A Consolidation of Community Suggestions to Improve GW -- Both PvP and PvE

[kelvanor]

a few things i posted elsewhere:
Spirits:
Whilst everything supposedly has it's respective counter, spirits are lacking in that department. EoE (edge of extinction, isnt really that effective, aoe damage is also not that effective aka fire magic, putrid is an option that works ok) Although they can be beaten; fighting or even playing a spirit spam build is boring for everyone and takes away from the fun and fluidity of the Tombs tourney, resulting in long boring matches that leave everyone cursing like pirates.

nature's renewal: way overpowered, and against the spirit of the game due to the fact that it destroys the use of a whole subset of spells (chants) and therefore forces teams to build around and against it to a degree which degrades creative team building. Firstly need to make it so that it cannot be stacked aka max of one spirit only on the ground.

Frozen soil: perhaps single down at a time as well as shorten timer, shouldnt be a fire and forget skill considering how powerful it is.

another possible fix for spirits in general:add a "maintenence cost" aka 'every 5 seconds costs 3 energy to maintain this spirit or it dies.' therefore would have to pick and choose combos of spirits rather than just spam a large amount of every type. make it closer to online with enchantments, which require maintenence and can be removed.

PVE side:
monk unkillable farm build fix: (reffering to the one where you lower you Hp to 100 and use prot spirit/mending/smiting to be unkillable) make prot spirit based off HP's before rune/death Penalty HP losses
aka:you cannot lose more than 5% of total HP before DP/rune adjustment. that will fix the exploit which is running rampant at the moment and destroying honest sup. monk rune prices.
for those of us not interested in finding the best way to cheat our way to uber riches and gear these types of builds can be quite frustrating to watch succeed with such abandon.

[DarkWax]

Hi,

I posted this elsewhere, in a similar context. As much as I love this game I'm encountering some sort of boredom - I'd never expected coming this so fast. So I put together some ideas that could beef up this thing:


1.) Enhance the PvM experience!
Much was announced about the benefits of streaming & instancing - we all know it. But there's the same map, the same monsters, everytime you enter an explorable or a mission: "Hey girls, be careful, 3 of this nasty scorpions will appear up this hill!" It's getting boring. You know the road, you know, where's what monster and how much, all you can do is to explore the fastest way.
Why don't we have random spawn points? Why don't we have random quests? Why don't we have random bosses with good drops?

Imagine wandering around in Ascalon with your L20 hero you'd find having the collectoresse (random NPC) having an exclamation mark (random chance, lets say 5% when entering an outpost/city). She'd tell you that an awesome moster were devastating (random quest) the Diessa Lowlands (random region) - zoning there you could search the region for it. It'd be a L30 Charr Ashwalker (Lvl and profession based on yours - a monk would get a necro, mesmer or ranger) surrounded by 5 groups of 3 [regionlevel] other Charr. Kill him and have a 10% chance to find a good item suitable to you.

Another possibility were to calculate the monsterlevel by the level of the lowest human player.

2.) Enhance the PvP experience for the "intermediates"!
We have, at the moment, 2 versions of PvP:
- a.) PvP for "the rest of us": Random 4v4.
- b.) PvP for the pros: any other form of PvP.
Even in team 4v4 a not optimised team will fast get ganked by the faction farmers from the pro guilds. There's 1 PvP mode for beginners, all other for the pros.
But "the rest of us" is the wide majority, and we have nearly no chance to get "pro" if there's no possibility to learn. And this only suitable random 4v4 is getting boring fast ...

Imagine your small guild could do 4V4 GvG, facing other guilds in your skill range - best in a sort of "intermediate league". This would give those unnumbered smalls guilds a chance to learn, have fun and even ascend to the "pro" level.
Imagine more sorts of "low level" PvP - random 6v6, team 6v6, some copy of tombs but random/team 4v*/6v* ...
We need a way to grow "the rest of us" to "pro level"!

3.) Kick the Account-Guild connection!
I'm in a guild. A small guild. A guild of people that RL know each other. A very fine guild! I'm very proud to be Officer of Foreign Affairs of the PinkPanthers [PiPa]!
But we're way to small to compete at "pro level", and most of us don't want to spent the needed amount of time to create a competetive build. We could GvG, were there an option for 4v4 GvG, but we never could set up a pro team. OK, fine.

So I, as the PvP fiend of PiPa, have some invitations of other guilds. Competetive guilds. I'd very like to join to see "real PvP"! But I'd had to abandon PiPa, which I never would. Pwned :-(

Imagine each guild leader could decide if members were allowed to have two guilds, perhaps for every member. Some small guilds could throw together their champions to create a common fighter squad!

I understand the problems about espionage etc. from some elitist guild leaders, but if it were in their hands to allow or deny? Were there a problem?

Ok, much said. I think we could have a better GW. It's in my opinion the best game since years, just Gothic cames near. But, I think, we've reached a dead point. Not much changes needed, IMHO, it could be easily done.

Have fun!

[jesh]

First.. responses.

Originally Posted by Silmor

Most people don't see a problem with this issue because they're either:
- too green behind the ears to know about Protective Bond abuse
- too busy playing PvP to give a damn about PvE (this Protective Bond setup is indeed laughable in PvP)
- abusing Protective Bond themselves for phat lewt and ultimate pwnage and don't want the evil ArenaNet to nerf their cash cow

I just checked, and I have 761 hours 41 minutes over 3 months. Am I green behind the ears? I don't PvP that much, although it is pretty fun. I'm one of those people that wants to turn their PvE character into a PvP one. However, I don't have a mo/x with protective bond. I farmed charr once for linen if that counts.
It would appear then, that I am not in this category. I simply avoid protective bond because to me, it's a showcase of your lack of talent to do it through more creative methods.
That, and farming is boring.
That being said, there are still people that do it, and as others have said, it's the rewards system at fault. Having drops for literally everyone is a great idea.

Originally Posted by Diomedes

If you get the same rewards if you're alone or with a group, most people will try and tag along with a group since it would (probably) be easier than going out alone.

The fact remains, this is a free game, and there is an according amount of people I'd love to smack across the back of the head with a humungous sausage. The better question is, "Why group, when I can solo and not have to deal with losers?" Soloing needs to be discouraged.. not just put on an equal level as forming a party.

Originally Posted by Plague

"Healing" Syndrome

This is not a large problem at the beginning of the game, but more near to the end, especially when you enter into even Yak's Bend, monks become almost necessary components.

I have to agree totally with this.. being how I am, all my characters are made to survive with or without a monk. Last night, I was in a party with my necro for Sanctum Cay. We left without a monk, because it was just too much trouble to find one. Nobody had healing skills either. One of the elementalists died twice within 2 minutes simply because she had come to totally and completely rely on a monk being in the party. She had never experienced a party without one before. To her credit, she adapted remarkably and didn't die after some pointers, but there's a point to be made. Monks need the pressure taken off of them, definetely. Maybe even make a class or two that has *better* healing abilities, so that people will be more receptive to other combinations that "the holy trinity". It's really sad to see people that simply can't survive without the presence of someone cramming hit points down their throat.

Originally Posted by Corbin

I feel that in order to improve GW is quite simple, just make there an inscentive to explore. you cant base a game off missions, there needs to be other things to do!

Amen! When I first saw the screenshots for this game, I was in awe. I was just imagining all the time I'd spend walking around with friends and taking in the sights. Sadly, all the maps are built like mazes, (wtf?), and there is hardly any time to take in the scenery when you are too busy watching life bars and rushing off to complete the stupid mission as soon as possible. A world, say, 3 times as large, that isn't built like a maze, would just be awesome. There wouldn't have to be quests or anything.. it would still be super enjoyable.
Another thing I would love to see is more critters. Sure, I counted a butterfly and bunny in pre searing, but later on in the game, the world is just empty not counting the enemies. Why not add more? They don't have to have skills or aggro, like enemies do. You could even make them all charmable, so that a ranger could have a level 20 butterfly or squirrel in combat. Surely that wouldn't be too much work, considering how there is no difference in between pets.

Originally Posted by Jake

I suggest adding in new scoreboard charts that list things such as .. total damage done, total healed, maybe something along the lines of potential damage avoided, things like that. That way you can see how effective your teammates are somewhat, and perhaps it could aid in the group finding process. If some random players see warriors/necs/mesmers/rangers outdamaging elementalists in their team, they'll probably get more respect and maybe *GASP* convince random players to get different class combinations as substitutes instead of the standard obvious choices.

This is also great, maybe a pop up window on the right hand side, showing the stats on *all* of their characters, when you click on them? That way you wouldn't be stereo typed for "just another n00b" because you're several lowers lower than the majority. Of course.. the worse players would have a hard time getting groups.. I can't say I feel sorry for them. Maybe they can all band together and enjoy sucking.


Okay.. here are some of my own suggestions.

First - the level 20 cap. It's fine, I have no problems with it ever raising, since techinically this is not a mmorpg. However, it seems to take a freakin' long time to get those skill points after 20. I suggest instead of experience, people that are level 20 will gain faction from PvE. The amounts, I have no idea. Anything seems better than the way it is now, though.

Second - dye prices. Something screwy is up with the traders.. the silver dye that sells for 2k to the average man, I only get 100g for giving it to the merchant?? This is a load of crock. It actually discourages selling to the trader, increasing prices, which discourages more selling... I prophesy, unless something is done, people will just ignore trader prices completely and sell for whatever they want to.

Third - PvP ideas. Someone said something about more PvP games than are currently out there... I believe I speak for many when I say that a lot of smaller guilds don't GvG because they need to recruit.. and no one will join a guild with less than 1000. That means.. try, and lose once, and you're screwed. So what happens is, you try to recruit people.. keep recruiting.. and wait a long, long time, before you even get to see a huge aspect of the game. Why not add a whole bunch more PvP options? Here are some ideas that I had.
1v1 - Choose an opponent similair to the trade button, and if they accept, you can now target each other. This could be done anywhere outside, in missions, maybe even in town. I think it'd be cool to see people duking it out in town. There could also be a random tournament type thing, for the prestige.
Hotbox - A large, cool looking room, or map, where people can just chill and talk. Anyone that wants to attack anyone else, can. This might sound stupid at first, but that was one of the two forms of PvP in Ragnarok Online, which I enjoyed immensely. You might think, "Oh, someone with Meteor Storm might come in and piss everyone off.." Well, that's just the point! It's fun to hunt down people that try things like that.

Fourth - A lot of people have expressed a need for a better way to find a group, and I second that opinion. However, what really needs to be implemented is a way to get rid of people in the party that are there to just cause conflict. You know, people that don't follow instructions, or blatantly ignore them. Maybe just as bad, people that just go afk and stay at the spawn points, reaping the rewards of the groups effort, while investing none of their own. Whenever I'm in a party, it seems like there is always one of those. Why not just leave the "kick" button in, once you start the mission, or quest? A lot of people would be grateful.

Fifth - special effects. Mesmers and necros got totally screwed when it comes to this. This is the reason that elementalists are so in demand, is that their spells simply have a visible effect on the enemy. I suggest to make every single attack/skill/spell super flashy. Make some spell/skill combinations harder to pull off than others, and make it accordingly more pleasant to look at. This is supposed to be a game based upon skill, but I don't see what's so hard about pressing 1-8 at appropriate times. Why not add actual combos, like Summoner, or at least like Morrowind, where you get a different type of attack with the way that you move? A sexy game is a better game.

Sixth - an option for solely exploring. With this, you and your team mates could chose to not gain aggro from mobs, just so you could sightsee. There would be limitations, of course, such as:
--You will only not attract aggro from mobs less than your level.
--If you a certain type of monster consistantly, it will not bother you any longer.
--{New towns, missions, and outposts can not be reached in this manner, and no quests can be done while in this mode.} - Scratch this.
On second thought, it would be nice to stop by an outpost to sell, but you would not be able to buy skills, enter mission, accept quests, etc. You would not have that town/outpost on your map for future warping, either.

Maybe the monsters could be lessened in occurance, as well, according to how many people are in the party. This would go best with my previous suggestion, of adding a lot more flora and fauna to the game.

Seventh - Add boats! I know it was played as a joke on someone before, that they needed on to travel to the guild hall. Well, wouldn't it be cool to have boats that can be crafted with the right materials? There could be varying grades of range/speed to them, and it would allow the adventuring new player a chance to see what's in store for them, later on in the game. Of course, upon landing, you would automatically be put into "explore" mode, so as to avoid exploits.

Anyway, these are just my thought, I'm sure they're not the best, but here they are.

::Edited for typos and new thoughts.::

[Phades]

Originally Posted by jesh

The fact remains, this is a free game, and there is an according amount of people I'd love to smack across the back of the head with a humungous sausage. The better question is, "Why group, when I can solo and not have to deal with losers?" Soloing needs to be discouraged.. not just put on an equal level as forming a party.

While i agree with what you said, i doubt that something like this will come to pass in a system like GW. What you are suggesting is a system that rewards play by multipling the effect through the sum of the parts, similar to games like FFXI. While this does exist to a degree within GW, moving the rest of the way down this line would create too many situations where players would be utterly destroyed within pvp in seconds. People thought air and adrenalin spiking were bad, they wouldnt have experienced anything yet. Granted it is a pve solution that helps with gameplay for pve, but it can easily destroy the pvp side of the game. Another unfortunate side effect from this is the even greater lack of diversity within the game. Single user defenses become obscelete, healing becomes over valued (already is ), and finding groups becomes an even longer process as you need key elements in order to advance. Right now, nearly any ad-hoc method can work with a little coordination, which allows for the solo play to exist as well.

The real solution follows more of the balancing of the skills path, while introducing npcs that behave more like situations that occur within pvp, in order to create the inter-dependance within the pve environment by introducing more of a challenge in the pve game. This is without falling into the trap of must have x of class a, one of class b, 2 of class c and so on.

[jesh]

Originally Posted by Phades

While this does exist to a degree within GW, moving the rest of the way down this line would create too many situations where players would be utterly destroyed within pvp in seconds.

I think I might be pretty dense, because I see no correlation with what I said, whatsoever. Would you care to explain yourself further, please?

[Phades]

Oh i dunno, imagine a multiplied damage effect through one or two non degen attacks, that would have enough force to brute its way past a 105 prot monk.

[Sarus]

Sec VIII. General Issues (Last Updated: Aug 4, 2005)

1. Player Drops

The issue of players dropping mid-mission is another one of those topics which I personally think must be resolved by Anet before GW will ever be taken seriously for tournament level PvP.

From a PvE perspective having a player drop mid-mission is without a doubt an incredible annoyance. Nevertheless, most well formed teams can still make it through a mission down a man. At worst, you have to give the mission a second shot.

However, in the competitive PvP world having a player drop almost certainly guarantees a lose. All of the top FPS games allow dropped players to simply rejoin the match. Although a team is at a disadvantage while their dropped players logs back in, it is only temporary.

To be fair player drops aren't always GW's fault. In fact, I would say only 10-15% of the drops I've been party to were a result of a GW thrown error. The vast majority are due to poor internet service providers and short spikes of network latency. Nevertheless, the fact is that players WILL get dropped in competitive matches (GvG and Tombs) and the problem is currently ignored. I can tell you first hand there is nothing worse than slogging through all the maps in tombs to have a key component of your offense or defense drop once you finally get to the hall 2 hours after starting.

The solution is obvious. Allow dropped players to rejoin their teams. The key here is to create a system that isn't open to abuse by enterprising players trying to gain a competitive advantage. I feel that there is more room for abuse in a PvE environment so I will only address the PvP side as it seems to be a much easier thing to fix.

From a PvP perspective the only avenue for abuse that I can think of would be to purposefully drop and come back with a different skill set or possibly even a different class. There is no issue of dropping early in the mission, having your team carry you through and then rejoining at the end. The solution of course would be to only allow players to rejoin their team if they have not made any changes to their attribute layout and their skill selection. The way I see it working is if a player gets dropped, they have 10 minutes to log back in to GW with the character they were originally playing. They would type a "/rejoin" command which would warp them back into the match.

From a technical standpoint I'm not sure how difficult it is to insert someone into a particular instance that is already running. A possible stopgap measure that could probably be implemented faster would be to let the player rejoin on the next map load. Unfortunately, this would obviously only help in tombs and so would do nothing to address the issue in GvG.

I'm confident that Anet programmers have the ability to create such a system to minimize the effect of player drops. Without such a system in place I don't think GW can ever make it as a high level competitive PvP game.

[Sarus]

Once again, thank you for the feedback so far.

Here is a list of updates to the main post located here

• Added 2 new sections. These are:
  1. Notable Posts
     • This is a listing of posts which I consider to be well written and that also cover a wide variety of topics. Again, it's not necessarily stuff I agree with. Just posts that people obviously put time into writing.
  2. Almost a Bug
     • This is a listing of concerns which could almost be classified as bugs
• Flushed out many of the "Anet's Thoughts" links. These are links to Anet quotes which give a little insight into what Anet's thinks about the issues that concern the community.
• Updated several of the "Learn More" links by linking to posts which go into depth about a particular topic.
• Updated the last updated dates (hehe I know that's kinda lame)

Just wanted to mention that there may be some cleaning up of the thread. The goal is to keep it as concise and readable as possible. Again if you have a problem with how the cleaning up is done just PM me.

[varyag]

The math for most guilds is simple.

ToPK (tombs tournament) requires alot of coordination and 8 guildmates present to really have a chance at earning faction. Even for a top guild doing its best effort the Faction/Hour remains of the same order as in the arena, due to the longer duration of fights.

GvG - waiting times for the best guilds are crazy, and the average guilds don't play or win often enough. Faction farming builds like the PANK GuildLord assassination aren't consistant. Considering that matches here require coordination, 8 ready members online and an opponent - the actual Faction/Hour is not much better then in the Arena, even for the Top guilds.

Also remember that most guilds unlock just to get into GvG, so its not really an option untill you already have everything.

Therefore the best option for a casual guild that tries to form its ToPK/GvG build is to earn faction is the Team Arenas.

This is how it works in my guild:

We decided that we allocate 4 minutes for each round (and waiting times), and play for an hour. This gives us 15 rounds per hour, more or less.
Some rounds last less, some more, but 4 minutes is a good average.

If we go on a winning streak (noone counters our build):

15 rounds/hour x 21 avg.faction/round = 312 raw faction
3 bonuses/hour x 11 avg.faction/bonus = 33 bonus faction
Maximum Total = 345 faction/hour

If we don't go on winning streaks, or have to leave due to a drawn out fight (when a fight goes over 6 minutes...):

312 raw faction x 75% victory rate = 234 faction/hour

234 faction/hour is the number we get with a 3:1 winning build, which is common in Team 4v4 during primetime.


Its almost the same number Wheel got from his survey of G-Stats. His faction numbers are right.

----------------------------------------------

I agree with Wheel's thread. I think his approach to calculating the faction is much better because it addresses the source of the problem:

How much time should a casual gamer have to play before unlocking most things?

Well, how much time does a casual gamer have?

2 hours per day = about 60 to 70 hours per month.

Asking people to play the game for over one month before having everything unlocked and ready for serious PvP seems reasonable enough.

Originally Posted by Wheel

To make it so that players can unlock everything in roughly 100 hours, the faction reward needs to be multiplied by roughly 37.63x.

Factor in the first-time PvE through all the missions which is currently required at least once and you can reduce that multiplier - but it will still have to be of the same order.

I'm thinking 16x to 20x to be something acceptable.

Anything less is unfair to the majority of gamers.

[Divinitys Creature]

I agree to this an Wheel's calculations. It is worth noting that the G-Stats data doesn't take into acount waiting times and team formation times so the real rate corrected for that would be even higher but I don't want to push it and would stick to what data we have.

[varyag]

On the issue of Player Drops:

From a technical standpoint I'm not sure how difficult it is to insert someone into a particular instance that is already running.

How about allowing people to join the instance as 'spectators' - with some kind of a limit to what they get to see to minimize their use as scouts - then if someone drops the spectator gets to play the same character build as the person dropped (just for that match).

Also...Sorry for the spam but...

Why isn't this thread a sticky? ^_^

[delfin42]

Originally Posted by asdar

The second would be to have options with the hench. For instance Lina is a protection monk. She brings some great skills that I like but she doesn't even touch on many I think are important. I think that hench should have a window much like the merchants where the group leader could set the skills the henchmen would take.

Seconding this, or at least suggesting that more henches with different skillsets be added.

I think that one of the reasons that Rangers, Mesmers and Necros are frequently passed over in PvE grouping is because their respective henches aren't particularly useful (or at least not visibly so). Reyna can't interrupt, set traps, bring a pet, drop spirits, or do anything other than shoot arrows, defeating the whole purpose of being a viable Ranger. Dunham's skillset is missing just about everything that makes a Mesmer useful (interrupts, anti-caster skills, Chaos Storm). Claude casts Blood Ritual once in a while and dies a lot. Not that the other henches are real prizes, either (Orion, for instance, is the master of dropping Fire Storms on fresh corpses), but they're at least serviceable.

Hammer Warriors, Minion Necros, Domination Mesmers, Smite Monks, anything-but-Fire Eles, anything-at-all Rangers... those who routinely pick up henches don't get to see what any of those can do or how useful they can be.

I'd like to see more variety in henches, perhaps refocusing the existing henches to concentrate more on certain attributes as well. They don't have to be world-beaters, as the existing henches were clearly designed to be mediocre, but more choices would make tailoring a hench party to a mission much easier. If I know a Monk boss is coming, for instance, even a mediocre hench with Backfire or Distracting Shot or Defile Flesh is better than nothing.

[kayten]

first, let me state that i do not PVE. i did try it, and i founf it to be the exact opposite of fun. i made it to level sixteen, and said "screw this". i deleted my rp character as soon as the faction system was released, since pvp was my only true fun. imagine my disapointment.

i'll be as brief as i can, my idea is pretty easy to understand.

if you want to place a preist of balthazar and reduce the cost of faction, you still have to scale the gain of skills. afterall, it's not fair if a new player logs on, fights, gets the best skills, and never has to deal with th crap-skills like a pve player does. so, let's set a system up where when you buy a certain number of skills from the preist, more skills open up. basically, take the system they use for the rune unlocking, and use it on the skills. that way it still takes time and work to get the late game skills, but you don't have to keep farming money for runs to places to get the new preist, and doind quests that are sooooo much less fun than arena.

[walder]

First, I'd like to say that there is definitely quite a bit more to fix before I would ever like to see my idea implimented (as far as skill/upgrade/rune aquisition goes).

PvP
I would like to see PvP mean more than just ranking, and I think the way to do this is by adding a PvP map. WoW tries to do this with hoard going into alliance territory but its pretty unorganized, Lineage 2 does this the best of any RPG I've seen so far. We should keep the guild system we have now, except there should be alliances that guilds can join. These alliances will have land that is theirs and they can fight to protect. The land ownership can be determined by who holds majority or who holds a stronghold on the land, its not that important. But as it is now, if you lose in PvP it just doesn't matter. It will take a lot more planning and thought to actually get this to work but it will add another dimension of play to Guild Wars.

[Mourning Air]

1. Problem: The resurrection signet limits the number of usable skills. This signet has become too important not to bring in many cases, especially in PvP - but it ends up limiting the number of usable skills to 7, when it is meant to be 8. I often feel too limited when I bring the signet, but I usually hate to risk going without it on a non-monk character.

Solution: I feel that the resurrection signet should get its own slot which would allow us to use all 8 skill slots as it should be. The new "extra" slot could also be used for a capture signet. In cases where you want to bring both the capture signet and the resurrection signet, or more than one capture signet, you could still use any of the original 8 slots to hold these signets.

2. Problem: Storage is too limited. I can hold 45 items on a character, yet storage is limited to 20 for all of your characters to share? This does not make sense, and makes it very difficult to keep a supply of, say, crafting supplies to share among your characters. In addition, a lot of useful items like runes and weapon upgrades can't stack, making it difficult to hold on to more than a small number of them - you are usually forced to sell them or otherwise dump them right away.

Solution: Allow the player to either purchase or rent more storage slots, providing both a solution to the limited storage as well as an additional gold sink. Another related solution is to allow common crafting supplies to stack higher than 250. I feel 400 or 500 to a stack would be more reasonable for common supplies, while perhaps limiting rare supplies to 100 to a stack to balance this.

3. Problem: There are very few good ways to practice PvP with your guildmates, without jumping right into the fray. This issue has been touched upon several times already, but I feel it's worth repeating.

Solution: The best solution is intraguild scrimmaging, which I believe ANet has mentioned as a good possibility in the future. Scrimmaging could be added to guild halls, where you could set up matches of various sizes between guildmates, while other members could watch if desired. This also helps with the issue of guild halls simply not having enough to do.

4. Problem: Refund points are tedious, annoying, and unnecessary. I'm sure I'm part of the vast majority in believing this.

Solution: Get rid of refund points, and allow attributes to be changed without them. To avoid this being abused in the middle of PvP play, only allow attribute changes in towns/outposts/guild halls.

5. Problem: There is no way to preview the result of two dyes mixing, or to preview the result of a dye on a piece of armor. I believe this has also been touched upon here. Many would like to experiment more with dye mixing to create a more distinct look, but it can become wasteful and expensive to just randomly mix the dyes together and see what happens. Besides that, the effect of dyes on certain armor can be very different from what you expect - it may not dye the area you think it will, or the dyed hue may look very different than what you expected.

Solution: Create some form of preview for both mixing and applying dyes. When you mix a dye, a small window could pop up that would show you in advance what the new vial of dye will look like. When you apply a dye, it could change the appearance on just your character's inventory view, so that you have a good idea of what it would look like. You can then either confirm the change, or cancel it.

6. Problem: All characters on an account are forced to the same guild. This causes problems mainly with people who share accounts and do not wish to be in the same guild, but also others - for example, people who wish to make "gimmick" guilds/characters with a certain theme that their other characters do not fit into.

Solution: Allow an option when you join a guild that asks if you want just that character to join, or your entire account. This would present an issue for certain guilds with "guild espionage" or "double agents" - the solution there is to either allow the guild leader to force your entire account to join (i.e. make it a guild policy), or to simply allow the guild leader/officers to see the other guilds that each account is affiliated with.

7. Problem: Four character slots per account is too limiting if you would like to experience both PvP and PvE with the widest range of classes. I created 4 PvE characters with all 6 classes included so that I could unlock all skills eventually, but this means I am unable to make a PvP-only character without deleting one of my hard-earned advanced PvE characters. I have an issue with destroying all of that work just to experience a different aspect of the game. Yes, it is possible to unlock all skills with just 3 PvE characters by forcing them to use all 6 different classes - but this forces my hand, causing me to create a class combination that I might hate just to assure that I can unlock the skills for those particular classes. It is also possible to change your secondary class to unlock more skills, but anyone who has done this knows that it becomes extremely tedious.

Solution: Allow a 5th slot on the account that can only be used for a PvP-only character. I think this solution speaks for itself, and would add a lot to the longevity of the game.

[ygraul]

One thing I've heard people talking about in the game is the fact that four accounts is not enough. In my case, with my fourth character going for ascention and finishing the game, I've had to delete my first character to make room for a PvP only character.

For those who don't do any PvE this may seem odd, but the part of the game I most enjoy is being able to gather with my guild buddies to do missions, explore, farm and do FOW/UW runs. Sure, I've done pre-searing a ton of times, but it's the social and cooperative aspects of the game that make it interesting for me. And it's cool when we're getting ready to get eight folks together that many of us can swap out PvE characters as needed to build a balanced and successful team.

I have considered buying another account, particularly with rumors that there are new classes about to be released. But then it would be like starting over. I would lose all the cool skills I had captured and all the cool items I've unlocked with that account. And I do enjoy PvP and I like having all those wonderful things I've unlocked at my fingertips to try a new combination.

I don't want something for nothing. I would be willing to pay for more character slots and I think a lot of folks feel the same way. I hope this will be taken into consideration as expansions are added to the game.

Rockin board, btw. I come here a lot to glean information and read the great posts. Thanks for making it available.

[DarkZeal]

All I have to say is:

More character and storage slots

1v1 arena

FFA arena

Winning battles give you $$

Make Vengence a Necro ability

[wheel]

Originally Posted by Sarus

Sec VIII. General Issues (Last Updated: Aug 11, 2005)

1. Player Drops
2. Observer Mode
   
   You can read about the planned Observer Mode here (Can someone help me out with a link thanks!). Observer mode would go a long way in injecting some excitement back in PvP. It would also provide a way for guilds to watch “the best” and learn new tactics and styles of play. In general, Observer mode would be a huge boost to everyone in the game. Hopefully Anet is still working hard on it.
   
   Anet’s Thoughts: [Learn More] "We are looking forward to unveiling Observer Mode a short while after the changes we mentioned above." ~James Phinney (State of the Game Address)

1. Here's an overview of Observer Mode.

   Originally Posted by http://www.pixelrage.com/mesmerize/fansitefriday/46/

   I'm looking forward to observer mode, and I was wondering if a replay feature would be part of that? Is there anything more you can tell us about how observer mode will work?

Originally Posted by http://www.pixelrage.com/mesmerize/fansitefriday/46/

Observer Mode and Replay are two very separate features. Once we have Observer Mode, replays will be a done deal, for pretty much anyone will be able to make one. So it's on Observer Mode that we're focusing, and here are some details of how that will work:

• You will be able to observe any PvP battle – tournament or guild – in which the Top 10 guilds on the Guild Wars Ladder take part.
• Any other noteworthy PvP battles such as regional or tournament championships will also be made available for observation. You can also view the battles taking place in the Hall of Heroes.
• We think that someday down the road, it would be a super innovation to also make it so that you can witness any battle in which your guild is taking part. This is a highly-requested feature and we'll look at the opportunities to offer that, too.

The way Observer Mode will work will be to offer a menu which you use to select the match you want to observe. One thing that surprised me is that there will be no limit on the number of people who can observe any particular match; the entire Guild Wars community could conceivably watch any individual match. When we have our first global tournament, which is coming in the not too distant future, we look forward to hosting many tens of thousands of viewers as they witness history being made.

[quinlan]

I have a few ideas for improvements.

1. More characters per account --- I really love that fact that dual classing gives us a possible 30 classes. Combing this with the limit of only 4 characters per account just makes it frustrating. I would love to try all 30 combo's but after spending all that time developing a character I don't want to delete him/her to make room for a new one. I suggest raising the limit to 6. This way people can have one character per primary profession and get to play with the primary only attributes without having to delete a previous character.

2. Character appearance --- To me the more options a player has to customize their characters appearance the better. Ideally I would like to be able to pick the nose, mouth, and eyes of the face separately.

3. Fixing Ranger's Expertise --- Its says things drop by 4% per rank yet this is not reflected in the skills description. There is no good excuse for this especially when their biggest competitor (a.k.a. World Of Warcraft) does do it. If you add a point to an option in the talent tree that affects ability cost and/or affect it is shown in the abilities description.

4. Spell Effects --- The spell effects leave a lot to be desired. Take Firestorm for example. This conjures up images of something awe inspiring and terrifying. Yet when you cast the spell it looks more like fire drizzle. Spell effects that ramp up in relation the attribute rank would be great.

5. Gwen's dialogue --- I just found out how much fun it is to have this kid follow me around in presearing. She seems to have a lot to say while traveling but because she travels behind me I miss most of it. Any way to add her dialogue to the dialogue box would be a great help.

[Nizzim]

my thoughts

Gameplay : This game seems to linear and cookie cutter to be truly enjoyable after a period of time. Everything you can do in the game is already set in stone and you cant go very far outside of that. I suggest side things players can do that wont neccessarily effect the rest of the world, but just give you something to do. Wood and materials are already cheap, why not have proffessions to mine for these things

Guild Halls : Personally I think Guild Halls are useless, I mean there just there to battle in. Nothing else. I think there should be things you can do in your guild hall. Maybe implement an inside or a hut like open door structure or something of the sort. Maybe have a place where you can literally "farm". As in like grow a tree to cut it down for the wood, or things like that. Maybe have animals or even be able to buy monsters and scatter them through out. There should also be a bank at the GH to put your belongings.

Community : I feel like this game doesnt have a "family" based community. It honestly feels like everyman for himself. When you go and battle with PUG's and someone dies you dont say "oh damn that guy died we better res him" you say "god this noob sucks" or "res quick nub." It just doesnt feel like everyone is fighting towards the greater good. If you go and play FFXI, you feel like people have there own things to do and your all going to save something and you feel important. Fix that

Thank you for reading