Multiple issues with gameplay and thought out suggestions for remedy. (To devs)

(Posted recently to support AT guildwars.com)

Hello there Guild Wars support [And the GW community now],

I have been playing the game for a while and have enjoyed it. During
this time though, including some recent changes to Guild Wars, I have
come across a few gameplay issues. Here are some of my thoughts on the
subject, as well as a few suggestions on how to fix them.

Due to the recent changes to player versus player gameplay that
removed experience gain, it has become a large problem to modify ones
so called 'build' (attributes and skills set, though I imagine you are
familiar with the term). Since PvP characters do not gain experience,
they cannot gain attribute refunds either, which results in the
character getting 'stuck' in the build. While it is possible to delete
the character and rebuild it from beginning, it is rather
inconvenient. The problem is also aggravated by the fact that bought
runes and components cannot be reclaimed from PvP armor/weapons, which
results in them and the possibly sizeable investment getting lost for
good.

As a remedy for the beforementioned problems, I would offer as a
suggestion to either return experience gain alongside faction, or to
remove the necessity of refund points for PvP characters completely.
While I can understand the reasons behind attribute refund points for
PvE characters, they become a sizeable problem for the PvP ones. As
for the mentioned problem with armor and weapon components, I would
suggest making it possible to salvage those modified items for the
components/runes only. That is, if you were to purchase a superior
vigor rune and attatch it to an armor piece, you could later on
(expert) salvage it and the result would be the superior vigor rune.
To avoid exploits, no materials would ever be returned from a PvP
armor/weapon, nor the runes added in character creation could be
salvaged.

The size of the friends list has also quickly become a problem. 25
entries, shared both between friends list and ignores is a miniscule
amount to a person who is active in the game. This problem becomes
especially clear when you are trying to keep track of good players for
building teams for Tombs matches for an example. Thus I would like to
ask you to increase the allowed entries size at the very least to 100,
and seperate and give the ignore list the same amount of it's own
entries. Being able to add customizable labels (or "groups") to your
friends list would also be appreciated.

I have also several times ran into the problem of a player getting
stuck in the scenery of the game. This has even happened in tombs
matches, and I imagine to several people in guild matches as well.
Last time the other of our two healers got stuck in a wall, and to
make things worse they were the one who the ghost was following, as
well. As such a /stuck command is fairly badly needed as well. The
mechanics of such a command could work approximately in the manner of
having say a 5 second countdown (to avoid exploits) after the /stuck
command had been typed in, and then moving the player a short distance
awaywards from the collision edges/however it is implemented. If the
player would not be free of the wall yet, they could simply retype the
command and be moved a short distance again.

Another larger issue is the fact that if a group is on a time
consuming mission or PvP'ing for an example, and one of their players
suffers a disconnection, they can be seriously hampered and the person
disconnected in particular will not be too happy (I've had the dreaded
error 7 happen way too many times myself). While an AI henchman is of
some help, they truly are no replacement for an actual player
(Especially since the type is selected in random.) As a remedy I would
like you to consider giving the player a certain grace time on
reconnecting to the game, a few minutes would be enough. If they were
to reconnect inside this time, at login they could be returned to the
game exactly where they were as well as in the same state (hp, energy,
etc). This would make connection problems and the error 7 much less
frustrating. Losing a player right when you enter the Halls of Heroes
is truly no fun.

Then there is also the faction gain from the 4vs4 arena fights.
Considering the numbers, you could go for a streak of 100 consecutive
wins and still not gain enough faction even for a minor rune. Whilst
faction is not meant to be a replacement for PvE playing, I find it
could be at least a little bit more rewarding. I would suggest that
approximately 50 victories in the arena should be enough to gain that
1000 faction. At any rate it would be more inspiring not to have to
win a hundred times to unlock a minor item. (Even 10 faction + kills
for each consecutive arena victory would be better.)

As a last thought on how to make Guild Wars more playable and fun that
it is already, I might toss in the thought of 1vs1 PvP challenges.

Thank you for taking the time to read this lenghty letter. I hope you
will give it some serious thought. I have put some thought into it
myself, and have attempted to come up with solutions that should be
relatively easily implementable. After all, if these things were to be
fixed, you would have rid Guild Wars of several of it's current
biggest gameplay issues.

---------------------------Response---------------------------

Thank you for contacting the Guild Wars Support team on this. You've brought up some very good points on aspects that need work in the game and some great ideas on some solutions for them. I appreciate very much how much detail you've included. Many players write in about these exact issues. Therefore, I would like to encourage you to consider posting these as a suggestion on one of many of the Guild Wars Fansite message boards. A compiled list can be found here (http://guildwars.com/community/default.html). By posting on one of these message boards, other players can comment on your ideas, concerns, and suggestions, and Development Team members are able to catch up on what the community wants to see in Guild Wars. Fansite forums make it easy and efficient for us to learn from those playing the game.

Thank you for your efforts in assisting us to create the best gaming experience possible.

Kind Regards,
The Guild Wars Support Team

--------------------------------------------------------------

So here we are, feel free to discuss the subject.

- KanRyu

Just a thought about pick-up 4 on 4 before this gets moved to the sardelac sanitarium.

+2 faction for every team kill. +6 faction for a team victory. On one of the "elimination" matches that works out to 14 faction points. 1000/14 works out to roughly 71 victories. I dont' recall if you get +2 if you kill someone that gets resurrected so those points aren't counted.

Then there's the "score kills" arenas which randomly play. There it's usually a minimum of 4 kills on the winning side (+8 faction guaranteed for winners) and the battles I've seen are usually in the range of 6-12 kills for the winners. For the sake of argument call it 8 kills or 16 faction + 6 for the win. If you play just elimination that's 1000/22 or about 45 victories.

Combine the two results together and you *roughly* earn 1000 faction points for every 60 or so victories.

As for how LONG that takes... Each "Timed" event is around 5 minutes from when you click "enter mission" to when you see teh countdown to start the next round. Assuming that the "elimination" missions take just as long (most don't, a few stretch into theoretical infinity) you're looking at roughly five hours to earn that 1000 faction points, IF you win every round.

Assuming your win/loss ratio is 50/50, you're looking at roughly 10 hours to earn that 1000 faction. In the short run that's a lot of Time, but in the long run the faction points let you specifically buy what you want, and not just spend 100's of hours farming random runes to unlock.

GvG are worth a lot more faction points (150 + perks) but that's for another day.

Ah, that's partwise true on the 4vs4. I must've been a bit tired when I was calculating the point amounts. As for the subject of faction gain on the "score kill" arenas, the only time you gain faction is when an enemy does not have any death penalty. Thus while I initially counted wrong, your assumption on 22 seems incorrect as well :) The amount of faction you can by maximium receive in such a 4vs4 match, hopefully counted correctly this time, is 16 as far as I see. And this is only for the one particular match that includes a priest. This is how it counts out:

4 players, +2 faction each, you gain 8 faction at most from kills.
+2 from the priest and then the victory faction +6, comes down to 16 faction
in that particular map. On every other one the maximium is at 14 faction per round, which comes down to the ~70 victories (If you're lucky and no one leaves for an example) you mentioned as well.

Don't forget though that those 10 hours have to be active playing. Into the actual time you would also have to count things like dinner, bathroom breaks, planning and in general messing about as well. I have finished some full commercial games in that time myself. Also most people don't play games 10 hours straight. A person who is working for an example is unlikely to have 10 hours to spend on a game per day. While it is true that you can select which rune you wish to unlock, 1000 faction will only unlock you a minor rune. 1500 for a major and 2000 faction after that yet for a superior. 4500 faction total, 45 hours of active game time by your calculation. Does that not seem a bit excessive ?

Yeah, it's true that GvG and Tombs do gain you a lot more faction, but they were not really the issue I was wishing to address. Appreciate the feedback though, let's hope that we'll get some conversation going on and attention to this thread :)

In the same I'd like to note about the refund points, incase they were to be removed completely from PvP characters, things could be set so that you could only change the attributes outside the arena. All in all the whole attribute refund system is a bit inconvenient for players who for an example might like to quickly change their build for a bit to something else to help a friend, or to just experiment with various different builds. As it is now, you can end up in a state where your character is completely worthless after a rebuild and gaining back refund points then becomes rather problematic.

On a side note, could some admin kindly move this thread to the Sardelac Sanitarium side ? Sorry for the trouble, I didn't notice there was a game suggestion forum in particular when I was posting this.

- KanRyu

I think a really nice adjustment for the refund points system would be something very similar to what you're suggesting here:

Something along the lines of one refund point gained for each kill, or one refund point for X number of faction points (maybe 5). I'd think one refund point gained per kill is reasonable.

Yeah, I think adjusting the faction point payout/requirements is a good idea. The way I see the adjustment going is something like this:

Ascalon Arena: Win (10 faction points). Loss (5 faction points). And the faction rewards for the kills would remain the same.

Shiverpeak Arena: Win (14 faction points). Loss (7 faction points). Faction point kills remain the same.

Competition Arenas from Lion's Arch: Win (30 faction points). Loss (15 faction points). Faction point kills remain the same.

Tournaments (I'm assuming it means Tombs?): Remains the same.

GvG: 200 to 500, depending on your guild rating, and a loss in GvG grants you half of whatever total you would have received had you won.

Regarding adjusting the faction point requirements...most of them would seem okay. I'd lower the Elite skill requirement from 3k to perhaps 2500.

The way I see it, this adjustment could go a long way in improving/streamlining the unlocking process. I think granting the losing team half of the victorious faction point rewards is a pretty good idea. I mean, after all, even though Balthazar is the god of war, I think a team merely stepping out onto the field of battle would please him, regardless of whether they win or not.

They're displaying courage and bloodlust. Qualities a god of war likes seeing?

You betcha.

Hmm, that's an interesting idea and might work indeed, if they wish to keep the refund system. One refund point per kill sounds about good if so. It would allow one to regain them and change the character fairly well. Though I'm still not terribly fond of the whole refund point system as a whole, since it can get your character stuck in a state where you cannot easily regain them. Something like having unlimited refund points while in towns would allow one more freedom and avoid such problems. But at the least there should indeed be some way to regain them.

I'm not so sure if losing faction would be a very good thing. Especially if you consider the random teams arena where you have no idea of what kind of a team you will end up with. It would probably frighten people away from it completely since you'd run the risk of getting a bad team and losing your hard earned faction.

Unfortunately I think you might run the risk of people just getting into guild matches and messing about for free faction points. It probably wouldn't do too good for the ladder. Or what do you think ?

Heh, one might imagine :) Thanks for contributing.

- KanRyu

Why should there be refund points on PvP characters anyway? Since you can just delete and recreate the character, they should just let you change your attributes any way you want, without using refund points.

As for Faction, here's how it works:
For Ascalon and Shiverpeak, I'd like to see it go to 3 per kill and 5 per win.
For Competition/Team Arena, I'd like to see it go to 5 per kill, plus 20 per win.
In addition, you should get 5 points for a Flawless Victory.
For Tombs, it should be 50 every time.

Right now, GvG will give you about 20 points per minute. Competition/Team Arena gives about 2. That's a HUGE disparity.

and the developers spent an extra week polishing it before release.

possibly they intended it to be this way to increase guild battles

Er, if the team loses, they don't lose faction. They merely gain half of what they would have received had they won.

Win in Ascalon Arena: you get 10 faction points.
Lose in Ascalon Arena: you get 5 faction points.

True, but I'd wonder just how many would fool around just for free faction points. I mean, for those guilds that do PvP, they're either hardcore or casual. Hardcore (so we're told) never messes around to begin with, and casuals (like my guild) do it for fun anyway, so...I don't know if that would be any incentive for guilds to change their playing habits.

Some gamers are stubborn mules, after all. ~_^