User:NuclearVII/Essays/Gw2 Suggestions/Cool Suggestions

Isometric camera
Would be cool. No, scratch that. Isometric Camera would be awesome. Anyone remember spellforce? That was awesome. So was diablo. They all used isometric camera to make the most out of their players. That kind of a camera makes it super easy to be aware of the battlefield and helps develop a critical gaming skill. DOTA is awesome precisely because of the camera angle.

Profession, skill caps, etc
Now, how about we make every player take only two stances maximum? Only, say, three attack skills, only 5 spells, only three of which can be hexes. Only 3 of the same profession is allowed in the same party. Only one of which can be a paragon. This does sound odd and may make a game of 8 skills and 8 characters inflexible, but with the gigantic amount of skills present in GW this actually may make for a nice balance mechanism. Plus, no more paragays or sfways or iways. Forced balance, if you will. Certainly not a true subsitute, but a nice alternative to imbalance.

Some people may argue (correctly) that this goes against the spirit of GW. Well, okay, yeah, it does. But so does stacking. 6 SF eles working in tandem isn't something I looked forward to when I picked up my copy of GW.

And it's a working system. Look at, say, WH40K tabletop. Now, it's not exactly a paralel comparison, but in 40k you have something called a force org chart, which means you have to take at least 2 two 'troop' choices (which are cheap and low quality, but necessary for scoring and winning) and 1 HQ choice (powerful hero commander thingy). Your army can't include 6 powerful death-dealing monster units, because the chart limits you to three 'elite' choices, which are always highly valuable. Some army lists have further limits placed in them, again for example, a necron elite called the Pariah is basically the most powerful single infantry in the game - both at range and in melee, but you are limited to only a single unit of pariahs - as much as you may have wanted to grab 3 of them, you can't, because that would make the game explode. You can't build working gimmicks, Any build you go for has to be balanced. This takes very little out of the fun that is Warhammer. It adds a lot, though, for balance and fair games.

Just food for thought. Think about it.

Splash damage and AoE limitations
Warcraft 3 does this. Most of the AOE spells in WC3 and in throne can't hit more than a certain number of units. so, for example, I land a Dark Swarm on 30 ghouls, only 10 of them get damaged, an evenly so. Some spells distribute a maximum amount damage to all the characters in the the AoE - to avoid the instant oblitrations in tight points, and so on. This might actually work for GW because some of the fiercest PvP goes in very tight enviorments - HA especially. It sucks to get stuck under a powerful nuke and be able to do nothing about it - this might help the "nuking 8 fishes in a barrel" syndrome that is a common occurance in modern HA.

Another mechanic I'm longing for is the Splash damage from AoE spells. Starcraft is a prime example why this is so damn important. Terran Siege tanks blast themselves to bits when rushed, so they have a built in counter to make up for their deathly power. Ditto for the terran nuke, you can't simply drop 25 kilotons of firepower on your team and walk away. This might make for more intelligent uses for AoE spells like searing.

No titles, and if titles, make them visible to the player only
I don't like titles. They make for grinding. That's bad. I think the same problem goes for achievements for all the new Live-supporting games. Playing a video game is evolving from having a good time to "working at a second job to display statistics to boost one's ego".

You may not be able to stop this. But you can resist it. You can lose points from a lot of reviewers and more casual oriented people, but the hardcore fans and smart reviewers will thank you in the long run. Nobody needs to know how many hours they spent playing a game, only if they had fun or not. Those that do won't be missed.