I Now Know What Appealed to Me about GW

So, after on-and-off playing GW since late 2005, I've decided to call it quits and move onto other creative efforts. It wasn't until I decided to leave that I realized what, exactly, it was that appealed to me about GW.

The appeal of the game, much moreso than other genres, was that it allowed for an expression of creativity within the gamespace. And not just on a superficial level, but on a competitive gameplay level. Working within a seemingly complicated framework of skills, attribute levels, professions, and group interactions, this game allowed me to explore just how creative I could be in coming up with character or team builds that could meet the PvE and PvP challenges in the game.

This kept me interested in the game for over two years, and I thank the developers who came up with the game designs that were interesting enough to keep my attention for that time. Here are a few parting ideas/suggestions that I hope can still make it into the design cycle for GW2:

1) Passive abilities. Not everyone enjoys micromanaging abilities that require constant attention. Enchantments provide great versatility for short durations, but the opposite mechanic was never really explored in the game. Using attribute levels to boost profession-specific passive abilities was implemented at a very basic level with primary attributes, but could have been explored so much more than that.

2) Dungeon or instance design. Create a tool to allow USERS to develop their own instance or dungeons that other USERS could compete in. This would blend both PvE and PvP realms: dungeon/instance designers would create maps filled with groups of PvE monsters using PvE skills, but would try to counter groups of real-life people who would attempt to defeat the challenge. You could immerse this within the PvE world fairly easily by having NPCs which would "sell" land and mercenaries to guard your land. You'd therefore have controlled map geography and allow for players to come up with challenges. You can even tie it into the economy by making incentives for good dungeon designers and/or monetary penalties for bad ones.

EDIT: This one has generated a few responses and I needed to clarify. This was done with a reply, but I am copying + pasting here in OP.

"This one was by far my most radical suggestion. I still think it's implementable. How's this as a variant that might be better suited to GW:

A guild alliance of some suitable stature (don't know what they would use to determine this - size, or money, or some measure of competitiveness) can purchase, in addition to a guild hall, a "guild grounds". They can hire AI mercenaries to guard the guild grounds, and they can CREATE groups of AI mercenaries with whatever skillsets/attributes/compositions that they desire. There could be some sort of resource allocation system involved: high ranked guilds might have high amounts of resources while low ranked guilds would have less. Defeating the "guild grounds" would be a mini-game prerequisite to challenging a guild to some contest. Different guild ranks could be used for different benefits (GvG rank might increase the mob level, some other rankings might increase the number of AI or how many elite skills are allowed, etc)

This provides another avenue of creativity: guild members (ie - players) will actively create and test their own groups of AI to provide sufficient challenge so as to gain some sort of benefit when another guild challenges them and does not succeed in overtaking the "guild grounds" mission. (Perhaps some sort of guild fame rank)"

3) Titles. Eliminate reputation-based titles altogether. No one wants to grind faction rank, or sunspear rank, or asuran rank. You took a surprising turn in EotN by adding MORE grind. I'm all for titles: but they should be skill or accomplishment limited. You can keep silly ones like drunkard and sweet tooth if you want though

4) In-game economy. You've got to do better than what was offered in GW1. I remember for the longest time there wasn't even a TRADE channel!! That was a tiny step in the right direction, but no one wants to sit around and spam to sell things. Take some cues from games like WoW (auction house) or EVE and incorporate things that will make the economy more interesting.

5) Items. Although I appreciate making items not the focus of PvE gameplay (like WoW does), you really devalue items too much by having so many "perfect" unique items as well as the ability to perfectly mod everything. It ended up hurting the economy a great deal.

6) World interaction. It's already been announced that there are some interesting things in the works for new world interaction mechanisms. GW1 was sorely lacking in these.


That's all. Good luck with GW2, and I hope you don't follow the path that many developers have and try to "streamline" GW2 (ie - dumb down and make LESS interesting) for the masses. Looking forward to 2009!

--uby

PS - no, you can't have my stuff.

/ agreed
i think you hit the nail on the head and if anet wants the good players who have left the game to come back you should implement his ideas into gw2
know all anet does it give us random bonuses almost every weekend which takes away from the value of the game i mean wtf if u make a title keep it you want us to use 10000 party items then let us dont give us double points some one who maxed this title b4 that event is prob pissed off i think the game is dead and hopefully will revive in gw2

Some people would argue that being able to grind mindlessly is an accomplishment. I would say that given the fact Anet is giving the finger to the vision of no grinding, I would think the titles we all hate will be back with a vengance.

1. I'm interested to hear your ideas on passive abilities. You mainly just pointed out what you thought was wrong without giving any ideas of your own. Exactly how could a.net "explore so much more than that".

2. Dungeon design? I don't really like this idea. Just play the game that was given to you. Let the players play and the game designers game design. I would however like to see more areas implemented at a more frequent basis, much like how Sorrow's Furnace was put into the game shortly after release.

3. Agree with you on this one. Not being able to get into HA groups because of rank is bad enough, but not being able to get into FoW groups because your Norn reputation is too low? Give me a break... I don't mind a little grind now and then, but excessive grind is a chore, not a game.

4. I wouldn't call this an ingame economy as much as I'd call it ease of trade. With things like Guru's trade forums and auction center it's become easier then it used to be sell an item(anyone remember spamming amongst the hundreds of others in LA AD1?). However, an ingame auction house is a feature that should be in GW2 and should've been in GW 2 years ago.

5. I actually don't have a problem with the current item system. Decent looking weapons still don't come cheap, whereas if you don't care about the skin, you can get a perfect sword or shield for a minimal price. It really puts the emphasis on skill level and not how legit your items are or how rich you are.

6. World interaction is actually something that I didn't miss while playing Guild Wars. While it would've been nice to have, it wasn't needed for the success of this game. That being said I am looking forward to it in Guild Wars 2.

Overall, good ideas

this is the reason that guild wars is so much better than other games!!!

in other games there usually isnt a cap to the damage a weapon does or the boosts mods can previde.


if this is changed in gw2 i will be unhappy. I'll still buy it though!!

thanks for the replies.

as to the items critique: I too would hate to see GW fall into the trap that WoW has - that is, never-ending need to upgrade items due to uncapped stats. however, i feel that GW should still have stratification of weapons rather than having none whatsoever. you can do this beyond their looks: you can create trade-offs between set items and unique items that provide equally useful but entirely separate benefits (ie - mutually exclusive stats depending on which type of item you choose to wield).

as to the dungeon idea, it might work better if it were in an arena form. ie- players could create an all AI team using some tool to enter in simple AI priorities and strategies in addition to skillsets and attributes. this would allow for a player to be creative and exhibit skill in a form aside from PvE and PvP.

as to the point about passive abilities: it would be hard to discuss such an idea without setting up the gameplay. if i were to try to "layer" it onto the current GW, i'd allow professions to have "passive skill points" with no associated skills that would benefit their gameplay. it would be separate from skill attribute points. passives could range from simple things like dodge, block, crit., double strike, cast time mods (ie- things already in the game), to things like "chance to ignore armor", "chance to ignore condition", hex breaking, cast-on-ally effects, and even environment changing effects (say, for a necro, chance to spread poison to nearby foes upon minion's death). i'm just throwing these things out blindly at this point, since you can't easily throw this ON TOP of an existing system and try to balance it. you can, however, DESIGN the new game to make these passive attributes significant enough to be another creative aspect of gameplay.

The Primary Attribute line bonus effects are the equivalent to passive skills in other games. Yeah, it is a very basic implementation, and definitely can be expanded upon.

The problem with adding any further complexity to the GW system is that there are more chances of imbalance and optimisations. As it is, not all Primary Attribute line bonuses are born equal.

As for the rest, I largely agree. Protectors, Guardians, Vanquishers, Carthographers and PvP titles are all that really matters to me. And things should get harder for people with high title rank, not easier.

1.Passive abilities:Please elaborate on your passive abilities more.
2.Player designed dungeons:I agree if it's similar to the design-a-weapon contest, where the victor gets their dungeon made playable in gw.
3.Titles:The titles are fine as they are; more grind is only an option, not a necessity. Factions and Nightfall had required grind, but it wasn't that much.
4.Trading:Yes, an auction house would be very nice.
5.Items:By making the items moddable yes, it hurt the old game economy but allowed us to concentrate more on gameplay than item hunts. In short, more time to enjoy the game.
6.World interaction: please elaborate more;do you mean to say you'd like a grawl invasion of which we'd be informed of via the login screen, and which we can choose to stop? Or a large luxon/kurzick invasion perhaps?

Lastly, when Guild Wars and Prophecies were one and the same, anet's decision to silently nerf Thunderhead Keep by making it easier increased the amount of people being able to enjoy the game, but diluted the skill of the playerbase. This was later followed by the catastrophic ursan blessing. Clearly, anet prioritizes all players being able to enjoy the game over a skilled playerbase.

These things make you my hero

(1-
Totally agree, however like you said, this can only be viable in GW2. Having primary attributes such as Expertise, Mysticism, Strength, Fast-Casting, hell ALL of it, would severly imbalance gameplay. Whole professions would need to be reworked (as i hope anet is doing) around this principle for gw2.

(2-
Creative idea. As long as there are enough customization options, the rewards are worth the effort (for the people making them AND the people playing them) and it is regulated, I dont see why not. Other than the potential programming nightmare for anet devs. After all, they do have a budget since they plan to keep gw1 up for quite some time.

(3-
Titles and minis, titles and minis, I knew it was going in the wrong direction when all anyone spent their time talking about or working towards were titles and minis.

(4-
Old news, obviously.

(5-
I find that inscriptions were a good addition, however, they should have NEVER made weapons that appeared in previous campaigns non inscript, as inscriptable. That was a big mistake.

Actualy, I disagree.

They should have made inscriptions in all campaigns.

As it is now, a PvP player can't unlock inscriptions in PvE without Nightfall and/or Eye of the North.

That is a big power imbalance issue.

I agree that the reason I keep coming back to GW is because of the amount of versatality in the builds. There are hundreds of way to play the game on each character and plenty of customising to do with your heroes.

In GW2 they are removing heroes, but at the same time making the game soloable. This means that if you play alone like I do, you will be playing as just you and your companion, but you should be able to play the whole game this way.

This is the most exiting feature I have heard about GW2, and I cant wait to see how it gets implemented.

General Discussion belongs in Riverside.

/Moved.

Very true - for me the real leap from a casual to a more hard core player occurred with the heroes. I could finally work with *team* builds and that opened up a whole new world.

As to the rest

Hmm, passive ability spells would be fairly interesting but I don't see more things linked to the attributes to be that nice. It gets too complex - complex isn't exactly the right word (complex isn't a bad thing) but it is the best word I can come up with. I guess "hard to balance" would be in there also - inherent passive abilities should be VERY rare though I would like to see more passive skills with a Mesmer able to disable them for a period of time, it would be quite nice to have more things like "Charm Animal" wherein simply having the skill on your bar confers an effect.

This ones tough. If you do this you can't have them drop things or give experience otherwise you will have a dungeon full of a zillion really high level rangers with no interrupts or degen (that is - hundreds of bunched up no scatter 55 monk kills in HM). I don't see any real way to have user created areas with user created rewards that isn't going to mostly be used to farm things, if you don't give rewards then people will rarely play them. It's a good idea in single player games, but even in them that is one of the main uses of player created content. Anet is not going to have time to vet them and a community vetting system suffers from the same thing. It would be nice to have, but I don't see it happening.

This is fine as is - the grind based stuff isn't *that* good yet it still gives those that like grind something to do. In this case they have one of two choices - make one side happy and the other side angry enough to leave or make both sides not unhappy enough to leave. The second will almost always win and really it *should* do so. Though since I'm not on the grind based side I would also like all my characters to have a good Pain Inverter to cast or my least player caster be to join an Ursan group without having to grind a title out - however I understand why it is there. That is, personally /signed but I don't remotely expect this to change.

As other said - economy is fine as is. I like it that a casual player can pretty much afford all their needs to play and extra gold confers little advantage. I also agree with those people that you really mean "in-game trading" and that is lacking. An auction house would go a LONG way, or at least an automated trader for the basic items (inscriptions, weapon mods, tomes, etc).

Only part I *really* disagree with you. Any change much towards making things more rare and we get worse than the title grinds. It is already hard to play only on drops if you have more than a few characters. I have a backlog of golds waiting for even near max mods to drop as I hate using the trade channels. However, a slight tweak along with an automated trade house would probably work OK, but it still would be much closer to the current allegiance title "grind" (it's currently easier to fill books for max EOTN and grind out SS/LB in Nightfall than to find three +18-20% enchant scythe mods).

The main thing that made max stuff not worth much is greens - those afore mentioned golds are sitting there because I can easily get a green that is exactly what I want. Yet those greens made it such that many casual players can play at a decent enough level to compete.

Meh, can't say as I agree or disagree. I find both methods quite nice and don't care. For some it is a big deal, for others not.

A huge problem with passive abilities is a number of factors that balance other abilities. They cannot be removed or stopped in just about any way, for one thing.

ANet recently has been making a lot of skills more active in play, by reducing durations and recharges (hex changes) because having skills that last a long time make them more difficult to deal with and take less tactical play to use.

Passive general boosts are typically balanced as they are because there are so few, and because of how they integrate with the character itself. I wouldn't like to see very many added - the NF HA meta comes to mind, where massive paragon defense, non-removable and with long durations, effectively made a team invulnerable. Adding in passive defense could end up in that manner.

The effectiveness of your skill usage is one of the factors that makes a good player. Removing this to an extent by providing more passive abilities that take no thought whatsoever isn't necessarily a good thing. Making the game shallower and easier is not a good thing - if you want the benefits of multiple skill micro, that should depend on your player skill, not whether you just pumped a stat up for it.

So true - I was in factions before I got my first zealous bow string, and I play a ranger! I've never quite forgiven GW for that.

Mods should not be part of the rarity factor of a weapon. The current blue/purple/gold system is ludicrous and undermines the sense of any weapon being worth anything. Most weapons have no value, unless they are gold. Most golds have no value, because they actually have a common skin. On top of that we're made dependant on finding as many golds as possible, just for the damn mods. Tying golds to mods and title point farming, whilst often having a less then desirable weapon underneath, has essentially made them into a consumable. Get your wisdom/treasure hunter points, rip off the mods and merch if there's anything left.

I really hope they have skins locked to a particular rarity in GW2 (assuming the rarity system stays). eg.

White/Blue - rough makeshift items like a "Machete".

Purple - Well-crafted, but otherwise common military weapons like a "Gladius"

Gold - Ornate, elaborate or unusual weapons like a "Crystalline".

I'd also happily say make golds far rarer, so long as all mods drop within any rarity band. The perfection of the mod should be more connected to the stage of the game, than rarity, though I could still see some mods being rarer than others - so long is it's not by too much and there is an improved trade mechanism for obtaining them!

0) (why you played) I agree wholeheartedly. The versatility of roles a "max level" character can fill is one of the things that keeps me coming back.

1) Interesting, but I think they would have to have very small effects or risk being hugely imbalanced (like Avarre said).

2) Disagree for several reasons. I find player created content is overly focused more on utility to and/or challenge for the player. While those are admirable goals, and letting players have some suggestions towards those ends might be a good idea, having them design whole areas would be problematic.

3) Somewhat agree. The only problem I have with titles is the pressure they place on single-character play. Getting to SS/LB/Gwen Rep max (or near max) once isn't too bad, it's doing it two or three or 10 times that I don't like. And don't get me started about TH/Wisdom.

4) Pretty much a solid agree. Still got some hope for a XL market in GW1, though.

5) Mostly Disagree. The easy availability of max-stats weapons was a great design decision. However, the concept of more "trade off" mods is interesting.

6) Mixed bag. Could be good, could be bad. Depends on how it's done.

Now this is an interesting idea. Also, don't forget greens.

With this system, maybe change the entire mechanic behind gold drops to make them not solo-farmable (in the sense we think of it now, since GW2 will be full-world solo). Gold drops are from specific places, like the elite/dungeon chests only. This guarantees a certain level of difficulty in obtaining them.

To a certain extent, something like this is already in place. Many weapon skins only drop gold, and they are usually the more ornate/sought after skins. Of course, normal skins can still drop gold, and I'm not aware of any "purple only/and up" skins (with the exception of very rare Sorrows Furnace/UW/FoW purple Crystalline drops).

I read your first suggestion and can't really say much more than I disagree. I could go into far more detail and say why I disagree, but I'll attempt to keep it short.

Primary Attribute lines have helped break game balance with their passive effects. For examples see; Thumpers, Blood-Spike, FCAS, etc. etc.

More passive effects added like this kind of stuff will merely result in far more things to abuse, and when that abuse is happening in a competitive game it's a big problem. Honestly, I don't care what's done with PvE. I like playing it but the two types should be completely seperate and other suggestions in your post make me want to stress that further (ie. pt. 5). As such, it makes it hard for me to agree with your point about title grinding when those titles help seperate the two game forms.

/Agree with most of these. I only complain about 1. I think passive abilities are nice, but those aren't really good for active gameplay. I like the idea that all skills are active and removable and usually quite low duration. And passive abilities also fight with game balance too.

imo make a godlike mode lvl 99 creeps

I enjoyed reading your ideas, but I would say that while there are many things I like about Guild Wars, the "appeal" for me was primarily the way the game is at once solo and group friendly.

I love the AI (heroes/henches); no other comparable MMOs offers anything like this. I like grouping with other players, but I hate being thwarted by the dreaded NEED TO GROUP WITH PLAYERS when no one is around. With Guild Wars, this never happened. NEVER. If I cannot find a group of players there is always AI. "LFG Hell" is the bane of most other MMOs I have tried. In fact, I have moved from just appreciating having an AI option to actually preferring them to most player groups (i.e., PUGs).

While, I, too, am taking a break from Guild Wars, I have to say that returning to WoW for a bit has made me appreciate even more how open Guild Wars is to all kinds of grouping options and playstyles -- including grouping with just heroes and henches if that is your wish. But then, maybe that's part of the "creativity of expression" that you were referring to in your post.

GW only has a hero hench system because most of the game is based on playing in a party of 8. In WoW and other MMOs, you can play the game perfectly fine on your own, you just need a party for the instanced dungeons and raids, neither of which are required for solo play and are the equivalent to PVP in GW and places that cant be H/Hed like elite areas.

I still dont see why people think that GW is more solo friendly then WoW, it is far from being as solo friendly as other MMOs are.

1) GW is meant to make each battle a 'fresh start'. So every time you zone you have to activate everything again, and after most battles everything wears off (exception some enchantments).

2) That's something that only works in discontinuous games, where the matchs has and end, like Real Time Strategic, Neverwinter Nights modules, etc. I saw the Neverwinter Nights approach to persintent worlds, and its... well... disappointing. Things specifically meant to work one way usually work bad in other ways.

3) The problem with grind titles is that they are way too far from XP evolution, they are too slow, character based, or both. They should be like XP, easy to get and faster to max, but account wide.

4) You know what I'm going to say here. Yes: We need the Xunlai Marketplace.

5) In GW hte important thing is the skin. What we need in this case is better customization. Why? To make it appealing, and thus remove much more items form the market. Requiring cutomization to being able to use the item would be a bit too much, but considering how easy is to get items, that could do too. Not updating all the skins to inscriptions is a mistake that I hope they fix soon.

6) Yup, some siege weapons, bundles and a couple of mounts won't do. More is better in this case.

3) Titles and grind: bad boring mix imo, especialy when you need to grind to pump up or to get skills and ranks.

4) ask MithranArkanere

It's simply because in WoW (and similar MMOs) the instances contain some of the best content in the game but are restricted to player groups only. In Guild Wars, this is not the case.

You do have to realize ANet was trying to make sure anyone who jumped ship on World of Warcraft to Guild Wars had something to do. Not everyone cares about storylines.

There isn't a single max level raid or instance that can be soloed. While there are a variety of soloing options, the arguably "best" content requires you to interact and spend a lot of time with other people.

I'd say that this is why Guild Wars is different, but in retrospect Guild Wars feels like it has a lot in common with Diablo than any MMO I've seen. Grouping now feels like an option.

In regards to the OP:

1. I don't think this would work too well in a competitive online RPG. It would be fun in PvE, but they would also have to include a bit more customization and depth to the current system.

2. It would be interesting, but a feature best left for off-line games.

3. As long as they don't give any actual benefits, titles are fine. They're just the 360 equivalent of achievements (sans the rewards).

4. Trading sucks in GW, and to not improve upon it would be abysmal.

5. The lack of emphasis on gear was kind of boring to me, but that's just personal opinion. I'll leave this one alone.

6. Agreed.

Thanks for even more replies!

Let me refine some of the ideas I presented.

1) Passive abilities. I don't intend this to be something that would be layered on top of the GW system. Rather, GW2 would need to incorporate it as a design philosophy. This would not at all preclude the use of active skills; on the contrary, it would work hand in hand with these skills to either further boost their effect, mitigate their removal, or otherwise provide synergies that would be *unique* to your character. The more ways to differentiate yourself, the better IMHO. If you have two SF elementalists with identical skillbars and attribute point allocations (and GW somewhat promotes this with the template system) then the only difference between the two is player skill. That's fine, but what if there were passive abilities that would make a group want to bring both rather than just one? Perhaps passive abilities that synergize with other players,etc. Same could go for healers, tanks, etc.

2) Dungeon design. This one was by far my most radical suggestion. I still think it's implementable. How's this as a variant that might be better suited to GW:

A guild alliance of some suitable stature (don't know what they would use to determine this - size, or money, or some measure of competitiveness) can purchase, in addition to a guild hall, a "guild grounds". They can hire AI mercenaries to guard the guild grounds, and they can CREATE groups of AI mercenaries with whatever skillsets/attributes/compositions that they desire. There could be some sort of resource allocation system involved: high ranked guilds might have high amounts of resources while low ranked guilds would have less. Defeating the "guild grounds" would be a mini-game prerequisite to challenging a guild to some contest. Different guild ranks could be used for different benefits (GvG rank might increase the mob level, some other rankings might increase the number of AI or how many elite skills are allowed, etc)

This provides another avenue of creativity: guild members will actively create and test their own groups of AI to provide sufficient challenge so as to gain some sort of benefit when another guild challenges them and does not succeed in overtaking the "guild grounds" mission. (Perhaps some sort of guild fame rank)

3) Titles. Agreed with everything everyone has said. Some gamers want to grind, so giving them the ability to do so is fine. However, this game has taken the path of providing tangible PvE benefits for higher PvE titles. Lightbringer ranks give +50% dmg against end-game nightfall foes, high ranks of Norn rep are often required to run Ursan groups, some title-track skills unfortunately need high ranks to function properly. These should be avoided in GW2 at all costs.

4) Trading system. Nothing to elaborate on.

5) I don't want to mis-state myself when speaking of the need to stratify weaponry. I do NOT want to see "high end" weapons being able to do things that "lower end" weapons cannot. IE - functionality should not be impaired by stratification. Rather, functionality should be varied through stratification. An example:

perhaps in GW2 there are two different kinds of armor sets- those that are crafted in exchange for materials, and those that are acquired via collectors. in GW1, both sets can be modified to be exactly the same (looks aside). perhaps in GW2 there can be a tangible different in how each armor set works. perhaps there could be different armor levels for a given profession with tradeoffs for energy regen/some other stat. perhaps armor is the same but some inherent mod is different. or perhaps one set can be modified with a subset of insignias while the other would be modified by a different set of insignias -- perhaps one geared for defense and the other offense. don't take my ideas as literal suggestions, just as examples of what i mean by stratification and differentiation.

6) World interaction. I think the inclusion of siege weapons and more traditional dungeon elements would be great (more complicated traps, more puzzles, etc)

i like how we all work together as a comunity and help out as much as possable

I am afraid nothing you've said is particularly novel. This thread seems to be a collection of suggestions, and we have a forum for that specifically. Where everything under the sky has already been suggested in twenty different forms. If you truly care about GW2's development and want to have Anet's ear, try their official wiki or apply for a job with them. Here your audience is just other players, who by the available evidence have limited (tending to nil) influence in designing GW2.

if you get a job u might get a mini frog appealing as anything ...but having to deal with actual people would be hard

I originally posted this in the Sardelac Sanitarium, as it was my intention for the thread to mainly be about my parting ideas/suggestions and reflections upon the game's appeal.

I agree on all points, but the (2) dungeon design thing while sounds really very cool, sadly it would be extremelly hard to implement. That would be user made content on official servers and would require additional software or a Very powerful ingame interface for that.

And this one is exactly my take on it!

I really hope they don't screw up on this in GW2.
I mean, you CAN have a game that's Not gear-based, that's NOT focused on grind to progress to next ranks of significantly better gear (like most other mmos) BUT still have an interesting varied item system. It doesn't have to be perfectly balanced to be accessible for casual players. Only PvP needs perfect balance, and we know competetive PvP will be separated from PvE in GW2.

Both - supereasy availability of 'perfect' items and the ability to turn almost any common drop into a perfect make the system really boring. Yes, everything perfect=very boring. (also note that none of those were present in GW1 for the first half year after release and nobody complained - it was obvious nobody ~needed~ perfection for PvE)

I'd absolutely LOVE if GW2 had a system with NO such thing as a 'perfect' item at all, so you could possibly always have a chance of finding something better, even if it was only a tiny tiny bit better. With a large enough number of variable inherent mods that you can't easily say one weapon is 'strictly' better than another, but with still having collector/crafter/quest-reward/etc. items good enough to play through all game content.

I think the player-created dungeon design idea is really quite intriguing. I played a game called Dungeon Siege some years ago. This game could be played single player or multiplayer and was similar in basic structure in a number of ways to Guild Wars as it is now (though not as polished, obviously, since this was an older game than GW).

The makers of Dungeon Siege actually welcomed modding, offering players a downloadable modding toolkit, and a number of people created Dungeon Siege "campaigns" using this modding toolkit. Some of these player-created campaigns were truly amazing, all were freely downloadable, and, in a couple of cases, I felt the player-created campaigns were actually superior to the original game (one, "Legends of Hyperborea", absolutely blew me away: it was longer, far more innovative, and much more difficult than the original game -- but it was absolutely great).

If I were ArenaNet, I would seriously consider an idea such as this, only I would make it so such campaigns had to "pass muster" (i.e., official ArenaNet quality control and approval), then I (ArenaNet) would purchase the campaign from the person who created it (or perhaps offer creators a percentage of the revenue), and then add the campaign into the standard game as optional content . I think this would keep an MMO very innovative and fresh, with a constant supply of new player-created content coming in.

For example, a player could create a kind of "Sorrows Furnace area" and submit it to ArenaNet for approval. If the campaign (or rather, "mini-campaign" or "mission" or whatever) or dungeon "passes", ArenaNet could then purchase it from the player-creator, and offer access to the new content through the game (probably for a fee [think Bonus Mission Pack]). It would be an interesting direction to go for an MMO, I must say.

Just curious, but what do people have in mind when they ask for "skill-based" titles? Sure, I can see how the consumption titles aren't "skill-based," but I think the vanquish/protector/guardian are as close as you can get within the way Guild Wars is set up.

Nice writeup... and, can I please have... (oh, you answered already - nevermind).

/signed


Remove all grind based PvE titles.

I would love a weapon mod trader to be implimented, few things are more frustrating than getting that perfect skin gold and not having the mods to build exactly to your liking. I usually prefer to build my own gold to my liking (especially with BMP golds being available very early on in the game) rather than get a comparable green. Maybe it's just me but I like to build my own weapons, so finding prime mods is high priority to me.

I agree with this one a lot, we needed more space between average goods and rare quality goods and not be able to make everything in the game perfect. I liked it really before inscriptions where you really had to work for a quality item and everyone wasn't running around with a torment weapon/shield or elemental sword. It's just too easy to get everything to max now on anything. +30 hp mods that used to sell for 30k are barely able to get rid of for 5k-7k, same with 20/20 sundering mods that used to sell for 30k to 50k pretty much worthless nowadays. Everything is except a few of the old rares like perfect crystalline swords and chaos axes. Old skins though not much of anything else of value except the torment stuff and eventually that will be worthless as everyone starts to get theirs either farming it or buying it.

In this regard I would have just wished for an expansion pak with RANDOM dungeons in it like LDON of Everquest. Where going into the same dungeon didn't mean you would meet the same mobs and bosses each time. The loot tables would change also so you never knew whatcha was gonna get. LDON to me is the best presentation of dungeon crawling adventure I ever played in an online game. It had 5 zones with 8 scenes in each zone for a total of 40 different views and then an unlimited amount of mobs and types and levels based on the average level of your group to fight against. Too bad the only bad thing about it is you couldn't solo it, you had to have at least 3 players or I probably never would have left EQ.

Sorry, but, I disagree with you on this. I love titles that are important to increasing my power or ability to do things beyond a normal capacity. Like the Treasure Hunter Title, Wisdom Title, Luck Title, Lightbringer and Sunspear and the Norn Title track, Kurzick and Luxon as these things gave me advantages in the game to earn. But, yeah drunkard and those silly childish titles that do nothing to help you within the game they could have just tossed them out. Who cares if you survived the whole game without dying if it's not even going to give you some type of ingame advantage. Who cares if you mapped every pixel in the game you're not getting any advantage. What the truth of the matter really is is that nobody really LOOKS at your titles. I know I don't cause I dont really care what titles you have except the ones I mentioned and only those would be Lightbringer or Norn or Kurzick or Luxon for the SKILLS they give you. <grin>

1) Yeh, but I see it very hard. Can be done, however

2) Only if they are for fun, not for farming

3) Totally, utterly and fully agree. Rollback to 2005, when titles didn´t determinated your skill. ( Unless the PvP ones...well, Hero...eh..tjem)



4) Fokin Xunlai Marketplace pliz. But I´ve heard that the game´s engine do not allow to add that addition.....again, for GW2 /sigh

5) Items are perfectly balanced...if we talk about numbers. Ask the other guys of this thread.




6) Yeh, I also want to rape every NPC chick I see.