User:Erasculio/Suggestions For GW1

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[edit] Armor and Weapon Unlocking for PvE

Storage is a problem without end - we always will have players asking for more. One way to deal with the problem is by removing the need for storage, instead of just asking Arena Net for more space. The hat maker NPC is a step in this direction, by introducing a system in which we basically unlock hats for our entire account. I believe the same kind of unlock system could be applied to weapons and armors in PvE, allowing players to store an infinite number of each item. Of course, this system would need a high number of rules and checks; Mithran Arkanere made a summary better than my own, so here's his take on this concept:

[edit] Mithran Arkanere's take

As I always say: The only way to solve storage problems is removing the need for storage.

Here's my latest revision of your idea, based on other ideas of mine:

They way to do the unlock could be something like this:

  • Unlocks made by a PvE character would be for that character only.
  • Unlocks made by any PvP characters (like Zaishen chest, HoH chest and PvP rewards) would be account wide, but ONLY for others PvP characters.
  • Unlocks made by any character will automatically appear at the HoM corresponding Monument is unlocked the first time.
  • Items added to the HoM would be automatically unlocked.
  • Hat makers would be renamed to 'Xunlai Crafters' or something like that, and added to all Mayor cities. Guild Halls already have Hat Makers, so just the name change would be required there.

In order to unlock an item, the item must meet certain requirements firts:

  • The base stats of the item must be 'maxed'. The same stats of those items must be those of a PvP item of the same kind: req9, max base, max armor, available upgrade slots, etc... low grade items like armors with non maxed armor or without upgrade slots won't be allowed (like maxed collector armor that do not allow insignia).
  • Req8 and req7 maxed items won't be replicable either, they would stay 'more rare than rare'(XD) as they are.
  • The exceptions would be Shing Jea and Istan uniques and festival masks.
  • In order to unlock an item, the original must be either customized or destroyed in the process. No "having the pie and selling it too".

So, the items allowed would be:

  • All 'maxed' crafted items, both Weapon and Armor.
  • All maxed collector armors with insignia and rune upgrade slots.
  • All Gold and Unique items. Once you remove upgrades from a gold, there's no much difference between a gold an other rarity item, this would give them a bit of extra 'ding' other than the color.
  • 'Toy' uniques like the Istan, Shing Jea and Tombs funny uniques.
  • Bonus items will automatically appear unlocked, and crafted without upgrades and with inscription insignia, unlike when created with /bonus.

And the items that would be left out are:

  • Common (white, blue) that are not crafted and uncommon (purple) that are not crafted.
  • Collector weapons and quest rewards that are not rare (gold) or unique (green).

Copied items would have also limitations:

  • NO UPGRADES. Copies would come clean and clear. People would have to get upgrades in traders, from other characters or salvage them from other items. Weapon upgrade traders would be a great addition to help upgrading weapons. PvP outposts would get also Traders so PvP characters and upgrade Zaishen, HoM and PvP rewards too.
  • They would be either not salvageable or salvageable only with perfect kits, so only upgrades can be removed, never materials.
  • Copies could have a price to add a little gold sink:
    • Festival masks: 10 Gold.
    • Reinforced festival masks: 500Gold. That is, masks with max armor for the character's profession, slots for insignia and runes and a +1 Item attribute property)
    • Unique weapons: 25 Gold
    • Other weapons: 100 Gold
    • Normal armor pieces: 50 Gold
    • Prestige armor pieces: 200 Gold

What would we get with this?

  1. Most storage problems would vanish. There are lots of armors and hundreds of weapon skin. Harm the economy? NO WAY! No one buys an Elemental sword every week. But would you buy it if you get the chance, If you won't have to worry to buy the skin again ever? Even more if miniatures and everlasting tonics were unlockable too.
  2. More activity in material traders. Since people would buy more armors, due to not having to care about storing the ones they would have to discard to make room for the new ones.
  3. More upgrades sold, since in some cases it would be more expensive to use a Perfect Salvage kit than buying a new rune or upgrade... If you make the copies not salvageable, which I don't agree much with, it would be MUCH more movement in upgrade traders. But in that case, Some of the runes would require an increase in drops, like Vigor runes, since they won't be bought just once or twice per character anymore.
  4. A place in market for every single skin. Items would be "Gotta catch'em all" like skills, people could choose between getting them all or getting the ones they want. But they won't think twice, get it once, use it forever. Even not very sought skins would be seek by many people. Even the 'toy' ones. Give the unlocking an achievement title called "Equipment " (something I don't support much either) and the fever is guaranteed.

I hope I'm not missing something. MithImage:User MithranArkanere Star.pngTalk 16:37, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Advantages

  • Like Mithran said, the need for storage would be greatly reduced.
  • The high number of checks and balances would hopefully prevent players from feeling cheated.
  • Economy would thrive, as players would be free to have as many weapons and armors they want, without having to worry about where to place them.
  • Perfect salvage kits would allow for mods to be moved from one item to the other without too many complications.

[edit] Problems

  • Players from a certain forum would complain anyway (the same that are against inscriptions everywhere).
  • No mods on the weapons could mean players would still keep either the mods on storage or the weapons/armors in storage. A mods trader would really help this aspect.
  • Likewise for dyes, with the difference that dyes are easier to find thanks to the trader. Those with black and/or white armors are likely going to keep those in storage, though.
  • And of course, the main problem: this may be far too resources-intensive for what Arena Net has available to GW1 right now. While we could probably use the same interface in place for PvP unlocks, this is still an incredibly complex idea.

[edit] Variants

  • A similar idea would be to have a system in which only an exact combination of items is unlocked. For example, if someone presents a chest piece of Assassin Ancient armor dyed red with a Brawler Insignia and a Minor Rune of Shadow Arts, that item would be destroyed and the player would be able to make infinite (unsalvageable) copies of of exactly that combination of armor part + dye + insignia + rune. I have the feeling this is something even more complext to code than the idea above, though, and would consume as much space as storing the item itself.

[edit] Common Skins available from NPCs

Rare items are easy to find. Someone seeking to buy a Voltaic Spear would only have to go to one of the main cities and at most wait a bit, for example. This makes sense, considering how the large profit in selling rare items is worth the time it takes to sell something in Guild Wars.

Common skins, in other hand, are very hard to find. They are sold for such cheap prices that it isn't really worth spamming the trade channel over hours hoping a buyer would eventually appear. Which leads us to a situation in which someone seeking the rarest item in the game may buy it quickly, as long as he/she has enough gold, but someone who simply wants a Tribal Shield is not going to find it, be in game or even looking at outside sources such as GWO or GWG.

The best way to fix this would be a large trading center in GW1, in which it were easy to buy and sell everything - the Xunlai Marketplace. That is not going to happen, though, as we have already been told a few times. If the best solution isn't available, I would like to suggest an alternative, hopefully more viable: make all the common skins available from NPCs. Here are two different ways of reaching that goal:

[edit] Hero Tokens

Many major cities have Quartermasters (like the Imperial ones, the Sunspear ones, etc), offering common items in exchange for quest reward tokens. Players may trade those tokens among themselves, be it to get some slightly hard to find items (such as ale) or just to get common items for a lower price (like Expert Salvage Kits). But the number of quest reward tokens a character may earn is limited, and so is the quality of items available from the Quartermaters.

One way to implement the above suggestion is by allowing these NPCs to offer all the common weapon skins found in their region, together with the common green items. So someone seeking a Tribal Shield would have the option of trying to find a player selling that item, or buying with tokens from a Quartermaster on Vabbi, while someone trying to find a rare skin, such as a Zodiac weapon, would still be limited to either buying from players or earning one as a drop.

In order to solve the limited availability of quest reward tokens, we could implement a new kind of token - Hero Tokens. Those would be a random drop by any monster in the game, and they would be accepted by all Quartermasters in the world of Tyria. Players would then have an incentive to trade among themselves, but instead of selling specific items and hoping there's a potential buyer around, we would be able to buy and sell the Hero Tokens, that may be used to get a great variety of things.

EDIT: Or, we could just use the Zaishen Coins. Arena Net could add a new collector in every main outpost exchanging Zaishen Coins for inscriptable common skins found in the area.

[edit] Using the Crafters NPCs

Another way of implementing my suggestion would be by using the Crafters NPCs. Currently they already offer common skins for the cost of gold and some materials, but they have a limited selection of items. They could be changed to offer all common skins found in their region, together with all common green items available in that area. So someone willing to buy a Tribal Shield would just have to go to Vabbi and have one crafted there, instead of having to waste time seeking a seller who may or not exist.

One side effect of this change is how it would increase the demand for common crafting materials, increasing their prices and so making currently existing things, such as armors and consumables, more expensive. In other hand, if the price of those materials increase, we could end with more players farming them and thus prices actually dropping, instead of increasing.

[edit] Advantages

  • Players seeking common skins would have a simple way of earning them.
  • One of the problems due to the lack of a good trading system would be alleviated.

[edit] Problems

  • Some players still try to sell those common items, and could be bothered with this change.
  • Some players would complain about how this would make common random drops less important in the game.
  • And of course, this may be outside the scope of the resources currently available for GW1.

[edit] Expanding the Zaishen Coins

I really like the Zaishen Coins system, and I believe they could be expanded to work with other items. I think they could be used for common skins (as mentioned above), but I also think they could be used for an old problem within the game: the lack of a mods trader. Maxed mods and inscriptions could be made available through Zaishen Coins, giving people one more incentive to play through those missions and quests, as well as solving the problem of how hard it is to find mods for weapons.

[edit] Balance Ideas

(Still a work in progress.)

Everyone else is doing it, so here's my own take at balance. I'm not going to propose changes to all professions, nor am I worried about fine tunning some numbers - I'm more concerned about mechanics that I believe need to be changed, and so I'll focus more on the newer professions. Beginning with one of the most problematic ones:

[edit] Ritualists

Ritualists were originally designed as a profession relying on passive play and turtling (the spirits). When this design failed, the profession lost its role and since then has been mostly an imbalanced mess. I believe the first step in improving ritualists is to give them a main role, one the profession may revolve around.

So the new role will be: party support, using weapon spells and ashes, with spirits ("active" spirits, requiring the character to act in order to be effective) as the only viable source of damage, and also helping a bit with party support. This will be the new theme the entire profession (with a few exceptions - random, not overpowered gimmicks like Spirit Strength are good, IMO) will be adapted around.

[edit] General Changes

  • Lower the damage of all direct damage skills. They usually have bad damage anyway, so this wouldn't be much of a loss; the idea is to turn those skills from being mostly sources of damage into being mostly utility skills that also happen to do a little damage.
  • Lower the damage of all offensive spirits. The idea is not to make the offensive spirits useless - rather, it's to make a spirit that is simply summoned and then forgotten useless, as that's an extreme of passive play. By using skills that boost the spirits, they would become viable in play.
  • Spirits cannot burn anymore. This is for the sake of consistency - if spirits cannot suffer any other condition, allowing them to burn is an exception that does not make sense. There are better ways to balance how easy it is to defeat the spirits.
  • Allow weapon spells to be cast on spirits. This will require major changes in numbers, but helps to turn spirits into entities that require attention and that are only useful if being manipulated by the player. The game already has an animation for this - in the Factions Preview Event, weapon spells could be cast on spirits.
  • As today, spirits would still be immune to all the other mechanics - enchantment, hexes, wards, wells, chants, shouts, other spirits, all of those would not work on a spirit. However, all the skills that currently state "non spirit allies" will get that clause removed, as it's inelegant to have such description in so many skills, while there are so few spirits in the game. If such clause is really required, add them to the description of the spirits.
  • Still no counters to weapon spells (or ashes). Adding skills that effectively remove weapon spells would, IMO, require too large of a change in the game, even considering the scope of my suggestions. Proper counters would have to be skills useful by themselves (so they're not useless if the other team does not have weapon spells), in large enough numbers so they're common enough to find a place in most builds (again, to avoid the idea that often skills would be taken just because the other team may use weapon spells), and hopefully spread among most professions. Like someone else said, this kind of change should have been implemented when the weapon spells were added to the game - to do it now would require a large revision of all skills in the game, to see which ones could be adapted into proper, viable counters for weapon spells. Frankly, that's beyond my abilities.
  • (Maybe) lower the speed of spirits' projectiles. This would make dodging spirit attacks to be more of a viable counter. I'm worried about the impact of this change in PvE, though.

[edit] Spawning Power

  • Description: For each rank of Spawning Power you have, spirits you summon have 4% more Health, weapon Spells you cast last 2% longer, and you have +1 maximum energy when holding ashes. This is to fix what I consider more an annoyance than an element of skill - when holding ashes a character loses the energy bonus given by his weapons, leading to a smaller energy bar. In order to stimulate the use of ashes, and make skills like Empowerment redundant, I propose allowing players to control how much energy they have when holding those items.

[edit] Channeling Magic

  • Direct damage is bad. The idea here is to take all damage dealing skills, give them minimal damage and turn them into buffs to other abilities of the ritualists - spirits, ashes or weapon spells. Some skills in this line already work in that way, such as Spirit Boon Strike; all would be adapted to follow that path. This change, however, is far from being enough - skills that buff spirits and weapon spells and ashes are useless if those three kinds of skills are worthless by themselves. I'm not worried about spirits, given how, as explained above, they could be rather bad by themselves as long as buffing them (with short duration buffs, in order to promote active play) made them useful. Ashes and weapon spells, in other hand, will need to be tweaked so they're better (not more powerful - some are incredibly broken already - just better). Most of those skills would require an increased recharge, and some an increased energy cost as well.
  • Ancestors' Rage: change functionality to "Weapon Spell. For 1 second, target ally has an Ancestral Weapon. When this spell ends, all foes adjacent to target ally are struck for 5...50 lightning damage. This damage is dealt twice if target ally is a spirit you control.
Why: "OMGWTF, you say you're against Channeling being used for damage yet your first change is to increaase damage, WTFF!!!shiftoneoneone!!!111". Granted, but if we are making spirits more useful, keeping those spirits alive is also more important. This skill would work as a counter to melee characters, and in PvE the two pulses of damage would would cause AoE scatter, helping to save the spirit.
  • Bloodsong: move back to Communing.
  • Caretaker's Charge: change functionality to "Elite Spell. Target foe is struck for 5...25 lightning damage. If you are holding an item, you gain 1...10 Energy and 5...50 Health".
Why: the damage here is meant to be irrelevant. The goal of the skill is to act as energy management in the absence of spirits, relying on another of the ritualists' abilities.
  • Channeled Strike: change functionality to, "Spell. Target foe is struck for 5...25 lightning damage. If you are holding an item, the next item spell you cast lasts 20% longer".
Why: to turn the skill into a buff for item spells.
  • Clamor of Souls: change functionality to, "Elite Spell. Within earshot, foes nearby a spirit you control are struck for 10...100 lightning damage and allies nearby a spirit you control are healed for 10...100 (the same ally and the same foe cannot be affected more than once)".
Why: a source of direct damage, but more importantly a source of party healing linked to the spirits. Isaiah once mentioned he thought about making this skill heal allies; the proposed change increases the range a bit to make the effect more reliable, at the same time the skill becomes slightly more limited than today as it requires speficially spirits, instead of working on any ally.
  • Cruel Was Daoshen: change functionality to, "Item Spell. Hold Daoshen's ashes for up to 15...60 seconds. When you drop his ashes, the next attack skill used by the nearest spirit you control within earshot does +10 damage".
Why: a way to buff spirits while providing ritualists with a long lasting ash. The recharge of this skill would be balanced over the buff to the spirits.
  • Destructive Was Glaive: change functionality to, "Elite Spell. Hold Glaive's ashes for up to 10 seconds. While you hold her ashes, the nearest spirit you control within earshot attacks 25% faster. When you drop her ashes, the next attack skill used by the nearest spirit you control within earshot also strikes adjacent enemies".
Why: a more agressive buff to spirits, trying to reinforce how individual spirits are expected to be weak, but to become powerful as long as they're being controled by their owner. I was considering to give this a shorter duration, but given how speeds attack slowly, the speed buff would not make that much of a difference in the short time. The current version would require a long recharge.
  • Lamentation: change functionality to, "Spell. If target foe is within earshot of a Spirit you control, that foe takes 10...50 damage and the spirit is healed for 10...50 health".
  • Renewing Surge: change functionality to, "Spell. Target foe is struck for 5...25 lightning damage. If you are holding an item, the next Item Spell you cast recharges 20% faster".
  • Spirit Burn: change functionality to, "Spell. Target foe is struck for 5...25 lightning damage. The next attack skill used by the nearest spirit within earshot causes burning for 1...3...3 second(s)".
  • Wielder's Strike: change functionality to, "Spell. Target foe is struck for 5...25 lightning damage. If you are under the effects of a weapon spell, the next weapon spell you cast lasts 20% longer".

[edit] Restoration Magic

  • The direct healing here is more powerful than what's available to monks. IMO, that's bad for two different reasons: first it's a source of imbalance, and second it focus too much on raw healing, which isn't that effective by itself. I believe it would be better if the skills here had their functionality changed, in order to provide some healing but focusing more on secondary effects.

[edit] Assassins

Assassins need to be reworked. Like ritualists, their original role is simply too awkward for a game like Guild Wars. A combo system dedicated to kill a target is either too good, leading to degenerate gameplay in PvP filled with cheap telespikes, or incapable of killing the target and therefore useless. The problem is, there aren't many roles left in PvP for assassins to use. Both their trademarked features, shadow stepping and the combo system, are barely salvageable. As first steps, my suggestions are...

[edit] Shadow Form

Shadow Form is a farming skill. It's borderline useless in common PvE (in other words, not farming or running), thanks to the damage reduction. While having skills that are effective in farming is ok, having a skill specifically for farming is mixing a bit the priorities in Guild Wars' PvE. Therefore I propose changing the PvE version to:

  • Shadow Form: Elite Enchantment Spell. Shadow step to target foe. For 5 seconds, all hostile Spells that target you fail and all attacks against you miss, your dagger attacks deal 25% more damage and you cannot cast spells. When Shadow Form ends, lose all but 5...50 Health. 10 energy, 1 second casting time, 30 seconds recharge.

In PvE, an assassin shadow stepping into an enemy group is just going to kill himself, as the entire group would focus aggro on him. It's wiser to wait until the rest of the party takes aggro and then attack... But since the enemies will be close anyway, shadow stepping becomes unnecessary, given how any speed boost would allow the assassin to reach his enemies almost as fast. Add to this how the AI monks do not kite when a melee character is moving close to them, and shadow stepping turns out to be somewhat pointless in PvE. The proposed buff to Shadow Form would fix this issue by allowing assassins to jump into the middle of an enemy group and quickly kill an oponent before the rest of the party engages, possibly removing threats (such as the double damage dealing bosses) before they have a change to strike the other characters.

[edit] Shadow Stepping

Shadow Stepping is not balanced for PvP play. Removing the strategic element of knowing how to position yourself, watching the field to see where the enemies are at any given moment and predicting what is going to happen based on where each player is just takes away a great deal of skillful play from PvP. Pretty much like allowing chess pieces to teleport around the board. In order to fix this, I suggest making, in PvP only, all shadow stepping skills to have half casting range, and to have 50% chance of failure with Critical Strikes 50% or less - they would still allow some teleporting, but far more limited than today.

In PvE, it's the opposite, as explained in the above section. Dash is better than any shadow stepping skill for common PvE: it has a low recharge, it has a very low energy cost, it may be used both offensively and defensively, and it gives pratically as much mobility within combat (the only moment in which shadow stepping is viable in PvE) as any of the teleporting skills. Since my previous suggestion already requires a split between PvP and PvE, I propose changing how most of the shadow stepping skills work: for all of those in which the main effect is the teleporting, reduce the secondary effect and decrease recharge to zero (of course, in PvE only). For example, Death's Charge would have a smaller healing but instant recharge. Assassins would then have true combat mobility in PvE, being able to jump from one enemy to the next almost instantly - still a minor advantage, but hopefully enough to make shadow stepping viable in this game mode.

[edit] Critical Strikes

Critical Strikes is abused in too many different ways. It has been balanced considering dagger attacks, and daggers have been balanced considering Critical Strikes. The same cannot be said for scythes, spears, bows, etc, and the interaction between those weapons and assassins has led to some issues in PvP. I would suggest, then, limiting Critical Strikes (and all its linked skills that increase the probability of critical hits) to dagger attacks. An assassin using a scythe would therefore not have a higher rate of critical hits than a warrior using the same weapon.

[edit] Necromancers

Soul Reaping is my only issue here. The old one could give theorically unlimited energy to a character, so I understand how Arena Net wanted to cap the energy gain. What I strongly disagree with is how the cap was done - a timer with a limit on how many times Soul Reaping may trigger is, IMO, completely counter-intuitive. I would like to propose a change to the current system.

Today, with Soul Reaping of 10, a Necromancer may earn at most 30 energy within 15 seconds. I suggest a system in which, once something dies, the character earns SR/2 seconds of +6 energy regeneration, not stackable (in other words, if two enemies die at the same time the necromancer would not get +12 regeneration). This would allow a necromancer with Soul Reaping of 10 to earn at most 30 energy within 15 seconds, while avoiding the annoying timer with random cap.

The credit for this idea goes to Chthon, from the GWO forums. The main problem is that it would limit corpse control, as a necromancer would not get the energy instantly when something dies. A minor problem is that builds which rely on giving extra energy regeneration to a necromancer would also be impaired, but as far as I know we do not have that many builds in which a necromancer casts Blood Ritual or Blood is Power on another character of the same profession.

I would also suggest removing the Soul Reaping gain from spirits.

[edit] Paragons

After all the trouble Arena Net had with ritualists, witnessing how a party wide defense such as the spirits was hard to balance, and how unremovable buffs like weapon spells often went from overpowered to useless and the other way around...They decided to implement Paragons, with more party wide defense and unremovable buffs >.> Way to go, Arena Net. This time, the overpowered defensive profession has been given extremely high armor, the use of shields and ranged, high DPS.

One of the problems of paragons is how they reward passive play. Being able to spam skills on recharge without any considerable drawback, together with the ability of making viable all paragon builds, and given how it's not possible to remove shouts and chants, paragons are hardly balanced. In order to fix this, I propose changes to how some mechanics work...

[edit] General Changes

  • Chants now have to be maintained. Which means, the paragon has to remain still and do no other action while using them (not even using stances or shouts), or they will stop. Knocing down the paragon also interrupts the effect. Using Anthem of Flame as an example:
    • The paragon activates the skill. During the one second casting time, it may be interrupted by anything that currently interrupts chants.
    • After the one second casting time, the chant begins. The paragon must remain still and do no other action, or the effect will end. Allies that move outside of range (earshort range for the paragon using the chant) will also lose the effect. Knocking down the paragon would also end the effect. Interrupts would not end the effect, though.
    • The paragon will stand still until 10 seconds have passed (the duration of the chant) or until the effect ends over all allies within earshot (either by moving out of range, or in this case using an attack skill), whatever happens first.
  • The following shouts will become chants:

Paragons would then have to consider what would benefit their team the most: maintaining a chant, or using some other skill, or moving, or attacking in order to get adrenaline. Enemies would have options in how to counter paragons, either by making him move (such as requiring him to kite) or by drawning his allies outside range, or by just knocking him down.

[edit] Suggestions from Other Users

[edit] Rejected Suggestions

An account based title collecting achievements over all characters.

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