Curse

Muse of Shadows · Dec 15, 2006, 03:01 PM // 15:01

As a forewarning, this is a very long post with many ideas on how to improve the game. As such, I have included a table of contents to allow an easy way to reference a particular topic or scan to it.

Most, if not all, of my suggestions have likely been posted before. So why am I creating a new thread? I do not wish to search for a dozen or more threads, and post in them all separately. Further, I would like a single place for the developers to look at all my ideas and what everyone else thinks of them.

This post took me a significant amount of time to create. As such, please keep it on topic and flame free. I would, however, appreciate constructive criticism, alternate ways if implementing ideas, new ideas, why you do not like/agree with an idea, and signing of my suggestions. I do not appreciate people stating they dislike or disagree with one of the suggestions without explaining why they feel/think that.

I have not yet listed all of my ideas here. As I get around to it, new ideas occur to me, or I see ideas listed somewhere else, I will add them to this post.

I – Character Appearance
…a) Character Generation
…b) Stylist

II – Insignia’s/Inscriptions
…a) Compatibility
…b) Price

III – Storage
…a) Additional Upgrades
……1) Character Storage
……2) Dye Storage
……3) Rune/Insignia Storage
…b) Increased Storage

IV – Two-Weapon Combat
…a) Attack Speed
…b) Damage Reduction

V – Henchmen Intelligence

VI – PvP
…a) Heroes and Henchmen
……1) Limit Heroes and Henchmen
……2) Remove Heroes +/- Henchmen
…b) Heroes Ascent

VII – Skills
…a) Skill Balancing
…b) Skill Descriptions
……1) Rotting Flesh
……2) Crystal Wave
……3) Searing Flames
……4) Life Siphon and Life Transfer

VIII – Game and Patch Releases
…a) Game Release Dates
…b) Beta Testing
…c) Patch/Update Team

IX – Bots and Gold Sites

I - Character Appearance

…a) Character Generation – Put simply, character generation should include all hair style and colors, skin tones, and facial options from chapters you own, regardless of which chapter you are creating the character for. This is so players can create characters with the appearance they wish without having to play a specific chapter.

…b) Stylist – A commonly asked for feature by players on forums, a way to change your characters appearance after character generation without having to remake the character from scratch. This can be done simply by adding an NPC to towns that, when spoken to, will take you to a screen such as during character creation, where you can look at designs. Once satisfied with how your character will look, you may finalize the choice by paying a gold price. This will have the additional affect of creating another gold sink that ArenaNet seems to enjoy implementing so much. The price, however, should be something an average player could easily afford for a basic feature such as this.

II - Insignia’s / Inscriptions

…a) Compatibility – As is, the insignia system is poor for the primary reason that it is not compatible with all items from all chapters. Because of this, already existing items, and those found in Prophecies and Factions, are inferior to those from Nightfall. Put simply, it does not make sense and causes much frustration. The insignia system should be made universal to all chapters, and existing equipment should be updated to allow insignia’s and inscriptions

…b) Price – When Nightfall was first released, the insignia’s, when available at the traders, were selling for obscene amounts. Like many others, I attributed this to the new release, and expected the prices to fall to reasonable levels quickly. I was, for the most part, correct. However, the Stonefist insignia has held a stable price of about 2.5k to now. This in my opinion is far too much for the casual player. Further, the Bloodstained and Sentinel’s insignia’s have continued to rise, and currently stand at 15k and 8k respectively. This is far worse than during the release of Nightfall, and far to expensive even for most of the “rich” and hardcore players. Because of this, I believe there should be a separate vendor for insignia’s (possibly a second tab for armor crafters) that sells them for a fixed price in place of listing them with the rune trader.

III - Storage

…a) Additional Upgrades – The material storage upgrade was an excellent idea, and much appreciated. However, it only covered a limited field. Additional upgrades should also be made available. Possible upgrades include the following:

……1) Character Storage – A storage space similar to the current one, except exclusive to the character, not spread across accounts. This could be used for additional armor and weapons not in use, holiday items, ect.

……2) Dye Storage – Working very similar to the material storage, a tab where players could place all their dye. Allowing 250 of each dye to be held when purchased

……3) Rune/Insignia Storage – Working similar to dye or material storage, this one, however, would be more complicated due to the amount of runes and insignia’s available. I propose a tab that, when clicked, would produce several sub-tabs beneath to be selected from. These sub-tabs could be organized in multiple possible ways, but I feel the most effective would be to have four tabs labeled as Insignia’s, Minor Runes, Major Runes, and Superior Runes. Each sub-tab would work as material or dye storage for their set of runes, allowing 5 of each type to be stored once purchased.

…b) Increased Storage – Even with the storage upgrade options, people will likely complain about maxing out their storage space (250 materials and dye, 5 rune/insignia) for each item they possess. My proposed solution, and another gold sink, is to allow further increased storage to be purchased. For a fee of (previous upgrade cost + 50 gold), the player would add an additional 50 to the cap of material or dye storage, or 1 to the cap of rune/insignia storage. Example: Initial cost 50 gold for 250 cap. First increase of 50 would cost 100 gold (50 previous cost + 50), and the second would cost 150 (100 previous cost + 50). A similar version of this may be implemented for the account and character based storage boxes.

IV - Two-Weapon Combat

An excellent idea that is periodically presented, the most likely reason two-weapon combat or dual wielding has not yet been implemented would be for game balance purposes. Here, I present possible balances so it may be implemented.

…a) Attack Speed – Axes and swords have a base attack speed of 1.33 seconds. While dual wielding, the attack speed of each weapon (weaponA and weaponB) would be placed at 2 second staggered intervals. Example: Second 1 – weaponA swings. Second 2 – weaponB swings. Second 3 – weaponA swings, ect. The two second staggered interval was used as an example, and will likely need to be changed to properly balance.

…b) Damage Reduction – The overall increased attack speed and associated affects (DPS, adrenalin, vampiric, ect.) may not be able to properly balance with the loss of a shield. If this is the case, an additional affect of a slight damage reduction while dual wielding may be implemented, such as –5% damage from each swing. Once again, the 5% was for example only, and likely is not properly balanced.

V - Henchmen Intelligence

Simply put, the AI of henchmen and heroes is rapidly falling behind that of the enemies in the PvE environment. The solution to this problem is quite simple: apply enemy AI updates to heroes and henchmen as well.

VI - PvP

…a) Heroes and Henchmen – A great many people, myself included, dislike heroes being included in Heroes Ascent. Two possible ways I see to quell these complaints are outlined below.

……1) Limit Heroes and Henchmen – Limit the number of heroes allowed to one per player, and limit the number of NPC’s (heroes and henchmen) allowed in a group to four. This allows people to still play with henchmen and heroes when they wish, but doing so will no longer dominate the Hall of Heroes.

……2) Remove Heroes +/- Henchmen – My personal preferred choice, remove heroes entirely. Leave the henchmen if the ability to use some NPC’s is important, but once again, I would prefer to have them removed completely.

…b) Heroes Ascent – The Hall of Heroes has lost significant interest sense the update changing it to 6 vs. 6. Solution=simple. Change it back to 8 vs. 8.

VII - Skills

…a) Skill Balancing – Many skill balance changes have taken place sense this game’s release. However, I have noticed that a great deal of these updates have been little more than degrading the effectiveness of overpowered or popular skills and builds to the point of uselessness, and once in a while, increasing the power of little-used skills to the point where they become overpowered and to frequently used. I, and I believe a great many others, would greatly appreciate it if through a single or series of updates, skill changes were made to balance them fully, instead of the previous mentioned power exchange.

…b) Skill Descriptions – Many skills have redundant, inconsistent, or confusing skill descriptions, examples being Rotting Flesh, Crystal Wave, , Searing Flames, Life Siphon, and Life Transfer.

……1) Rotting Flesh: Target fleshy creature becomes Diseased for 10…22 seconds and slowly looses Health.

This spell simply has a very redundant wording. It says the target becomes diseased, and explains (incompletely) what diseased does, when no other skill I can think of at the moment does so. A simpler and tidy wording is as follows:
Target foe becomes Diseased for 10…22 seconds.

……2) Crystal Wave: Foes adjacent to you are struck for 10…82 damage, but are cured of any negative Conditions.

First, the description of this spell implies that there are positive conditions in this game. Very misleading to a new player, and annoying to veterans. Second, the description is, for lack of a better word, messy. This spell should be written as follows:
Foes adjacent to you are struck for 10…82 damage and cured of all Conditions.

……3) Searing Flames: Target foe and all nearby foes are struck with Searing Flames. Foes already on fire when this skill is cast are struck for 7…91 fire damage. Foes not already on fire begin Burning for 1…6 seconds.

Once again, this description is simply extremely messy. It should be written as:
Target foe and nearby foes are struck for 7…91 fire damage if Burning, and are set on fire if they are not already Burning.

……4) Life Siphon: For 12…22 seconds, target suffers -1…3 Health degeneration, and you gain +1…3 Health regeneration.
Life Transfer: For 6…11 seconds, target foe suffers Health degeneration of 3…7, which you gain as Health regeneration.

These spells, while doing exactly the same thing to a different degree, have very different descriptions.
The correct way to describe these spells should be:
For x…x seconds, target foe suffers –x…x Health degeneration, and you gain +x…x Health regeneration.

This clearly states what the spell does with a clean wording and what can be targeted (a foe).

VIII - Game and Patch Releases

…a) Game Release Dates – Most agree that Factions was a very poor release, giving the impression of being rushed, and Nightfall was quite obviously released incomplete. Because of this, I am led to believe the release schedule of every 6 months is not enough time to complete the game. I propose that you delay the game releases by 2 months – for a release every 8 months. The first game will have 14 months of work, and all later chapters will have 16 months. The increased sales of a higher quality game will hopefully make up for the loss of income of a 2-month delay.

…b) Beta Testing – Beta testing weekends greatly help the development of the game, as demonstrated for the Prophecies release, and so, I think there should be more than simply one such weekend before the release of future chapters. If the time between release periods stays at 6 months, there should be two or three months with a beta weekend before the release, not counting PvP previews. If the release date is pushed back as I suggested above, there should be plenty of time for four or more beta weekend events.

In addition to helping development and weeding out bugs before release, this will also keep the players who “want the next chapter now” satisfied during the wait period.

…c) Patch/Update Team – As I understand it, there are currently two teams working on new releases on a staggered 1-year scedual, which leaves very little room for game updates. I propose the formation of a third, smaller team dedicated to updating the game, and adding new content while new chapters are under development. This can be done with new employee’s, or if funding is not available for such, taking developers from the chapter development teams.

This will allow for faster fixes to bugs, more frequent skill updates, and (hopefully) enough new/additional content to keep players satisfied and playing the game while new chapters are under development.

IX - Bots and Gold Sites

Bots and the gold selling sites commonly associated with them have constantly caused a problem for the game, and despite ArenaNet’s efforts, are not apparently slowing down.

A possible way to remove these gold sites and bots completely, while increasing ArenaNet’s revenue as an added benefit, would be to sell gold on their online store. For the players who wish to purchase gold (despite being frowned upon by the community), would then be able to do so without the risk of a banned account or an in-game transfer, and quite possibly for cheaper than what the gold sites sell for as well. Doing this would quickly put such sites out of business, therefore stopping the vast majority of bots.

Clerihew · Dec 15, 2006, 03:12 PM // 15:12

I like the idea of having access to all the character looks for the games you have purchased regardless of which campaign you are starting out in. I have been a little frustrated in the past by wanting to play a character with one type of look but also wanting to start in a different campaign. I don't see it would change the authenticity of the experience as you can see characters from all different campaigns everywhere regardless of where they were originally created.

However, I don't see Anet selling gold in their store. If they have made an offence bannable then they shouldn't change their principles. It would make me respect them a lot less. Do as I say not as I do type of thing...

Commander Ryker · Dec 15, 2006, 03:36 PM // 15:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Muse of Shadows

V - Henchmen Intelligence

Simply put, the AI of henchmen and heroes is rapidly falling behind that of the enemies in the PvE environment. The solution to this problem is quite simple: apply enemy AI updates to heroes and henchmen as well.

I totally agree with this. It is absurd that the fire ele hench is still using firestorm when every other self respecting ele quit using it the minute they started running away.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Muse of Shadows

III - Storage

…a) Additional Upgrades – The material storage upgrade was an excellent idea, and much appreciated. However, it only covered a limited field. Additional upgrades should also be made available. Possible upgrades include the following:

……1) Character Storage – A storage space similar to the current one, except exclusive to the character, not spread across accounts. This could be used for additional armor and weapons not in use, holiday items, ect.

……2) Dye Storage – Working very similar to the material storage, a tab where players could place all their dye. Allowing 250 of each dye to be held when purchased

……3) Rune/Insignia Storage – Working similar to dye or material storage, this one, however, would be more complicated due to the amount of runes and insignia’s available. I propose a tab that, when clicked, would produce several sub-tabs beneath to be selected from. These sub-tabs could be organized in multiple possible ways, but I feel the most effective would be to have four tabs labeled as Insignia’s, Minor Runes, Major Runes, and Superior Runes. Each sub-tab would work as material or dye storage for their set of runes, allowing 5 of each type to be stored once purchased.

So totally agree with this. I have been whining to myself for a long time about the storage space. Also would help a lot, stacking runes and insignia's.

Antheus · Dec 15, 2006, 03:37 PM // 15:37

This thread violates so many rules it's not funny:
- Storage
- Searing flames
- Multiple suggestions per thread
- Stylist

There's really nothing that wasn't extensively and exhaustively covered before.

Knightsaber Sith · Dec 15, 2006, 03:47 PM // 15:47

Cough*
Your supposed to make an individual thread for each suggestion; not one giant list thread (which this personifies..).

chracter
Character Generation- It wouldn't make any sense for lore's sake. Not to be racist or anything; but the people born in Japan don't look like the people born in Mexico. They try to give as much customization as possible for race and whatnot; but the facial features available to each campaign are designed to be distinctly native.

Stylist- We and Anet have all seen it a million times. I'm not sure if it's technically possible; but I'm sure that they know people want it by now and would be looking into it if it was feasible.

insignia
Compatability- It's fine the way it is. The extra customization option would be nice; but frankly we got along just fine before insignias and inscriptions existed and there's no reason to change now.

Price- I actually think that rather than increasing insignia drop rate to lower the price; they could offer old tyrian style armor that comes with the extra mods already. Then each skin could come with one locked in set of mods; or you could by a blank one for an insignia. Then if you chose the blank one; there'd be no reason to complain about insignia price.

storage
upgrades- All been beaten to death; if it offers some solice the froggy mentioned there might be some kind of event headgear storage coming 'round christmas.

increase storage- Also been beaten to death; they've cited some technical problems against it. Perhaps on a rainy day they will decide to really work it out; other than that I'm sure they've heard it.

Two weapon combat
I'd have to say the reason we don't have it isn't due to attack speed but rather that it would simply be overpowered. Even with reduced damage; a class like the warrior with skills that were intended for one sword would be overpowered with two. They may in the future make a new profession with skills designed specifically to duel wield sword/axes or whatever.

Henchmen intellegence
The reason the hench AI isn't quite as good as the enemy's is that the player now has more direct control of them to compensate.

pvp
Heroes- A team of real people with a solid team build should do better than a single person micromanaging a bunch of heroes.

HA- No need to suggest changing back to 8v8. They know some people don't like; they know that some people do. Knowing that they changed it to 6v6 in the first place. They will change it if they deem appropriate.

Skills
balance- They can never really fully balance the skills. They do the best they can but you just can't be sure what's overpowered 'til you fully see how skills interact with one another. If a skill proves overpowered; it'll be nerfed; if one proves underpowered it'll be strengthened.

Description- They seem just fine to me. If they confuse anyone, just take a second to think about what it says.

Game/patch releases
game dates- I think all the releases have been fine. There was nothing wrong with Factions; the style of play wasn't everyone's favorite but that doesn't mean it was lacking or rushed. With Nightfall, they put they game out then after a little while added a bit more content to play through. No mmo will be 100% on relase; and I don't see a problem with it. A little suggestion on a fan forum is not going to convince a company to restructure their whole business model.

Beta testing- They have closed betas for that. If they had all those open betas for every release; most people would be tired of the game before it even came out.

Update team- I'm pretty sure they already have a small dev team to handle bugs and whatnot. I think they even have an event dev team.

Bots & Gold
- Selling gold in the online store has been suggested before. Anet has stated time and time again; it will NEVER happen. Despite how it looks from the outside looking in; many many gold buyers and sellers have been banned. They don't ban bots immediately; they try to monitor their trades and activities to take down as much of the farming network as they can. The farmers/buyers and sellers all get banned. Of course, the farmers and sellers just buy (or steal o.o) more accounts and keep going at it; the unfortunate buyers hopefully learn a lesson and either move on or ragequit.

Loviatar · Dec 15, 2006, 04:34 PM // 16:34

[QUOTE]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Muse of Shadows

As a forewarning, this is a very long post with many ideas on how to improve the game. As such, I have included a table of contents to allow an easy way to reference a particular topic or scan to it.

READ THE STICKIE

Quote:

Most, if not all, of my suggestions have likely been posted before. So why am I creating a new thread? I do not wish to search for a dozen or more threads, and post in them all separately. Further, I would like a single place for the developers to look at all my ideas and what everyone else thinks of them.

been done and better here.....A STICKIE AS WELL

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=84455

darted · Mar 31, 2007, 02:11 AM // 02:11

I would like to add my desire for some character based storage and dye storage, specifically armor storage and pet storage.

linh · Mar 31, 2007, 05:55 AM // 05:55

Too many ideas on one thread. Too many old and suggested ideas.