GW 2 - What would you change?

First off, I'm assuming they will go with a similar design of health, energy regen, and limited skill slots. I'm also assuming they may go with very similar game mechanics. The core game design should remain the same. The appeal of Guild Wars is the challenge of creating a complete character out of hundreds of available skills and only using a very limited number of them


So, on to a few game mechanics I would change:

Tanks - Give the Warrior their role back. Every class in Guild Wars and most MMOs has a primary role to perform better than all others. This is supposed to be facilitated by the class-specific statistic, armor, and energy regen rate. Warriors have never been the best tanks in all situations. I've always wanted to make one, but it seems like specific builds (Perma-'Sins, Ele Terra Tank, 600 Rit, 55 Monk) can out-tank the Warrior in most situations.

Armor-Ignoring Damage - Another factor that reduced the Warrior's ability to tank is the abundance of armor-ignoring damage. If the Warrior's only advantage is taken away by so many spells that ignore armor, why have a "tank" class in the first place?


Taunt Skills - Where are they? I know GW1 never wanted them, but controlling aggro is another thing that makes a tank... well, a tank. I also know people have found ways around the game mechanics by exploiting the AI with body-blocking or other tricks. If monsters are just running around and hitting random players and the Warrior is just a pile of metal that gets ignored half the time, then why bring a Warrior? Bring another DPS class so your monks don't take as much of a beating. After all, the job of the tank is to keep others from taking a beating. By not having aggro management, the tank doesn't perform that job very well. On a side note, to balance taunts in PvP, do something similar to Warhammer Online, where taunts make the enemy target do less damage to all but the tank.


Hexes and Hex Removal - There are so many hexes in the game. Many of them are easy to apply with low cooldowns and low energy costs. Where are the low cooldown, low energy cost hex removal skills? Almost all of the hex-removal skills are on 12-second cooldowns and only remove one hex at a time. At least condition removal has Restore Condition.


Conditions and Melee vs Casters - Blind, cripple, and weakness all affect melee characters more than spell-casters. Dazed is the only condition which hinders a caster's ability to perform their role. The balance is a little off here, especially when you compare how many spells cause anti-melee conditions against the melee skills which cause daze. Reduce condition availability or make an extra condition for casters, or make blindness cause spells to fail (after all, you can't see who you are casting a spell on while blind).


Enchantments and Enchantment Removal - As with Hexes and Hex removal, the offending side has a major advantage again. Enchantment removal is easier than applying them when you compare the recharge times and number of enchantments removed by a single skill. It is almost pointless to "prepare" for a fight by applying enchantments to yourself because enchantment removal will be one of the first things the enemy does to you. Necromancers have two ways of removing ALL enchantments from foes in an area, to make things worse.


In conclusion, I am in no way saying Guild Wars 1 isn't fun or has something horribly imbalanced with it. The challenge and fun of Guild Wars is bringing the right classes and builds to meet the demands of the situation you are facing. However, I will say that after four years of changes and expansions, the game's focus has shifted away from the traditional MMO it used to try to be.



---IMPORTANT---Please do not consider this a complaint post or whine thread. This is a serious discussion about general game mechanics which I would like to see different in the next Guild Wars game, not this one. This is also not a debate about which skills are overpowered or don't belong in GW 2.---IMPORTANT---

Get rid of hexway

There's no point in theorycrafting change based on an already theorycrafted perception of Guild Wars 2.

This is not to mention the fact that you are under the false presumption that tanks were meant to exist in Guild Wars. While indeed, aggro is an important factor against AI, it's not nearly the end-all-be-all of Guild Wars. Melee classes, warrior included, were designed to deal DAMAGE. That is there role, and that is what they're best at. A well-placed prot spirit or guardian could help a warrior to achieve more than a pure tank ever could. In fact, it's the ingenuity of prot skills in Guild Wars that makes the game unique. Unique enough that tanking is not a necessary, or integral, part of the game.

Hexway- Far too bloody powerful right now, 2 hexes can shut down a class for a ridiculous amount of time and can be re-applied with easy, there are few skills with the ability to fight back against this kind of power effectively at all. Faintheartness/Empathy/Backfire/VoR, all come to mind.

Evasion/Blocking ability - This needs to be closer watched, monks and rangers, and assassins with critical defenses, truely wreck melee combat ability and forces long drag outs of fights or truely stupid curb stomp battles just because the warrior does not carry wild blow/rip enchantment. You can say "Without it we'll get owned", well I'm not saying those skills are bad, they do have a place, but they need to be closer watched and not make so quick n easy.

Touch Ranger - Send this bonehead build the grave

Easier to say what id keep, and that would be the 1 login server model.
No multiple servers seperated by region with characters tied to them as per the traditional MMO.
The rest, well, that could do with some work.

2nded, 3rded, 4thed, it was a major major part of my love of the game.

Poke, you have never said anything that I have MORE agreed with

Amen Brutha, Amen!

Aggro is gameplay style....you cant have skills affecting it. That's like using a skill to remove a wall in the way.

Two comments:
1) You speaking about what you want to change in present GW, not about GW2 (how to speake about GW if we know near nothing about it yet?).
2) About tanking - I play mainly earth ele, which can be super tank, it has some use in PvE, but in most situations is not too usefull. Why insist warriors shoud be best tanks when they excels in so many others roles? Eles/monks can be better tanks but not better frontliners. (Common complain here - please balance shadow form a bit).
3) You are com plaining that warriors are too vulnerable to conditions/hexes/ench. removal - I recommend this threads Why Nuking Sucks, where casters complains that warriors and sins are too strong, superb DPS even without any skills etc, skills so fast to use and no/minimum aftercast and recharge, no problem with energy denial and much less vulnerable to interrupts... Maybe good idea for both "sides" to try oposite profession a bit.
4) Armor-Ignoring Damage - I agree it is an issue, hope will be different in GW2.
5) Taunting - this approach would split PvP and PvE. Better find some way usable in both (like stance which extends bodyblock size of warrior temporarily, punish by damage/knockdown runing aroud,attack which throws enemy in oposite direction a bit...). Anyway even as it is - you can get similar efect with knockdowns and/or criple builds.

Things I'd keep:

Warriors: This is largely in response to the first post in the thread. In every RPG I play I always aim to be the melee damage dealer. This is different in MMO's: I hate tanking. Granted okay I don't *hate* it but I'd *much* rather be actually hitting things to kill them. Tanking rarely made sense to me, honestly.

Things were different in GW. My role was to get to the frontlines and deal some damage. No tanking, just pewpewpew. I loved it. If things change to the typical "tank and spank" mold in GW2, things are going to look quite dark - not just for Warriors but for all classes.

The Core Classes: All have a role and can fit it well. Things got a bit jumbled as GW went on, but if they kept it stable in GW2 like the earlier days in GW1 then they'll hit gold.

Things to change:

Skills: Too many and you get boned. If you keep expanding the mechanics you'll lose grip of the balance of your game.

New classes: Similar to adding too many skills. There was nothing more additional classes could add that the original six couldn't. The only thing you'll gain from more classes is pretty much more imbalance. They need to watch this in GW2.

Aggro: Because of the way aggro worked in GW1 you were able to effectively perform the "tank and spank" mode of gameplay. The game wasn't made to fit this mold, hence why became insanely game-breaking, and being generally easy to do.

That's because a warrior isn't supposed to tank, and you're a terribad player for thinking it is. A Warrior is for high single-target damage and sometimes knockdown spam. Not a tank, never was, hopefully never will be.

Guild Wars isn't meant to use tanking, which is part of why SF is so problematic.

How do non-segregated servers co-exist with a persistent world design? I don't want to be artificially walled off from players either, but how could that work?

I would make Armor-ignoring damage less prevelent. In Prophecies, there were very few skills that ignored armor and the ones that did were expensive (Obsidian Flame, Dust Trap, etc).

Have less skills than GW1, but make all skills useful. For new expansions, release ~5-10 skills per profession.

Revert to the 6 core professions. But, merge rit spirits into the necro profession. Make the primary attribute a Soul Reaping/Spawning Power hybrid.

Make smarter AI. For example, make monsters move to account for obstructions, make them not always attack themselves to death if they have something like Empathy on, and give better them builds.

Agreed, less skills and professions is better. Problem is that Anet needs sell new campaign from time to time and need add new skills in new campaign but... Maybe add new attributes in different GW2 campaigns like spirit would be new attribute for necro, scythe+spear+leadership for warrior. Maybe even lets have profession (after few campaigns) have choice from few primary attributes.

And please, to split skill between PvP and PvE version if necessary is OK, but not so much super-strong PvE only skills ...or at least limit them to specific area.

And let most ares have 4 and 8 people mode (switchable in outposts like NM/HM), if you play alone, it is not much fun to have so many henchies and heroes.

Remove all titles and associated grind from the game.

warriors are the damage dealers in guild wars, not tanks. their high armor is intended to compensate for their vulnerable positioning on the field, not to stand there and absorb damage from idiots who can't see the squishy targets behind them. there is no designated tank class because guild wars is a heavily pvp-based game, and tanks are utterly useless in pvp.

oh god no


agreed, hexes and hex removal just aren't balanced right. there's always PnH if you know or think you're going up against hexway but broken counters doesn't really solve the problem of a broken mechanic, it just promotes build wars. idk what anet could do to make them better, tho.


there are plenty of anti-caster counters. hitting them with a hammer, for instance; you'll notice they take more damage. this makes them better targets for warriors, and therefore they have to kite more often. kiting = not casting spells. dshot-ing them also works. while you can interrupt a physical, it isn't nearly as detrimental to their ability to perform their task as it is to a caster; an auto-attacking warrior is still a threat. also, cripple isn't just an anti-melee counter; cast it on an enemy and your frontline will find it much easier to hit.


agreed, deep, fast-recharging enchantment removal makes pure spike builds a little too appealing because you can guarantee a good opportunity for a spike every 20-30 seconds with little to no spec in a single skill.

Another GW2 thread

I'd blame the AI more than anything, honestly. Make them aware of the person who's dealing damage to them and things would be a lot more functional, and would actually make sense.

Tanks are the most lame rpg archetype in existence. I'm glad GW discourages them.

Why would we want a skill that has the sole purpose of making the ai dumber? Isn't more intelligent ai more fun to play against?

Anyway, things I'd like to see:

More viable pressure damage from casters - they can spike, but fighters are where it's at for pressure so far. Maybe make wand/staff damage better so they can do something useful without expending energy?

More health on characters, and weaker healing. I think spikes are a little too easy provided you have an organized group, and I think that monks are too strong compared with the rest of the classes. I would like to see healers be weakened, but give players more health instead so they can still last.

More freedom with PvP formats. Why not allow players to hold a 6v6 or a 10v10 GvG match? Why not let them hold one where all teams are randomized like in RA, but in the GvG format? Most other online multiplayer genres allow players to change these settings to their liking, and I think Guild Wars would be better with it as well. Why not let players host games with whatever rules they like, and then let other players choose which ones they want from a list of all the available games? They could also allow new players to join a match in case of a leaver or something.

More skills on a skill bar. The skill bar idea lets players go a long way towards making their characters unique, but I think they're too marginalized. You can either make a versatile bar or a bar that's only really good at one thing, and that sounds like it should be fair enough, but the problem is that if your bar/team isn't balanced, you run the risk of being hopelessly stomped by a gimmick group whose strength is something you don't cover. For this reason, I say that players should be allowed a bit more versatility by giving a few more slots on their skill bars. Why not use, say, the 9 and 0 buttons so you can have 10 skills instead?

1. Skills would be level based and characters would only receive half the benefits of secondary profession skills. Its easier to balance and less skills would be nerfed.
2. No more metagame. There is like 101 ways to defeat you opponent. I don't need to be told to run these specfic skills all the time.
3. Players should be able to craft their own gear and weapons. Why ? Because it simply adds depth to the game.
4. A consignment house instead of an auction house so this way players can not overprice items.
5. Goodbye hard mode - The game should be challenging from the start. I shouldn;t need hard mode.
6. Better character customization
7. Instead of titles we can have achievements where if I eliminate 200 wardens I can get a +5 damage to wardens.

Just ideas I am throwing out because I have nothing better to do at the moment.

I agree that a shared sever is awesome. It works on Eve because the population is so low and the universe so massive. Champions Online is also going to be run the same. I hope that is the trend towards MMOs in the future. Only reason to split it up now is latency issues and overcrowding.

^^ that is what GW2 will have, limited skills. End of story. Which is something I quite dislike.

I wouldn't change a thing of GW, and hope GW2 will be a different experience and the game play even more exciting then GW. otherwise, I'll have to be content with playing GW

and I disagree with you on the part where caster should be affected by blind ... etc. If anything, when blind, it should intensify their other senses, making casting ability even more effective.

I'm also in agreement that shared servers are great. One of the most irritating things about MMOs such as WoW (the only other one I've played, so I can't comment elsewhere) is when you create a character on a server, then realise AFTER you've put in loads of effore (for WoW, effort=grind) that your friend plays on a different one. Sucks.

For me, I'd agree with the poster that wants more 'crafting' abilities - I mean, maybe not making your own armour - while that's great and all for WoW, where only a few people will specialise with that skill as there are so many others, if everyone was crafting armour, it would be... well, firstly rather unrealisitic (how many expert tailors do you guys know?) and would also probably not be as good an idea as you first think. If you can sell the armour the economy would be trashed on account of everyone selling more or less the same thing. If you couldn't? To give it any purpose, it would obviously have to take some form of 'training' to make the best armour. Meanwhile, I can see players constantly making utterly redundant armour. I quite like that you have to go to a specialist to get armour - it makes sense.

For me, I'd like to see more sidequests in PvE. If we're going to have titles, it could avoid the excessive grind, and it also gives a bit more endgame to PvE without excessive work on programming new areas. And I totally agree with the idea that someone had of making secondary professions have their skill power cut. Perhaps not in half - with only limited skills on a bar, that would make second professions rather redundant (would you use 'nerfed' skills if you had a choice?). But casters definitely shouldn't be running with major melee skills as they are now. (sf abuse)

As for what I'd love, to be honest, a good, gripping story that is enjoyable to play, with perhaps a bit more endgame than endless grindy titles. And also incentives for PvE players to get into PvP. I don't do PvP at the moment - mainly because hawking for groups sucks when you've never done PvP and you have a deep, unsettling feeling that you're going to go out there and get trashed by someone that's gone it loads. Separating the arenas into experience levels would be good. If ever there's a place for a useful title, it would be a 'Victories in Arena' one. Once you have a level of the title, you move on to play with others that have it, in an unlocked hall. That way experienced players don't get stuck with 'noobs' like me, and newer players don't get utterly disheartened by constant failure, and give up altogether. Yes, I know it would possibly end up being abused slightly as the 'Ultimate status' title, but it would also serve a very real use.

i would say " Change it when it comes out"

You were saying?

exactly the same way it does now, but rather than the hard cap of 100 per town,have a hard cap of maybe 10,000 (easily comparable to when GW was released) and use the towns/outposts as "hubs" for map and server jumping (and map jumping will be in according to interviews)

but thats the thing, EvE ISN'T one server, they actually use multiple servers and each area of space is a separate HUB, and the chat windows and market take all info from yet another server

CCP where absolute geniuses with the way they did it as you can still chat to anyone anywhere and see most info and even most Market/contract info anywhere and it works

If I had any say in GW2's design, I'd recommend they offer --

--Modes of play, allowing players to switch between two modes (in much the way you are able to change districts now), which you would set in common areas before you left the city/town/outpost gate
(1) Persistent world mode: persistent regions, instanced dungeons and missions, no henchmen or heroes, maximum player party size of 5 (in other words a WoW/EQ/LotRO-style world environment)
(2) Instanced world mode: instanced regions, instanced dungeons and missions, henchmen/heroes, maximum party size of 5 (in other words a GW1-style world environment)

The two "worlds" would be identical in every other respect -- same landscapes, quests, bosses, etc., but the regions in each mode would be scaled and designed (mob-wise) to match the mode you had chosen.

If this kind of setup proved logistically unworkable, then I'd rather GW2 set up entirely different servers -- Instanced or Persistent -- on which you could create your character because frankly, if ANet offered the option of playing GW2 in either "Classic" mode or "New Coke" mode, I'd choose Classic in a heartbeat.

It'd sure be nice (imo) to play an MMO that actually allowed players to "toggle" back and forth (i.e., in towns and communal areas) between player modes depending on how you felt like playing that particular day.

Why the hell does he have high armor and skills like Endure,Defy Pain,Dolyak Signet etc?
For the lulz?

All I need is a cool event system, that will spread across regions and persistent instances, a working auction house, housing and a more action oriented combat.

After that, it's all fine with me.

IMO, that would kill (or diminish) the whole point of persistent areas.

If a certain percentage of the player base is running around their own instances, and avoiding persistent areas, then the persistent areas will become ghost towns, and any Public quests set up to take advantage of large amounts of people being around will be worthless.

While I am skeptical about many changes in GW2, the addition of persistent areas is one I am most excited about. It will make GW seem less like a single player RPG, and more like a MMORPG.

That said, I DO still want there to be a variety instanced areas so when I want to be by myself, that is still possible. But trying to combine the two seems like a bad idea.

GW2 Suggestions Thread, in Sardelac where it belongs.

wat? metagaming, the act of using out-of-game information to influence in-game decisions, will always exist. sounds like what you want is a wider variety of viable builds, which is called balance.

or that could just be locked down and Inde could open up the GW2 Guru to everyone

Speaking of server caps, Aion has about a 6500 concurrent users per world cap (this number was mentioned in I think February's quarterly report or conference call). WoW beta (back in 2004) had a 3500 cap (back when they exposed these numbers to players). World does not mean one machine, of course.

Guild Wars supports 2500-3500 concurrent users per machine according to this article about GW's architecture. However it says the machines were 2.5GB and the scalability issue there is mainly memory, so going 64-bit should allow for larger numbers.

The world cap might be based more around desired community size rather than technology though.

Because a Warrior is meant to attack on the front line, and so will often take more incoming damage from the other team.

So that we can identify shitty players really easily - they're the ones who actually use those skills.

I know that the current place of Warrion in the game isnt tanking,and that it never really was,but i am saying that they CAN tank and have tanking skills.The warrior class was partialy planned as a tank,but it isnt really one now.
On the other hand a Earth type Elementalist is a "pure" tanker with dmg skills.

Minimize the potential for imbalances in certain classes to allow them to replace classes who were designed for that purpose.

As an example - n/rts out healing monks.

Theres literally no solid info about gw2, so there's no way to say with certainty how anything will be. You can't change what you don't know.

However, in general terms:

Keep the low level cap ffs - This appealed to strategy-minded and mature players and suddenly WoWers and little kids go "awwww, boooz, i cantz go up past 20, this game suckz"

Don't block off/cut out expansion classes and continents. Why limit the player? We've seen them in GW1, so it would be a big disappointment to not have them at the start. I personally would feel a little gyped. Npcs going "cantha/elona is too dangerous..." my response: I freaking killed shiro in cantha and a god in elona, and you say theyre TOO DANGEROUS?

Racial abilities - GW1 was built around an even playing field, where skill was meant to matter. Racial abilities take away from that ideal and force players to make a class of a certain race for optimal effeciency, to be taken any kind of serious.

EDIT: Most importantly, I would change all this "dragon lore." I can't imagine seeing the big RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing deal about these dragons after killing a god, although chained. It seems to me the easiest and most cliche fantasy storyline where the dragons are the source of it all. GW1 lore was unique, but they seemed to move towards the hackneyed attempts of other games with the beginning of eotn.

Yeah, if there are going to be racial differences, just make it something negligible, like each race gets a single, pve only skill (preferably one that isn't as good as all of your class skills later in the game) or something like that.

I'd remove levels and classes and just stick to skill lines.

And boot out the Asura and Norn as playable race, in favor of Tengu.