Guild Wars 2

Orpheal, you are making an assumption I think is clearly false given what we know about this game so far. You are assuming that all three (or however many) subclasses will be equally attractive, so instead of everybody playing Zerker Greatsword Warrior, there are now three different types of Warriors. Look, uniqueness!

Wrong.

Instead, there will be an ideal subclass, based on DPS, and everybody will “choose” that. Players who do not pick that subclass will be marginalized the same way non-Zerker builds are marginalized now.

More skills. More weapons. More traits. More armor. No needless restrictions on who can use them.

(Side note: it’s very unfair to say that GW1 dual-classing and sub-classing are the same thing. Choosing a second class in GW1 did not remove options from your main class, it only added additional options.)

Instead of subclasses, what if you could unlock Postures. Postures would have options like Aggressive, Elegant, Brutish, Stealthy, etc. Postures would update your characters’ animations, dialogue, emotes, etc.

Once you unlock a posture, it can be enabled anytime out of combat, but you can only have one active at a time. Not all postures would be available on all professions. Elegant, for example, might only be available on Thief, Ranger, Mesmer, and Elementalist.

This would allow horizontal character progression without any vertical component whatsoever.

Conski is correct. My point is that subclasses represent AT BEST a wasted opportunity to develop something better. They add nothing which cannot be added within the existing structures. At worst, they force players to grind out a subclass which they are more-or-less required to use because it is “ideal.”

I see it far more likely to reduce, rather than expand, build diversity.

I wonder if Chris would be willing to post a report showing the percentage use of each trait. For example, 25% of Engineers use Grenadier. 35% use Speedy Kits. That sort of data.

I bet you’d find there are a couple very popular builds in each profession and probably 1/2 to 2/3 of traits are under 1% usage.

If you want new builds and better roles, fix the problems with control, support, and conditions and overhaul traits to allow additional build options. Don’t tack on some new random subclass structure because some other game has it and you liked it there.

Let’s be clear here: direct damage is king in this game (PvE specific) because of these reasons…

1) Most encounters are fast enough that sustain is not important.
2) Condition caps
3) No condition damage against structures
4) Defiant :-(
5) Dodge for damage avoidance
6) Poor scaling of healing and toughness

Adding subclasses doesn’t fix any of those issues. It just means that everybody has to figure out which subclass works best with their existing DPS build.

Don’t add subclasses. FIX CONDITION BUILDS IN PVE. I soooo badly wanted to play a Confusion Mesmer, but it’s terrible. I’m so much better now that I have a Zerk phantasm build with Sword/Pistol+Focus…

I think subclasses are wrong for this game. Those who support subclasses seem to want a lot of things, none of which actually require a subclass system. I’d far prefer a redesign of the trait system to be more flexible, but even that is questionable because of balance concerns.

Adding subclasses opens up ZERO additional fun content or customization options.

Want more armor? You can have it without subclasses.
Want more skills? You can have them without subclasses.
Want more traits? You can have them without subclasses.
Want more weapons? You can have them without subclasses.
Want profession-specific weapons? You can have them without subclasses.
Want cosmetic options tied to specific roles? You can have them without subclasses.
Want control and support builds viable? You can have that without subclasses.

Development of systems like subclasses costs tremendous amounts of resources, resources that would be much better spent on other systems. (Order Missions or another idea I don’t love but recognize is popular: housing.)

One more important thing: you need the pass while you’re there as well, so you can’t port in, leave the pass in the bank, and log back in later with the first character and remain inside.

I was hoping to use it as a fast way to move my unlimited gathering tools between characters, but no luck.

Yeah, a little unhappy at the results for 1000 gems. I was planning on parking all my toons there as well. Very disappointing.

MakubeC.3026:

Role diversification.

I bought Gw2 under the premise that I could make a customized hero. That if I wanted to make a venom thief, I would have traits and skills to help me with that build. That if I wanted a tanky thief, I would get one. Now, that’s not the case. Not because it is impossible, but because we are lacking on the skills and traits departments.

So yeah, role diversification please.

You can make a tanky thief. Just make a venom build and you’ll tank every group you’re in!

I don’t think the open world is challenging enough for vanquishing to be a thing. Previously in this thread, I suggested new instanced zones without waypoints that could include a vanquishing concept. I called them Wilderness Zones. Still think that’s a better plan.

I had also suggested that Order Missions might send you into those zones and included a few examples. I could dig up a link if anybody’s interested.

Cliff.8679:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

morrolan.9608:

How about some of the more egregious vertical progression imbalances get fixed before implementing purely horizontal progression suggestions such as the fixing ascended armor crafting so that it is more equitable instead of light armor taking 36 days to craft, medium armor 24 days and heavy armor 25 days due to the time gating on bolts of damask.

The goal of the T7 materials is not to be a pure time gate for crafting it’s to allow those materials to have value above their cost. This does mean weapons and armor that only take one material take longer to craft if you craft all the T7 mats yourself but you could also buy those mats thus it isn’t a time gate.

We do recognize that cloth prices are a bit high this is a factor of how hard it is to focus farm for leather and cloth. This is something we are looking into.

Honestly, I’m not so sure cloth prices being high is what you should be focusing on. You guys just put out a crafting system that punishes players for crafting with their own materials rather than spending money buying from the trading post. You can justify it as not being a time gate if you like, but I don’t see how that’s acceptable. Maybe a better option would be to fix the ascended crafting system itself, and then worry about playing with material acquisition.

As a counter-point, I’ve been crafting Damask and selling it at a substantial profit. This is the first time crafting has been profitable for me, so I’m happy.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

lol, sorry, timmyf had the same idea before me… I didn’t want to “steal” that O_O

Great minds think alike! :-D

Orpheus, I agree with many of your points – I’d love to see control and support be more viable. I’d love to see condition builds in PvE be more viable. I just don’t think subclassing is the right way to go.

I certainly don’t believe that every class should have access to every weapon.

It sounds like what you really want are VISUAL cues tied to the existing build structure. Right now, you can already make a Thief that specializes in stealth or stealing. What you want is a cosmetic way to make that more obvious. Is that a fair statement?

That brings up an interesting option: what if certain traits could have unlockable visual additions? For example, once you’ve accomplished X with grenades, you unlock a second version of Grenadier that gives you the same effect but adds a special skin? Or once you accomplish Y with stealing, your Thief can unlock a Sleight of Hand trait which applies a different look? Or perhaps it means that you don’t get the “whoosh” sound when you dodge or shadowstep? (you know… you’re silent)

You could continue to use the original trait, of course.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Orpheal.8263:

You don’t get born and start to be directly a for example pope. Being the pope is a long chain of decisions in your life, your personal “career ladder”), that defines your role in your life andwhat you can become over time, because every profession has more specalized developed forms.

And this is where you forget that we’re in a game with alts and people who love to play different professions /characters. Currently suggestions how to unlock a subclass are all about having to play from 1-80 again, grind this and grind that. People already can’t stand that WvW profession is characterbound, how do you think they would react on subclasses?

This is pretty much where I stand. What if I decide I want to change? If I have to go and grind out a new subclass just because I want to try out a different build, that’s a big pain in my rear end.

You see this as opening up new opportunities. I see it as gating opportunities off.

Sorry Orpheal, I thought you were responding to me in your post. I’ll be patient. :-)

You didn’t answer my question: why do we need subclasses to gain access to new weapons and skills? Why can’t we just have those new weapons and skills with our existing classes?

I can call my Thief an “infiltrator” because I wield Chain Sickles without any sort of subclass structure. We have this already in game. Look at terms like Zerk Warrior, Healway, Bearbow – these all refer to specific builds and weapon choices without a subclass structure.

Questions for Chuggs and others suggesting subclasses: do subclasses increase or decrease build diversity? Couldn’t you get the same results by adding weapon options for a class? And/or by adding additional traits?

What, specifically, about subclasses can the game not support with its existing mechanics and concepts that subclasses bring? Other than “now I have to grind out/lock myself into something else?”

As somebody who owns a house in real life and spends plenty of money and time repairing and upgrading it, I can’t fathom why anybody would wish to do so in a game. I play this game to get away from that trouble…

…but if we’re going to have housing, we should maybe look for an apartment in Kaineng City. I hear they have plenty of space there… ;-)

I’d really love events that span multiple zones or impact other events.

For example, you assist the Quaggans in Sparkfly Fen and they help you fight Tequatl the next time he spawns.

This could potentially be tied to Order Faction or Rank (and work as an alternate Hero system) – if you’re ranked high enough in your order, you can start new events to acquire order assistance for a period of time/particular event/particular area.

I have an idea for you, Chris. One which might seem a little radical, but here goes:

Have an all-(relevant)-hands-on-deck release with the entire (relevant) development team building new Dynamic Events. Shoot for the moon: dozens or hundreds of new Dynamic Events. Call it a “Game Changer” because it is literally changing the game world.

Based on various loose-lipped comments I’ve heard, you have something big planned in the next few months. Why not follow it with a huge overhaul to the in-game world? Give everybody a reason to go back out and explore again.

And then… repeat. 3-6 months down the road, cycle out 100+ events and add 100+ new ones. And repeat. And repeat. That’s a real “living world.”

Sociopolitical diversification for sure, specifically Order Missions/Faction. This could also tie in with new zones and additional content.

Ronah.2869:

I know this idea will be pretty expensive for A-net because they will need to design thousands of them, but the player who gets them will stand out in the could because no one will ever get his type of looking gears

Thousands? We’ve had maybe a dozen or so armor sets since launch, and now you’re suggesting thousands? That are extremely rare, so most of the user base doesn’t get them?

I think this CDI is interesting, but some of you guys are suggesting things which would take hundreds of man-months to complete. I don’t get the feeling that there will be that level of resourcing.

I’m hoping Chris comes back with estimates of implementation effort soon.

I’m reading, Ghotistyx, I just think subclasses are a terrible idea for this game. (In no small part because it’s a huge development effort and complete rebalancing of the game, something I think will never. happen.)

I’m going to have to agree with Shriketalon – I want extra weapon sets and skills in the game, but there’s no need to add additional mechanics, especially grindy gating mechanics, in order to unlock them.

For everybody asking for subclasses, I see where you’re coming from, but that seems like a HUGE change in game mechanics to bring something that I’m not even sure I want. The development effort would be incredible.

I’d rather focus on simpler, shorter-term changes which we could see this year that fit with the existing mechanics and systems of the game.

ArtemusHunter.9521:

Quizotic.2815:

can we please get some word on ascended, as of right now I don’t want to grind for gear but sadly since ive been dropped from groups for not having any, it looks like im going to have to or quit playing

The stat difference is not much from exotic.. I don’t see why even elitists would want to drop someone because of non-ascended.. :/

Only if you’re in Fractals and don’t have any AR would it make sense.

Ascended gear is not going away, but at least there won’t be any more after this. Right? RIGHT?!

It’s not 4 rares/attempt, it’s 3.

(You get one back.)

If you want to be really picky, you should also consider the 20% chance (or whatever) to get an exotic back.

I’m not trying to be a jerk here, but maybe you should just stick with 40-49 fractals until you have the mats to get more AR?

Seeing a lot of common threads here. Here are mine.

1) Order Missions and progression, especially in new areas.
2) Skin Locker
3) More character customization options, including account-bound Legendary dyes

Sorry Ronah, I’m only a fan of a Hard Mode in instances, not in the open world. (As a side note, I feel like Hearts are the absolute worst part of this game and am shocked that anybody would WANT to repeat them.)

Nike.2631:

A thought for letting our heavy-hitters of gold collecting slug it out for our amusement and for theirs.

Patrons of the City
Add 12 pedestals to Lions Arch, scattered around in somewhat out of the way palaces. At the start of each month a pedestal becomes “Up for grabs”. You can place a blind bid by interacting with the pedestal, which takes your coin into holding as the bid is placed. You can always increase your bid by throwing additional coin in. At the end of the month the highest bidder is revealed and used to model a statue that will stand on that pedestal for one year, they receive a ‘Patron of the City’ title, and their name & winning bid is permanently engraved into the interactive plaque at its base. Failed bids are then returned, another pedestal goes up for grabs, and the cycle repeats. After all 12 pedestals are filled, the first pedestal goes up for grabs and so on, recording ‘patrons of the city’ for all time. Pedestals, statues, and plaques would be unique to each server (no bidding while in overflow!).

That ought to pull a few tens of thousands of Gold out of the system from the very wealthiest and provide a title the puts ‘Golden’ to shame for sheer exuberant wealth .

I am BEYOND in love with this idea and it could be extended to more than just pedestals: why not allow people to claim ownership of town POIs like bars, etc?

The absolute king of all: allow a player to buy their way onto the Captain’s Council. This would be a truly unique way to allow a single player to show off in the hugest way possible.

Plenty of peeps on SoR.

StriderShinryu.6923:

Kulvar.1239:

If you can make every Order quest without being of the Order, you destroy the purpose of these Order Quests that is to make you involved in your Order plans/duties/plots. So the answer is : Yes, you need to have joined an Order.

You join an Order with the level 30 quest, It’s not hard. If people don’t want to join an Order/make their Personal Story, It’s a way to motivate them.
It’s a way to make our choices meaningful on long term !

Absolutely. If Order quests and/or progression is added (and I 100% agree they should be), then that progression/quest (and hence the rewards) should only be available to members of that Order. If that restriction is not put in place, there is really no point at all to doing the Order quests in the first place.

Also, the game would feel like it has a touch more story-endgame if the Pact was, for the purposes of these quests, an “Order.”

So there would be unique activities for Priory, Whispers, Vigil, and Pact.

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?

Dailies might be too much, but what about Weekly Orders Missions? Each Order can have a unique task for you to accomplish and it raises a corresponding Order Rank. Higher Order Ranks unlock new tiers of Order-specific gear.

I think it’d be better to keep the existing systems in place – no subclasses, no trait overhauls, etc – but make small changes to allow a greater diversity of builds and roles. For example: allow each profession one more weapon, like…

Warrior: main-hand pistol
Guardian: Warhorn
Thief: rifle
Engineer: torch
Ranger: rifle or pistol
Mesmer: main-hand pistol
Necromancer: greatsword
Elementalist: shield

This could lead to a huge rethinking of how people play their class, give everybody new skills, and keep the game fresh.

Here’s a few things that I’d like:

1) Skin Locker for PvE with all the skins I’ve put on a character.
2) Account-bound Legendary Dyes which put special effects on my gear (fire, mirror, glow, black hole, electricity, etc)
3) Minipet slot with Visibility checkbox (like we have for helm)
4) Inventory Bag Type: Shared Bag – same items across all characters to keep from constantly having to hit Bank. Could put my unlimited gathering tools, Salvage-O-Matic, etc in there

Just a few quick thoughts, don’t want to blow up everybody’s screen… (wink wink Diogo! :-P)

I might suggest that our discussion would be considerably more focused if we kept in mind the development effort of some of these suggestions. Entirely re-working the profession system to include subclasses is a HUGE undertaking.

Smaller, easier-to-implement ideas have a much higher likelihood of being adopted.

Not that it’s unhelpful to have these conversations, of course. Just remember that development resources are limited.

I’m much more a fan of Legendary Dyes than Legendary Armor.

I want more activities and adventures to do with my guild. Maybe instanced dungeons with special bosses at the end that reward you with a skill… or an update to an existing skill.

Like, maybe there’s a Mesmer boss and when you defeat it, your Feedback dome gets an added electrical effect or something?

The Lost Witch.7601:

I think the way we value the current progression in the game is very hard to get through metrics. Since we may very well be doing things that we really don’t want to do. That means that the forums are probably the best way we currently have to let the devs know what we think about the game. (Maybe polls in the future?)

The Ellen vs Evon model would work for any number of things, by the way… the Arcane Council, for example, could plan to research ways to either 1) make crafting Ascended armor more efficiently, using less materials, or 2) develop a process to take an existing piece of Ascended armor and make a copy suitable for use by other heroes (read: alts) at a substantially lower cost than the original.

It’d be fun to see what the playerbase decides on so many of these issues.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

An idea for this: create a Stat Swap consumable that takes a piece of gear and an insignia. The insignia goes into the gear and the player get the gear’s stats back as an insignia. NOTHING gets lost except the Stat Swap consumable.

This way, you can decide what it should cost to change stats on gears and sell the consumable for that price. Ideally, players should be able to use karma, coin, or badges to get it.

Here’s a proposal for handling some of the time-gating for Ascended mat refinement, etc…

Change the once-daily recipes to X-times-weekly (10 would be my suggestion). This means that you aren’t punished for “missing” a day.

Izzy-

I think that’s some great info on time-gating and helps us to understand why you use it. I would add that, in addition to casual-vs-hardcore, you should consider single-vs-multiple character players.

Time gates that might be reasonable for players with a single character could be entirely ridiculous for those of us who have eight.

I think stat-changing (in the way you have on Legendaries now) on Ascended gear would work IF:

1) It remains pretty much as hard to get as they are now
2) You decide to never introduce Legendary armor

If you make it substantially easier to get, a stat-switching method like Volkon is suggesting may be ideal.

Question for Deified and videoboy, who seem to like “working for rewards.” Is it enough if the rewards are cosmetic, or must the rewards be stats?

I had a lot of friends who came to GW2 and quickly left for Rift because they got exotics and there was nothing more powerful for them to grind out. “I have nothing to do!” they said.

“Do you have a Legendary?” – “No.” – “Get one!” – “Does it make me more powerful?” – “No, but it looks cool!” – “meh.”

I imagine most of the grind-for-stats types have already left, but as somebody who plays for fun, it’s always interesting to understand other viewpoints.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

timmyf.1490:

2) Instead of subclasses, how about race-specific trait trees? Putting points in these trees would allow you fixed traits (at 10, 20, and 30 deep) which would improve racial skills and primarily racial elites. These trees could have different stat bonus combos than the other five trees allowing slightly different stat diversity.

well the devs stated that they don’t want players to feel like they have to take a certain race to be superior in certain aspects (e.g. you have to be a norn to do the most damage).

It sounds quite interesting, to develop those racials further though. I guess it would be a balancing nightmare, just like the cross-profession skills in GW1.

In my head, these changes would allow for an interesting new way to play your characters, but would almost certainly be underpowered compared to other builds. Still, I’d likely take a DPS hit if it meant running around with two golems all the time.

Here’s ways some of these suggestions could be implemented while still not being a massive implementation effort:

1) Each weapon has a #5 skill (or #3 for main-hands) tied to the weapon, not the weapon/class combo. Meaning there’s a Greatsword 5 which is an option for Mesmer, Guardian, and Warrior. You can swap between your class/weapon-specific #5 or choose the weapon-specific #5.

2) Instead of subclasses, how about race-specific trait trees? Putting points in these trees would allow you fixed traits (at 10, 20, and 30 deep) which would improve racial skills and primarily racial elites. These trees could have different stat bonus combos than the other five trees allowing slightly different stat diversity.

These would be something along the lines of…

Asura: Golemancy
Norn: Animal Spirits
Sylvari: Power of Nature
Charr: Warband
Human: Divinity

I won’t go so far as to suggest a full list of traits, but here’s an Asuran version.

Per trait point: +1% damage from golems, +3% health to golems

10 points invested: golems last an extra 30 seconds.
20 points: golems to not have a time limit.
30 points: summoning any golem summons an extra 7-Series golem.

(I have not spent much time thinking about balance here, these are just an example.)

Chris asked whether vertical progression could be confined to Fractals. I say yes, in the form that has already been introduced: Agony Resistance infusions. If you tweak the rewards in Fractals, I think this could provide sufficient end-game for that type of player. (The treadmill lover.)

Chris-

Vertical Progression, as you said, is a good way for players to slowly learn how to play. Start simple, add complexity and power as you go. This is fine.

The vertical progression most of us are concerned with is additional, required vertical progression added after launch. The reason we dislike it is because we feel a sense of completion by max-leveling our characters and getting the proper gear.

When you add new levels or new gear tiers, it destroys that sense of completion. It starts to feel like work, not progression. And for players like me with 8 toons (only 5 that I’ve even managed to get to 80… none with Ascended weapons… only 2 or 3 with their Ascended accessories), that becomes a huge, demoralizing setback.

So vertical progression at launch is fine. Post-launch vertical progression is terrible.

A bunch of others have mentioned this, but I think it deserves repeating:

Horizontal Progression through new traits and skills, especially ones you have to EARN, could go a long way toward giving us something to do without undoing all the progress we’ve made so far.

If you were to create new instances with hard bosses and you unlocked the elite skill from that boss (sort of like GW1 skillcapping), that’d be great! Something that is challenging but doesn’t take a huge amount of time.

Well, didn’t take us long to get off topic, huh?

Chris, I have a lot of feelings about this because this has definitely affected my enjoyment of the game. I would say that I’m torn on the subject, and here’s why…

I Bought the Game For The Grind-Free Gearing

I play about 2-3 hours per day, but I hate farming. As a player who had played Guild Wars all the way from early-purchase, I was happy to have another game that continued with that style of easy leveling, easy gearing. For stats, at least.

All My Real Life Friends Quit Because “There’s Nothing To Do”

When GW2 came out, I had about 8-10 real life friends who got the game with me. Around October or November, when they all had exotics, they didn’t know what to do. So they left.

You Can’t Please Everybody

In theory, adding another tier of gear should have kept my friends around longer. But truthfully, once they got their Ascended gear, they probably would have left anyway. Meanwhile, I now feel the pressure to gear out 8 characters in very expensive, long-term-goal gear that isn’t supposed to be in the game. Or at least wasn’t supposed to be in the game at the time I purchased it.

Whatever You Choose, Please Make It Clear

If Ascended is the end of the treadmill, that’s fine. I can manage. Most of my toons will never have Ascended armor, but Exotic is good enough. If, however, you continue to add more vertical progression, you should make that known. I don’t want a vertical gear treadmill and I can leave and find another game.

It is your decision to make, but all I ask is that you respect the player-base enough to let us know your plans.

I had this same “problem” and then found out, apparently, that you need to buy recipes for the Celestial gear. It’s not discoverable.

Also, the prices are preeeeeetty high for light armor, but I bet the medium armor recipes are cheaper.