User:Kite/GW2 Suggestions

Ok, this is a list of suggestions that I have thought up of. I doubt many, if any of them will be useful to the developers, but whatever. If anyone wishes to comment on any of these, please feel free to visit the discussion page(but please, be polite).

All of this is opinion, and should be treated as such. Also, most of this could also be applied to GW1, though that isn't really my intent.

Level Cap
I think GW2 ought to have an infinite level cap. In my opinion, every player should start with a set amount of health, and a set amount of energy, never gaining or losing either by leveling. You would still gain or lose max. health by runes and weapons, however. Every player in PvP would be treated completely equally -- no one would have an upper hand, except by playing-skill and skillbar-skills.

In PvE, you might, for example, have +5 armor for each level a monster is below you, and -5 for each level one is above you. The same would apply to the monsters as well -- they'd gain an armor bonus for being above your level, and they'd lose armor for being below your level.

Also, I think that there ought to be some expensive weapon skins which would require rather high character levels to equip. Otherwise, it would be impossible to tell someone's level, except for their armor(and the armors would be pretty evenly spread from level 30-infinite level). This could help lower the rank discrimination issue, because by doing so, you would risk leaving out skilled players who simply don't have money for the skins.

Skill Quantity
Each profession ought to have a limited number of skills; a possibility would be to limit to about 20 skills per attribute(for each profession having five attributes), with 4 of them being elite. Similarly, a four-attribute profession would have 25 skills, with 5 in each attribute being elite. In either system, these skills would more accurately reflect the goals and strengths of the profession/attribute, and not stretch into doing everything at once.

Perhaps also having some race-specific skills as well would be interesting. Try to keep them low in quantity, high in quality, though.

Blocking Skills
In my opinion, blocking(or evading) skills should be kept to only active skills and few passive skills. Only Warriors and Rangers would have them -- Warrior blocks would be one-shot things like Shield Bash(and usually requiring a shield); on the other hand, Rangers would have blocking stances which would be short duration, and less % chance than they have in GW1. No other profession would be able to block without accessing Warrior or Ranger skills.

Account-Shared Skills
Except for Elite skills, or their GW2 equivalent, I think skills ought to be shared across one's account. So, if you had unlocked a non-elite skill on one character, it would be usable on any character.

Weapons
Most melee weapons ought to have one handed and two handed variants(see the warrior section). Short swords and other one-handed items ought to be dual-wieldable(see the ranger section).

Scythes
Scythes would be considered two-handed "axes", and would be significantly less overpowered than they are currently.

Spears
Spears would be melee-range and would be two-handed. They would use the Swordsmanship Attribute and skills(which would be more of bladed-weapon -- similar to how Oblivion turned axes into Blunt weapons). The GW1 throwing spears might be included as Javelins (Ranger item, requiring Marksmanship -- I don't think the word "Marksmanship" has any real-world connotation with the bow in particular).

Daggers
Daggers would be replaced with dual wielding short swords(see Ranger, below). This would also give the advantage that one could go and also wield an axe in one hand instead of two nearly identical daggers.

On the topic of Mounts
In my opinion, if included mounts ought to be restricted to the Ranger class(Beast Mastery), and ought to be battle-critters(not just a free ride) and temporary. Perhaps the use of a "Subdue Beast" skill of some sort to charm the massive mounts, after which you'd be able to ride and fight(snipe?) atop them, similar to the Siege Devourer or the Stone Summit Beastmasters. However, when atop these, you could be shot off with a bow or another ranged weapon if you took a solid hit. However, you might be well protected against melee attackers, as they can could only attack the mount(if it's large enough) or only your feet. However, if the mount were killed, you would have to find a new one.

Pets
While Mounts would be "mortal" -- they wouldn't be resurrectable -- Pets would make be resurrectable similar to GW1's system. However, pets wouldn't be ridable, and they wouldn't survive quite as well as the mounts.

Professions
This section assumes that the professions would be similar to the GW1 professions. Not necessarily guaranteed, but whatever.

Warrior
The Warrior, in my opinion, ought to be the sort of heavy-weapons guy. He would wield the two-handed weapons, which would have rather severe speed issues compared to their one-handed counterparts. This would be counteracted by the Strength attribute -- Strength would increase the attack speed of two handed weapons so that they would actually have a reasonable speed. They'd never be quite as fast as one-handed weapons, but they'd still be much faster than without the extra points in Strength.

The Warrior would also have the choice to use a shield, if wielding a one-handed weapon. Using a shield, a Warrior would have the capability to use one-shot block skills similar to Shield Bash.

Ranger
As the Warrior is the heavy-weapons guy, the Ranger would fill in as a ranged- and light-weapons specialist. This expertise(haha--get it?) at light weaponry would grant the Ranger the capability to dual-wield one-handed weapons. When dual-wielding, attack skills would activate with less time in-between, and you'd be able to use two different attack types(with requirements met, of course) -- however, due to this speed increase, the skills would cost much more energy -- which would need to be reduced with Expertise(like in GW1), if you really wanted to actually get your Eviscerate-Final Thrust pwnage off the ground (now that I think of it, both of those skills cost adrenaline -- well, I think you get my point).

As far as ranged weapons are concerned, all ranged weapons would be either two-handed or excluded from dual-wielding with melee weapons. Primarily, this is so that you don't have weird attack-range issues. Other than that, they'd work much in the same way as GW1.

Armor styles would not simply look as if you lived in a tree all your life -- as the assassin is absorbed into this, in many ways, assassin-esque armor would also be available.

Also, Beast Mastery would be super-charged(see On the topic of Mounts, above).

Monk
As far as weapons are concerned, monks might wield staves, as in GW1, but they would have melee-range and Staff mastery skills for attacking with them(think Bo-staves and martial arts).

Necromancer
Necromancers, on the other hand, would wield Truncheons and other brutal weapons of torture-ness. They might have skills from Blood Magic to do attacks.


 * Seriously, melee-range weapons for mages might simply be a terrible idea. I understand that.

Mesmer
I, personally, think the mesmer system needs a real serious rework to fit with GW2's solo player goals. Thus, I will simply let the developers think up their own ideas -- not like they would listen to any of these, anyway.

Elementalist
The Elementalist was a great and well-designed class in GW1, in my opinion(the others are too, but not exactly to this degree). Thus, the designers should keep this much the same, I think. The magic arts could use fancy names, though.

Assassin, Ritualist, Paragon, Dervish
Really -- in my opinion, these classes are unnecessary, and would not have been included if they could have imbued the skills into the core classes without breaking them. Assassin works easily lore-wise as a ranger(except for Shadow Steps, which might work in a new Mesmer class); Ritualist is a crazy combo of Necromancer and Monk; Paragon is really a shiny warrior in a skirt; and Dervish -- well, dervish's scythe skills could easily be Warrior's, and their Mysticism is really a monk's area. Even the definition of Dervish is too close to "monk" in so many ways. For these reasons, the four campaign-specific professions are rather unnecessary.

Enemy Spawning
As GW2 is going to be persistent, I think a good way to spawn the enemies will be very important. I personally recommend a method that doesn't cause enemies to pop up out of no-where. Perhaps having them drop out of trees, or climb up out of the earth, or bud from existing enemies(Weird, I know, but that's what a real Hydra does. >.<), or any number of things. More civilized foes might even have reinforcements being called in by ship or airship -- if those are possible in GW2.

Bosses
In Guild Wars, a lot of the bosses are rather boring. They're not much of a threat, generally. Thus, here are a few ideas which I would think would make bosses a bit more interesting:
 * Fewer bosses. Simply put, don't make a boss for the sake of a boss. Instead, perhaps create a class for named foes(similar to the difference between an officer and a guild leader), who wouldn't necessarily be bosses, but from which you could cap elite skills and get green items. (and laugh at joke names =P )
 * Reasons to fight them(Lore, not Loot). Yeah, Orosen and the Jade Brotherhood gang may be a bad thing, but he hardly qualifies as an epic struggle over the fate of a town/nation/region/world.
 * Generally, bosses should be far more powerful than the average foe in that area. Currently, they're only slightly more powerful (usually). After this, a chest would appear and give everyone involved in the fight an uber-item valued based on their involvement in the fight(assuming they aren't farming the boss) Due to this, bosses would probably be a more party-based experience, or you would fight with whoever was nearby at the time. Solo players would more likely fight the named foes.
 * Simply put, bosses should be interesting. For example(a terrible example, probably), a necromancer boss might have a monster-skill hex which would gradually weaken the player, and would (after 20 seconds, if not removed) kill the player that was hexed and would raise a very dangerous minion from them immediately. In essence, animating flesh that was already animated (I told you it was a poor example). But I think you get the point.

Armor (a general point)
This is really just a personal thing, but I would like to see all of the professions having modest armor available easily for female characters. I found it incredibly hard to get a modest set for my female Elementalist(I ended up combining two sets, which ended up pretty well). I'm not saying there should be no Druid 15k's in GW2; I just would like an alternative.

This may be a bigger point on the Norn characters, since they seem to take pride in exposing as much skin to the icy chillness of the Shiverpeaks as possible.