Guild Wars 2

This is something similar to two of my suggestions:

• being able to create your own weapon and armour skins to apply to weapons and amour (much like the HoM and Halloween skins).

• A crafting profession that can create small particle effects (as well as environmental weapons and buffs. Called it an Inscriptionist).

Um, who’s Dr. Ricks, and why should we care what he says?

Anyway, I’m against Open-World PvP in the PvE area:

• It makes no sense lore-wise. Unless you gave the option at character creation to become the antagonists of each race (Nightmare Court, Flame Leigon ect), then the Races have no reason to kill each other.

• Griefing during events and of lower level characters (scaling doesn’t work that well).

Gnashor.9287:

I tryed to puted everything in one post with paragraphs but system didnt let me.Was saying text is too big and should be under 5021 something.

Yeah, should have elaborated. You could have kept all of it in one topic, but just split it up into different posts.

If you want people to read your suggestions, you should:

• try to keep it concise and to the point.
• lay it out so it’s easy to read
• Split up topics accordingly, and use formatting to show this (i.e. bold for headings)

Not everyone likes reading great walls of text where you don’t know where something begins or ends

Gnashor.9287:

1)Also poison isn’t dark arts for the necromancer.

2) Also stealth might be a part of an illussion but also could be replacing with something else that fits more to the Mesmer class.

3) And I totaly disagree with you about the Norn’s that can fulfill the ranger class even as beast master or traper or anything.

And yes I see things from the realistic point of view and not making assumptions.Games is virtual reality and to make you forgot that you playing a game should be realistic as every single player game is or atleast try to be.

1) Necromancers aren’t just about raising the dead. They’re about death, decay, controlling life force ect. Since Poison denies a portion of healing while also damaging, I’d say it fits in with the ‘decay’ part.

2) Like? At the end of the day, if people turn invisible, they turn invisible. It’s kind of pointless to go creating a load of buffs that will end up doing the same thing.

3) If you see things from a realistic point of view, then look at this image, and tell me it doesn’t fit in with a Norn.

Gnashor.9287:

TL:DR

• More stats on gear in PvP as you progress. I don’t understand why this isn’t so.
• Cosmetic only is stupid
• I don’t want the same stats as everyone else

Because keeping all stat amounts the same means that:

• people who join the game later aren’t outclassed because other players have higher stats.
• people who don’t get as often to play don’t fall behind. It’s more about skill > time invested.

I.E – A level playing field where the only advantages are (ideally, when class balance has been sorted):

- Your build
- Your skill
[/quote]

Plinx needed a nerf.

~2000 karma every 15 minutes?

It took players from other areas. Rather than giving Plinx back, they need to put more incentives for players to visit other areas.

GCleonardo.3947:

This is why i don’t like it.
No farming no flying no mounts, just fight, slash and pvp and wvwvwvw

And suddenly, if mounts were introduced, you’d like it? So you can add ‘running around on a mount’ to that list of yours?

Besides, you couldn’t have flying because of the jumping puzzles.

Not that I’ve got anything against Mounts, but you’ll want to construct a better argument for them other than ‘these games have them so why doesn’t this game?’

Right, first off: a) you could have chucked all of these in one post and b) you really should use paragraphs (especially in your other posts).

1) + 3) Disagree – ANet said they didn’t want people to be limited by their preferred playstyle simply because one race is more suited to a profession or because a profession isn’t available to a race. Not only that, giving passive racial abilities just means more balancing work to be done.

In your example about Norn Rangers, you’re thinking too restictively. Rangers can adapt their play-style to be Trappers, Beast-masters, Shaman, Archers. Given this, Norn Rangers DO make sense regardless of body-size.

2) Not every class has similar abilities or debuffs: Warrior abilities can’t Blind or Poison, for example. However, you will get some overlaying of debuffs and abilities, and the ones given make sense. Again, with this, you’re too rigid in your thinking:

Mesmers are masters of deception and misdirection, making Stealth a viable ability to give them.

Necromancers are masters of the dark arts. Given this, and that Poison reduces healing as well as being a DoT, this also makes sense. As for sacrificing blood, they had this in GW, but they removed it because it would unbalance the classes (where Necro’s would have to have some sort of resource management alongside cooldowns where every other class wouldn’t)

5) The only reason PvP only has the amulet is because the total base stat allocation for a level 80 is on there. Adding more would just mean having to spread the stats out.

6) Totally disagree. ANet wanted to create a level playing field so that the only advantage one player might have over another is experience. Introducing stat increases SPvP would just unbalance that and make it into a gear>skill game. Why would you need stat increases anyway?

While I agree with the slotting in skills for weapons (proving skills are kept in the theme of the weapon), I disagree on the Utilities.

Traits are there for the passive buffs (as well as the Signet utilities). Also, adding more slots would mean having to balance out skills by either increasing their cool-down or weakening their effect.

NinjaEd.3946:

I’d like to further elaborate on this, and say criers/shouters in all major cities. They too don’t get enough attention even with all the hard work the developers put into making them.

This would make more sense than having them all in LA, considering that a few of the zones has Main City influence (i.e. Plains of Ashford, Diessa Plateu, Blazeridge Steppes all have Charr influence)

Belias.2147:

Again i don’t write anything about Open-World PvP i wrote: Add some map with Open-PvP, I mean for example new island? Where anyone can fight against others.

Actually you do:

“Any map that is not directly adjacent to a city is considered an open PVP zone or PVP fields.”

Considering the amount of zones that are adjacent to a city (mainly 1 – 15 zones), that would make the majority of the map able to have Open-PvP on.

Open-PvP, Open World PvP. Phrase it as you want, it’s exactly how you described it.

CandIeJack.9352:

The bugs size and problem DOES NOT matter. If Armored Core had a bug where you couldn’t move, and it took a week to find and fix it, they would find and fix it because it’s a SERIOUS issue. If everyone showed up as pink and translucent, I would laugh so hard, and then it would be fixed, because it’s a bug that needs to be fixed.

The Asura ear gigantism bug was around for hours, and it got fixed. Things that are wrong need to be fixed.

I agree on this. But the point is how can you fix something when you don’t know what the problem is (code-wise)?

Anyone with a working knowledge of programming knows that it could be anything, ranging from the code isn’t up to the task, to a spelling error. And while debugging tools help, ultimately it’s up to the programmer to find and fix the problem without affecting any other part of the code.

It really isn’t as simple as saying ’there’s a bug, it needs fixing’. If you got a major bug that you have no clue of solving, but 10 smaller that you can, which ones are you going to work on?

CandIeJack.9352:

Yes I know that content creation is the the same as bug fixing, but leadership tends to push employees into doing what they find as to being the priority. However, that being said, that’s a trend. I don’t actually work at ANet or anything, so I don’t know what the issue is, but somebody there does, and I hope they speak up.

Content Creators =/= Bug Fixers

The people who create the content aren’t necessarily programmers, so how are they supposed to fix the bugs?

A lot of the resources created are created through tools developed by the programmers. So while the content creators know how to use the tools, they don’t necessarily know the inner workings, therefore they can’t fix bugs.

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

1) I think the biggest reason a reward system won’t work in these zones is because people would be downscaled to do these events – making it possible for low level characters to get these rewards since they’re based on completion not level.

2) A single DE in Orr nets you 17k karma for completion last I did one… and the only way to get coin was pretty much drop based. Can you imagine having that kind of karma rewarded to you when you’re level 25 in Kessex?

I truly can appreciate the amount of thought you all have put into this, but rewards just don’t seem (to me) to be an effective solution. I’ll stop posting so you can keep theory crafting, hopefully there is a way that low level zones can be made more fun again.

1) Valid point on the scaling. Obviously something would have to be implemented to stop lower-levels getting that much Karma and stuff. Maybe have it so you have to be at cap / story completed / scaling rewards.

2) Huh? It’s been around 378 karma and 1s 73c per event now for a while in Orr. Not sure where you got 17k from.

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

You guys have thought out what you want very well, but unless it’s implemented in a way that rivals Orr/Dungeon farming – I’m just not seeing it being good enough to entice people to go back.

That’s basically what my entire post was about; providing rewards that rival Orr on a daily basis.

2k Karma and 1 gold for doing an event rivals Orr? I must really not be missing a whole lot by avoiding that place then lol…

If it is a decent alternative, then I have to ask how often they can be done a day. Cause even if you put a dozen of those in the lower areas once they’re complete why would people stick around? If I was all about getting the best accomplished each day I would do them all and return to farming. Not that we want to drag people away from Orr if that’s what they like, but what about that would make people want to stay and do DE they don’t want to do now?

Well, in my suggestion, I suggested 4 daily tasks for each area:

• Re-do a set number of Hearts
• Complete a set number of different events in that area
• Complete a Bounty (Vet or Champ difficulty)
• Complete an Exploration task (JP, Vista, PoI ect)

The 2k and 1g was just an example. Anet has a lot more data on Currency Acquisition, so they’d be able to set a more competitive rate.

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

You guys have thought out what you want very well, but unless it’s implemented in a way that rivals Orr/Dungeon farming – I’m just not seeing it being good enough to entice people to go back.

That’s basically what my entire post was about; providing rewards that rival Orr on a daily basis.

Onshidesigns.1069:

Each zone is it’s own map with it’s own time of day and weather. And, each zone must be part of a server cluster.

Nope. All maps on a server are saved on that server. There aren’t different server clusters for one Server or whatever.

The different time and weather doesn’t come from the individual servers, but settings coded into the map on creation. It has nothing to do with the server.

For example, using psuedo-code:

mapA=lionsArch;
{
_dayCycle = 3 hour
_nightCycle = 1 hour
_weatherOne = Rain()
_weatherTwo = Sun()
_weatherCycle = .30
}

Basically shows the properties assigned to the map called _lionsArch.

Shootzy.3580:

And TP, lots of ppl cant read on TP,leathers are bad texture.

You don’t mean ‘letters’ do you? As in the text?

Because that is a problem when you set your UI to small.

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

to be honest I’m not sure rewards for going back would fix anything at all.

If that was the case, people would be going back to previous areas now. As it is, they don’t because it’s not efficient in terms of making money / raising Karma / farming Rares (which I agree with you. I’d rather play the game for fun than like a spreadsheet).

Say, for example, you get 2,000 Karma and 1 Gold for a task that is roughly the same length as an Orr event farm, and each area has 4 tasks. Not only would that be more Karma, but it’d also be more Coin. Throw in guaranteed fine crafting mats, and the ability to lower your traveling costs (maybe even open up new merchants for unique armour / weapon / recipes), and that would provide the incentive to take a break from farming the same place over and over.

It also gives people somewhere to keep earning when DR kicks in and also something to do alongside their Daily Achievement.

This is the original thread

Area Rep addresses earlier zones being empty.

Order Missions addresses alternative character progression and importance of the Orders outside of the Personal Story.

Onshidesigns.1069:

Each zone is on a different server, so paying to fly a dragon form one zone to anther is not possible.

Mounts would only work if they were only cosmetic.

If their was no speed increase and automatically exiting mount when entering towns, events. No combat on a mount.

1) Zones are on different servers? Whut? The only event this happens in is if you go onto an overflow server. Even when guesting is implemented, you’ll still be on the same server consistently (LA, The Cursed Shore and Sparkfly Fen on Desolation are all on Desolation). You don’t server hop every time you go into a different zone :/

2) Why would mounts only work if they were cosmetic, with no speed boost? Just saying it wouldn’t work isn’t really a valid reason.

OT:

I have no real opinion on mounts. If they add them, whatever. If they don’t, whatever.

I agree that they shouldn’t raise the level cap, even more so now that they’ve introduced Ascended gear.

As well as this, they shouldn’t add more skills or traits until the current ones are balanced.

As long as they were well made, I’d totally buy one to go with my Rytlock.

Anything to bring people back to lower levels can only be a good thing

I myself suggested Daily Tasks to earn Area Rep. The more rep you get, the lower Waypoint costs will be. As well as that, Tasks would award rewards that would give incentive to go to them areas.

Dueling and PvP Arena’s: I wouldn’t say no.

Open-World PvP: Totally disagree:

1) That just opens a large amount of opportunity to grief (mainly down to the Events) when ANet said they want to make the PvE experience about co-operation.

2) That’s what WvW is for.

Sef.6918:

this would fix the emptiness of zones, i hope anet see this and add it to the game.

This was what I was aiming to address (as well as an alternate form of character progression), except I broke my own golden rule of explaining what issue I was addressing XD

I approve of this post.

People seem to have a natural inclination to focus of the bad, and forget that they can still have fun.

But now you mention it…

If all the hardcore WvW’s are complaining they need the gear to stay competitive, doesn’t that mean that no-one’s going to get it if they don’t like doing the Fractals?

And even if they do, 1) people on other servers also get it and 2) how much difference would a few people having this gear make?

Kakashi.9271:

If this game had nothing but exotics for 6 months it would be bland.

Actually, GW1 has had the same gear cap and level cap for 7 years, and there have been people playing it that long as well. They just introduced new skins, skills, title tracks, content ect.

1) The people who create the content aren’t the same people who fix bugs.

- Content Developers – Create Content
- Programmers – Create Tools for the Content Developers

This means that anything goes wrong, it’ll be the programmers, and not the content developers, that’ll fix it, unless it’s a case of modifying existing content. You also can’t expect content development to halt, otherwise people will leave the game down to nothing to do (when GW was first released, we didn’t have a saturated MMO market).

2) “It doesn’t matter how simple or difficult of a fix it is, GW2 is the only game I’ve played that has had problems that happen to everyone that have lasted this long.”

Well, it does. If you got one bug that you’re still trying to come up with a solution for, and 100 bugs that you know can be fixed, what are you going to do?

3) I think saying that the Fractals has replaced all other content is a tad over-dramatic. I still see people out in the world, doing events, doing the Dragons, and looking for other dungeons.

As for ‘you can’t play with your friends because of the level system, nobody wants to play on a lower level than they have to’, I can easily turn around and say ‘I play on lower levels because playing with my friends is more important to me’. You get Elitists who have a short-term memory problem, and you get the players that just want a good time, and will share a laugh and a joke when you all get owned. Same with every game.

As for everything else, it’s a ‘wait and see’:

• They’ve said they’ll be overhauling existing dungeons, creating Guild and WvW content ect.

• We still don’t know if this is going to end up a treadmill or just a step with Ascended.

Personally, I hope Ascended becomes the final tier, and they implement more fun systems of progression (aesthetic, skill and trait hunting, skill upgrading ect).

Area Reputation

This suggestion was in response to a thread suggesting Waypoint Costs being lowered:

Rather than just them straight reducing waypoint costs, why not have a rep system with each area, where the more rep you gain, the lower the waypoint costs?

Tasks (x amount a day) would be collected from a billboard (think Zaishan Dailies), and associated with that area:

Redoing a Renown Heart(s)

Given the tasks for Hearts aren’t things you associate with permanency (dealing with mobs / collecting things ect), have a select Renown Heart(s) a day be re-doable as part of the rep-gaining.

In the case of later areas that have no Renown Hearts, another system would have to be implemented (maybe for Orr, a successful Temple Takeover?)

Bounty

As in, tracking down a specific mob, killing him, and taking back proof that you’ve dealt with him. To stop players camping the spawn point as well, the mob would randomly re-spawn somewhere else on the map.

Event(s)

Doing a set number of different events (to stop players camping events) in that area will fulfill this.

Exploration

Completing a jumping puzzle, accessing a given vista, visiting a PoI and other exploration-related tasks fulfills this criteria.

Each successful task earns you:

• A number of reputation points for that area (depending on the difficulty of the task i.e. a jumping puzle will earn more than a vista). The higher the rep, the more rep points needed to reach the next milestone.
• XP
• Coin
• Karma
• A bag with random fine crafting mats.

The XP, Coin and Karma would have to be comparable to those of Level 80 events in order to encourage participation.

Order Ranks

Outside of the storyline, being part of the Order / Pact has no importance whatsoever (outside of getting armour).

In order to combat this, assign characters missions they have to complete. Missions would be available after they’ve completed the Personal Story.

Missions would be in the flavour of the Order, so:

• Priory missions would be about research ect.
• Whisper missions would be about gathering intel, assassination ect
• Vigil missions would be about facing the problem head on and smashing faces in ect.

Completing missions would earn you ‘ranks’ within that Order. Ranks come with a number of benefits:

• Title track i.e. Vigil Grunt, Vigil Lieutenant, Vigil Field Commander.
• Access to different armour / weapon sets. Higher the rank, the fancier the armour.
• Access to harder missions which yield greater rewards.

When you reach a milestone (i.e. Rank 2, Rank 3), you have to undertake a special mission to prove you are worthy of that rank. Failing means that any other missions you undertake will not count towards Ranking.

Also, to add a bit of immersion, after reaching a certain rank, failing to carry out a set number of Missions actually decreases your rank (since you’re not following orders).

Since people may go on holiday, have exams IRL ect, there would be a vendor that provides a token (free of charge) that essentially gives “time off”.

This token would then come with a cool-down after that period had finished i.e. using any token would mean you can’t use another for a week. However, there are a number of different tokens that you can get (week, fortnight, month ect

As well as this, Missions would award a hefty amount of Coin, Karma, XP, and other rewards (i.e. Chance for rare crafting mats like Ecto’s).

However, this idea may not work now because of how fast we rose up the ranks of the Order in the Personal Story.

If you want mounts, go back to WoW…

There, now we got the obligatory thing out of the way:

• I have nothing against mounts or duelling. If they’re not included, whatever. If they were, whatever.
• A trading system for only items (no money, since that’s what the TP is for) could be useful.

Now teamwork. If Story Mode dungeons were soloable, I wouldn’t have a problem with that, since everyone should be able to experience the Story, even when people don’t run it anymore.

However, I do think the game needs content that requires teamwork.

Making everything soloable, even with larger rewards for teamwork, would just result in people running stuff solo, especially if you can do 3 – 4 runs in the time someone takes to get a group together and do one run, and then has to get another group together.

As for the idiots that kick people out of the group because of profession / gear / noobness, there’s not much you can do about them. Elitists will be in every game, and they have incredibly short memories that at one point they were a noob, or didn’t have the best gear.

The best thing for it is to find (or even create, which is what I plan to do personally) a guild, that have the precepts of taking anyone who’s eligible regardless of gear, experience, and runs are done for a good time (these runs where you laugh at stupid deaths and such are the best IMO).

mamourrir.9641:

All you just said lead me to wonder why they don’t have more people to work on that. With the number of copies sold, I’m pretty sure money shouldn’t be a problem.

Because ANet didn’t get all of that money. NCSoft did. NCSoft give ANet the money to develop the game, and then took it back with profit to recuperate what they give.

The game cost $60 for the base product, and the sold over 2mil. To make things simple, lets say that the 2mil they sold was just the $60 version:

60$ x 2mil = $120mil net income

Now, given it’s a big-budget game, let’s say it cost $50mil to develop. That would have meant NCSoft would have made $70mil profit. Out of that $70mil, they would have allocated ANet a portion of it for the year.

A lot of complicated maths, profit margins and big-suit meetings later, they decide to allocate $10mil (since the cost of keeping it running won’t come anywhere near the cost of development, otherwise it wouldn’t be cost effective, which would result in them shutting the game down).

Now, out of that $10mil, they have to budget.

First, wages. Average American wage was $26,000 a year in 2011 (we’ll work with averages since that’s all we got to go by. Chances are though they’ll be on a higher average wage)

Now, say they have 200 people working there total (including customer support, web maintenance, mods ect), that’s a minimum total of $5,200,000, which is roughly half of their budget. This isn’t taking into account things like overtime, bigger wages, bonuses ect.

Next, security. This is second priority since they’re dealing with sensitive data. They might contract out to a private company, so it wouldn’t come under the wages part.

Next, bills. Cost of keeping the building operational (i.e. Water, Gas, Electric, Maintenance and Repairs ect).

Lastly, they can’t spend all of the money: They need to keep a fair amount aside for the year in the event of emergencies (equipment failing, needing to hire temp staff [sickness / bereavement happens]).

This is nowhere near a detailed explanation on the inner workings of budgeting and the like. You’d have to pick up a textbook for that.

It’s just a rough outline on what goes behind the budgeting, what companies need to budget for ect. And a possible explanation behind why they can’t hire more staff. Because remember: out of all the money they spend, they need to make a reasonable profit. That means keeping costs as low as they can.

In reference to your ‘greedy’ comment, you obviously have no idea how funding works:

Any money made by ANet is given to NCSoft, who then allocates a budget for ANet (obviously the more money they make, the higher the budget, but they may not be directly proportional i.e. ANet would get 10% of $100, but only 11% of $200 made).

Out of that budget then, ANet have to allocate funds to all the different depts: customer service, content development, QA, bug fixing and imbalance ect.

Now, out of this budget, they’ve got to pay for people’s wages, maintenance, location costs (electric ect).

You also probably missed the thread where they were talking about how they balance stuff :

As for bugs, it isn’t a case of waving a magic wand and saying the magic words.

First, they got to decide which bugs to prioritise (game-breaking bugs take utmost). Here’s a link you might find interesting: Not All Bugs Are Worth Fixing

There’s thousands upon thousands of lines of code to go through. It could be:

• something else they’ve implemented has caused the issue.
• referencing a piece of code that’s broken, in which case, they got to follow the path back until they find it.
• something as simple as a missing letter, bracket, syntax error.
• programmers aren’t given enough time to develop (given that they’re on a time-frame to get tools out, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is one of the biggest factors).
• poor design logic (tools aren’t up to task)

At the end of the day, they’re only human. They make mistakes, and they can only do so much in the time they’re given.

Wolfey.3407:

I sent a couple messages to anet staff asking what happened to Dhuum and Menzies but no answer yet Dhuum for supreme god!!!!

They’re out of the offices until Monday (what with it being Thanksgiving and all)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/AMA-with-Chris-Whiteside-on-Monday-November-26/

I wonder if that war is still going on? That’s why the God’s have gone silent: to focus their attention on them breaking through?

Storms Fury.9307:

Apparently I was still under the assumption that favor was still based on the status of Heroes Ascent. Honestly I am offended.

They should change it back as that degrades the “epicness” of gaining the favor of the gods.

It was removed back in August 2007. You don’t pay attention to much, do you

Um, lore-wise, one problem: The Gods are silent (as in, not in Tyria). How do they bestow favour if they’re not there?

Besides, I’m pretty sure Favour of the Gods was a PvE thing (FotG would extend evertime someone would get max title track)

On Buying Game Through Gems:

If people could do that, it’d mean they could potentially get another game for free (since you can convert gold to gems), which would result in a loss of revenue. That really wouldn’t be a good thing for the game (since they need to produce money to get continued funding from NCSoft).

• UI customisation: Agree
• Not sure what you mean by custom spell bars, but if you mean access to more spells at once, I disagree. If you mean saving a skill-set as a template for easy loading, then I agree.
• Haven’t really got an opinion on Dueling, Numbered Health Bars, Last Time Online.
• Not sure what you mean about the leathers and the TP and your eyes hurting.

That’s cool and all, but maybe you should post this on the WoW forums?

Everyone has access to the same gear, runes, sigils ect in SPvP i.e. no statistical advantage.

Silver Bride.4685:

Waypoints after death should be free because what happens if you die and don’t have enough money for the waypoint?

I always thought way-points were free on death?

Rather than just them straight reducing waypoint costs, why not have a rep system with each area, where the more rep you gain, the lower the waypoint costs?

Tasks (x amount a day) would be collected from a billboard (think Zaishan Dailies), and associated with that area:

Redoing a Renown Heart(s)

Given the tasks for Hearts aren’t things you associate with permanency (dealing with mobs / collecting things ect), have a select Renown Heart(s) a day be re-doable as part of the rep-gaining.

In the case of later areas that have no Renown Hearts, another system would have to be implemented (maybe for Orr, a successful Temple Takeover?)

Bounty

As in, tracking down a specific mob, killing him, and taking back proof that you’ve dealt with him. To stop players camping the spawn point as well, the mob would randomly re-spawn somewhere else on the map.

Event(s)

Doing a set number of different events (to stop players camping events) in that area will fulfill this.

Exploration

Completing a jumping puzzle, accessing a given vista, visiting a PoI and other exploration-related tasks fulfills this criteria.

Each successful task earns you:

• a number of reputation points for that area (depending on the difficulty of the task i.e. a jumping puzle will earn more than a vista). The higher the rep, the more rep points needed to reach the next milestone.
• XP
• coin
• Karma,
• a bag with random fine crafting mats related to that area.

Frotee.2634:

Uhm…don’t grind then? oO
You do realize you can easily change the looks of your high-end armor with (fine) transmutation stones, right?

Also – making armor look “better” is always difficult because people have VERY different perspectives on what counts as ‘better’.

This, pretty much.

As Lincon said: You can please some people all of the time, all people some of the time, but never all people all of the time.

Short of ANet providing a service where you can send in designs for armour and then having them made, you’re going to get armour sets you don’t like. You just seem to be more picky.

Have you tried mix-matching to get a look you like?

Child Of The Aesir.8762:

Or a large Char or Norn with a kitten displayed proudly.

I TOTALLY WANT A PONY ON MY CHARR WARRIOR! FOR PONY!

ahem

Something like the OP’s suggestion would probably be incredibly simple to implement, since it’d just be a case of creating the emblem, and inserting it into the options.

I agree that they could expand on the emblems. They could even put a Design-Your-Own in the cash shop (vetting required of course).

Love the ideas. Especially the events.

Add capture points with moats (and therefore drawbridges), and you could add Grappling Hooks and Flame-Powered Pullys:

Grappling Hook

Creates a walkway from the launcher to the castle wall. The actual grapple itself will have a healthbar. Destroying the grapple will cause the player to fall.

Flame-Powered Pully

Only usable on drawbridges. Pullys will pull down the drawbridge, slowly over a reasonable period of time. The only way to counter this is to destroy the pully.

I would flesh these out more, but my head is full of mush at the moment.

Bonefield.9813:

I would suggest reading this post:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-teams-that-work-on-PvP-WvW-Balance/first#post818357

I thought it was a bit strange only having a total of two people XD

Your name also rings a bell, and I can’t think where from.

Zsymon.8457:

Are people going to keep investing in gems if there’s no staff to fix bugs and
underpowered skills/builds/professions though? If every new update ends up
with the “no new content” tag, major bugs from BW1 still unchanged, weak
and useless traits and skills everywhere, and according to Jon Peters, barely
any hope of them ever getting fixed because it is just too hard for the two
lone coders?

I want to buy gems, but if I know patches keep coming up empty, what is the
point? I don’t play an underpowered profession/build, but many people do,
and if you read the forums you see that they’re getting sick of it. If they read
Jon’s comments on the ranger forum, they will get disheartened and they’ll
never buy gems.

Quick question: Name one game that’s perfectly balanced 3 months out of the gate.

1) They said they cut down on the number of skills to make balance easier. Probably with the budget in mind. Eventually it’ll get there. But you’ll be hard pressed to find a game that has perfectly balanced everything. When DK’s were first released in WoW, for example. They were self-healing, indestructible powerhouses that took about 6 months to alter.

2) Skills, contrary to popular belief, aren’t created by programmers. Programmers created the tools for the staff to easily create skills. In which case, most of the time it’s the actual testing and balancing of the skills that takes time.

3) As above, see below. Programmers don’t create the content. They create the tools for content designers, meaning if there’s a bug, the content designers aren’t going to be the ones that fix it. At the same time, they can’t wait to put out content until everything else is fixed, otherwise people will leave.

4) As I said in another post, ANet doesn’t get the money. NCSoft gets the money, who then in turn allocates a budget to ANet.

5) Knew there was something I was going to add. Everyone thinks their class is underpowered, x class is OP, and their class deserves special treatment. However, they are working on it (did you not see the Nov 15th patch?) and it’s down to people needing a little commodity called patience.

Open-world PvP would be a bad idea for one reason: Events.

Events are focused on creating co-operation between players.

Zsymon.8457:

So I guess that means, the game is designed to get income from initial game purchases,
and then just let it die out, losing all subs until the game world is empty, moving on to
the next game, rinse and repeat? That is sad.

Nope. Based around micro-transactions. Like the first GW.

So you want:

• More HP
• Faster Movement Speed
• Less Health on the Boss
• More Profession Skills and Traits
• Increased Level Cap?

More HP

Eh, I haven’t got any particular opinion on this.

Faster Movement Speed

All professions have access to Swiftness. There’s also a Rune that increases passive movement speed (I think), as well as Traits.

Less Health On Boss

Agree, and in it’s place more interesting mechanics.

More Profession Skills and Traits

Disagree for the moment. They only got two people working on skill balance. Let them finish this set of skills first.

Increased Level Cap

Disagree. There’s already a big yooha over Ascended gear. Introducing an increased level cap would also bring in power creep.

1) Any income ANet makes doesn’t stay with ANet. It goes to NCSoft, who then allocates ANet a budget, meaning that although they would be making more money, they won’t necessarily see much of it.

2) Offering bug fixes (which would also include skill bug fixes) and superior skill balance in a sub version would essentially make the F2P version a ‘freemium’ model, and wreck the balanced PvP that they are aiming for.

3) ANet marketed this game on the premise that it would be buy once, but still have the content updates of a subscription MMO. Adding a superior sub version is more likely to drive players away (many who came because of this).

4) Because of the lack of constant gear progression (Ascended is one step, and even then all that gear isn’t out) and focus on end-game raiding and stuff, the game isn’t really designed to retain a large number (if any) of subs.

Do I have an alternate solution?

Aside from:

• completely splitting skill balance between PvP, WvW and PvE, hiring an extra guy for skill balance (who doesn’t necessarily have to be a programmer; they mentioned before that they can easily create / modify skills with their development tools, and it’s the actual skill testing that takes time) and giving each person one based on their experience of that game-mode.

• improving their code structure to easily highlight where things go wrong (known as optimization, which comes with time).

Then no. But I don’t think a freemium / sub model would bring anything to the table. It’d either be all sub or no sub in the interests of keeping balance in PvP.

Care to explain:

• What features are incomplete?
• What MMO features it could use?

I’m not entirely sure though what textures have got to do with it feeling like an MMO.

Why unlock it?

Have it so the Largos starting area is you escaping from these ‘horrors’.

Onshidesigns.1069:

“agony item buffs” buffs could also be in the gem store chests.

I doubt this would go down well with players.

Rather than ‘buffs’, why not fight mechanics that reduce / remove Agony for a short time? Such as:

• Standing in beneficial areas outside of combat range (so people can’t just pew-pew from there)
• Losing LoS with the mob
• Standing in periodic AoEs that remove Agony
• Killing constructs to reduce the effect of Agony

HERO.2057:

I aggree we need raids.

There is no skill in PvE, no learning curve, this is the most boring PvE ever.

So….why are Raids needed?

You know, I was wondering about that in the Lost Shore.

I think this sounds like a brilliant idea. Have the dragon’s forces running through the street as well. Maybe have players need to guard mortars and stuff to bring the dragon down ect ect.

While I have nothing against Raids, I can see how it could hurt in some ways:

• If it’s extremely popular, it takes people out of the world, meaning those levelling might have trouble completing DE’s at later levels.

• If it isn’t popular, it diverts resources from them improving existing content.

Personally, I’d rather see them improve DE’s in later zones vastly to the point where co-ordination and teamwork are needed otherwise you fail. However, from an immersion standpoint, raids would make sense for the Elder Dragons since you can kill them and then forget about them (although, considering they are supposed to be the biggest threat to Tyria, you’d have thought they’d be flying around creating havoc).