You are the lead designer of GW2. What would be your next step?

[Lotus Victoria]

Hello, champions of Tyria. Lotus reporting for duty with another thread!

So, we all know the current state of GW2. Most of us aren't even playing the game anymore, which is quite bad!

Well, let's make a little game, then. You are now the lead designer of GW2. Your decisions will reflect on the game.

What would you do to make the game more interesting for the players?

Decide time!

See you soon!

[Jibjub]

FIRST on my list would be a complete class overhaul. I personally would take things back to a more Holy Trinity direction -- though i could be convinced otherwise if I saw that a majority of the players, especially those leaving, really love the every man for himself design. I would make each class more unique and distinct. I would /attempt/ to make more build diversity and player choice. I would add WAY more abilities to choose from within a weapon set (so an axe, for example, will have 3 choices for every slot, 1 through 5).

Personally, I would allow for guild warfare open world pvp (ideally people could only be in one guild again). If you are at war with other guilds, you can engage in pvp. This would open way for guild alliances as well ... ideally this would create faction game play.

Open world housing would be on the list. Player created towns.

Removing the load screens would be important ... and evolving the map to be more open as a result.

WvW would be either completely overhauled or scrapped. I don't think it's a very good concept.

Player run speed would be increased. Everything moves very very slowly.

I'd go back in time and launch with a $5/mo subscription and put way less BS in the cash shop.

I would experiment with developer-controlled world bosses (maybe they are spawned by a huge team effort).



Basically ... I would make the game as sand-boxy as possible. More exploration. More class choices/diversity. Maybe naval mechanics.

[Deleted]

WvW would be either completely overhauled or scrapped. I don't think it's a very good concept.


I'd go back in time and launch with a $5/mo subscription and put way less BS in the cash shop.

There are people who only enjoy playing WvW...

As for the cash shop I was one of the people raging against it, nowadays I don't care, it's not that bad.


I would bring:

Alliance Battles and FA/JQ type of matches for GW2.
Monthly balance for pvp.
Easier acquisition of ascended gear.
More ways to get weapon skins, no more "you can only get this weapon by play this specific part of game" crap.
Scrap raids, just because they've wasted so much time with them, that being the reason I left the game.

[Jibjub]

There are people who only enjoy playing WvW...

As for the cash shop I was one of the people raging against it, nowadays I don't care, it's not that bad.


I would bring:

Alliance Battles and FA/JQ type of matches for GW2.
Monthly balance for pvp.
Easier acquisition of ascended gear.
More ways to get weapon skins, no more "you can only get this weapon by play this specific part of game" crap.
Scrap raids, just because they've wasted so much time with them, that being the reason I left the game.

I would think hard about scrapping abilities tied to weapons (and I know a lot of abilities are based on the weapon, like war horns ... but that's just flavor and can be changed easily). It goes against the whole "look how you want to look, play how you want to play" motto.

[BannedForViews]

I would make it Guild Wars 1 with better graphics.

[thilicen]

Release some freaking content that's not just half a raid per 5 months.

[Paula Deen]

Release Content.
Stop being SJW Cancer and release Cantha rather than do nothing and call the whole continent problematic.
Update Guild Wars 1.
Fix the Support Team for the whole company.
Update Guild Wars 1.
Kill Guild Wars 2.
Update Guilds Wars 1.

[Deleted]

I would think hard about scrapping abilities tied to weapons (and I know a lot of abilities are based on the weapon, like war horns ... but that's just flavor and can be changed easily). It goes against the whole "look how you want to look, play how you want to play" motto.

That would be cool.

I would make it Guild Wars 1 with better graphics.

Update Guild Wars 1.
Fix the Support Team for the whole company.
Update Guild Wars 1.
Kill Guild Wars 2.
Update Guilds Wars 1.

Oh God, yes please!

[Fencers]

Would overhaul most of the game; Dual classes, get rid of the elite classes thing. Take out most of the platforming elements. Overhaul the entire gear system. UI would be scrapped totally- easily the worst UI I have ever seen in a major western MMO. No abilities linked to weapons, ability to place skills anywhere on the hotbar.

Et cetera.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Rename the franchise since it's kinda not about Guild Wars.

Redo classes, don't make your skills dependent on the type of weapon. Update world in small updates. That's all I have right now. Cause I cannot think

[Andosup]

Gonna be a contrast to some of the others (I like jps, the ui (though I use ICM to clean it up), skills attached to weapons and no sub) but I'll throw in my opinions on it.

• Redo the personal story to be less rushed and instead made using the new dialogue functionality over the old fullscreen thing. That so many people don't like the story stops new players from getting invested in the guild wars lore and going into the living world chapters. Add more focus on the orders. Whispers could have something cool using the stealth mechanics from Caithe's chapter in living world season 2.
  
  
• Make more elite specializations fast so it's more like those old games were for example thief can progress into assassin or bard so as to make the mentality of the new ones trumping the base profession logical.
  
  
• Maybe give up on halfassing the healing and tanking thing. People area already making healing or tanking builds. Why not just give in and make elite specs with it.
  
  
• Give the wvw borderlands a pause and test something inspired by the stronghold in a 3 vs 3 lane wvw map. Having three borderlands and the Eb spreads people around a bit too much. Whichever I'm on always has the outnumbered boon (and I'm on Tarnished Coast). Door knocking simulator version 2.
  
  
• Add a 'this is how a break bar' works tutorial somewhere so I don't have to explain or always use basilisk venomshare to get shit done.
  
  
• WEATHER EFFECTS AND DARKER NIGHTS. Work with how the game has been said to be immersive and fun to explore.
  
  
• Fix the 'sound effects' volume levels so foot steps are separate and mean I don't have to be deafened by the projectile sound of incinerator.
  
  
• Move the collections tab out of achievements into it's own panel. They can still have achievements attached, but there's far too much 'quest like' content hidden away in a confusing ui functionality. Rename it something pretentious like 'life quests', that initiates a "hang on is collecting this stuff something I can do like game goals or legendary weapon quests in wow?" line of thought.

I could probably go on for a while but I'd end up going into personal nitpicks like clipping on asura. As for direction to take the game, I'm not sure. I'd like stuff going into more guild wars 1 lore rather than making up stuff and locations exclusively for gw2.

[Kazgrel]

- Make the elite specs baseline built into their respective classes, where upon completing a quest line (be it the main story or whatever) for the respective expansion, that baseline package becomes available on top of the normal trait lines we already have. Yes, it sounds a bit redundant, but we'll essentially have this anyway once another elite spec becomes available for each class. Having the specs as simply another trait line, with one of your three pretty much guaranteed to be an elite spec...yawn.

- Disagree with the "make the game holy trinity" based. I would rather see raids scrapped and retain the more ARPG thematics to the classes instead of being holy trinity based MMO # 13487346. "But you're playing FF14, how can you hate on the trinity so much?" Because I want to see developers work and think outside the box a bit. I loved being able to grab 3-4 of my friends and run dungeons, no matter what.

- I'd like to see an seamless open world, a la WoW, Wildstar, etc. That would be something for GW3, unless they pull off an expansion akin to FF14's A Realm Reborn, where, say, Primordus emerges and blows up Tyria more or less completely. Note: If they went about it in that exact way, I would /facepalm so hard my head would probably explode, since it would be aping what's done in FF14 and WoW waaaaaay too closely.

- The whole "weapons determine your skills" and weapon swap systems are fine, imo. Hell, instead of going the elite spec route, just grant the base classes new weapon skills (aka Elementalists with main hand sword, as I thought we would get as Tempest). Furthermore, this could delink the elite specs from requiring certain weapons (although this is already being done kinda-sorta). Yes, this area needs work, but I'd rather see them stick to this design philosophy and expand on it, rather than just making weapons nothing more than skins.

- Screw raids; would rather see more dungeons done. This game's combat systems (for pve at least) seem better suited for 4-5 people in a group. I'm still baffled at how they decided to pretty much abandon dungeon designing, even when they have a system in place that effectively lets them conjure up dungeons for whatever reason (aka Fractals) to provide people something new to run.

- More fun, less grind: There's a metric fucking ton of grind-a-thon content in this game that adding more such content (at this point) is overkill city. If the game reaches a point a couple years from now where people have literally "done everything", then sure, toss 'em a bone. New batch of legendaries every other expansion is fine. Living Story is a decent example; they should be churning stuff out like this every patch, even if they have to come up with some unrelated side stories, or go off on a comedic route with such a side story (think Hildibrand quests from FF14).

Couple of disclaimers: I haven't played since 2-3 weeks after HoT release, so I haven't even touched the raids in this game; furthermore, I haven't kept up with news/updates on it as zealously as I did a year ago.

[AngryCoco]

I just want them to release another expansion, but this time, give us 10 or 20 levels with plenty of zones that will function as both leveling and endgame. I didn't enjoy the HoT zones anywhere near how I loved the base game zones, revisited a bunch to fully complete them and had a ton of fun.

[Deleted]

I haven't played for a long time but i've been following the updates and haven't got a single good update i cared about. All i see is "new useless item on cash shop!".

So my changes:

1. Significantly tone down on the farm. Waaaaay too much farm being done everywhere. I feel like there's no point in trying to get anything because of the insane farm. Let people pay to speed up the farm without affecting the economy.

2. Remove the Mystic Forge. Adjust crafting accordingly. Mystic forge can only be used by using 3rd party guides, you can't expect players to toss items into it at a guess. It's just bad/lazy design.

3. Go back and completely rebalance story quests where needed. The pacing is off, some boss fights are a total let down and a joke. Encompass all vanilla story and seasons into a continuous story available to everyone who purchased the game and the relevant expansion. Yes, this includes season 1.

4. Tone the f down on the store-gated functionality. Inventory slots for real money are a total turnoff.

5. Dynamic events offer a great oportunity to have an engaging world but they all feel flat without any impact. Have single event chains that span between zones, lock down zones if the events overwhelm the players (if centaurs take out the entire Queensdale then the city is sieged and the way will be blocked until players break the siege). Gate loot and cosmetics behind these events, have certain conveniences completely locked behind events - if the Krytan farms are overrun by bandits or centaurs then certain crafting materials will not be available AT ALL until players go in and get the farms up and running again. Make the entire economy revolve around maintaing the lands against dangers. However, do let players permanently solve a problem if it makes sense to the story.

6. Multi-classing. I always disliked the fact that i have to make a whole new character just to use a differnt weapon or armor. Let my character learn everything eventually, Final Fantasy 14 does this well.

[Nihilist74]

Make gw2 more like wow because it sucks compared to wow.

[Auxora]

Sadly although GW2 was a really, really, good game there were changes in the first 6-9 months of GW2 that were all for the worse. Specifically in the area of WvW which was really the highlight of the game. I spent countless hours in GW2 WvW battlegrounds early on. But the game breaking invisible mass of players bug took WAY too long to fix (and even then wasn't really fixed), and then the changes to WvW killed the strategy and fun of it. We had seige weapons that mattered, good map layouts, etc. and then it was all changed in ways that killed the fun and drove most players away. There were a few small items that needed improved or fixed, but instead they kind of took a hammer to it and it simply didn't work.

If they could revert back to that early WvW style, but incorporating the good changes and fixes since then that would be a huge first step. Likewise, for PVE class balance for end-game has been badly needed for a long time, and I wanted to see more of a trinity since day 1.

All that said, I think it's probably way too late anyway. The time for these changes was a couple of years ago at latest. A mmo like GW2 that's been around quite a while might make changes and pull a few players back in, but nothing that's going to return it to the levels of the early days a few years ago when servers were packed and it looked like a real wow equal, or maybe even better.

[Arewn]

Lots of small tweaks that aren't worth listing off.
The main two would be:
Return to the old living story format of frequent updates, but change it to once a month instead of once every 2 weeks.
Hire new story writing staff. Or at least a few people in there need to be replaced.

Might also try adding an additional WvW mode as a trial. Old WoW alterac valley style. Single map, limited number of players, more permanence to map objectives, and a definitive goal (capture your way to the enemies main base, then take out their leader. Instead of points. Though points would probably play some other role).
And something needs to be done about elite specs. The idea only works if you have several elite specs to chose from, and we don't. At the very least they should make the baseline class into an "elite spec" of its own.

[Deleted]

Just remembered another one.

- Either remove wings from game or put an option to no display them.

[PACOX]

Just remembered another one.

- Either remove wings from game or put an option to no display them.

You mean back pieces? You can hide those.

[Deleted]

I would make it Guild Wars 1 with better graphics.

Release Content.
Update Guild Wars 1.
Fix the Support Team for the whole company.
Update Guild Wars 1.
Kill Guild Wars 2.
Update Guilds Wars 1.

Late quote, but this, so much f***ing this.

Sadly although GW2 was a really, really, good game there were changes in the first 6-9 months of GW2 that were all for the worse.

No, it was/isn't a good game, not compared to it's predecessor, from my point of view anyway.

The guild I was in migrated over to gw2 when it released, so did all the other guilds in our alliance ~ 250-300 people total.

Everyone pretty much quit playing after two months, they'll sporadically play a week or so nowadays before disappearing again. Sure, we got older and have other stuff to handle, but that's still a significant change in player opinion of the game.