ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions/Don't repeat these mistakes

Consumables (Discussion)
Get rid of powerful consumables.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * can make the game too easy
 * a money/salvage sink for rich characters
 * Why it may not work out

Mechanical rewards for grind (Discussion)
Don't provide mechanical rewards for heavy grind.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * Rewards for grinding only make sense for games that are selling time. More Time Spent = More Revenue. Guild Wars has a different business model, and a chance to stand out from other MMOs.


 * Why it may not work out
 * While a majority of GW1 players dislikes grind, a majority of the greater CRPG market favours grind games.

Overpowered PvE skills (Discussion)
PvE-only skills should be comparable in power to regular skills.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * Overpowered skills reduce build diversity.
 * Overpwered skills reduce the challenge.
 * Overpowered skills turns skill tests into grind.


 * Why it may not work out

Unlimited ammo (Discussion)
Unlimited ammo is unrealistic. Ammo should be limited.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * Opens up aspects for rangers: beastmasters wouldn't have to worry about it as much, so players might consider being a beastmaster instead.
 * Allows a change to the ranger's style: able to inflict more damage than now per shot, but a finite supply?
 * Different ammo types, such as arrows that poison?
 * Dmg based on weapon and arrows.


 * Why it may not work out
 * Having to buy ammo would be unfair to ranged attackers unless other classes have similar costs.
 * The possibility of running out of ammo would make ranged attackers less reliable.
 * The need to carry ammo would decrease ranged attackers' inventory space.
 * Magic can justify returning projectiles.
 * Think of PvP... genius, oh i'm gonna kill him! D@M... i got no arrows...
 * Unnessarily tedious micromanagement
 * lol "unrealistic" a meteor shower summoned by a giant humaniod cat is un "realistic". Guild Wars is a different world if the devs say people have unlimited ammo then guess what... they do
 * It'd turn GuildWars into other similar games that have an ammo reserve required to do something, or attack something.

Unremovable buffs (Discussion)
Avoid unremovable buffs such as weapon spells.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * Some claim it is the only way to balance them.


 * Why it may not work out
 * Unremovable buffs are fine as long as they're balanced properly, no one complains about Preparations being overpowered.
 * Doesn't take a genius to balance them.
 * Makes balance harder by reducing options.

Overpowered weapons (Discussion)
Avoid overpowered weapons such as GW1's scythes.


 * Why this is a good idea


 * Why it may not work out
 * Any profession can use any weapon, provided their secondary profession relates to said weapon, and attributes are distributed properly.

Inscriptions (Discussion)
Inscriptions make it easier for players to get the weapons, they should be removed, at least from rare skin weapons.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * High trade prices are good for sellers.


 * Why it may not work out
 * High trade prices are bad for buyers.
 * Promotes grind to get wanted and even required weapons.

Spears (Discussion)
Both melee and ranged spears should be available.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * More realistic.


 * Why it may not work out

Team dependance: reliance on other players (Discussion)
Guild Wars 1 has too much team dependance. Elitism, leechers and leavers are annoying. No quest or mission in PvE should require more than one actual human player.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * Less elitism.
 * No time wasted finding a team.
 * Customize the game for the individual.
 * Some people don't have time to find a team.
 * Being social in an MMO is great in theory. In practice, forcing players to "socialize or die" means more arguing and more waiting around.
 * Losing due to another player leaving or disconnecting can be frustrating.


 * Why it may not work out
 * Online Mass multiplayer game.
 * Playing with other people promotes social skills.

Team dependance: reliance on parties (Discussion)
Guild Wars 1 has too much team dependance. Elitism, leechers and leavers are annoying, and AI is often inadequate. No quest or mission in PvE should require more than one party member. Monsters in instanced areas could scale with party size.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * Less elitism.
 * No more dependence on healers.
 * No time wasted finding a team.
 * Customize the game for the individual.
 * Less balancing issues, since there would be no healer profession.
 * Some people don't have time to find a team, but henchmen are inadequate for a mission.
 * Using Henchman amounts to letting the game play itself while the actual player contributes relatively little.
 * Being social in an MMO is great in theory. In practice, forcing players to "socialize or die" means more arguing and more waiting around. Being forced to play with bots (henchman) or random, ie unreliable players often detracts from the overall experience.
 * Losing due to another player leaving or disconnecting can be frustrating.
 * Requiring teams waters down the individual's skill.
 * In random forms of PvP, such as Alliance Battles, your team can get merged with teams that don't speak your language, leading to troll suggestions such as "Ban the French from PvP."


 * Why it may not work out
 * Online Mass multiplayer game.
 * Playing with other people promotes social skills.
 * Forming a team requires some skill with regard to overall team balance, strategy, and skill synergy.
 * Could make professions too uniform.
 * Could be harder to balance.
 * Amount of monsters based on partysize =/= realism.

FedEx quets (Discussion)
Guild Wars 1 has too many FedEx quests. This should be toned down in Guild Wars 2.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * Few, if any, likes pointless quests.


 * Why it may not work out
 * These quests have value not in themself, but in that they get the player to visit new locations and meet new NPCs.
 * It has less than most MMO's so who cares?

Reused dungeon terrain blocks (Discussion)
Dungeons should not reuse terrain blocks.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * It's will look cleaner.


 * Why it may not work out
 * ArenaNet doesn't have unlimited resources.
 * Anet has better things to worry about.

Hard Mode foes(Discussion)
Difficulty in Hard Mode should be based on better monster builds and AI or more monsters rather than overpowered monsters.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * Bosses hat are tough because they do 9999 damage or equivalent aren't fun.
 * Hard Mode still is not hard if you only have to replace one skill in your monk's bar for Spirit Bond, and if the players have access to overpowered PvE-only skills.


 * Why it may not work out
 * Persistence limits the functionality of Hard Mode, aside from dungeons.

Use a PvE / PvP skill split from the start (Discussion)
Guild Wars 2 should implement a PvE / PvP skill split from the start.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * Making the split later means having to deal with a situation based on unsplit skills.
 * Separation of PvE and PvP skills is necessary so you can balance one without messing up the other.
 * Allows for more interesting skill concepts in PvE that would be problematic in PvP, or vice versa.


 * Why it may not work out
 * Individually Ballancing skills might take a longer time, possibly causing a delay on the game release.
 * Allows overpowered PvE only skills.

Spend more time improving the game (Discussion)
Guild Wars 2 should have more staff working for longer on finetuning initial game balance, and have a long beta period.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * Will result in a more polished, bug-free and impressive game.


 * Why it may not work out
 * Higher initial costs, possibly not offset by larger long term returns.
 * May frustrate players eager to buy the game.
 * What the heck do you THINK they're doing right now????

pressure vs spike balance
Make a pressure metagame instead of a spiking/blocking based metagame


 * Why this is a good idea
 * No more spike groups
 * Emphasizes the skill set players have loaded on their characters over the ability of them.
 * PvP would no longer be about who can do the most damage in 1 second but instead who can outlast the opposition.
 * Emphasizes strategic thinking over quick reflexes.
 * Skills no longer get unreasonable nerfs for being used in spike builds.


 * Why it may not work out

Don't split districts by language
In an increasingly globalised world, people should be encouraged to learn more of other languages and cultures, not be prevented from doing that. Alowing all characters to be used will make it easier for players to get guilkd names they want, as some at present need to find someone with the right language based account to make guilds for them (e.g. a German wanting a Japanese named guild) GW needs a slightly better way to 'copy' (Ctrl-C) names containing characters a player can't type. But this issue still exists in a segregated GW1 anyway, since Guild names and characters who change districts can now appear in the 'wrong' language district.
 * Why this is a good idea
 * Initial GW1 restrictions of travel between language based districts led to some people (e.g. night time players) being unable to join others in teams, even if they could speak many languages.
 * It also led to some offensive shouting about use of languages other than the nominated one in districts, even though many languages had no exclusive district designation.
 * Many people are bilingual or multilingual, and wish to encourage this in others. Being unable to use the full Unicode set of characters prevents this.
 * A major part of the fun of a global MMO game is meeting and talking to people from other cultures backgrounds and places.
 * Why this may not work
 * Legal issues in some countries may preclude this for some countries. (But that shouldn't stop everyone else from getting together)
 * Language barriers in random PvP cause epic failure. (I once played with german people, did not know the language and we did all missions with no problems, thanx to good leadership and visual instructions on radar map... so, if you know how to play, there is no matter what language your comrades are talking in)

Change the blocking mechanic
Instead of "blocking" removing 100% of damage let blocking skills have a chance of removing a percent of damage. Bonuses stack multiplicatively, so if you block 20% of damage, then block 50% of damage, you block 60%, not 70%. Blocking would be capped at 90% of damage, so if you suffer 100 base damage from an imbalanced scythe attack, you will take at least 10 damage no matter how many buffs you have. Effects of a single skill could break the limit but 100% damage removal blocks would be rare and probably elite as well or balanced by large energy costs/recharges.

Blocking would reduce damage after all other damage modifiers. For example, if someone does 40 base damage with Conjure Flame at level 5(+10 damage) and uses an attack skill that adds +30 damage and is blocked for 50%, the overall damage is 50% of (40+10+30) = 40 damage total.

For example, here are a few versions of existing skills: Note-all numbers given are examples and probably not very well balanced.

Guardian 5e 1/4s 5r "For 6 seconds, target ally has a 50% chance to block 25...45...50% of damage." Escape 5e 12r "For 1...7...8 seconds, you move 33% faster and have a 75% chance to block 30...60...70% of damage."


 * Why this is a good idea


 * Blocking is less of a luck based "all or nothing" gimmick.
 * Nerfs the massive blockway metagame.


 * Why this may not work out
 * Would make blocking useless against non-damage attack effects, such as interruption, knockdown and conditions

Sunspear-esque Grinds
Please, for the love of God, don't ever force the player to do Sunspear-esque title grinds to continue the plot...ever. There's no way of getting around it, you have to obtain the points in a slow manner, whether it be quest-grind or farming, just to continue the Main Storyline.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * For a game that prided itself on being anti-grind, tying the SS title track to the progression of the storyline is a bad idea, especially when you have to take a special effort of doing random non sequuntur to continue the storyline. It really disrupts the flow of the storyline.


 * Why this may not work

Make separate balancing teams for PvE and PvP.
PvE and PvP are two different things, and should be balanced as such. Put PvP experts in the PvP balance team and PvE experts in the PvE balance team.


 * Why this is a good idea


 * Why this may not work
 * It would cost Anet money

Hard Mode
Don't add hard mode to the GW but instead have the difficulty to increase when you play further in storyline as it is at the moment. The really hard areas should be elite areas etc.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * Less content instead of different difficulty levels.


 * Why this may not work
 * More specialliced areas means fewer areas of any on e type, thus a more boring game for all groups of players.

Xunlai Tournament House
Don't add such system as XTH to the GW2. Of course there could be some sort of betting system but not such as the current is which basicly gives you 100k a month without doing anything. Allows people to spend RL money on a second account in order to obtain ingame gold, effectivly making Anet goldsellers.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * Better economy, stuff may actually keeps its price
 * Stops one way of using RL money to gain ingame money.


 * Why this may not work
 * Encourages the use of other goldsellers.

Secondary Professions
No secondary professions for Guild Wars 2. If you're a warrior, you're a warrior and that's it.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * Helps balacing the game by simplyfying it.
 * Makes every class more special.


 * Why it may not work
 * limits creativity on builds
 * Is boring
 * Less strategic thought while making builds
 * Takes away one of the many things that makes Guild Wars's combat more fun than WoW's and other MMO's.

Monks
The current meta is the monk meta. Four men teams consists two monks and often 3rd healer, eight men teams consists at least two monks, often three. This is just way too much! There's 10 professions. Basicly, nerf monks for GW2 or if you can't do so, don't add them at all.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * No one profession over others
 * Makes teams consists of more different professions


 * Why it may not work
 * Fails to understand that it's not the monk profession, it's the need for healers.

Titles
Yes grinding, titles like vanquishers, reputation titles etc. are nothing but grinding.


 * Why this is a good idea


 * Why it may not work
 * Takes away things to do for players that want to play a lot.
 * Adds an end to the game, there would be nothing to do after storyline completion.

Capping
Make PvP about killing opposite players as it should be.


 * Why this is a good idea


 * Why it may not work
 * Takes variety out of PvP and makes every thing elimination.
 * Robs the game of a (little) strategic element.

Keep all rare weapon skins confined to their own expansions
EOTN managed to single-handedly devalue almost every previously sought after weapon skin in GW. It would be greatly appreciated if the GW2 graphic design team was willing to invest the time into giving each campaign it's own set of rare weapon skins and not importing them from previous campaigns. That way any expansions that turn out to be broken farm-fests will not run the risk of dragging the core game down with it.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * More stable economy


 * Why this may not work
 * Higher development costs

Really rare stuff only a few people are able to get
Best example of such stuff would be rare minis. There's a limited amount of them in the game and they cost like thousands of ectos or tens of millions making them way way too expensive when comparing to anything else in game. There's only three ways to get such item, ebay, dupe or be extremely lucky but by simply playing the game, getting these items isn't possible, no matter how hard you farmed.
 * Why this is a good idea
 * Better economy
 * Less gold buyers and sellers
 * Why this may not work

Give everyone the option to unlock all skills regardless of content purchased
One of the big problems with Build Wars is that a lot of the best skills are in Nightfall and EotN(which are the most expensive chapters). Anet keeps those skills overpowered and keeps the best combos in skills that require all campaigns and EotN so that people have to pay more to be competitive. This is unfair and turns Build Wars into something like MapleStory where amount paid > skill. My suggestion is that people should all have access to the same set of skills.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * Makes the game more skill based as opposed to who can pay more
 * No more getting kicked out of teams because you can't run a build due to lack of a chapter.


 * Why this may not work
 * Anet probably wants something like a subscription fee where you keep paying for new overpowered skills and equipment or get shoved out of every form of PvP until you pay up. Also known as giving noobs who pay more a set of broken skills to cheat with