User:Shard/TADR

Things Anet Did Right

There are enough places telling anet about the things they did wrong. There aren't as many places telling them what they did right.

Free Online Play

The first thing that comes to mind is the sales model. Here, I'm talking about the original sales model, not the one they're currently using (which is bad). You buy the game once, then you can play it whenever you want. In my opinion, all games should be like this. It never made sense to me why WoW et al had a purchase fee, then a monthly fee on top of that. If you have to pay to play, don't make us pay $50 on top of that. Anet's sales model of new chapters is very similar to Magic: the Gathering's. Each time a set comes out, players can buy new cards (skills) to improve their decks (builds).

Where Anet went wrong here was in making the chapters too big. They knew if they added 2 professions with every expansion, soon they would need to make 1000 skills per game, which is partly why they stopped after EOTN. A smaller set of content at lower prices (1 profession and maybe +10-20 skills per profession at $20, for example, new arenas or pvp game types, etc) would have probably worked better for them in the long run, and it would have given them time to test/perfect new expansions.

The E-Sport Crowd

Arenanet's original plan to market the game as an E-Sport was also one of their good ideas, and it worked for a good while. The GWFC proved this over anything else. It was exciting to have the best players in the world fight each other (observe mode made this more exciting). It's not so exciting to watch rawr win every tournament, only because they cheat (nothing against them specifically, most guilds cheat), and they buildwars everyone else. The skill selection is also pretty bad, but this wasn't an issue before Nightfall came out. The game's pvp side was always top quality while those few legendary guilds played. If you remember the feeling you got when you were matched up against EviL or WM, you know what I'm talking about.

Template Codes

High up on the list, probably number 1, is savable template codes. There's nothing much to say about this, it's just an overall great addition to the game.

Observer Mode

This is a feature every e-sport should have, and they added it as a Christmas present to the players. The only gripe I have with observe mode is that you can see what everyone is running (skills-wise). It would have been nice if obs didn't make build ripping faster than it already was.

Removing Scarred Earth

For those who don't know, Scarred Earth was the suckiest map ever. You basically had to work twice as hard to get the same amount of fame. Later, when they introduced the gate locks, you could even gank other teams. Luckily, they removed it, hopefully forever.

Changing Altar Capping

A long time ago, in what is now HA, there was no King of the Hill. There was only Altar Capping. The difference? Well, in Altar Capping, you had to control the altar at the end of the match to win. This doesn't sound different when you first hear about it, but Altar Capping made it possible for a team who owned the altar for 1 second to beat a team that held it for 10 minutes. Players figured this out, and shortly before the objective was replaced, teams would bring echo sandstorm eles to blow up enemy ghostly heroes 10 seconds before the end of the match, then cap at the last second for what was a nearly effortless win. The change to King of the Hill fixed this issue for good, and it makes more sense.

Destroying Ursan and Shadow Form

Ursan was a stupid idea. It took anet a long time to realize this, but at least they did. Unfortunately, another very similar problem had been plaguing pve for nearly four years before it was fixed. Better late than never, I always say.

Loot Scaling

Anet's had a lot of good loot scaling ideas. There are basically two farm prevention methods they've used. The first is that when you farm the same area too much, drops lessen, which discourages farming the same place too much (obviously). They've also tried an increase of drops based on party size, which encourages team play (this is still in the game). Obviously, they need to balance that against how speedy other farms are, especially the elite area clears. In some situations, farming an area with a certain build gets you more loot than doing it with a team.

Boss Design

All of the end-bosses in GW, along with a few others, have very fun battles which allow you to use a lot of different strategies. The most boring big-boss (a boss that isn't "just a level 30 warrior") to me was Abaddon, and I still found it kinda fun. The most boring one now is Dhuum, but that's because of the length of the battle, not because of the design itself. I look forward to seeing what other special bosses they can come up with.

Early PvP Improvements

During release, there was a lack of flexibility available to players who wanted to pvp. You weren't allowed to lower your attributes unless you had Skill Refund Point, which you earned every 250 experience you got (this was a lot for pvp characters). So even if you had the skills for a build unlocked, there was a chance you couldn't play it, and were forced to rerolling a new character. They removed this feature, and now you can modify your attributes freely.

The only way to unlock skills used to be through PvE. This means if you wanted to roll a certain character, you had to have played that profession through enough of the campaign to have those skills. When I started, I really wanted to join spirit spam builds, because I like getting 3000 fame per day, but my first character was an elementalist, so I had to run chain lightning spike instead. Anet fixed this problem by adding Balthazar Faction. It works exactly as it does today, except the rewards have been greatly increased (originally, you only got 1 faction per kill).

The last major pvp improvement they added was the beloved J button - the ability to roll your equipment in any town. Before this, you could only make equipment on the character creation screen, and you had to reroll your whole character if you just wanted to switch from sword warrior to hammer warrior.