[Expansion #3 and beyond] What's the next expansion seller for you?

[MokahTGS.7850]

While I see a playable race as something that would be interesting, I don't think it's impact would really mean that much, since most racial stuff has been minimized. Player housing on the other hand, if done well could be a huge deal, very fun, and be a giant gold/time/resource sink that the game needs.

If they do add player housing, I would want part of it to be something akin to the GW1 Hall of Monuments that displayed trophies of content you finished or skins you've unlocked. Armor stands, weapon racks, trophy stands, etc.

[ReaverKane.7598]

I don't think expansions can sit on a single feature any more, without endip up to gimmicky and devoid of actual content.

The major expansion sellers will be the new story and the new locations, most likely.Sure there will be a new mastery package, but honestly i can only think of one thing that would become a major selling point (looking at other traditional MMO tropes), and idk if the game has the tech to implement that. And that would be the next logical step after mounts... Ships...

Yeah, new weapons would be nice, new revamped UW combat will be necessary any time in the future if the expansion lives to see us go vs the underwater dragon. But i don't think any of these alone should be the pillar for a new expansion. Just like i believe its unhealthy for Elite specs to be tied to expansions only. The game is already 5 years old. If they keep the same cadence it will be 7 years old by the time we get 3 choices for elites (something that's common as standard for games with similar class progression).

So yeah, my choice is other, because i hope they sell the next expansion simply because its a proper expansion, with proper new content spread throughout the game, not just open world pve and story, 1 elite specialization per class and a new gimmick they can monetize.

[TwilightSoul.9048]

Caution: Text contains Spoiler for those not familiar with HoT Story!

My least favorite options would be new race and player housing - which makes the current results of this poll extremely difficult for me to comprehend.Why would anyone want to have a new playable race? They change virtually nothing about the game for an enormous amount of effort while providing just another race to be neglected in the story. All races except Humans and to some extend Asura (since their technology is practically everywhere especially with the inquest invading many maps) are almost entirely absent from the happenings in Tyria - Sylvari have found their way into the story by accident since they are Mordremoth Minions but Norn and Charr are entirely irrelevant at the moment - which makes me sad as a huge norn fan. (Pun intended)

As for player Housing... why? We have our Guild Halls, what could player housing add to that? Sure you have a place that you can decorate yourself however you see fit but unless you can display your house to everyone without having to invite them that seems very unattractive to me. And IF every single players house would be visible to everyone else... where the kitten would all those houses be? And even if we had a place for that - it'd just be a cluttered mess of thousands of houses. Maybe they could implement a way to rightclick->enter house other players but then we'd only have the interior - which is almost the same as having a personal place reserved for you in your guilds GH..

Oh well, to each their own, personally I'd prefer something that gives me an incentive to play the game rather than to display something to others, if I want to display my creativity I'll do that my own way, not within the boundarys of a game.

[Lonami.2987]

@Solaris.2489 said:I voted housing since Im already a fan of crafting gh furniture.Naval combat would be awesome like someone mentioned, especially in WvW.A new race would be one of the worst possible additions imo. It would take an insane amount of work to make all existing armour skins fit + wouldnt add anything innovative gameplay wise.

They don't need to adapt previous armor sets for the new races. They would adapt some of them, of course, but they don't need to bother adapting all the previous stuff. No one really does that in any MMO. Yeah, it kinda sucks, but you have to be realistic here. The physique of the new races matters too, largos would get all previous armor adapted easily, since they would use the same skeleton as humans/sylvari/norn, but tengu could have more limitations, even if they would use the same skeleton as the charr, the heads and tails are different.

Same for new weapon types, some people assume we need 100 new scythe skins if we ever get scythe as a new weapon, but we would be fine with 10-20 at release. There's already many sets with the underwater weapons missing, so it's not like it should come as a surprise.

@MokahTGS.7850 said:While I see a playable race as something that would be interesting, I don't think it's impact would really mean that much, since most racial stuff has been minimized. Player housing on the other hand, if done well could be a huge deal, very fun, and be a giant gold/time/resource sink that the game needs.

If they do add player housing, I would want part of it to be something akin to the GW1 Hall of Monuments that displayed trophies of content you finished or skins you've unlocked. Armor stands, weapon racks, trophy stands, etc.

Yeah, that's a problem of sorts. Mosts games don't have it, even if they have racial skills that really impact the game, because the professions/classes are not easy to customize, and sometimes it's worth having multiple characters for the same class. GW2 doesn't really require for you to have multiple characters of the same profession, it's a waste of time, so I could see the lack of appeal regarding leveling up another character for nothing but aesthethics.

It could be a good opportunity to remove racial skills altogether, and replace them with racial/faction masteries. Then give each race some sort of gimmick, for out of combat activities, so that you feel like having duplicate professions is still worth your time. I don't know, dumb stuff for the open world, that makes it worth to party with characters of other races for various bonuses. Think of what they wanted to do with bundles changing skills depending on profession, except this time we would change it depending on race. So, when a norn takes a barrel of some liquid, he drinks it and burps some toxic cloud, but when a tengu does, he spills it on the ground to make his enemies slip. A blocked door? The asura can hack the terminal, charr place explosives, and norn smash it open. Alcohol? Every race could get drunk, and have different hallucinations. Need to light a cave? Asura summon a lamp golem, humans ask Dwayna for a light blessing, charr uses a flare, and norn ask snow leopard for a blessing to see in the dark. Stuff like that, just for fun.

[DarcShriek.5829]

New maps and a title is all I need.

[MokahTGS.7850]

@Lonami.2987 said:Yeah, that's a problem of sorts. Mosts games don't have it, even if they have racial skills that really impact the game, because the professions/classes are not easy to customize, and sometimes it's worth having multiple characters for the same class. GW2 doesn't really require for you to have multiple characters of the same profession, it's a waste of time, so I could see the lack of appeal regarding leveling up another character for nothing but aesthethics.

It could be a good opportunity to remove racial skills altogether, and replace them with racial/faction masteries. Then give each race some sort of gimmick, for out of combat activities, so that you feel like having duplicate professions is still worth your time. I don't know, dumb stuff for the open world, that makes it worth to party with characters of other races for various bonuses. Think of what they wanted to do with bundles changing skills depending on profession, except this time we would change it depending on race. So, when a norn takes a barrel of some liquid, he drinks it and burps some toxic cloud, but when a tengu does, he spills it on the ground to make his enemies slip. A blocked door? The asura can hack the terminal, charr place explosives, and norn smash it open. Alcohol? Every race could get drunk, and have different hallucinations. Need to light a cave? Asura summon a lamp golem, humans ask Dwayna for a light blessing, charr uses a flare, and norn ask snow leopard for a blessing to see in the dark. Stuff like that, just for fun.

The truth is that in the recent (PoF, LW3&4 and Current Events) have been using more RPGish aspects utilizing classes, and races in gameplay. I'd like them to do more of that, but I know it takes time and doesn't always fit. I feel it was a good idea that was never really implemented correctly. There is also a design issue that you can never get rid of in the fact that any content that is designed to be experienced by a subsection of gamers will not be experienced by other subsections. It's a tricky balance and more often than not difficult to justify in the game design budget.

[CaptainAngelStar.1479]

All of the above?

Although I would throw down the money super hard if they brought in stone dwarves as a playable race. (I love playing dwarves in fantasy games)

[Lonami.2987]

@"MarcellinoAlighieri.7194" said:All of the above?

Although I would throw down the money super hard if they brought in stone dwarves as a playable race. (I love playing dwarves in fantasy games)

Stone Dwarves could be really awesome. Imagine customizing your face with crystal beards, moss, mushrooms, and stuff like that.

Just like sylvari are elves gone dryad, there's a lot of potential in stone dwarves, or whatever they could end up calling them if they're ever made officially playable. If they don't want to use the original dwarves, they can use their descendants, or some sort of construct. It's said they're mostly extinct, assuming it's true, we could find some way to "resurrect" the race by putting their souls back into newly forged bodies or something like that.

[Ardid.7203]

I would have voted for new weapons, but the options listed are extremely boring and redundant, IMO. Greataxe is not a seller to me, is a waste that should be solved with more axe skins for hammer.

[Shiyo.3578]

Raids changed to 5 man.

[Galaa.8475]

expansion maps like the original GW2 maps, new race would be good, i think we have enough classes. lower some cooldowns. i like ranger with a bow, but its so slow. thats about it. out of it all. i would perfer the maps and new race.

[juhani.5361]

Actively casual and solo-friendly, or at least a setting to make it that way :p PoF difficulty is at the edge of my skill level, and without good pacing and downtime, it's been a drag.

[Ayakaru.6583]

Hear me out

UnderwaterCombat and explorationOverhaul v2.0

[TheWolf.1602]

Why do people want player housing? we can harvest resources in our home instance and if you want to decorate stuff, get your own guild hall, player housing seems redundant...

[Grim West.3194]

I'll buy it without even checking out the features. So far, ANET has been pretty good at releasing the kind of PvE content I can enjoy. I usually get bored of their expansions after a couple of months, but it's enough to get my money's worth. Would play more if they focused on WvW though.

[Thanatostasis.4562]

Underwater, Largos, Tengu.

[Grampybone.3716]

No matter what outcome, I'll buy the expansion!

[Kitty.6219]

Upgrades to underwater gameplay (Reworked underwater combat, terrestrial skills adaptation, etc).

[Xillllix.3485]

Elementalist buffs and GvG...

[Curunen.8729]

Customisable skills through upgrade/evolution trees, including alternative auto attacks.

Thinking usual rpg game mechanics for active abilities.

Eg using Chaos Storm as an example - you could choose between larger radius, more damage per tick, etc.

[Goettel.4389]

Greatly expanded open-world PvE with more incentives for random group play.

[Hyper Cutter.9376]

I love creating alts, and I'm running out of options without doubling up on the same race/profession.

[Arzurag.7506]

balance between classes across all gamemodes, plain and simple

[Cragga the Eighty Third.60]

I expect I will buy the next ex-pac in any case, as long as the game still runs on my computer. My main hope for the next expansion is that it is less human-centric than PoF was.Pretty much none of the options you suggested said, 'wow that would be awesome' to me. I started less than a year ago and have not had time to get bored by what''s here now.

New races - Would be nice, but will probably not happen.New professions - Well, the Astralarium library book, A Brief History of Cantha, mentions assassins and ritualists, I've been wondering if that's foreshadowing, but not a big deal for me.Player housing: have you considered the possibility that having your own house is not something all races do? As far as I can tell, Asura make their home in their labs/businesses and Charr in their barracks. There is nothing in the Black Citadel or Rata Sum that looks like individual housing. And while Charr farmers have farmhouses, I don't remember anything in Metrica Province that looked like a private home. There is evidence that some sylvari have homes (Caithe's house) but a lot more of it feels like a big, shared commune. I think that having your own home is an overwhelmingly human/norn concept. Anyway, on the practical side, I don't see what could be accomplished in a home better than in your current home instance except decorating, and I have usually found that a farce. There are always extremely limited options for diversity of style and 'real' decorating, and player homes end up just as warehouses crammed with game trophies.

[Umut.5471]

Player housing, Tengu/Largos playable race and player-controlled vehicles. Most likely ships for large sea maps.And ofc metas that require us to sink corsair ships with our crew and cannons etc.