Curse

Hanok Odbrook · Sep 09, 2007, 01:30 AM // 01:30

Now that we're entering the second official week of GW:EN, I once again feel that compulsion to drag myself out of the game and into the forums to drop down another batch of ideas that I have been mulling over in the last few months.

Map Travel
This is one that hit me shortly after Nightfall released. Map travel is a beautiful thing, especially traveling from one continent to another – unless you are traveling from a 6 or 8 party outpost to Elona. Then we run into problems as the only access point to Elona is through Kamadan, necessitating either a party breaking up then reforming upon arrival in Kamadan, or dropping enough heroes to keep the party together (if traveling with 4 or less human players). Since it has already been determined that EotN is the final major expansion to the current GW universe, I would suggest opening up more ports to hit between continents.
Possible additions to the Travel Ship could include Dajkah Inlet, Nundu Bay, and/or Kodlonu Hamlet for Elona; Seitung Harbor, and/or the Marketplace in Cantha; Amnoon Oasis, Droknar's Forge, Port Sledge, and/or Ember Light Camp for Tyria. Not only would these ports (in addition to the current choices), allow for max party travel, but also cut back on having to remap to other major parts of those continents. Instead of going from Elona to Lion's Arch to the Crystal Desert, we could hop right there in one step. Of course these additional ports would only be accessible once they are unlocked by playing through the respective campaign.

Special Event Weekends
I love the special event weekends. It's a nice change of pace to have a bonus to look forward to while playing. Unfortunately, not only are there those among us who don't have those nice Monday to Friday jobs, but then there's those pesky wives and kids nagging us for more quality time as well on those weekends we do have some time off. So inevitably, the weekends that we end up having minimal playing time usually ends up being the weekends of some event we would really like to take advantage of, while the one weekend that does crop up to give us play time ends up being an event that is really of no use to us. An example of this would be having a PvE player miss out on an increased green/dye drop rate weekend only to have an available weekend use a PvP rewards event.
I would like to see a system implemented that would allow players to activate an event one or more events of their own choosing for a particular weekend so that they may take advantage of the most useful events to them on the weekends they have the most playtime. The event(s) that they choose would then be unaccessible until they “cycle” through all available events, which would then reset the choices and they could do their favorites all over again. For example, let's say that there are five total special events to choose from. Upon implementation, a PvE player could pick an event or two that would become active at the usual time on Friday and remain active until the usual time on Sunday night. These events would then become inactive until the player uses up all the remaining events. In this way, on a weekend where he has a lot of time to play, he could activate the green and dye drop rate to take full advantage of the increased ratio of drops. The next weekend, when he has little or no time to play, he can just log in, activate one or two PvP events just to let them expire. The following weekend, he could activate the remaining one or two events, and upon their expiration, the event list would reset, allowing him to once again activate the increased drop events on another weekend he has time to play.
Naturally there should be some max limit on the number of events that could be activated in a single weekend to avoid players activating them all each weekend. There should also be a limit on the total number of events offered to avoid having players to wait months at a time to take advantage of their favorite ones (or perhaps make the number of events able to be activated on a given weekend proportionate to the total number of events available).
My personal favorites for events are/would be:
Double XP for elite capture (I love this for the Survivor Title)
Increased drop rates for Greens and Dye
Double Faction rewards and double Victory Points for Hero Battles
Double Faction rewards for Canthan Challenge Missions and Competitive Missions
Double title points for trading in Luxon/Kurzick Faction (great for the PvE skills)
Double Sunspear and Lightbringer points
The Boardwalk Weekend

Title Organization
I know I asked for better ways to organize the myriad of available titles in a previous posting, but now with the bushels of new titles available, I find this to be more of a necessity than ever (along with more sorting options in the character select screen). I would like to see the Account wide titles separated from the character specific titles for a start. Since we already have an Account tab in the Hero window, perhaps the account wide titles can be moved to this section, and then move the “Faction” related titles (such as the Norn/Dwarf/Vanguard/Luxon/Kurzick titles) to the Factions tab. With the character specific titles, more sorting options or tabs to organize them by campaign would be very helpful. It tends to be a pain to try to filter through the non-Tyrian titles to find the specific Tyrian only title I am looking for (such as the Tyrian exploration title). Moving the campaign specific titles to their own tab (and having the multi-campaign titles in a tab all their own) or allowing options to sort based on their type, as we have for the skills, would be helpful in keeping track of the titles relevant to the campaign my character is currently exploring.
In addition to better sorting/organizing of the titles, I would like to see one change that would allow salvaging of items to have an effect on the Lucky/Unlucky titles. Currently, the only way to increase these titles is through the Boardwalk events or by using Lockpicks. Since the Boardwalk is only an occasional weekend event, and Lockpicks are more or less a Hard Mode item, we need something for us Normal Mode players to have to work towards increasing these titles. It only makes sense to have salvaging runes/insignias from armor, or mods from weapons give points towards the titles since a successful salvage (without breaking the base item) can be considered lucky and having the base item break and unlucky event, I don't see why a successful salvage should not contribute a point towards the title while an unsuccessful salvage contribute towards the unlucky title. Naturally, salvaging crafting materials from an item would have no bearing on the title.

Inscription/Upgrade Traders
I would like to see the addition of an Inscription and Upgrade traders. These are the only two NPCs that are really lacking in the game, and would aid in equipping our PvE characters as easily as we do our PvP characters. They should act in concert with the Rune trader by having a set inventory, and the prices fluctuate according to the demands of the market. Having a set inventory can be problematic with the randomness of these items, however, these traders can be staged in set areas of each campaign and have their inventory stats reflect the level of the area they are in. For example: the Inscription Trader who appears in Old Ascalon, Shing Jea Island, and Itan would have the "Sieze the Day" inscription be +10 Energy with -1 degen; the Upgrade Trader would have a Marksmanship +1 Bow Mod at 10% chance. For these Traders who appear in the Kryta/Magumma, Kourna/Vabbi, Kaineng/Luxon/Kurzick, areas, their mods would increse to +12 Energy and +15%. For the end game areas such as the Ring of Fire, the Imperial Palace, and the Nightfall area, they would have the perfect stats available.

Spirit Spamming/Creation
Here's a slight issue I recently noticed using two characters carrying the Vampirism spirt skill. It appears that these spirits fall under the spamming block the same as any others. I know this block us put in a while back for good reason, originally encompassing the Ranger spirits, and I think it should remain in place, however, some changes need to be made in regards to the global effect of a spirit. The Ranger spirits, and most (if not all) the other Rit spirits offer a global effect to the entire party and allies. Vampirism is a character specific spirit in that it only aids the character who created it, and as such, should not fall under the spamming block. Why should I and another player be forced to choose whom gets to take Vampirism on an outing since only one of the spirits can be active at a time. It would be different if this spirit healed each party member with each attack, but since I'm the only one be affected by my spirit, then I and any other party members should be able to have each of our spirits active at one time. It makes no difference if five party members each bring 4 different spirit skills (thus enabling 20 spirits to be active at once), so raw spirit numbers should make no difference in allowing more than one character to be able to have Vampirism active at the same time, especially if they use this spirit as their self healing skill. The same should also be applied to any spirit that offers a character specific only effect, and not a global party effect.

Guild Wars Wiki
I like the fact that Anet has established an official GW wiki, even though the "unofficial" fan created one has been around for a while and they both share the same type of info. I would like to see the GW wiki carry more info from the developers themselves, and take the direction of a defacto Strategy Guide for the campaigns, especially since we didn't get one for Nightfall nor for Eye of the North. Having the developers comments, ideas, and strategies for quests, exploration, builds, and missions would go a long way to helping the casual player get through the campaigns, and be of interest to players such as myself to just like that kind of thing. Plus this would be a great way to have firm information about various NPC's, outposts, and quest requirements as well.

Guild Wars Store
I don't think there's any need to rehash the previous or ongoing controversy regarding the GW on-line store, especially in regards to the requirements to unlock the special mission pack. I have already voiced my thoughts on that particular subject and won't repeat them here. I would like to see more items offered in the store, however, and have mentioned in a prior post about adding weapons packs and making the region specific pre-order items available to those players living in regions they were not offered in. I also liked the idea of a map pack mentioned by Gaile in another post a while back, and would like to see that offered at some point - taking into consideration the suggestions on what should be included that were made by myself and others in that thread. I really do think various in game upgrades and exclusive item packs should be offered on top of what I already mentioned, including extra additional content such as explorable areas, missions, or quest chains. Clearly this "micro-tranasction" has worked in Korea and other such areas and think it would be a good way to generate more interest in the store and allow us players to have more opportunity to take advantage of offers such as the mission pack.

Misc. Suggestions
Just a few odds and ends that keep cropping up as I'm playing that might make the GW experience slightly better:
1) Allow Heroes to be set back to a single profession only. I tend to play all my heroes with their prime profession only, but have experimented with one Melonni as a D/A. However, I would like to see an option to be able to set heroes back to a primary profession only just to keep things simpler. In the grand scheme of things, I know I can load up the prime attribute points and just use the prime skills for the hero to the same effect, but having that option would simplify matters a bit, especially when forming single profession templates.

2) An option to lock the camera angle is one of my most desired options here. Dying can be a pain in the rear, but constantly having to readjust my camera angle to get it back to just the right spot after every death just gets annoying. An option to lock the view so the angle never changes, unless I manually do so myself, would be a great time saver - and a whole lot less frustrating.

3) Adding a slight change to the /Bonus command so that we can create specific bonus items would be nice as well. It gets to be a pain when I have to make sure to clear enough backpack space to make sure the specific item I want gets created when using the command. The ability to "/bonus Ithas Bow" just to create the Ithas Bow would save some time.

4) Exactly what is the point of the Star of Transference? We not only have to spend one skill point just to have an item that gives us the skill point back, but then spend the gold and material cost on top of that to have the item crafted. Some players may use the Star as a means to sell to other players, or to use on a lower level character to give them a skill point, but I don't really see the value in that. Skill points are useless for PvP characters, and I am playing all my PvE characters through each campaign, so just by questing, leveling, and level roll-over, each of those characters will have all the skills points they will ever need to cap elites and buy every skill available to their prime and secondary profession. Therefore, there's really no point in this item unless the crafting cost drops the requirement of the skill point, offers two skill points upon consumption instead of just one, or also offers one or two Hero Skill Points along with the regular point.

5) Now that I have loosened the purse strings a bit and added the Skill Trainer to my guild's Guild Hall, I would like to see this NPC improved to encompass all skills of all three campaigns and not just the core skills that he currently offers. Since skills trainers are account and character specific, it should be no problem to have all non-elites from each campaign included on the account available to all the characters on that account, especially considering the fact that the Priest of Balthazar is designed in just such a way. It's that whole one stop shopping thing I mentioned for the Guild Hall upgrades in a previous post. It just saves time from having to take a character to visit several different trainers in each campaign to pick up the desired skills. And since all skills are based on attribute point allocation, and costs based on number of skills bought, there really should be no worries about a lower level character having access to all available skills since their effect will be scaled back based on the character level.

That just about wraps it up for this soapbox – I've been out of game for as long as I can take it, plus I've got to work on some ideas for improving PvP (just how can the Option 1 change to the Champion Title be MORE of a grind than the current setup which forces a ton of grind before having a shot at just one point??!!) and the balance of combat in Dungeons and other areas of the game. Thanks for lending the ear.

Hanok Odbrook
Real Millennium Group Guild
Truth * Knowledge * Peace