manage, and I’ve never been as engaged as I have with GW1, where I only had 8 skills.

Swagger.1459:

horizontal character progression…

I’ve never played gw1, but many have consistently mentioned that it had a great amount of profession options and flexibility. this game is in desperate need of profession development, so mirroring what was offered in your original game would be a good start.

in addition to the above, gw2 could use more buttons to press on the bar. I suggest something like this…
*#1-10 would be used for individual or multiple weapon skills.
*f1-f4 mechanics bar
*f5 heal skill
*f6 aoe/team heal skill
*f7-f10 utility skills
*f11 &f12 elite skills

a 3rd weapon swap option would be great as well.

last but not least, get rid of combat movement suppression and provide an option to pan out the camera more like you do for certain encounters.

thanks and make it so!

So 22 skills available at any one time? What would it add to the game?

Guhracie.3419:

Here’s what I don’t understand about gear progression: It’s so weird. It’s totally unfinished; there’s no method of acquisition for higher end underwater gear, for example. Then there’s this whole system of insertables, which is really not intuitive. Runes, sigils, marks, gems, 2 infusion types, doubloons…. It feels messy. I also have no idea why some items have a collectible spot and others do not. There are plenty of cooking items that only work as ingredients, but they don’t deposit, for example. It is punitive to switch to new gear and costly in terms of gold and space to keep gear for different builds/situations.

Horizontal progression is just so difficult to even manage. Even on the same class of armor, dyes vary wildly in coloration. There’s not enough space to hold all the gear/skins we have been getting, and the cost of switching looks is prohibitive. There has been a distinct lack of full armor sets being added to the game- I don’t think it needs to be an equal ratio with the gemstore sets, but maybe 3:1 isn’t a terrible idea? Of course, I’m all for postponing if it means less clipping issues with non-human races.

Implementing the zenith/radiant/hellfire pieces the way you did shows that you have the capability to unlock and store skins in a much more permanent and efficient way, and I think people are really wondering when you are going to utilize that to its full potential.

Also, I don’t think it’s off-topic to discuss progression resets. There’s precedent for it, now, with the fractal level resets.

Will there be another stat increase in gear? Will cooking get bumped up to 500? Will crafting be expanded again?

Mmmmm…..Ascended doughnuts.

In all seriousness, I wouldn’t consider skins and how you dye something as ‘progression’, or at the very least, the progression is very personal to the individual. Who’s to say someone who likes the Karma weapons in a level 2 area hasn’t progressed?

Rather, it’s more along the lines of cosmetic customization, much like the character creator, unless the look of the gear was tied to challenges you went through to get it (Fractal Capacitor comes to mind).

As for storage, yes, they could do with a wardrobe. Even if they gave you 3 slots which you could store a set, as well as the template for that build, and you could buy additional slots at your pleasure.

Morrigan.2809:

If you are only interested in talking about how it is implemented- I have nothing to say
and why have a discussion?

It needs to be removed and no joke!

We all know how well received removing progress is from the Fractal levels.

The issue with this would be that if it is removed, people would expect (and quite rightly) recompense for the gold and time spent. Now, given how the economy is game-wide, what do you think would happen if that amount of gold and mats (which I can imagine some people spent real money on) was suddenly re-introduced into the game, and with no immediate use for the new materials that were introduced?

Thus, the next best thing is to polish how it’s acquired. That’s the reason for the discussion. Just because it’s not a discussion as to whether or not Ascended should be removed, doesn’t mean it has no worth.

PopeUrban.2578:

You’re thinking of journals/storybooks. Skill books were the things you got in hard mode that let you learn any skill already unlocked on your account. IDK how this system would be applicable to GW2 though, as all skills in GW2 are considered “unlocked” when you make the character.

Ohhhh. Yeah, I remember them now.

Well, you still need the skill points (they just removed the hunting for them part), but since there’s no cross-profession system, and there are more than enough skill points to unlock all of your skills by the time you get to 80, it sorta makes it pointless.

Savoy.6824:

Now, jumping right into horizontal progression. Can the ArenaNet designers begin to design a game that incorporates the orders that we joined in our personal story. The designers may already be doing this to some degree, but it is my opinion that it is lightly used.

Personally, I think they missed a trick with the Personal Story, both as a way or making it relative to the open world and extending the pacing of the story, by not including a Order rep requirement.

For example, you start out as a grunt, and you don’t get the next Personal Story mission until you’ve made yourself outstanding among the new recruits (through doing DE’s and Order Missions [Order Missions aren’t something that’s actually in the game. Rather they are tasks doled out at random – say, every 1 – 3 days]). I mean, I found it kind of disjointed that you start in an order, and 5 missions later you’re quite high in the Order in terms of rank.

VOLKON.1290:

Anyone remember skill books in GW1?

Great horizontal potential there if they come back.

Were they the ones you did for rep and gold?

Or am I thinking of something else?

Sirendor.1394:

TheDaiBish.9735:

SNIP

A lot of what you say would be incredible, but sadly it’s an utopia. We’ll never get something like this. :/

Eh, some of them could be ‘easily’ remedied (easily being relative and all to what I wrote).

• Use existing content for the skill acquisition part.
• Create more maps for WvW. The variety and ‘blindness’ I feel would add so much.
• The scaling on the individual bosses.