What major change would you make?

[perilisk.1874]

Just to daydream, what sort of deep, wide-reaching, fundamental, and/or entirely impractical change to the game's design would you make, regardless of whether it would be implemented? If it helps suspension of disbelief, feel to free imagine that you're recommending it for a reboot or a hypothetical GW3.

 

Just to throw one out there to start: A limited "labor" resource in crafting/gathering, where labor expenditure for an action is reduced with better tools (gathering) or higher skill (crafting). Would add more thought to crafting, make refinement less pointless, create more reason for players to trade and craft, and (if the limit was character by character) add more value to alts. Characters could possibly get a labor bonus based on the number of times they have created a specific item, allowing specialization.

[Hoodie.1045]

I would buff core engineer. It's no secret that ArenaNet hates core engineer, but I say enough is enough! It makes no sense that the more difficult profession is weaker compared to the Holosmith which is a dumbed down version of the engineer. Before the Holosmith was made, ArenaNet looks at the statistics one day and says "Not many people play engineer. I wonder if it's because of the complexity of playing with multiple kits in order to be the most effective?". And here we are today with the Holosmith being objectively better than core engineer. The smarter and more intelligent profession is outperformed by a braindead specialization that swings his weapon like an idiot.

 

I don't have a problem with the Holosmith being easier to play, but what I do have a problem with it is being able to achieve more than core engineer by doing less. Holosmith should be for new players, but they won't achieve the highest results. Core engineer is the most difficult profession to play, yet it sucks that the profession that requires the most skill to play in the entire game is lackluster compared to the specialization where you press one button and you go Super Saiyan Blue.

[Endless Soul.5178]

I'd like to get away from the whole cut down an entire forest to make a single magic stick approach to crafting, but to be honest, I don't know what to suggest to replace that.

[Zushada.6108]

Customizable UI including Squad/Group frames that allows you to do the following:

1. mark ppl in your party privately

2. move skills around the 1-5 buttons and have more available slots for mounts and clickable inventory items (such as those used for Legendaries)

3. move/separate boons from conditions; xp boosts etc

4. player health bars displayed in squad frame with numbers and percent (boss as well)

5. The ability to click on a player and then click a skill e.g. CA 3 for Druid and have the heal drop on the group in that location

 

Overall, I just want a customizable UI. Kind of boring but it is my pipedream for the game. ;)

[Cirian.8917]

Add "foot step" and "aura" cosmetic slots to the hero panel, probably extending the "Outfits" panel to include them.

Then I'd have legendary weapons unlock their legendary effects for those slots so that you could equip them in any combination and with any weapon.

Then I'd have the gemstore offer some options for those slots too.

Basically like Path of Exile and Tera do.

[Imperadordf.2687]

Remove Revenant from the game. Although that's kinda minor given how much Anet cares about Revenant. FeelsRevMan

[Edelweiss.4261]

I'd like an elite spec that does piddly damage in exchange for exceptionally strong debuffs. The boons/conditions system makes control moves feel more like striker moves than controller moves(4e was my jam) with the break bar system. The break bar system is interesting, but, in my opinion, it is a super boring mechanic.

[MHaastrup.6978]

I would just like the game to be updated with vulkan support.

[Dayra.7405]

Disable CC on people, remove the in-fight restriction for everything but autoheal

[perilisk.1874]

> @"Hoodie.1045" said:

> I would buff core engineer. It's no secret that ArenaNet hates core engineer, but I say enough is enough! It makes no sense that the more difficult profession is weaker compared to the Holosmith which is a dumbed down version of the engineer. Before the Holosmith was made, ArenaNet looks at the statistics one day and says "Not many people play engineer. I wonder if it's because of the complexity of playing with multiple kits in order to be the most effective?". And here we are today with the Holosmith being objectively better than core engineer. The smarter and more intelligent profession is outperformed by a braindead specialization that swings his weapon like an idiot.

>

> I don't have a problem with the Holosmith being easier to play, but what I do have a problem with it is being able to achieve more than core engineer by doing less. Holosmith should be for new players, but they won't achieve the highest results. Core engineer is the most difficult profession to play, yet it sucks that the profession that requires the most skill to play in the entire game is lackluster compared to the specialization where you press one button and you go Super Saiyan Blue.

 

Engineer's in a weird place in the overall design anyway. Not only does it _not_ overlap skill types with other professions (something "unique" to engineer and revenant, another profession that doesn't quite work), but thematically it overlaps a lot with random heart "kits" and the like.

 

I mean, have you ever gone to a heart and had an NPC hand you a wand and say "hey, go reanimate corpses lying around here to fight for us" or "hey, use this to summon a bunch of clones to kill trash mobs"? But there are tons that give any character some sort of engineer kit or let them repair machinery using F. And why exactly aren't engineers in charge of siege in WvW?

 

And then there's the fact that technology differs from race to race, and racial utilities for 3/5 races are built on that flavor, but engineer doesn't really capture any of that flavor.

 

I kinda feel like they should have gone with every race being a full "profession" balanced around and intended for solo PvE, with engineering skills rolled into racial skills along with some general utility abilties (some skills could be common to all races, like res/cap signets in GW1).

 

Then they could have let each character unlock _all_ of the other 7 professions as "secondary" professions, and balance them around specific roles and group content. Since no character would be stuck with a profession (except racial professions, which would be samey and not aimed at group play), there would be less whining about profession balance, and without each profession needing to fill enough niches to at least have a viable solo build, they can have fewer skills and tighter theming and balance.

[Radiobiology.6185]

I would first completely remove the class thief from the game. Then i would completely remove stealth from the game, there was no stealth in GW1 so i dont see why it should exist in this game. Then finally i would release a new class most likely just called Assassin but there are a lot of other name options, with no perma stealth, no triple dodge or jump around screen bullshit. A class that resembles the class Assassin in gw1. A leather melee class without all the gimmicks, but much more viable in other non gimmicky areas.

 

People with thief class characters (including me) would get the choice of either having their character simply deleted, transformed into the new class (but the character would be locked and unable to be played until the class is finished.) or transformed into another random class of choice.

 

Radical? Yes. Would people cry? Yes. Would people want refunds? Yes.

 

But i truly believe in the end we would be left with a much better game experience, sure the people who love gimmicks (who i truly believe are in the absolute minority) would probably quit the game. But so many other people who already quit would return.

 

I would also look over the class healthpool in general, probably raise it across the board to encourage longer fights and less one shot. Another option would be to lower damage across the board or most likely a combination of both. Pve mobs healthpools/damage could also be lowered or raised depending on what route would be best to go.

 

And then i would focus heavily on optimizing the game, even if it means no new content for a while, the infrastructure of an mmo is so insanely important.

 

Lastly, and this is a sensitive one. I wouldnt release a single new skin in the ingame store. The business model would be completely overhauled to focus on dlc/expansions. Of course there will be new skins in these dlcs/expansions, but not a single new skin would be released for the gemstore, there are more than enough already that can be rotated. Dlcs would be smaller content released more frequently, like the living story for example. But not very expensive at all, and the expansions would be like they are now, maybe a small price decrease to compensate for living story going over to a paid model. Probably the deluxe edition of the expansion would include a season pass. This is if the decision is taken to sell the living story.

 

Another idea for the small dlcs could be mission packs that focus on things not focused on in the current story, like the development of the orders for example, or the politics of Lions Arch. Things that are not directly tied to the mainstory. A dlc could even be a playable race like Tengri. The main baseline would be that it would always be content based and not cosmetics based, you should always get good content to play through when buying a dlc.

 

Well, thats enough for now, i got kinda carried away. It was a lot more fun writing this than i expected when i started so it got kinda long i guess. :D

[Neural.1824]

There are a lot of major changes I can think of. Overhauling the crafting system so it is not integral to playing the end game, for example, and making it a much deeper system (I can't help it, my first crafting experience was Vanguard: SoH).

Overhauling the trading post and trading system to be a game on it's own, much like Eve Online. Give each major city it's own trading hub, so you can buy and sell at each hub. Limit certain crafting materials to those regions (example: chili peppers only in Ascalon). And then, yes, I'm going to say it, Remove 95% of the waypoints so traveling to those trade hubs is time consuming (thus making the precursor you want that is 5g cheaper in Black Citadel not as attractive as the other one in The Grove where you currently are).

 

All that said, those are fantasy. The one major change that I would make at this point, even considering my hatred for soul-bound and account-bound items, would be to remove "combat speed" completely from the game.

[derd.6413]

* Give ppl a "paranoia" debuff when a stealthed enemy i nearby also tell if it's nearby or if hou're about to be sniped (or some other form of counterplay to stealth)

* Give thief rifle a stealth skill

* Also give engi/rev/necro some love

* Rework racial skills into non-combat skills (preferably without to long of a cd)

* allow me to see what's going on when there's more then 5 players nearby

* improove old content

 

Yes, i'm very indesisive

[Plautze.6290]

Make engi fun to play without having to be a legendary pianist.

[Nuka Cola.8520]

I would remove skill trees completely and allow you to choose any skill you want. This would exclude special specs. For special specs, it'd stay as is. Our build variety is garbage, and its been garbage for too damn long. There's no point of having skill trees and having to take useless skills just cuz you want/need that grandmaster at the end of a certain tree line.

 

Six years, Anet. Do something.

[Goettel.4389]

Living World content that doesn't shy away from adding meta events to existing zones.

Combined with nerfing or even deactivating mount skills in core Tyria.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

I would disconnect all skills from all weapons and allow players to place then in any slot, within their profession.

 

Any number of weapon skills, any number of healing skills, any number of utility skills. One elite skill. 10 skills at max. Similar to the system that GW1 has.

[Keltan.1827]

Add a scaling system to Dungeons so people can solo them as part of the leveling experience., or they can change the difficulty do them with a friend or two, or max the difficulty and do them with their 80s and a full group.

[piitb.7635]

Add gw1 signet of capture and litter the world with collectible skills. Will really diversify builds even further.

 

Add more weapon types. Spear/lance, 2h axes, crossbows, fists, throwing weapons( think boomerang/chakrams)

[daviesforu.6291]

I'd like to see another new pvp game type, like that one in gw1 when you had to escort the giant thing through gates and stuff while 1 team defended (like gold rush in battlefield)

[Rauderi.8706]

> @"perilisk.1874" said:

> Just to daydream, what sort of deep, wide-reaching, fundamental, and/or entirely impractical change to the game's design would you make, regardless of whether it would be implemented? If it helps suspension of disbelief, feel to free imagine that you're recommending it for a reboot or a hypothetical GW3.

>

> Just to throw one out there to start: A limited "labor" resource in crafting/gathering, where labor expenditure for an action is reduced with better tools (gathering) or higher skill (crafting). Would add more thought to crafting, make refinement less pointless, create more reason for players to trade and craft, and (if the limit was character by character) add more value to alts. Characters could possibly get a labor bonus based on the number of times they have created a specific item, allowing specialization.

 

Definitely do *something* with crafting. It needs to be retooled from the ground up. In the very least, make attribute acquisition much more dynamic, so we can pick stats as we need for builds, instead of waiting for ANet to make one and shoveling it behind a Living World release.

 

Either that, or handle my other huge pet peeve: waiting. Out with 2-hour metaevent rotations or waiting ? minutes/hours for an event to start. Bind it to an NPC that starts the event chain and have it reset no more than about 5 minutes after its meta finishes.

[Mandragorin.5978]

> @"TheQuickFox.3826" said:

> I would disconnect all skills from all weapons and allow players to place then in any slot, within their profession.

>

> Any number of weapon skills, any number of healing skills, any number of utility skills. One elite skill. 10 skills at max. Similar to the system that GW1 has.

 

I don't know if everything even COULD be balanced after that. Imagine cherry picking every stealth skill or every hard CC skill in your class and loading them ALL on your bar all at once. Then we move onto pvp-wvw where you will have immortal players. Imagine the best bunker build you have ever seen....then take out those couple of skills that don't help and add even more turtle skills. No thank you. I have been playing from headstart and silently held the course through several bad decisions (many of them were later reversed thankfully) but this might irreparably kill the game.

I do like the idea you have, but with skills linked to weapons...you can balance things easier. You can have a skill slightly overpowered and it be ok because of another slightly underpowered skill on the same weapon.

 

Something I'd like to change is being able to slot an extra utility skill at the expense of giving up the elite skill on my bar.

 

Out of combat only weapon swap for classes with one weapon set.

 

Hot item bar for food and consumables

 

Build saves (preferably that can swap your gear for you, but that's not a sticking point for me).

[perilisk.1874]

I'd make Ascended equal to Exotic in stats (but with an added infusion slot) and make obtaining it a Mystic Forge recipe that uses items dropped/bought in Fractals.

 

Especially since we can't easily redistribute our stats as desired, at least the effort to obtain the desired stat distribution for your build should be minimized.

[MithranArkanere.8957]

I'd like to see some changes on core mechanics and some new mechanics:

 

* Critical strikes no longer depend on Precision and RNG. Now they depend strictly on skills, traits, upgrades and similar selectable effects, and one's ability to meet their requirements to trigger. For example:

* Some traits or sigils may cause the next weapon attack to be critical every X number of hits.

* Some traits may cause an attack done from the back always critical, or attacks done to disabled enemies, or enemies suffering from a certain condition, with a cooldown of Xs.

* Some autoattack chains may deal a critical always on the 3rd hit, or every X hits. Or every 3rd time the 3rd hit strikes. Traits may increase how often a weapon may crit.

* Stealth attacks will always have a requirement that guarantees a Critical hit. For example, Backstab would no longer havea different damage from the back, instead, the base damage would be increased a bit, and it's always critical from the back.

* Ferocity would work just as always, increasing the damage done by critical hits.

* Precision is replaced by Agility. Agility increases the speed of attacks. 1000 Agility is the base attack speed which will be 10% slower than the current attack speed. At 2000 Agility attacks would be 25% faster than now.

* Quickness is now a stacking boon, and increases Agility. At 25% stacks, the speed increases by 25%.

* Fury now increases ferocity for the next critical hit, and is lost when dealing a critical hit.

* Slow now reduces Agility.

* Warrior's Dual Wielding now gives Agility for 3s and adds 1s to all Agility stacks on self whenever an attack lands.

* For all professions, dual wielding two 1h melee weapons changes the animation of the autoattack to one in which the second attack is done with the offhand and the third attack is done with both weapons. This would be only a visual change that won't affect the combat performance of the skills.

 

---

* Introduce a new stat called Wisdom. Wisdom would increase all forms of 'indirect' damage:

* Life steal would no longer depend on power and healing power, only on wisdom for both its damage and healing.

* Retaliation would no longer scale with Power, it would scale with Wisdom instead.

* Pets, minions, any any other player-controlled AI will now always scale their damage with Wisdom (currently they either use power or ignore player stats).

* Might, Fury and other effects that can add or increase power, condition damage or any damage will now scale with Wisdom.

 

---

* Wall-hitting and Bounces:

* Skills that can force players to move away from self (push, launch, fear) will now have a damage component that triggers when enemies collide against obstacles in their trajectory, this extra damage would usually be half the damage of the hit that caused the movement. For example, if Banish would deal 404 damage on someone sent flying, they would take another 202 damage if they hit a wall.

* Launch will also make players bounce off obstacles for half the remaining distance of the launch. For example, if a skill can launch for 750 units of distance and the enemy hits a wall after flying for 250 units, they will bounce off the wall for 500/2=250 units.

 

---

* Introduce Damage Staggering.

* This effect delays damage received. Staggered damage will be done fully, but it will take longer. This effectively reduces DPS without reducing damage, but if healing can't keep up, with the staggered damage, the player will go down anyways.

* Players will have a base damage staggering effect for damage caused by other players that prevents anyone dying way too fast. On the release of this mechanic, this effect would stagger damage down to a DPS equal to 1/3 of one's health per second , but numbers would be adjusted based on how things go from that. Damage staggered by this effect is per enemy, so while it would prevent anyone from killing anyone solo in less than 3s, being outnumbered or having several enemies focus on you can still get a player killed in under 1s. This base effect only affects damage done by players to other players, it would not affect anything between NPCs and between players and NPCs, even if they are player-controlled creatures.

* Some skills that currently cause invulnerability or partial invulnerability will now stagger damage instead. Some less used defensive skills will get a damage staggering component. For example:

* "Staggers 33% of all damage taken over 10s"

* "Staggers all damage caused by conditions over 5s"

* Some effects like skills, traits and upgrades can remove staggered damage, partially or fully. For example, there could be a "Superior Sigil of Respite" that removes 20% of one's staggered damage on swap.

* Any remaining staggered damage is always removed when downed.

[MHaastrup.6978]

After thinking some more about it, I want legendary weapons that don't require a 3000 gold item to be legendary, and build templates (including gear).

Guild Wars has build templates, why can't guild wars 2?