BenaSPACE.6028

As always, I'm back with another what-if for Core Engi's gameplay mechanics. At present, the toolbelt skill 5 is based (barring elite specs, of course) on your currently equipped elite skill. I ponder if, instead of your elite skill determining your toolbelt 5, if instead your specializations should instead determine what fits in this slot (the first slot or the latest slot, as players leveling may choose not to skill up any specializations with their hero points early) This would offer engineer a better incentive to play core, as the toolbelt 5 skills are, at present, rather weak for it due to it partially defining what you pick for your elite skill, or worse, having no influence at all. Furthermore, I don't feel like this would be difficult to implement, as a lot of the already existing skills could be translated to these specializations. firepower -> Orbital Strike inventions -> Med Pack Drop alchemy -> Toss Elixir X (maybe change it to Elixir M or something for theming purposes) This leaves the two remaining specializations to be assigned; and I can offer some tenuous ideas though I feel these might be disagreeable to some: Tools -> Multi-tool Kit? As an engineer, I hardly ever use tool kit, and placing it in toolbelt slot as a freebie might offer it better use. (Coincidentally, and on a tangential note, I feel like tool kit's skills 4 and 5 should be considered as "gadget" skills, but that's for another thread) Explosives -> Mine Field Kit? To be frank, I'm unsure at present what to put here. I feel like taking something like the artillery strike from the Charr racial elite would be fitting, but that feels almost cheap and uninteresting. The stopgap solution I'm offering is a not a terribly interesting idea, and frankly I feel like it's the weakest theming wise. Some time ago there was a mine planting kit in the early days of GW2, and I feel like this would offer something with synergy to the explosives specialization, though I'm sure there's a strong reason why the kit skill was replaced with the gadget skill we have now, and unlike the tool kit I feel like it works decently well where it is now, though only in PvP. Again, these last two are just stopgap ideas, and perhaps not what the final result could or even should be. Feel free to offer better suggestions, of course.

Straight up. They don't even do what they can do well enough compared to what other engi tools do, especially considering mechanist coming out. I feel like this is too cynical. I would like to believe that they will come back to core content to make it more interesting/viable/flavorful.

I feel like, in some ways (not this particular implementation, because of theming) that every class who has minions/summonables/etc could have something like this, perhaps. But as always, I play favorites with Engi first. 😛

I want to start this thread in particular by saying that turrets as they are are good enough for players who are just getting into engineer and the idea here isn't for them, but for players who want to customize how turrets work for them. This idea is an optomistic one , so take it with a grain of salt-- but I would like to see engis have a special pet menu that allows them to program how thier turrets operate (automatically). While I personally wouldn't be against having an in-game IDE to work with, I recognize that that would be an absolute nightmare in terms of player friendliness. One idea is that to program a turret, you have something akin to breadboard-esque menu which features three types of "nodes": -finders: determines the target for which the turret responds. Nodes of this type come in "flavors" like: Self, Nearest Enemy, Lowest HP enemy, Owner, Friendly, Owner's Target, etc. -Gates: A working title, but allows engineers to fine tune thier operations. These have the if-stuffs, and lead to two outputs (true or false). They have conditionals like: HP > 50%, number of conditions > 3, distance > 300, turret lifetime < 3 secs, etc. -Activators: The end result action. Whatever was specified on the finder, it will attempt to perform this action on. This will include things like: Attack, overcharge, detonate, dispense boons, project shield, and whatever else anet may want to put in. (the last ones would require the needed specialization stuffs) I would still recommend keeping turrets' current functions available and even default, with a possible pre-configured few settings recommended for players not terribly used to the idea, but might want some of the functionality. Lastly, I want to leave a bit of the kinda games that inspired this idea in Mindustry or Final Fantasy XII. I love making games play themselves (minion necros know what I'm talking about, heyoo!), and think it would be a fun way to improve how turrets work. (side note, these calculations should probably be done client side, and not server side. I'd hate to see a week of massive game lag because these somehow got implemented but the bulk of it on anet servers)

This is a bit more of an idle idea, but I feel like it's worth putting out there. Core classes feel like they fall behind a bit in comparison to elite specializations at times, I feel (It's not a universal case of course). Focus specializations would be my idea to that, where the third slot of your specs (where elite skills go), offer certain bonuses to classes that opt to play core.

I do, honestly. Engineer, is, as always, my first love in terms of professions and always where I start when I have ah... Complaints with the game. Turrets are braindead and kinda dull, I feel for example. A similar change where they only overcharge when dropped hit them and I feel like they're ruined forever now-- If you drop them it's to get the boon they throw, the shield they have, and then blow them up. They're like... Bomb kits with extra steps now. Gyros are weird and honestly, I kinda wanna say they should have basically copy-pasted minionmancer for them; but I can understand not wanting them to be the same thing. The well things they do now, I'm not terribly against, but it doesn't feel that flavorful anymore.

While I adore the Elite Specializations, it's more about what's in the game already that I want to see be more customizable. Elite specializations in my mind take the core mechanics of the classes and flips them to a new perspective. Very cool, but doesn't change what banners do for warriors or how Thief guild dudes work for Thieves (a class that I forget is in the game sometimes, haha).

In all honesty, I don't mind the "expanding world" thing, and I think it's a better nomenclature than "living world" by technicality. And I wouldn't ask them to do what they tried to do during LWS1-- because good lord, what a logistical nightmare-- but having a team that comes back and revisits old content to spruce it up in little ways over time seems like a great way to expand new players into the game.

Recently I had returned to the game, and I worry that perhaps too much attention is at times payed to making the game easier to play in ways that come at a cost of making class features interesting. I'll begin with a disclosure: I'm an Engineer main, and I feel like we tend to be the most disgruntled with our class; so when I speak it may be from a place of bias. When I first began playing Guild Wars 2, it was in its infancy during some of the betas. During these times, classes were a lot wilder, I think, and I feel like the devs were a lot more willing to be a lot more blue-sky (as in, taking even crazy ideas and implementing them) with how abilities worked. Warrior banners were things you could pick up and use as environment weapons, as an example, versus now where interacting with them simply just lowers the cooldown. Both ideas have merit, in my eyes, but I'm sure there's more than a few warriors out there nostalgic for the way banners used to work. I'm not that experienced in all of the classes, of course, but I'm sure there's a few more things like this that each class has. At the same time, however, an approachable game is just a good idea. Simplifying mechanics is an easy way to make the game new player friendly, and new players is just a fundamental need for any multiplayer game; especially MMOs like GW2. I'm not against the idea of having homogeneous playstyles starting out to get players' feet wet, but after a while, if everything feels the same, it just gets... Well... Dull. I honestly think the best solution is to, after some time of playing the game (perhaps by unlocking masteries for classes), players be given a few more options on how to customize how they play. Take a few of these crazy ideas and throw them out there for players to experiment and make fresh what was once overly understood. Maybe even add in weapon slot skills via this system (IE, trading in certain slots of the weapon skills for similar, but reflavored versions). Likewise, this could be a nice way of using those excess hero points that players accrue but don't use that much over time. Aside from elite specializations coming out, they don't see use otherwise.

I got a confused reaction earlier, so just to clarify, I haven't specified the game in question (yet) because I wasn't sure if the forum rules have a sanction on it. (I'm still not, but I'm looking) (Edit: It doesn't seem to be, so I'll edit the original to be more specific)

Not too long ago, a Paradox had come up with a pretty neat idea I liked; Worried that Stellaris' older content would become obsolete (or even unmarketable) the devs had set up a custodian initiative, a side branch that focused on sprucing up older content, especially its "Species packs" to include newer features that were more in line with how the newer Species Packs typically had included. They had a massive update when the initiative originally came out, but from then after, they took to much smaller contributions to the game. I'm sure that GW2, as a game that also has older content, would benefit a lot from a similar idea, if it could be feasibly implemented, I mean. (Not to mention that it would likely be an easy way to train new devs for future content, perhaps.)

Throwing my two cents on this, but I like how Engi rifle works; The idea isn't that you're using a rifle in specific style or tactic, but modifying it to be a multitool to respond to many scenarios. I do miss the kickback on 4, though, strangely enough. Was really flavorful. Actually, might be a fun mechanic to get to choose how your rifle skills work in each slot from a few options.