Guild Wars 2

ozmaniandevil.6805:

What if you don’t PvP? Crafting is boring. We get tomes and scrolls through AP chests, and you can, as mentioned, “buy” levels with glory. Why not TP?

I think the idea behind buying tomes with Glory is that it allows you to level your toon via sPvP. If you spend 200 hours in the Mists but you’re a Level 2 in PvE, that doesn’t seem fair/make much sense.

1) Boo for pay to win
2) You can always play around with a class in sPvP
3) You can buy gems, convert to gold, and craft
4) If you play around in sPvP, you can use that glory to buy tomes

Yeah, OP is a bit hyperbolic. I wouldn’t get too upset at this point.

Or they could just adjust it back down to 2 scraps = 1 bolt…

Chris-

I very much understand your desire to have the community write the proposal. I have an alternate suggestion, though it is one that may require more work and time before it can be used:

Create a site where people can submit proposals or ideas and +1/upvote/whatever those ideas.

It should be separate from the forums, but we could link to our ideas from here during discussion. Over time, it will be easy to find the most popular ideas.

In this sense, we are all proposal writers and editors, and no individual will have more power or more voice than any other. I think this is especially important because, I assume, there are many who would be interested in providing guidance but may feel uncomfortable speaking up here.

Ideally, this system would be tied to our name.#### logins to ensure nobody is rigging the votes with multiple accounts and allowing us to contribute without signing up for anything else. (As a software guy, I know this piece may be difficult to accomplish.)

Anyway, food for thought.

Romo.3709:

If you want to explore (and I mean explore, not running from point A to B faster than normal) nobody is stopping you. You blame waypoints for taking that away from you? It’s like blaming your TV set for keeping you at home.

This is very true! The suggestion for having non-waypointed areas is intended to facilitate a journey. An expedition. Starting from one point and traveling to far-away lands.

The key is to do this in a way that is:
1) Interesting
2) Repeatable
3) Rewarding

For it to be interesting, there has to be a story along the way. You have to experience adversity and overcome it along your path. You have to do it with interesting, well-written characters. You have to use your wits and your skill.

For it to be repeatable, you can’t just waypoint to the end and kill a boss. (Or, to say this another way: this already exists in game. It’s called the champ train. Not trying to repeat that.) Think of it like a dungeon path, but in a larger, open area.

For it to be rewarding, you need it to be structured as some type of event or mission. It can’t just be a zone without waypoints and dynamic events. You could have it be something like Underworld where completing the events spawns a special NPC. You could have a big chest or rares or rare skin drops. It could be tied to an Order progression system where you advance in rank.

Anyway, that was the thinking behind the wilderness zones. I don’t want to change ANYTHING that exists now, simply add on new zones with a slightly different style of play. I feel like I’ve gotten this CDI way off topic by explaining this poorly and apologize to everybody for all the trouble.

Devata.6589:

However if you talk about reducing way-points (That was, what was being talked about) then the question becomes if you need to replace it with something and then mounts come to tough.

I want to be very clear here: you misunderstand. I was not talking about reducing waypoints. I was talking about adding additional zones without waypoints and events/missions/quests that take you from the entrance to somewhere else.

Mounts are not at all a part of this. It would be things like escort quests where you can’t just skip ahead.

If people seem like they’re hostile toward your mounts discussion, it’s because you’ve misunderstood the original suggestion and taken it on a very different path.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

timmyf.1490:

Maybe I can guide discussion by mentioning one of my favorite events in the game: the Penzan pirate treasure hunt. Has everybody here done that one?

It’s normally broken with nobody doing it every time I walk by on SBI.

This makes me really, really sad.

Devata.6589:

timmyf.1490:

You don’t travel to reach the endpoint, you travel. Period. That’s it. The exploration is the gameplay.

You spend your 1 hour exploring. And then you’re done.

I feel like I’m failing at explaining it, sadly.

While I might not have totally agreed on the way you visioned the temporary instanced maps and no mounts I do 100% agree on this.

It’s what I am trying to say when I talk about how ‘exploring’ now is crossing of a list of locations in stead of really exploring.

Well let’s work together, Devata. Mounts are an awfully divisive topic, perhaps we can find common ground.

What ways can we encourage exploration without speed boosts? What gives somebody a reason to travel from point A to point B? What, specifically?

Is it about the journey or about the end-point?

If it’s about the journey, then what should be on the journey? If it’s the end-point, then what should be at the end?

Maybe I can guide discussion by mentioning one of my favorite events in the game: the Penzan pirate treasure hunt. Has everybody here done that one?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I hope I’m getting the point across. Waypoints exist for a reason, but their utilization is by people with a variety of reasons for using their convenience factor. Removing them for the sake of exploration (which a lot of players might not even want to have forced on them) seems . . . to be adding some fresh new vibrant color to the Mona Lisa.

I see what you’re saying.

I do not want to REMOVE waypoints.

I want to add new content built without waypoints in mind.

Morrigan.2809:

What I Absulotely do not want to do, is to spend my 1 hour play time running to where I want to be- I want to get there and play.

thing is I have a choice now you see?

I totally agree. The idea here is that the journey is the gameplay. You don’t travel to reach the endpoint, you travel. Period. That’s it. The exploration is the gameplay.

You spend your 1 hour exploring. And then you’re done.

I feel like I’m failing at explaining it, sadly.

Romo.3709:

timmyf.1490:

8) After a period of months, those zones would have Asuran waypoints and become more like the zones we have now.

Therefore I agree with you on all except for #8. Why months? We’re talking about Waypoints, not Asuran gates. The whole concept with Waypoints being built as you explore has already happened in “The Lost Shores” update where we practically rolled through the map as we were creating different settlements. For them to say now that it takes time for Asuras to create Waypoints wouldn’t make sense anymore.

Fair. My original suggestion didn’t include the “eventually these would be regular zones” bit, but I thought it offered some interesting flair. I’m just hoping that those 8 points helped to make my ideas a little bit clearer.

darkace.8925:

I don’t explore Southsun because there’s nothing to see or do. There are no Vistas, there are too few Points of Interest, there are far too few Dynamic Events, and I personally wouldn’t have balked at some Renown Hearts either. Outside of harvesting runs or Queen kills, there’s really no reason at all to spend any time in Southsun.

Would you go to Southsun if there were events that you could warp in, spawn immediately, and complete for a chest with a guaranteed rare or two? And when you finished, you could start another chain? Up to maybe three or four paths?

That’s basically what I’m suggesting.

Khisanth.2948:

How does it trivialize exploration? They don’t magically become available to you(except some of the ones next to zone entrances). You still have to get there yourself at least once.

Are you saying you NEVER used fast travel in GW1?

If/when Cantha is added to the game are you going to swim through the Unending Ocean every time you want to go there?

…

How much exploring have you done in Orr? How about Southsun Cove? Sure there are waypoints but most of the time they are all contested anyway so it’s like they aren’t even there.

Just to reiterate, because I feel like nobody is understanding me:

1) I’m not saying waypoints should be removed from the existing content.
2) I do not think mounts should be added.
3) I certainly used fast travel in GW1.
4) I do not think you should have to swim across the ocean every time you want to go to Cantha.
5) I don’t explore Orr much because everything there has CC and it drives me crazy.
6) I don’t explore Southsun much because Veteran Karka = owwwww.
7) My suggestion is for INSTANCED GROUP CONTENT as a TEMPORARY way to introduce new zones and provide a sense of exploration
8) After a period of months, those zones would have Asuran waypoints and become more like the zones we have now.

Edit: and here’s the link again: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3416638

Devata.6589:

And there might also be less need to in a way ‘force’ people to explore. You know that when you are completing a map by running to all the vista’s, POI, hearts and so on. They could remove many of those letting exploration feel much more as something you keep doing while you go instead of it being a list that you have to cross of as you level up to then never visit it again.

It also means that you are even less likely to really explore the area. You just run from one point to another when crossing of the list.

Very true. To extend the conversation, Orr has unique mechanics: there are no Hearts, there are Temples, and there are huge DE chains which must be done to open certain areas.

When we start to venture out into new areas, should the mechanics be the same as Orr? Or should they be different?

I’m no fan of Hearts, so I’d prefer leaving them out. As far as the DE chains, what we’ve seen is that players tend to ignore them. Or worse, they try to exploit the events by not completing them or letting them fail. What other options are available?

Having zones with events that are more like traditional quests could be one interesting option. Let me stick with my idea of waypoint-less instanced “wilderness zones.”

When you enter the zone, there could be a few NPCs. Each has a different objective: rescue somebody who is lost, kill a champion, escort a group, etc. You can talk to them and fire off an event. These events would probably have special rewards beyond normal events – perhaps like you get with world bosses.

You could stay in the zone and keep completing these events as long as your party remains alive. Because there are no waypoints, a wipe means you have to leave the zone and start over.

Because each of the events starts from the entrance, there’s no need to “run” to the events. You don’t need mounts. It’s just a launchpad for other content.

I only played GW1 for a couple years, but this is a bit like the Underworld content, if I remember correctly.

Romo- just so you know, nobody here is suggesting that we REMOVE waypoints. (I’m not, anyway.) Rather, it’s thinking about how waypoints may change the way the content is played.

The Wilderness Zones idea, if you go back and read a bit more carefully, was meant to address the desire for Hard Mode and Vanquishing. Really, to set up a zone for a difficult, challenging journey.

I do not think such a thing is possible in the open world zones. Creating new, instanced zones seemed like a better solution.

The explanation from lore is that the areas are too dangerous for the Asura to maintain waypoints. (You could bring up Orr, for example, but the Pact is there to help.)

My idea also assumes that, eventually, these will become regular zones with waypoints. So the Crystal Desert becomes open first as a super-challenging adventure, but after a few months, the zone gets waypoints and regular mobs and is no longer instanced. This is a slow, months-long rollout of a zone. Like Southsun, but on a much, much longer time horizon.

Edit: actually, thinking about it, it could be cool as an open-world zone as well, though that wouldn’t allow the vanquishing option.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I agree:

‘As convenient as I find the waypoints all over the place, I feel like it trivializes much of the exploration we would be having without them.’

Chris

Thanks Chris. I had posted an idea way earlier (available here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3416638) detailing a way around this. Here’s what I said:

timmyf.1490:

I’ve seen enough people talk about Vanquishing and Hard Mode etc here, I have a new idea that might offer some fun opportunities:

Wilderness Zones

Unlike regular zones in the game, wilderness zones are instanced areas without waypoints and without respawning mobs. These zones exist at the edge of the current map and would serve as an introduction to soon-to-be-released new zones.

In wilderness zones, you and your party venture through the zone in an attempt to hunt down and defeat some sort of boss. Because there are no checkpoints, a full wipe means you have to waypoint out of the instance and start over.

This could even tie in with Order Missions: perhaps there are 3-4 different bosses per zone and every week your Order enlists you to defeat one.

Some examples…

“Bandit Territory” through the existing portal in Brisban Wildlands. This heavily fortified bandit training facility/barracks is home to many top officials and commanders. You must infiltrate the barracks and assassinate one of these officials.

“Crystal Desert” takes you south from Ebonhawke. A patrol of Ebonguard has gone missing and you must rescue them.

“Active Fissure” sends you below the surface of Tyria to clear out a pack of Destroyers wreaking havoc on Kessex Hills.

Something like that?

Conski Deshan.2057:

@Timmy I realize every post you make is about minimizing exclusion or consequence but I feel this is an element needed for true progression to occur.
Everything is not for everyone, and everyone should not get everything.

I totally respect this. At the same time, I think a lot of players are upset that choices they make are permanent and gate them from things they want.

Take the example of Order weapons and armor: there is a very clear reason why you cannot join Vigil and wear Whispers armor…. but how many players are upset about this? How many come here and make posts about how they didn’t know, and if they did know, they’d have done something differently?

How often do we see posts about “I wish I could change my Order/Race/Class/Personal Story choices?”

Right now, there is only a VERY small amount of content and skins that are locked to a choice you make. But nearly every one of those is a constant complaint from the player-base. Do you think increasing that is a good choice?

I can’t pretend to speak for the player-base, of course. I’m just saying this based on the discussion that I see.

I might present a challenge: can you take all these systems which might require some sort of decision-gate and rework them in a way that doesn’t require it? So… Order skills won’t work because they are based on your unchangeable choice of Order. What about Pact skills? Maybe the Pact has different specializations and, once you join the Pact, you can proceed to learn new skills in a particular specialization? Once you learn a skill, you can always keep it, even if you change your specialization to start learning something else.

Just my two cents.

Nike.2631:

The more ways we can interact with the world, the more ways the world can respond to or require our involvement. Crafting ranks are just one of a huge box of un-used/under-used ways the world could be made more engaging. It can’t be a hard gate because we can’t expect every individual or group to have a particular craft but it can add to the experience with side paths be they shortcuts or limited bonus rewards.

I have a lot of mixed feelings and concerns about this, mostly centered around these points:

1) Crafting is expensive and a lot of people don’t like it, so even if you’re not “forcing” people to learn crafting, it may feel like a requirement to many.
2) You can only have two crafts active at a time. I’ve spent the money to learn all the crafting disciplines, but I have it split across 5 toons. I do all my dungeons with my Guardian. I wouldn’t want to have to relearn the discipline on a second toon to have that ability in a dungeon.

But, these problems seem relatively easy to fix. We can potentially break them into two categories:

Prestige Options – alternate dialogue or other horizontal progression options based on an account-based title. For example, a player who has earned The Sunbringer might be greeted by hylek with a bow and a voice-response, “Hail, defeater of Tequatl!” Something like that.

Non-combat Skills – much in the same way that you can earn WvW ranks, what if you could become better at certain activities by investing skill points into non-combat skills? For example, a “hacking” skill could allow your party to hack the COE terminals slightly faster.

My concern with the second option is that, as we’ve discussed here, that will increase dungeon elitism. There are perhaps other interesting options that might not mean better/faster/stronger that I’ve not considered.

Sorry for confusing you, Juno. I usually try not to quote huge blocks of text because it contributes to page bloat (and sometimes because I’m on my iPad and editing the quote can be time-consuming), but I see now that it makes it really hard for people to follow the conversation. I’ll be more careful in the future.

I was maybe not clear: if your build means you die a lot, that’s fine.

But you should not have access to SECRET ROOM A because you chose Rabid gear or Jewelcrafting.

Your build should affect your performance and play style, not your options.

This discussion brings up something I think should be a rule: your character decisions and build should not determine your ability to progress or the paths you choose through (non Personal Story) content.

Devata.6589:

What do you see as a consistent cash-flow. If they get money every min, every day every month or maybe every year. It’s all consistent just with different intervals so expansions can also been seen as consisten cash-flow. Yes a expansions can have bad sales but gem-sales can drop as well.

In the business world, typically you’re looking at quarterly cash flow. For public companies, they must report results every quarter, so that’s usually where all the effort goes. Meet your numbers every quarter.

For ArenaNet, I assume they look at each Living World release: how many people are playing the content? For how long? Do gem store sales spike? Which items get bought the most?

In the end, though, the goal is to even out the quarter-to-quarter revenue. (Most likely. I don’t work there. This is just my experience from corporate America.)

Devata.6589:

Chris saying it’s a well made point when on a reactions that says “For example, I would pay $25 (2000 gems) for player housing that is meaningful and flexible and useful. Would enough players pay that much to justify development by Anet?” is basically agreeing that micro-transaction and the living story model reduces the quality you can deliver.

It’s nice to see a developer say something about that, but then maybe it’s an idea to rethink that model.

As a company you do not only want to make money but also deviler a good product I would think.

I disagree with this. If anything, having a consistent cash-flow helps reduce the risk of developing the game. Expansions can sell poorly, so there’s an inherent risk of losing money and business pressure to constrain the overall effort required. By having a cash shop, ArenaNet should be seeing a consistent revenue stream.

They know their funding model, they know how many resources that buys them, and they know (to some extent) that they’ll keep getting that money in the near future.

That isn’t to say that 1) expansions are a bad idea or 2) ArenaNet isn’t secretly working on an expansion without telling us, of course.

You are correct, though: the developers DO want to deliver a quality product. For most of them, not only do they play the game, they work with it 40, 50, 60 hours/week. This game means more to them than I’d venture it does to us.

I believe they made the decision to go without subscriptions or (frequent) paid expansions because they truly believe it’s the best way to deliver their game, both from a quality and from a profit standpoint.

Hey guys, way to pile on, but let me add this nugget: in some countries, you pay per GB or for going over a certain threshold. In that case, having to download 5 or 10gb of data instead of just getting it on disk is kind of a big deal.

The tip above – that the total data may be far less because the percentage is based on filesize – is a good one. I’d be surprised if it’s 10gb worth of patches, but 3-5gb is probably more realistic.

For everybody here who started harassing the guy: we can do better than this. Come on.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Many have mentioned giving info on the relative weight of each idea that is put forward, we should do this after this phase but to be honest (having given it a lot of thought) I wouldn’t want to see this weighting get in the way of great ideas.

So this comment from awhile back stuck out to me. I think we’ve got plenty of ideas here, with Housing, Subclasses, Order Missions, new weapons/traits/skills/races, and more all having a lot of discussion.

The weighting, therefore, probably isn’t going to cause much trouble at this point. What it might do is allow us to consider some tradeoffs…

Suppose a reasonable housing system requires 120 man-weeks of work. (In reality, I’d expect it to be far greater, but bear with me.) That might make housing seem less attractive if we find out we can get Order Missions for 60 man-weeks and a new weapon for each class with another 60.

I am aware that estimating development efforts to that level of detail requires a pretty thorough proposal ahead of time, but even a semi-realistic ballpark could provide for some useful discussion.

As always, this is both your game and your initiative, but for my part, I think it would be a worthwhile next step.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I’d love to see it too, but I’d like to somewhat avoid the glut of skills GW1 had were you could literally have 500 skills and no idea what to do with them, or any idea where to start short of trying everything and getting catcalled as you do.

This is a good point! When ArenaNet gets around to adding build templates – something I’d say we all want/need – one very useful feature would be Suggested and Popular builds. This would be a great way to help guide players toward useful builds without forcing them into a subclass structure.

I’m not a game developer, but I have experience in coding and IT project management, and what Sytherek is saying is important. I certainly would not pay $25 for housing, and I’d bet the $10-20/month I spend on gems is at the high end already. (I have ten character slots, all bag and bank slots, a custom arena, a Royal pass, gemstone armor, a Jade weapon, etc.) I buy lots of stuff from the gemstore, all with real-world dollars.

On the other hand, if I could buy a bonus mission pack in which I travel into the Maguuma to learn the fate of the White Mantle or into the Charr Homelands or north in the Shiverpeaks to fight Jormag, I’d gladly drop $25. As would, I suspect, many more players.

If ArenaNet can give us that for free, then awesome. But passing up on building meaningful content in favor of housing? That’s a scary thought.

Chris-

At one point, you had offered to produce an estimate of implementation time/resources for some of the systems, I think. Are you still planning on doing this so we can better prioritize some of these ideas? Or will you be building the proposal based on the discussion so far?

I think some of the ideas here might serve as “quick wins” and that a lot of the suggestions, like subclasses and housing, might fall out of favor when the folks here (who I assume are mostly not developers) see how much extra effort those systems require.

Oh, and thanks. I think this has been a very interesting CDI, even if I tend to disagree with a lot of the ideas.

Very true! I’ve just not seen a subclass proposal yet which adds substantial horizontal progression without adding extra grind or power creep that adds to the game in a way the current systems cannot support.

Again, I think we are all romanticizing the original game.

A often-less-than-a-minute long fight against our doppelgänger in GW1 is not evidence that we need a massive overhaul of GW2 in the form of subclasses.

Furthermore, extra trait points is not horizontal progression. Somebody get Nike on the phone so he can tell us about the Plains Wurm. ;-)

Ben-

My fondest memories are spending literally all night trying to make it south in the Shiverpeaks through Lornar’s Pass. It was Beacon’s Perch to Granite Citadel or something. And it was brutal.

I was up until 6am trying one time when my cat stepped on my power strip and kicked me. (In GW1, you couldn’t rejoin.) I was Monk, so this meant doom for my party as well.

Despite the failure, I still remember this fondly.

I’ve felt this for awhile, though I still don’t quite know how to phrase it. Wondering if others might have an opinion.

As convenient as I find the waypoints all over the place, I feel like it trivializes much of the exploration we would be having without them.

I’ve suggested zones without waypoints as a way around this. Does anybody else feel the same way? Or am I romanticizing the runs from towns to far-flung locations in GW1?

Edit: should have said this originally, but all the credit to Sir Arthur for expressing my feelings better than I’ve been able to. This post was meant as a huge +1 to his.

Shiren- all my Order Missions are available to all players. Order gear – as is the case now – would still be available for only your order. Sorry if that was unclear.

First, I’ve been somewhat critical of the ideas presented on this thread by Orpheal. I must, however, give him credit for a very well-written, thoughtful proposal which he posted outside this thread. His vision for the game is very clear, but it is not my vision. Inspired by his fine work (and that of others, Nike especially) I thought it would be worth the time to flesh out an idea that I’ve been pushing, Order Missions.

Where Orpheal is redesigning core functionality of the game – changing the way leveling, classing, traits, and skills work – I choose instead to take threads and concepts we’ve seen in game and expand them. I’ve been very much in favor of Order Missions for this purpose, and this is my proposal for one way they might work.

The Vigil – Vigil Assault

Order of Whispers – Infiltration Puzzle

Durmand Priory – Fractured Histories

Rewards
There are two types of rewards for completing Order Missions. Once per Order per day, receive coin, XP, karma, and an Order-specific reward (Vigil Assault: dungeon tokens, Infiltration Puzzle: badges of honor/jumping, Fractured Histories: Pristine Fractal relic).

In addition to the daily rewards, every single completion, even multiple times per day, progresses a new Faction track for each Order. While you will still be limited to only your own Order’s weapons and armor, Order Faction will unlock titles and rewards at periodic levels of completion. The top 100 players for each Order (region-wide, meaning top 100 NA and top 100 EU) can wear a special title, reassessed weekly, to show their mastery: Eternally Vigilant, Masterfully Crafty, and Historically Knowledgeable. (I’m sure somebody else can do better with these titles.)

Hope you guys like it!

I really enjoyed that interview, Chris. I’d be very interested in the opportunity to chat with more devs, but I totally understand their reluctance. If you’re investigating new technology to help streamline these discussions, it might be helpful to ensure there’s some ability for the community to self-police offensive or aggressive comments.

Forums can be toxic, but I’d like to think that’s a vocal minority that could be easily silenced with the right functionality.

Oh, and Phill- your English is good, no need to apologize!

Nike.2631:

As a general sentiment, I’d prefer anything that permanently unlocks character gameplay affecting benefits (new skills, new weapons, heck, maybe even new runes) to mostly confine itself to individual segments of 3 hours or less. It would be painfully easy to separate the greater body of players from a perceived Elite (no matter how balanced and equivalent the new options might be) with long paths of activity. I say 3 hours on the idea that once a player learns about the new thing to pursue, keep in the realm of “a full afternoon” of play to access it.

Other rewards can and should be tied to longer journeys, but we’ve already seen the discontent spawned by the length of path involved in acquiring items from the Ascended tier. I’d rather not perpetuate that. Long paths to look the way you want are established fair game. Getting your character set up to work the way you want shouldn’t be a chore.

I’d also mention vehement opposition to unique Order skills. It would be too easy to place players in a position of uninformed and irrevocable choices. It’s tolerable to have uniformed choices if they are easily altered later. It can be interesting to have irrevocable choices as long as they are well-informed. But both at the same time gets you people still pressing a year later for the ability to swap race because it meant a lot more to how their characters play than the character creation screen actually explained.

Nike said this very well, as did Chrispy on previous posts. New skills should ideally not be put behind new gating mechanics, but if they are, it should be a relatively quick process.

As somebody who refuses to grind or farm more than an hour or two per week, I’m always feeling rather poor. I’d love it if they reduced the gold/hour discrepancies of different activities so I could do whatever I wanted while feeling equally rewarded.

Or more equally rewarded. I’m fine with harder content having better rewards. What’s weird is that the highest rewards seem to come from brainless, easy content.

Shock, I think we’re better off trying to build new systems and fix existing systems that are broken rather than trying to fix a system like dungeon tokens which, in my opinion, works pretty well.

If you want to revamp dungeon rewards, how about adding more karma? There’s already pretty significant XP gold and tokens.

Fair point: I can see how some players might not want to have to use their guild to access skills. The skills could still be tied to the bounty, but perhaps any player can find and talk to them, triggering a fight for skill acquisition?

( I should mention that I still think skills should not be locked behind some new acquisition method, but if that’s the way it’s going to happen, this is a way if consider acceptable.)

Bring the Gauntlet NPCs back as Bounties! Yes!

Until you get Liadri, that is…

Orpheal.8263:

This concept is already basically used with guild mission npcs, that move around, ANet just has to expand on this, that the world and especially NPC#s become more “living persons”, that actually follow their own life and move around, never to be found at any given time always at the same spot, based also on daytime ect. and what dynamically happens around them (letting them for example flee to an other map, when Scarlets invasion occurs for example on their current map)

Well, now you’ve got a suggestion I like. Killing a Guild Bounty awards a unique skill based on the bounty.

18 (or however many) new elite skills, one from each bounty. Add a new Bounty mission type that lets you select your Bounty so you don’t have to keep trying to get the one you’re looking for.

Also gives people a reason to join guilds.

Tying them to bounties and not random champs in the open world adds an interesting new dimension.

Chrispy.5641:

timmyf.1490:

Orpheal, 90% of your skill unlock ideas sound, to me, like either:

1) Go to Dulfy. Look up process for unlocking skill. Waypoint. Perform action. Repeat X times until complete.

2) Go to Dulfy. Look up thing to kill. Waypoint to nearest location. Kill. If group is required, insert period of time asking guildies to come with.

I played GW1 and there’s a few things that people remember about that game that they might be too find of. Specifically, people are remembering the interesting challenge of capturing ELITE skills and trying to put that process in GW2.

Now, if you are saying that a Signet of Capture mechanic should come back for ELITE SKILLS ONLY, I could get behind that. Sounds fun. Something to do, but it won’t overwhelm me with my 10 toons.

If you are suggesting this mechanic for utility skills, I’ll reiterate my “this is not fun, give us stuff to do with skills, don’t gate the unlocking.”

Except….Wouldn’t that also be a “Go to Dulfy” (to find the path of least resistance) type of thing as well? That’s not very interesting either!

I was trying to be friendly. I still think adding a secondary skill capture/unlock system is ignoring the real problem that cookie-cutter builds are ideal in basically every encounter and area of the game for most players.

Orpheal, 90% of your skill unlock ideas sound, to me, like either:

1) Go to Dulfy. Look up process for unlocking skill. Waypoint. Perform action. Repeat X times until complete.

2) Go to Dulfy. Look up thing to kill. Waypoint to nearest location. Kill. If group is required, insert period of time asking guildies to come with.

I played GW1 and there’s a few things that people remember about that game that they might be too find of. Specifically, people are remembering the interesting challenge of capturing ELITE skills and trying to put that process in GW2.

Now, if you are saying that a Signet of Capture mechanic should come back for ELITE SKILLS ONLY, I could get behind that. Sounds fun. Something to do, but it won’t overwhelm me with my 10 toons.

If you are suggesting this mechanic for utility skills, I’ll reiterate my “this is not fun, give us stuff to do with skills, don’t gate the unlocking.”

UNLOCKING skills isn’t likely to be fun. USING skills is fun. Give us new skills we unlock the old way along with new content which requires those skills.

The Antitoxin Spray + Nightmare Tower was a great idea, but it was way too weak/situational of a skill. I tried to use it and had little to no success doing so.

Give us skills that affect certain boss mechanics or enemy types. A skill that makes Risen attack each other. A skill that makes ghosts forget who they are and stop attacking. A skill that prevents Dredge from tunneling back up once they’ve gone under the ground.

As a Mesmer, I’m constantly switching skills based on encounters, but I feel like most classes have very little reason to do so. Elementalists do this with attunements, sort of, same thing for Engineers and kits. Changing up your build during gameplay is a unique, interesting, and underused mechanic which could be promoted more by the inclusion of new situationally-effective skills.

Based on his other messages, this poster appears to be a Ranger who is incredibly upset about thieves.

Yoh.8469:

timmyf.1490:

Yoh.8469:

• Mesmer’s could have two sub-classed, the Illusionist and the Duelist.
• The Illusionist gains a maximum of 2 more clones, for a max of 5. Including new skills and abilities that specialize in support via deception and trickery.
• The Duelist on the other hand gains new version of Shatter skills, specializing in control via interruption and CC.

If you extended trait lines to 40 points and added these as the 40-point option, you could do exactly the same thing. I don’t think there should be any gating of utility skills (beyond profession), but one could argue in favor of utility or weapon skills that require a trait.

Doing it this way saves substantial development time which could be used for Order Missions, housing, or hey, maybe a third heavy armor profession.

Ok, how exactly would you go about extending the trait lines to 40 without completely blowing out balance? Would you increase the level cap to 90? Which in itself would have a whole host of minor issues with gear to consider.

Because a sub-class system would be something everyone could get at a certain level, which would bump everyone up in power proportionally.
Your suggestion opens the door so that some may have it, and other not. Having anything too powerful would also have people skew their build in favor of a trait that they might feel obligated to get, limiting potential build.

I don’t think you’ve thought this through enough.

I would not increase the level cap. Still 70 trait points. That said, this was just one idea. I’m pointing out that the Trait system could be made more flexible and incorporate many of the ideas suggested for subclasses in this thread.

Of my ideas, this is not even my favorite, but I still think it’s better than subclasses.

Chrispy.5641:

timmyf.1490:

Yoh.8469:

• Mesmer’s could have two sub-classed, the Illusionist and the Duelist.
• The Illusionist gains a maximum of 2 more clones, for a max of 5. Including new skills and abilities that specialize in support via deception and trickery.
• The Duelist on the other hand gains new version of Shatter skills, specializing in control via interruption and CC.

If you extended trait lines to 40 points and added these as the 40-point option, you could do exactly the same thing. I don’t think there should be any gating of utility skills (beyond profession), but one could argue in favor of utility or weapon skills that require a trait.

Doing it this way saves substantial development time which could be used for Order Missions, housing, or hey, maybe a third heavy armor profession.

Adding subclasses as a 40 point Trait option could work. The way the system is set up, players could only ever pick one trait line with 40 points. The game balance isn’t going to collapse into a black hole if a character suddenly has 100 more power and 10% more condition duration for example. The only problem with that is that if you can pick previous traits from that trait line in the 40 slot (such as a second 30 point trait) it would seriously destroy balance in the game. So that 4th major slot has to be something special that doesn’t mess up the balance.

Make it a “minor” trait in that you can’t pick the effect. Instead, you pick an appearance modifier or something. Whatever would make Orpheal happy. ;-)

Yoh.8469:

• Mesmer’s could have two sub-classed, the Illusionist and the Duelist.
• The Illusionist gains a maximum of 2 more clones, for a max of 5. Including new skills and abilities that specialize in support via deception and trickery.
• The Duelist on the other hand gains new version of Shatter skills, specializing in control via interruption and CC.

If you extended trait lines to 40 points and added these as the 40-point option, you could do exactly the same thing. I don’t think there should be any gating of utility skills (beyond profession), but one could argue in favor of utility or weapon skills that require a trait.

Doing it this way saves substantial development time which could be used for Order Missions, housing, or hey, maybe a third heavy armor profession.