User:Will Greyhawk/GW2 Suggestions

GW2 Suggestions
Greetings. My name is Will Greyhawk. This is my GW2 personal suggestion page, which will continue to be a work in progress. Understand that I have little knowledge on how games are developed and programed, and that my experience with MMOs begins and ends with Guild Wars. However I'm an observer if nothing else, and through observing the game and others' opinions of it I've come up with a few ideas. I do ask a little patience, as moving these thoughts from the chaos that is my mind to print in a coherent manner is no easy task.

Guilds

Lets start with the guilds, since that's part of the game's name. I, among others were a little disappointed by the guild system, how they operated and how they fit into the game. The problem with changing it is that some want to have massive, organized guilds while others just want it to be a small group of their buds. So there should be be options at the guild register on what kind of guild your creating. Nothing too complicated, just a few options to help structure your guild to suit you. This includes an idea that I had while observing the guild I'm in, which consists of an alliance functioning as one guild. This of course leads to some problems in managing the guilds and getting the guilds to work together. To fix this, instead of creating new guilds when building such an alliance, have the guild(s) split in half in an amoeba like fashion, allowing the guild leader to be able to control the new guilds.

The customization of the guilds should include adding more ranks, like a second in command (particularly necessary in the cases of the aforementioned super guilds) as well as options for the small-group-of-friends type of guild (though what those options might be I don't know, feel free to put any ideas up on the talk page).

While the Luxons and the Kurzicks are unlikely to be a major part of GW2, the guild alliances will still be a necessary and important concept that ANet would be foolish not to have in GW2. I trust that they'll leave the alliances in.

The leaders and officers are also going to need ways of managing the guild(s), particularly in when some guild drama is filling up the chat. One such way is being able to temporarily shutting down the guild or alliance chat when there's a large argument going on. This can be helpful in both preventing breaking up guilds and as a way to re-enforce the leaders' authority.

I've also heard of the suggestion that guild membership be character based instead of account based. This is a really bad idea. I just don't see what possible benefits would come from this, and the conflicts of interest that would come from being a member of more than one guild would be significant.

ADDED:Some new ideas that I can't be bothered to integrate into the original paragraphs. Ever been in an alliance and needed to see who was on in one of the other guilds? You can visit the Halls of ally guilds on the alliance tab, why not include a feature for looking at other guilds rosters on the same tab? Just include a button for ally rosters next to the visit hall button. You can't tell me that it would be hard to program.

Guild Halls

First off, I've read more then one suggestion about customizing guild halls, and the obvious problem with this is how unbalanced they could be, as well as the technical issues. It was a comment made by Elven Chaos that gave me an idea on how to have custom halls that are still balanced. Basically the guild hall will be made into two parts; one area that will have a custom appearance, and the area that GvG will take place. The custom section will be the guild's inner keep, and is inaccessible in a GvG match. While as an outpost the two sections will be function as one area.

I haven't figured out how the customizing of the guild hall should work beyond another idea. The leader would get to choose a statue to put in the middle of the inner hall, say about the size of the Gods statues that are in the rez shrines in Cantha and Elona. There would be a variety of choices of what the statue would be, dragons (western or eastern style), one of the heroes or henchmen from GW1, a giant sword sticking in the ground, or perhaps something of more abstract nature. Also the appearance of the statue (as in what it looks like its made of) could range from granite, to gold, to obsidian, to some kind of glowing crystal. The statue would come with a plaque at its foot (this is probably the most important part of this feature), similar to the plaques at the foot of one of the gods statues, or the ones in Shing Jea. The leader would write about the guild, whats its purpose is, maybe a list of rules, etc.

On another idea I've seen more than once is allowing a characters weapons be visible in an outpost. The problem with this is that it would greatly increase load times. So I say, allow characters weapons to be visible in the guild hall, which tend not to be full enough to cause much of a problem.

It also be great if part of the guild hall was an indoor area (it is call a guild hall after all), particularly the inner area that I mentioned.

ADDED: At Cabals request, I will attempt to clarify on the customizing of the Guild Halls. I will not be integrating the section into the original one, as I have other things I need to do and that simply would be too time consuming. The way I see it, you choose a guild hall with a certain theme (canthan, charr, Asuran, etc.) and you get two areas, the GVG area which you cannot alter, and the inner hall which you can in small ways. Let me put it this way, the house is already built, you just get to decide where the furniture is going to go. Ideally you'd get a couple different choses of what inner hall you'd get to attach to the gvg area, and this would be an actual building your characters could go into. Understand that while there are no gvg matches going on these two sections function as one. As to how the custom process will occur still needs to be worked out in my head. If you can think of a good way, feel free to tell me on the talk page.

Races

I'm going to be brief with this one. The racial traits that ANet has mentioned must be balanced. A human Warrior must be just as good as a Norn one or a Charr one. If we are forced to choose between function and appearance of our characters, GW2 is going to be a lot less successful. And no boring racial traits for the humans, like being well rounded in all areas.

Professions

I'm not very good at coming up with new or original professions, nor am I interested in doing so. I'm just going to ask that all ten of the GW1 professions make it over to GW2, in one fashion or another. They will have to be reconfigured some to allow for better balance, particularly considering the differences of game play that is supposed to be in GW2. Same goes for any other profession that might be added.

Environment

One of the things the disappointed me about Guild Wars was that you couldn't go inside any of the buildings. Nightfall and EotN did come close to having indoor areas, so GW2 needs to take the next step (maybe the step after that, too). I'd like to be able to go up into the towers of a castle, and explore its corridors and rooms. I'd like to be able to peek inside a villagers hut. I'm not asking that every single structure be accessible, just enough of them to allow for greater immersion.

I'd also like to see more woodland areas. Tyria seems to be a mostly tropical/hot weather continent, so something to replace Ascalon and the Charr Homelands would be great. As a way of explaining this, ANet could say that the Ascalon refugees have over generations turn their area of Kryta into a miniature Ascalon. Not that I have a problem with any of the other environs, I just really liked the woodlands of Ascalon and the Charr lands.

I've heard of the concept of having the game simulate morning, afternoon, and night in the persistent areas. I think that would be awesome, and I'm not alone in thinking so. If this were implemented, it be preferable if it were on a 6 hour cycle, so we'd be able to experience most of the full cycle irregardless of what time we play.

Faction

Like I said already, the Luxons and the Kurzicks are unlikely to be a major part of GW2. How ever, a faction system based off the five races of Tyria would fill this role well. Particularly a dynamic system where the players collectively decided which race would be swore enemies, and which ones would work together for a time (and then turn on each other). More on this later.

Emotes/Controls

What I'd like to see with the emotes is the ability to chain them together. For example, say you could type: /ponder-agree-cough, and your character would do each one of those emotes in order without pauses in-between. The people who make those GW videos (machinima) would find this to be quite useful.

ADDED: I have recently attempted to make my own video, and this would have been REALLY useful.

Also, some new emotes that would control other aspects of your character.

/lookup or /up

/lookdown or /down (not the same as /bowhead)

/lookleft or /left

/lookright or /right

/shrug

/sarcastic (character does the fingers quotation marks thing or rolls eyes, etc.)

/stern (character glares ahead with arms crossing chest or fists on hips)

/greed or /plotting (rubs palms together or a similar gesture(will probably need a better name, too))

Also, better /taunt emotes. 'Cause the ones we have in the game right now are lame. The first few on my list might not seem interesting, but I noticed that in the EotN cutscenes that Ogden and Vekk could look up at the Eye, but the human characters could only stare ahead. Plus this would help out the aforementioned GW video makers.

I've seen some suggestions of having emotes that allow characters to interact with each other, like handshakes, hugging, or kissing. I'd agree to such a thing only if I'm allowed to target and kill any character that goes up and starts hugging mine. 'Cause you know that there will be some abuse of a /hug or /kiss emote.

Levels

To be honest I'm still sitting on the fence about GW2's higher levels. Anet hasn't released much information about this, so its hard to make an opinion. I do not have any desire to play a massive grind fest, though. I suppose I'll leave it at that for now.

Character

I personally liked the character creation system that was used in GW1, even if some of the options provided by the system left something to be desired. However, it was imperfect, and did lead to 'clones' populating much of the game. Also, there will be five races instead of the one, and two of those races aren't even remotely human looking. Now, I've recently seen a few YouTube videos that showed the character creation process of the NCSoft game 'Aion', and I was impressed by what I saw (and impressing me isn't all that easy). I'm not asking that GW2 use that exact same system, Aion's is rather complicated, but perhaps something in between GW1 and Aion's systems.

On a similar note, I've seen several suggestions regarding a 'hairdresser'. First off, I do not like the term 'hairdresser'. I do, however, like the basic idea behind it. Hair can grow, be cut, re-styled, and even dyed. Adding an NPC that would allow the changing of hairstyles after character creation would be welcomed by all. And it would allow for another gold sink.

Mapping and Mounts

I would honestly reconsider my intentions of getting Guild Wars 2 if there wasn't at least some kind of ability to map travel to other places. I do not want to have to walk across the entire map to get some where. Others say that map travel would ruin a persistent world. I strongly disagree, not having map travel would turn players off a whole lot faster. Though with the Asuran gates, which have been mentioned in the Movement of the World, this really doesn't seem to be much of an issue.

As for mounts, I'd prefer GW's rent a mount concept, already seen with the Junundu wurms and the Siege Devourers.

Art and Armor

In Guild Wars, as I'm sure you may have noticed, one is only allowed to see they're own characters' armor at the highest specs. When you look at the armor of someone else, its not as detailed as your own. This is to allow for quicker and better loading times, which is fine. Still, the option to be able to see others at full specs, if your computer can handle it, would be need to be in GW2. Unlike the concept of having weapons in outposts, this would effect ones own load times, not everyone elses.

Also, please fix the dyeing system. Mixing armor sets doesn't work properly if one piece dyes a different shade than another using the same dye combo. Very frustrating.

Added: I'd enjoy having accessories that can be added to our characters armor, such as scabbards or quivers, that would not have an bonuses or stats. Strictly for ascetics. It'd be great if my ranger could carry around one of those quivers that hangs to the side. Not sure what some of the other professions could use (I am assuming, from lack of other info, that GW2 will have the same professions)

Pets

I was going to put up something about each type of pet having a different inherent bonus, but after some thought i decided it was a bad idea. However I do support the concept of being able to keep more than one pet. Understand that I don't mean that one should be able to use more than one pet at a time, just be able to choose which one to use, and not have to give one up when you want to get another one. Kinda like how you have to choose which skills to use.

Interaction

GW2 really needs to allow characters to interact with the environs. The jumping and swimming and such is a good start, well more than a start I guess. Still, being able to interact with objects and such would add more flavor to the game.