social classes

like most people i've played gw a while ... and like most people i've sat around in outposts/cities for a long time for whatever reason. like most people i've wished we could have an auction house, seen large groups of people dancing for reasons i can't explain and so on.

now i know the immediate backlash to this suggestion by the hardcore pvp crowd might be "oh man, here we go again. you want a social game go play swg or wow."

but hear me out for a sec.

what i think might solve the auction house problem, and give those who enjoy syncronized swimming ... i mean dancing ... something new to kill time with is to implament a "social class" system.

these classes would only be accessable inside capital cities, and would come in four varieties.

class one - merchant.
benefits - ability to open a merchant window that's viewable by any other players ( in the same district ) with five slots to display items with the current asking price displayed next to them.

class two - dancer/groupie
benefits - ability to have a new alternative dance ( al la the ce dance ) as well as being able to use the core profession's standard dances ( dependent on secondary class ). when in a group with other dancer/groupies/party mogul's an action sync button will let all of party cue up one action and start it simultaniously.

class three - party mogul
benefits - ability to create light and special effects to compliment the dancer/groupie.

class four - gambler
benefits - ability to host games of chance ( not for tickets ) with other players for gold. games might include a formalized version of the /ran game, paper/rock/scissors, blackjack or a lotto.

that's it. i don't think new armor, costumes, skills etc would be necessary. i think it'd fill the demand for an auction house, at least somewhat. and i think it'd give all those dancing crazies something new to do while waiting for the event to start.

picking them up should be like getting additional secondary classes in nightfall. nothing hard or painful, and you can switch around as needed.

thanks for reading.

This is why this forum should be labeled "Profession Suggestions", and ideas for social class structure and functions belong in general suggestion.

the idea of non-combat occupations - /signed ! !

social occupations - great suggestions...

The dancer/groupie and party/mongul classes are good, and I think they could be combined.

I love MoonlitNightmare's idea about the gambling class, too. Anet could incorporate simple text macros like the minipet fight mentioned here:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10108809
"____ attacks ____..." "_____ shows him/her who's boss!" "______ whimpers and runs away."

People might get bored browsing the multitude of merchants or bummed that they would have to choose between standing around forever as this class and spamming "WTS" just to sell their items.

A not-unrelated thread is here:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...t=oc cupation

Here is a copy of what I thought of

I'm not sure our ideas would be as what WOW calls it's "professions," which I miss now that I no longer play WOW (especially fishing). But it's better than nothing. Extra fun FTW.

i didn't combine them because i thought it would be easier to handle in the current structure of the game if there were only a handful of new emodes implamented for each class.

and yes, i'm calling them a class and posting it here in the concept class forum because that's what they are in my opinion. you are selecting a specific role with which to become while you're inside your current environment, just like you select any other class to fulfil that role while you're in a combat environment.

seperated as such, with the limited benefits of each, there should only be about four emotes per class.

merchant
/startshop - opens the merchant window
/endshop - closes down the merchant window
/advertise - broadcasts to the trade channel that you're open for business every few mins ( 3-5mins )
/advertiseoff - turns off the above

if a player who was browsing the merchant window could actually buy an item at the selected price is up to arena.net, really. i could make a case for it both ways. if you could, it would encourage players to simply leave themselves in merchant mode for the entire day while they're afk; and you might have the side effect of an excessive amount of gold piling up in the player's inventory of which the game isn't designed to handle that amount ( although it might be possible to simply autodump the gold from the merchant window directly into storage. ) if you couldn't, it would negate the entire gold concern, and would still require some physical pressence there to complete a trade, and would facilitate negotiation and/or player interaction.

dancer/groupie
/dancegroupie - starts new groupie-specific dance
/dancesecondary - begins the dance of your current secondary class
/danceline - automatically moves the members of the dance group into a line
/dancecircle - automatically moves the members of the dance group into a circle

each formation would be set upon the leader, with each numerical member of the group going to a preassinged spot around them.

party mogul
/lightshow1 - starts first lightshow, specific show dependent on primary class
/lightshow2 - starts second lightshow, dependent on secondary class
/centerstage - announcerlike spotlight shines onto party mogul, al la ringmaster at a circus, for a few seconds ( 10s tops )
/dancereviewX [X=1-10] - gives a rating over the player's head, intended to judge a dance show ( or any other event, really )

depending on the rating of the review given not only would that number appear above the party mogul's head, but he would act on a preset emote as well. a 1 would be a taunt, 2 a boo, 3 a cry, 4 a sigh, 5 a nod, 6 a wave, 7 a high five, 8 a jump, 9 a cheer, 10 a congrats.

lightshows would be like a dance, a cyclical emote that continues indefinetly, only with special effects. the party mogul would act as though they were setting them off ( or summoning them, depending on the class i suppose ) so that they wouldn't be standing as static figures around the dancers.

gambler
/startgame1 - begins a game of chance ( lotto ) that other players can join
/startgame2 - begins a game of chance ( random draw ) that his party can play
/startgame3 - begins a game of chance ( paper/rock/scissors ) that the currently targeted player can participate in
/startgame4 - begins a game of chance ( mime contest ) that the currently targeted player can participate in

each game of chance would open up a window just like the trade window asking you how much money you want to wager before the game started. the money would stay in escrow until the game was completed, and then it would all be payed out to the winner. each game as it stands is a pretty simple double your money bet, unless you really wanted to overbet against someone else ( or stay in a game that someone's underbetting on you ); the exception is the lotto. a lotto could be handled by letting players accept an invite into a lotto pool, with a required buy-in price. after a set period of time ( 5mins ) a random player from the lotto pool would then be selected and the sum paid out.

i removed blackjack from the list of games because that would require a "house" to take gold, and i didn't think it was fair to let either a player be the house nor for gold to disappear from the economy.

Merchant sure...all the other no - its like combining Ce spam, Rank spam and general emote spam into a big ball and telling people to use it

Well.. this has been brought up befoe, and used to got shot down often, but seem like its getting more signage now.

People who dislike it will often say "go play WoW".. or that kind of thing, and say its not for GW.

I myself is still not too sure about it. It might be disruputive to the current game-play style of GW, but as it something that would enhance the fun-experience to many PvEers, the idea has its own virture.

In conclusion, I think the best way to go about it is to convert it to GW's mechanic (much like how people who want raise the level-cap got a compromise with things like the level-titles (lightbringer, sunspear), in which they can grind on) So in that sense, would be intersted to see what people can do to convert those non-fighting social class into something that is differnt from the rest of MMO and into the embrase of GW.


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I like MoonlitNightmare's second reply, as he/she detail more of the functionality of those social classes, and they are very good. But now would you earn/train/switch to those social classes? Also have to make it where it won't discrimnate certain players.

i know some will/wont like this idea ... it doesn't involve the "pure essence" of guildwars. however at the same time these are activities that a lot of guildwars players partake in. i've seen quite a few dance lines even on the pvp isles.

as for it being disruptive: while i can see non-combat classes that have a role in the explorable zones could be percieved as disruptive in some way, i'm really unclear as to how the restrictions/types of social classes i've proposed in any way infringes on the guildwars game mechanics. the gameplay mechanics for the cities as it stands now is: read the spam, visit a merchant/bank/crafter, obtain a new quest.

if a guildwars purest wants to defend the integrity of reading spam, then by all means do so.

as was pointed out by another, these are all things in the game already to some degree. while he wasn't real keen on having more of it, there was another who was. i wouldn't be suprised if that's the overall response you'd get from the entire guildwars fanbase.

and since these social classes are so limited in what they can do, and where, if someone doesn't wish to have anything to do with them it has zero impact on their ability to play the game; from either a pve or pvp perspective. the same can be said for dancing: if you don't want to have your character dance? then you don't have to type /dance.

my apologizes if that comes off as a tad adversarial.

as to your question, actionjack:

i think the social classes should be just like any other secondary class: you can obtain them all and switch from social class to social class as needed depending on the situation. perhaps an npc in someplace like kodash bazaar would offer to train you in each of the four for 500g. i don't think any additional fee should be required to unlock the abilities, they're all worked into the emote system anyways.

the general theme of these classes is twofold: first provide something to augment what a lot of guildwars players find enjoyable ( dancing/social interaction in cities ), secondly is to provide a way to implament a vender-esque auction house alternative to the playerbase.

People... here you should post proffession suggestions... and I cant see someone leveling up by running around talking...

Everyone would get a merchant, not sure if that is thé way it should be implemented, I was personally thinking about a special, non city non inctanced area that allows you to set up a stall.
or the info box of items to show up when you mouse over them in the chat box.

The social classes however do seem interesting, since heroes where introduced the social interaction has been severely reduced in PvE(and PvP but less) Anet should definatly do something/anything to get players closer together again *sings: Where is the love? ì_í Where is the love?*

The classes although, seem a little bland, I wouldn't want to have to find some profession changer deep into a continent only to get acces to a few emotes, they should be accesable straight away from the start.

And lastly, don't ask for dances from other professions, that's mean to the Anet programers, a dervish's dress moves along with all their movements making it to move for dances from all other profession would mean so many overhours to get it to move naturally, same for clothing on some other profesions, I guess if you where in your underwear you could do more than one dance, as I guess all humans still have the same bodypart bone mechanics.