ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions/Weather and Environmental Effects

Weather and Environment Effects (Discussion)
This idea is to add environment effects to the game to change the strength of elemental skills and attacks based on the location of the character. For example, if someone is in the Shiverpeak Mountains, water skills, and anything else that uses the water element will be slightly more effective than usual, while fire skills and attacks will be weaker. If you are surrounded by water and ice, anything that uses them should be more effective.

The second component is to add random weather to the game, that would also effect the relative strength of elemental skills and attacks. If it is raining, water attacks might be more effective and lightning attacks might gain a small area of effect because everything is wet. At the same time, fire would be weaker because of all of the water and earth would be weakened because all of the ground will have turned to mud.


 * Why this is a good idea
 * It adds a new dynamic, and an unpredictable element to the game
 * Makes every time you enter an area different because you may not be able to predict the weather effects in that area.
 * Adds new possibilities in combination with other suggestions, where aggro ranges might be smaller because of reduced visibility in rain or fog


 * Why it may not work out
 * May be hard to incorporate into story quests and quests in general because the difficulty may not be consistent
 * Will take decent amount of time to program it right.
 * Forces Elementalists to have damaging builds in all attributes. Not only annoying, but also disrupts the differences between the types (nuking/individual attacks/snare/protection).
 * I hope you dont plan on weather changes with that. Dying at the end of an elite mission because it starts raining and your eles suddenly deal half damage is not nice.