Uncertain horizontal progression(Professions)

Lily.1935 · August 31, 2019

With the live announcement and the statements Anet has made in the past about the living world or "Saga" now, people, myself included are concerned about the progression of one's profession into the future. The promise that was made by the Devs was that we'd see content normally exclusive to expansions in the living world updates. Thus far, the lines between expansion and living world have been heavily blurred already. I personally don't feel that these two features were ever decoupled as we'd get new masteries for Living world season 3 and season 4 before the announcement that "Expansion like content". As such, as a player this claim of theirs feels hollow at the moment because this content was already a part of the living world. With the announcement that occurred earlier today players were unsurprisingly expecting the devs to release something major that they wouldn't have released prior to season 5. Of all the things that were previously locked to expansions, masteries, new maps, raids, new story content, mounts. Elite specs and new professions are noticeably missing from this supposed expansion like content.

So the question becomes, where do Elite specs stand? Is this locked behind an expansion exclusively, should we just take what arena net says about the living world with a grain of salt? Because I feel the communication just isn't there to really express what they're trying to achieve and the players are rightfully disappointed that the progression of their characters that we most care about is being excluded. This might not be an issue if the window for new Expansions wasn't into question, but it most certainly is. We don't know if we'll ever get a new expansion and the lack of any hint as to what we can expect on this front is deafeningly silent.

With all of this said, there are absolutely steps that Anet could have chosen or still choose to take in order to excite the player base for the future without giving us new elite specs in the Living world(Saga). Let me list a few options.

Completing the Set: Some of the skill sets in GW2 are incomplete. We have a few skill types that don't have an elite, heal or both. It would be nice to see arena net complete these sets as well as expand on revenant to help them catch up.
New weapons: I'm of the opinion that weapons don't need to be locked to elite specs exclusively. Anet could choose to slowly add in new weapons for the core classes and it could even be doubling up on the same weapon but with different skills. Anet has the ability to do this and the players would likely welcome this as it offers a new way to use their favorite weapons.
Racial Specialization: Perhaps not everyone would be on board with this, however let me explain this one a bit better. The idea would be that regardless of your race you could take one of these specializations and the skills that you receive would be cosmetically different depending on if you chose something like Norn spec on norn or if you chose it on asura. Functionally, they'd be the same but visually they could be distinct. Even if this would need to be in place of an elite spec and offered the players revitalized racial skills or a new weapon in that race's style of fighting this could go a long way to giving the players something many have wanted for ages.
New Skill types: Again, new skills don't need to be locked behind an elite spec. Giving core necromancer Sacrifice skills or giving the revenant another legend to swap to could be something the player base would enjoy.
Skill Questing: This is something I'd love to see. Masteries are fine and all, but allowing us to each go on our own quest to discover new magics over the course of months, unlocking hidden magics or skills for our profession to unlock skills or specializations would be an absolute treat for me personally and would make me more attached to whatever it was that was released.

What I'm basically trying to get at is the serious lack of horizontal progression for the professions is something I care deeply about and you might not agree with everything I said or any of it. The thing is that I would like to see something. Even if that something took months to come out. Give each class a new skill or two every few months? That would be fine with me. I want more tools to play with, more ways to experiment with build crafting. An elite spec isn't absolutely needed to satisfy me, but this horizontal progression of my profession absolutely is something that is extremely important.

Could Anet be planning something else pertaining to the professions? Maybe. I'd love to see something like that. But Arena net gave no hint to anything like this in the announcement even though their blog post about "Expansion like content" months before did heavily hint at this form of horizontal progression. The disappointment and frustration with the community is understandable.

I'll end with this. The Saga looks like a lot of fun. However, I'm extremely concerned with how I'm going to play it. My skills are getting stale and I'd like something new to mix it up. Combat is the most important aspect of GW2 and our identity as players is heavily linked to our profession, far more so than the story behind the commander.

Anchoku.8142 · September 3, 2019

From my point of view, the major horizontal progressions we have seen are these, in no particular order:

Fractals & Raids - Abandoned broken original dungeons for "new" dungeons with a level progression
Elite specializations - Increased role capability for professions and fixed some glaring holes in capability between game modes
Squads - Released players from the fixed 5-person group play
Map expansions - Obvious but still a true expansion
Mounts - Makes Tyria a much smaller place and helps skip through a lot of old content

Things like changing trait lines from a point-allocation system, Living World stories, festivals and events, WvW and PvP adjustments, ascended and new legendary equipment... other people may consider these things horizontal progression but they do not fundamentally change the game.

For GW2 to stay out of "maintenance mode," the developers need regular, major game changes that refresh current gameplay. Things like...

AI improvements and revamping boss mechanics to allow the AI to act proactively against skills with high value and to dodge red circles
Squads in PvP for 7, 10, 15, and 20 man GvG or larger static team fights
Rework the combination system to give more complexity and potency for doing things properly
Creative activities for players. Crafting and collections only reward skins for hours of work and consuming gold and materials. Add world-building and other creative activities like the old mix-and-match armor pieces. Outfits and guild halls are nice to look at but unrewarding. This is why people set chairs around the hall or play with dye slots. Allow creative fortress-building in WvW.

These are some of what I think of as "minor" improvements that can be introduced every quarter or half year.

Continued work on chests, unidentified gear, map currencies, and loot boxes. The unidentified gear feels like it is only partially complete.
Structural changes to the profession system to allow each profession to be tuned more highly in one direction or another, at a significant opportunity cost.
Clamping down on conditions and boons characters can have in the game. A squad should find it very difficult to maximize boons and conditions should be fewer and more potent so clearing them with an active skill is both urgent and rewarding.
Time travel - Travel back in time to GW1, times in between, or times later? What would Orr look like with Zhaitan gone 100 years? How about the Heart of Maguuma or the Crystal Desert? Lion's Arch was worked over a few times so maybe adding selectable versions of the zones in alternate times is possible.
Fix crafting so all materials and results are worth something. This is something that Arenanet has been working on but requires a lot more effort. Crafted consumables and equipment should cost more as they progress from level 1 and level 80 but gathering effort for most materials does not progress evenly so surpluses and shortages are hard to avoid and affect the prices of crafted items. Add a potential for a critical success at all levels.
Rebalance the risk/reward for equipment statistics. It is too easy to use gear with 100% offensive stat's in PvE while defensive stat's offer little benefit. Make full-glass builds in PvE highly risky. If good-performing squads struggle more in raids when using 90% offensive stat's, that will give both support builds and defensive stat's more value and add more diversity to equipment, trait, and skill selection. This also means that defensive stat's, traits, and skills need their potency rebalanced so taking a little makes a larger difference while taking too much is inefficient as well.

Lily.1935 · September 3, 2019

@"Anchoku.8142" said:From my point of view, the major horizontal progressions we have seen are these, in no particular order:
Fractals & Raids - Abandoned broken original dungeons for "new" dungeons with a level progression
Elite specializations - Increased role capability for professions and fixed some glaring holes in capability between game modes
Squads - Released players from the fixed 5-person group play
Map expansions - Obvious but still a true expansion
Mounts - Makes Tyria a much smaller place and helps skip through a lot of old content
Things like changing trait lines from a point-allocation system, Living World stories, festivals and events, WvW and PvP adjustments, ascended and new legendary equipment... other people may consider these things horizontal progression but they do not fundamentally change the game.
For GW2 to stay out of "maintenance mode," the developers need regular, major game changes that refresh current gameplay. Things like...
AI improvements and revamping boss mechanics to allow the AI to act proactively against skills with high value and to dodge red circles
Squads in PvP for 7, 10, 15, and 20 man GvG or larger static team fights
Rework the combination system to give more complexity and potency for doing things properly
Creative activities for players. Crafting and collections only reward skins for hours of work and consuming gold and materials. Add world-building and other creative activities like the old mix-and-match armor pieces. Outfits and guild halls are nice to look at but unrewarding. This is why people set chairs around the hall or play with dye slots. Allow creative fortress-building in WvW.
These are some of what I think of as "minor" improvements that can be introduced every quarter or half year.
Continued work on chests, unidentified gear, map currencies, and loot boxes. The unidentified gear feels like it is only partially complete.
Structural changes to the profession system to allow each profession to be tuned more highly in one direction or another, at a significant opportunity cost.
Clamping down on conditions and boons characters can have in the game. A squad should find it very difficult to maximize boons and conditions should be fewer and more potent so clearing them with an active skill is both urgent and rewarding.
Time travel - Travel back in time to GW1, times in between, or times later? What would Orr look like with Zhaitan gone 100 years? How about the Heart of Maguuma or the Crystal Desert? Lion's Arch was worked over a few times so maybe adding selectable versions of the zones in alternate times is possible.
Fix crafting so all materials and results are worth something. This is something that Arenanet has been working on but requires a lot more effort. Crafted consumables and equipment should cost more as they progress from level 1 and level 80 but gathering effort for most materials does not progress evenly so surpluses and shortages are hard to avoid and affect the prices of crafted items. Add a potential for a critical success at all levels.
Rebalance the risk/reward for equipment statistics. It is too easy to use gear with 100% offensive stat's in PvE while defensive stat's offer little benefit. Make full-glass builds in PvE highly risky. If good-performing squads struggle more in raids when using 90% offensive stat's, that will give both support builds and defensive stat's more value and add more diversity to equipment, trait, and skill selection. This also means that defensive stat's, traits, and skills need their potency rebalanced so taking a little makes a larger difference while taking too much is inefficient as well.

Most of what you're talking about is content and balance which is very off topic. Please keep it on track. This is specifically about the professions and their horizontal progression.

Anchoku.8142 · September 3, 2019

@"Lily.1935" said:Most of what you're talking about is content and balance which is very off topic. Please keep it on track. This is specifically about the professions and their horizontal progression.

I apologize for going off topic. Your questions are good for casual speculation but Necro and most other professions I can think of do not need another Elite. There are no giant holes in profession capabilities, anymore, that need a specialization to fill a role so I look elsewhere for "horizontal progression."

"Where do Elite specs stand," you ask? They are done. Your suggestions can all be implemented without the scale of the last two expansion pack releases in core skills, racial skills, and so on. I thought, from your post, you were getting a sense of that.

There is no more worthwhile horizontal profession progression. That was my point. Sure, you can make a Thief play like a Necromancer or a Guardian play like a Thief but that is not a progression of any sort in my book, anymore. It was horizontal progression the first time but not now. If you want progression, look elsewhere. Elite specializations will happen, probably, but they will not feel like "progress" in the game. I realized that speculating on them is a waste of time and the next "Elite" will really be a grind that leaves me bored at the end when the novelty wears off... and we will get the opportunity to do it 9 times, maybe.

I would rather Arenanet fix Death Magic and other deficiencies in core professions than invent some new specializations that cause a new rash of imbalance issues. Two elite specializations is enough for me. Working on more means Arenanet is not doing something to make the game better That is my perspective on character progression: Fix the stuff that is bad/broken/outdated about the professions as they are and spend the bulk of the time available on game-changing updates.

Lily.1935 · September 3, 2019

@Anchoku.8142 said:
@"Lily.1935" said:Most of what you're talking about is content and balance which is very off topic. Please keep it on track. This is specifically about the professions and their horizontal progression.

I apologize for going off topic. Your questions are good for casual speculation but Necro and most other professions I can think of do not need another Elite. There are no giant holes in profession capabilities, anymore, that need a specialization to fill a role so I look elsewhere for "horizontal progression."

"Where do Elite specs stand," you ask? They are done. Your suggestions can all be implemented without the scale of the last two expansion pack releases in core skills, racial skills, and so on. I thought, from your post, you were getting a sense of that.

There

is

no more worthwhile horizontal profession progression. That was my point. Sure, you can make a Thief play like a Necromancer or a Guardian play like a Thief but that is not a progression of any sort in my book, anymore. It

was

horizontal progression the first time but not now. If you want progression, look elsewhere. Elite specializations will happen, probably, but they will not feel like "progress" in the game. I realized that speculating on them is a waste of time and the next "Elite" will really be a grind that leaves me bored at the end when the novelty wears off... and we will get the opportunity to do it 9 times, maybe.

I would rather Arenanet fix Death Magic and other deficiencies in core professions than invent some new specializations that cause a new rash of imbalance issues. Two elite specializations is enough for me. Working on more means Arenanet is

not

doing something to make the game better That is my perspective on character progression: Fix the stuff that is bad/broken/outdated about the professions as they are and spend the bulk of the time available on game-changing updates.

You mention necromancer as being covered but I can tell you for sure that is far from the truth. I'll focus on thos since it's my main in GW1, GW2, D&D and Diablo III. To suggest that the necromancer comes anywhere close to covering all of its themes properly is grossly wrong. I can't play a zerg down minion master, I can't play a minion bomber, I don't have the sacrificial blood mage that uses it's own health as a resource, or the aggressive support that the necromancer was known for in gw1. We have a strange Dervish like spec and a disk priest that has more similarities to gw1 ritualist protective spirits build than anything close necromancer's even normal potential identity.

Minions in gw2 are utility in every sense of the word and if the minions were removed and replaced with their command skills only, most would hardly notice or care.

Not even close to everything is covered. 3 elite specs is a solid number to end on but some professions can go as high as 5 or 6, necromancer easily being one of them. Especially when we compare these classes to classes of other RPG games that function similarly.

starlinvf.1358 · September 4, 2019

@Lily.1935 said:
@Anchoku.8142 said:
@Lily.1935 said:Most of what you're talking about is content and balance which is very off topic. Please keep it on track. This is specifically about the professions and their horizontal progression.

I apologize for going off topic. Your questions are good for casual speculation but Necro and most other professions I can think of do not need another Elite. There are no giant holes in profession capabilities, anymore, that need a specialization to fill a role so I look elsewhere for "horizontal progression."

"Where do Elite specs stand," you ask? They are done. Your suggestions can all be implemented without the scale of the last two expansion pack releases in core skills, racial skills, and so on. I thought, from your post, you were getting a sense of that.

There

is

no more worthwhile horizontal profession progression. That was my point. Sure, you can make a Thief play like a Necromancer or a Guardian play like a Thief but that is not a progression of any sort in my book, anymore. It

was

horizontal progression the first time but not now. If you want progression, look elsewhere. Elite specializations will happen, probably, but they will not feel like "progress" in the game. I realized that speculating on them is a waste of time and the next "Elite" will really be a grind that leaves me bored at the end when the novelty wears off... and we will get the opportunity to do it 9 times, maybe.

I would rather Arenanet fix Death Magic and other deficiencies in core professions than invent some new specializations that cause a new rash of imbalance issues. Two elite specializations is enough for me. Working on more means Arenanet is

not

doing something to make the game better That is my perspective on character progression: Fix the stuff that is bad/broken/outdated about the professions as they are and spend the bulk of the time available on game-changing updates.

You mention necromancer as being covered but I can tell you for sure that is far from the truth. I'll focus on thos since it's my main in GW1, GW2, D&D and Diablo III. To suggest that the necromancer comes anywhere close to covering all of its themes properly is grossly wrong. I can't play a zerg down minion master, I can't play a minion bomber, I don't have the sacrificial blood mage that uses it's own health as a resource, or the aggressive support that the necromancer was known for in gw1. We have a strange Dervish like spec and a disk priest that has more similarities to gw1 ritualist protective spirits build than anything close necromancer's even normal potential identity.

Minions in gw2 are utility in every sense of the word and if the minions were removed and replaced with their command skills only, most would hardly notice or care.

Not even close to everything is covered. 3 elite specs is a solid number to end on but some professions can go as high as 5 or 6, necromancer easily being one of them. Especially when we compare these classes to classes of other RPG games that function similarly.

Themes is NOT the issue though..... Especs exist to fill a lot of functional gaps in the Core classes (which was by design), so they can manipulate the buildcraft meta to help them fit into various game modes. With the exception of thief, each class has 7-9 build concepts that should be viable across the overall game meta. Core supporting at least 2, and each Espec supporting 3. Thief is the exception, because its support options are very obtuse in nature.... primarily being stealth and debuff, rather then direct group DPS buffs. In fact, Deadeye Marks used to BE a secondary vulnerability debuff; and then quickly canned since it was a major DPS increase in Raid scenarios.

But the point here is that each Espec should internally support 3 distinct roles, and the interplay with core enable hybridzation to fit more specific needs. The big reason this has been failing is due to how the game's stat system and Trait bonuses overtly rewards overstacking damage; often in an arms race to counter act a Percentile based offensive/defense scheme.

Conceptually Core Necro does 3 things that gives it major similarities to Warlock archetypes.... Debuffing, Crowd Control, and defense nullification. This is on top of the Minion master builds, sacrificial power, vampiric boon, and "death mitigation" (which lowers lethality for allies) features found in its kit- all of which are classic Necro/DeathMage type abilities. From a mechanical perspective, Reaper is Melee Brawler that used to have very strong condi builds in addition to its surviving power builds. Scourge is mechanically designed as a Area Control/Area Denial, which makes it a powerful vehicle to turn any other ability into an AOE ability if the Devs wanted to. Scourge is also a thematic and mechanical vehicle for Awakening (even if temporary) as a game mechanic, making that a huge game changer in PvP.

But the reality is Core Necro support builds are almost non-existent, since they've been built to overly selfish, their debuff AND buff abilities lack potency, Crowd Control (like most of core) is extremely limited, and despite the potential for huge amounts of interplay with Downed state, its barely explored. This lack of viability in Core is whats been limiting every Espec in every other class as well. Guardian, Ele, and Mesmer all have a long history of strong presence in every meta.... and that is almost entirely attributed to their Core design having exceptionally good interplay between traits, skills, and profession mechanics. Shatters are a major vehicle for Mesmer effects; and the recent crippling of Chrono to make shatter use harder to set up, had a major ripple effect in how the builds could actually be used. Guardian skills always double as support, and even the more selfish DragonHunter can still provide group support with its core skills. Ele does just about anything you need it to; and so could Engineer if the Dev's hadn't struggled for so long with its skill bar layout. Both of those class's designs make the perfect vehicle for any straight forward job you can imagine. Area damage, area fortification, area denial, debilitation, group support, shutdown, mobility, the list goes on. And ultimately the difference between them is how their skills and traits effectively work with each other. Engineer struggled for a long time with its control scheme, and many of its skills mechanical implementation (a lot of tacked on restrictions), while the Ele easily flows from skill to skill in sequences.

The potential for a LOT of things is already there...... all you have to do is shake that "1 class, 1 theme" stigma that makes a lot of the Trinity RPGs as stagnant for growth as they are. On the surface Especs might LOOK like they're just acting in lieu of a new class.... but in reality they have a flexibility that compounds the insane build/role potential that already exists with GW2's buildcraft. The so called "lack of identity" is clinging to an outdated method of thinking. People can learn multiple things, and combine those skills to produce results greater then the sum of knowledge of each individual discipline. This is greatly evidenced with what the player base has already been able to do with the kind of obtuse limitations imposed by Dev balance and Encounter design. Even more so in GW1, which was far more mechanically driven in how its skills worked.

Lily.1935 · September 4, 2019

@starlinvf.1358 said:
@Lily.1935 said:
@Anchoku.8142 said:
@Lily.1935 said:Most of what you're talking about is content and balance which is very off topic. Please keep it on track. This is specifically about the professions and their horizontal progression.