Improving the game

[Bolthead.2567]

Hi, I'll start by saying that I really do enjoy the game, but there's certain areas that I feel could use some improvement and would help benefit the game. This will basically be a bullet point list of things I'd look at improving and how I'd go about doing so. I'd like to hear anyone else's opinions and/or ideas they also have for the game and use this as sort of a thread for them.

The levelling experience:
So I feel the main problem here is the down time in between player story missions, this could be fixed by pushing players a little more towards dungeons. Instead of having their game guide say 'reach level 30' it could say 'complete X dungeon', maybe the first dungeon is forced to progress the story and to give players some understanding of how they work. I understand that there's some risk by forcing players into content they may not want to do, but I think there's also a risk in not guiding a player in between level milestones.

Personally (and this may be better suited to an alt levelling experience) I think that not having the down time at all would be good, I think the grind to level 10 is nice and quick, its a pretty good start for new players to get in to the game and learn the basic combat skills and dodging. After they have finished the level 10 set of missions I would then guide them to the dungeon (this would mean making dungeons a little easier as i'm not sure the lowest level dungeon is around 15) and after completion they have jump up to 20 to go straight in to the next story missions (or just a big xp jump), I'd repeat this throughout levelling.

Alternatively, you could instead remove levelling altogether and make all progression be based purely on story progress, at this point though you're making tomes of knowledge obsolete and things start getting a bit clunky so maybe worth ignoring this point, something to think on though.
 

Another thing I don't like (and most mmo's do this) is the useless gear you go through as you level, I think a really cool system would be to remove the level from all gear, basically it all drops at 80 level stats, but obviously there would be no level requirement on it so a player can equip these as the level up. They then get to keep the cool gear they've found levelling when they hit 80. You would do this in combination with scaling the stats based on player level so they don't just have full stats to go to end game zones. This would play really nicely with jumping in to content that scaled players up to 80 like fractals and WvW, they would scale up the proper stats to match other players, I know there is already some scaling up on items but i'm not 100% sure how this works say a player is wearing armour that has +5 power.
 

Dungeons:
So we already had some changes last month that combined the currencies which was a nice little update, but I feel like there was nothing really pushing players to go play dungeons and this was more a way of making things less convoluted for newbies. I don't think there's any daily dungeons (at least I can't find them in achievements) and this would be step one in getting people to go do dungeons.
Another thing I think would work well, you could add stat sets in to dungeons as rewards, for example sorrow's embrace path 2 could have a chance of dropping vipers gear on bosses, twilight arbour path 1 could drop marauder weapons etc. these could be rotated daily or weekly, or even just remain as set rewards, I feel it's nice having somewhere that a player knows they can go to get specific gear for a new build they're trying to gear. 
 

Crafting:
This is more of a side note to the above dungeon loot drop notes. If loot was more obtainable through other means, crafting on exotics would probably lose some value, and I don’t think this is a bad thing as prices can be a little high for new players hitting the end game. 

One problem I find with crafting in this game is that the cost of materials that goes into making something normally equals the price the item sells for, due to the fact that levelling crafting is so easy. In other games your skill in crafting held more value as it was something less players had done due to it being harder. One way around this I think is allowing the sale of crafted ascended gear (not dropped ascended), it would help bring more value to a players crafting skills as ascended recipes are a little harder to get than exotic.

Loot:
Personally I find loot in this game really boring, always getting unidentified gear and then having to go through the process of identifying and then deconstructing stops being fun rather quickly. It’s nice purely for the fact it saves inventory space but that's about it.
The only way around this really is more loot in the pool of dropped items, what if you had a chance of runes, sigils, insignias, weapons skins, even ascended materials like elonian leather squares, it adds to the excitement of checking if what you had dropped was worth something other than getting unidentified green gear again and again.
 

Environment: 
Not a big deal really, but there were recent updates that sorted some boundary issues in missions, it would be nice to see the open world get some love with boundaries too. There’s a few areas in Seitung Province when it comes to fishing spots, you’ll go for a fishing node and get dismounted for your skiff for slightly passing it, there is so much ocean that allowing players a little more wouldn’t hurt, there’s also some areas elsewhere in the game where just a bit extra space would hurt.

Cosmetics: 
Lastly, just a few ideas for cosmetics that would make everyone happier.

Mixing armour styles, being able to wear a heavy chest piece with medium legs and light helmet would be crazy good, people have mentioned that clipping would be an issue but armour of the same weight clips anyway (could be solved with letting players customise in 1 style, just light/medium/heavy), and at worst it’s just a visual problem if a player even decides to go through with that customisation. This benefits both players and Anet, more transmogs would probably be used, and it also gives players more to do, being able to go after another 2 full sets worth of styles adds replayability. 

Everyone loves skins, there’s actually a decent amount in game at the minute, but putting skins in dungeons as extra loot, that boosts player numbers as more would be farming for them. Put rare skins everywhere, rare drops from chests or mobs, spices up the loot.

Glider skins, would be nice if they were tied into equipment sets, currently if I switch sets and had yellow wings and swap to a loadout with blue orbs, I have to then go change my glider and dye it to match.

Finally outfits, if these were to be split into parts (helm, chest etc.), so players can combine them with existing armour, it opens up so much more customisation. Again this benefits both players and Anet, a player might see an outfit they like the chest piece of but not the legs, they’d be able to buy the outfit and use just the parts they want as transmogs (as well as still having the outfit page for the full piece of course as it exists now). This means that you’d be able to be a magical princess with a unicorn horn and have your feet our in invisible shoes if you’d like.

If you made it this far, thanks for taking the time to read, I look forward to seeing other ideas and any responses.
 

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Many of the suggestions are just not feasible.  For instance, Outfits can not 'just be split apart'; they would have to be converted (completely remade) into separate Armor pieces, which totally eliminates  the purpose for the Devs of creating Outfits. 

Same issue with removing armor weights.  Every piece of armor would need to be converted to a fifth armor weight.  There would not be any new armor for years, likely.

Also, including 'rare' items in most drops means said 'rare' items would not be 'rare' for long.

Looks like you may be a Dungeon fan.  I'm guessing Dev attention will be on the newer Instanced Content, rather than Dungeons.

[Bolthead.2567]

That's a fair point on the outfits, there's a few in mind I can see looking a little weird but it would be interesting to see how they could work, possibly just allow switching the head item as this part is normally seperate anyway.

I'm not too sure what you mean with removing armour weights, I'm guessing you're refering to the comsetics section where I mention being able to transmog a mix of styles? This would purely be cosmetics/wardrobe only, don't really see an issue with this as items are already split in to parts, obviously some stuff just wouldn't look right but that would be down to the user.

Rare items wouldn't be rare for long yeah, but it's something extra to excite the players other than unidentified gear drops. They could use a similar system to the new infusion they released in strikes, a way to guarantee it but it's bound, and then also as a rare drop.

Not actually played that many dungeons, as a new player myself it'd be nice to have a more of a reason to go play them and also for new players that start playing through steam release.
 

[Solitude.2097]

 If could add an improved LFG , it would be also sweet , to prevent scenarios like these

 

(lol)

Edited July 3, 2022 by Solitude.2097

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

4 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

That's a fair point on the outfits, there's a few in mind I can see looking a little weird but it would be interesting to see how they could work, possibly just allow switching the head item as this part is normally seperate anyway.

I'm not too sure what you mean with removing armour weights, I'm guessing you're refering to the comsetics section where I mention being able to transmog a mix of styles? This would purely be cosmetics/wardrobe only, don't really see an issue with this as items are already split in to parts, obviously some stuff just wouldn't look right but that would be down to the user.

Rare items wouldn't be rare for long yeah, but it's something extra to excite the players other than unidentified gear drops. They could use a similar system to the new infusion they released in strikes, a way to guarantee it but it's bound, and then also as a rare drop.

Not actually played that many dungeons, as a new player myself it'd be nice to have a more of a reason to go play them and also for new players that start playing through steam release.
 

Light armor wearers can't wear Heavy armor or Medium armor.  Those make up 3 armor weights.  Outfits make up a fourth weight.  To accomplish what you suggest, a fifth weight of armor would need to be created/used, and each and every armor piece would need to be recreated in that fifth armor weight.  (As would splitting apart Outfits).  It would likely take years to create all those armor pieces, and in the meantime, there would be no new armors.

[Bolthead.2567]

Ah right I see what you're saying, but my idea is more just let players pick any transmog from any armour set(not including outfits), not recreate them so they all fit, it agree that would take too much time. There's pieces that wouldn't work like a medium trench coat chest with light armour skirt, but if that's down to the player I don't think it's really an issue as it's purely cosmetic.

[Sigmoid.7082]

12 minutes ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

Ah right I see what you're saying, but my idea is more just let players pick any transmog from any armour set(not including outfits), not recreate them so they all fit, it agree that would take too much time. There's pieces that wouldn't work like a medium trench coat chest with light armour skirt, but if that's down to the player I don't think it's really an issue as it's purely cosmetic.

I think that's the part you are not understanding. You can't combine looks of armours of different weights because of their fundamental design. Its not just purely cosmetic. 

 

Each weight is its own rig / frame that the armour is then fitted to. Its not "just let the players choose if they clip or not and be done with it". The skins fundamentally do not fit together. There is a reason why when unlocking some skins you unlock Skin (light/medium/heavy). Each one has been designed with the rigging points of their respective frame in mind. 

 

Its why Incul said the only way to achieve your idea is to create a 5th weight to which everything can be fitted to. But like you correctly identified the amount of time needed to transfer everything to this as well as the increased cost of future development just makes this not very cost effective.

[Kozumi.5816]

For a game that's entire end game is cosmetics, they sure designed cosmetics in a bad way.

[Bolthead.2567]

That's true actually cheers for clearing that up, I'd not considered the skeletal rigs, my bad. I'd assumed that things such as trench coats contained their own rigs for the lower half and contained their own animation sets as this would have been more optimal for performance when not using such armour.

[Jin.8501]

8 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

That's true actually cheers for clearing that up, I'd not considered the skeletal rigs, my bad. I'd assumed that things such as trench coats contained their own rigs for the lower half and contained their own animation sets as this would have been more optimal for performance when not using such armour.

Don't believe any headcanon you hear way above. It's this way since it makes dollars, not due to technical reasons 😂

[Linken.6345]

4 minutes ago, Jin.8501 said:

Don't believe any headcanon you hear way above. It's this way since it makes dollars, not due to technical reasons 😂

How do it earn them money you cant race or class change from the shop.

[Randulf.7614]

Dungeons were abandoned in 2013. Two were added, deleted, then recycled into fractals which became the main focus of instances before they were (we assume) retired in development in favour of strikes.

Whilst many have asked for some dungeon love, it’s a request dead in the water for 9 years now. The currency merger whilst something I welcome pretty much points to the final sweeping up of loose ends. 

The only dungeon change I’d like is to see story mode as a solo mode. I know it kind of is due to power creep, but that’s more for veteran and skilled players.

 

[Gehenna.3625]

21 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

The levelling experience:
So I feel the main problem here is the down time in between player story missions, this could be fixed by pushing players a little more towards dungeons. Instead of having their game guide say 'reach level 30' it could say 'complete X dungeon', maybe the first dungeon is forced to progress the story and to give players some understanding of how they work. I understand that there's some risk by forcing players into content they may not want to do, but I think there's also a risk in not guiding a player in between level milestones.

The core game wasn't really a story driven game. LW chapters and expansions are for level 80 characters so the problem fixes itself. There is no reason for Anet to go back and fix it. I also find the leveling experience boring, it's what turned me off to the game initially. But asking people to complete dungeons is expecting them to do group content. Not a good idea.

21 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

Personally (and this may be better suited to an alt levelling experience) I think that not having the down time at all would be good, I think the grind to level 10 is nice and quick, its a pretty good start for new players to get in to the game and learn the basic combat skills and dodging. After they have finished the level 10 set of missions I would then guide them to the dungeon (this would mean making dungeons a little easier as i'm not sure the lowest level dungeon is around 15) and after completion they have jump up to 20 to go straight in to the next story missions (or just a big xp jump), I'd repeat this throughout levelling.

Ascalonian Catacombs is the first dungeon and is minimum level 30.

21 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

Alternatively, you could instead remove levelling altogether and make all progression be based purely on story progress, at this point though you're making tomes of knowledge obsolete and things start getting a bit clunky so maybe worth ignoring this point, something to think on though.

I don't care for the leveling experience but it's good for new players to at least play one or two characters through it. What I feel though is that above level 35 the levels are just there for the sake of levels and that's what makes it boring. 

21 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

Another thing I don't like (and most mmo's do this) is the useless gear you go through as you level, I think a really cool system would be to remove the level from all gear, basically it all drops at 80 level stats, but obviously there would be no level requirement on it so a player can equip these as the level up. They then get to keep the cool gear they've found levelling when they hit 80. You would do this in combination with scaling the stats based on player level so they don't just have full stats to go to end game zones. This would play really nicely with jumping in to content that scaled players up to 80 like fractals and WvW, they would scale up the proper stats to match other players, I know there is already some scaling up on items but i'm not 100% sure how this works say a player is wearing armour that has +5 power.

This is a side effect of having too many levels and going through levels fast. Individual levels don't have much meaning and so crafting a full set of level whatever gear is pointless.

21 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

Dungeons:
So we already had some changes last month that combined the currencies which was a nice little update, but I feel like there was nothing really pushing players to go play dungeons and this was more a way of making things less convoluted for newbies. I don't think there's any daily dungeons (at least I can't find them in achievements) and this would be step one in getting people to go do dungeons.

Dungeons are part of the PvE dailies but not every day. They come by now and again. The problem is that people don't do a lot of dungeons and this is because Anet has abandoned dungeons once they started with fractals. 

21 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

Another thing I think would work well, you could add stat sets in to dungeons as rewards, for example sorrow's embrace path 2 could have a chance of dropping vipers gear on bosses, twilight arbour path 1 could drop marauder weapons etc. these could be rotated daily or weekly, or even just remain as set rewards, I feel it's nice having somewhere that a player knows they can go to get specific gear for a new build they're trying to gear. 

Viper's and Marauders gear are not core stat sets. Therefore they cannot be added to core content as rewards. Also those sets are important for crafters and so it would drop the price of them even further on the TP.

21 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

Crafting:
This is more of a side note to the above dungeon loot drop notes. If loot was more obtainable through other means, crafting on exotics would probably lose some value, and I don’t think this is a bad thing as prices can be a little high for new players hitting the end game. 

It really depends on the stat set. Berserkers, for example, you can buy for less than a gold a piece on the TP. Some stats sets are more difficult. Besides, count your blessings. Stat sets like marauders and viper's used to be account bound and couldn't even be sold on the TP.

21 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

One problem I find with crafting in this game is that the cost of materials that goes into making something normally equals the price the item sells for, due to the fact that levelling crafting is so easy. In other games your skill in crafting held more value as it was something less players had done due to it being harder. One way around this I think is allowing the sale of crafted ascended gear (not dropped ascended), it would help bring more value to a players crafting skills as ascended recipes are a little harder to get than exotic.

That's because people gather materials a lot themselves and therefore they can sell it for cheaper. But not every exotic on the TP is crafted. Besides ascended gear is account bound so has no selling price. Exotics are only the special stat sets that can get any money on the TP. 

21 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

Loot:
Personally I find loot in this game really boring, always getting unidentified gear and then having to go through the process of identifying and then deconstructing stops being fun rather quickly. It’s nice purely for the fact it saves inventory space but that's about it.

Loot isn't very exciting, in spite of your characters comments. And there's just a ton of loot, none of which makes you go wow for the right reasons. However, that's kinda how the set up works. I don't see it changing.

21 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

The only way around this really is more loot in the pool of dropped items, what if you had a chance of runes, sigils, insignias, weapons skins, even ascended materials like elonian leather squares, it adds to the excitement of checking if what you had dropped was worth something other than getting unidentified green gear again and again.

Not the only way and also the wrong way. This would have way too many repercussions, especially for crafting. In case you haven't noticed, crafting is very important in this game. Devaluating it would be detrimental.

21 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

Environment: 
Not a big deal really, but there were recent updates that sorted some boundary issues in missions, it would be nice to see the open world get some love with boundaries too. There’s a few areas in Seitung Province when it comes to fishing spots, you’ll go for a fishing node and get dismounted for your skiff for slightly passing it, there is so much ocean that allowing players a little more wouldn’t hurt, there’s also some areas elsewhere in the game where just a bit extra space would hurt.

But a big enough deal to put it in this wall of text 😉 

21 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

Cosmetics: 
Lastly, just a few ideas for cosmetics that would make everyone happier.

I can tell you that this wouldn't make everyone happier.

21 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

Mixing armour styles, being able to wear a heavy chest piece with medium legs and light helmet would be crazy good, people have mentioned that clipping would be an issue but armour of the same weight clips anyway (could be solved with letting players customise in 1 style, just light/medium/heavy), and at worst it’s just a visual problem if a player even decides to go through with that customisation. This benefits both players and Anet, more transmogs would probably be used, and it also gives players more to do, being able to go after another 2 full sets worth of styles adds replayability. 

There isn't really a benefit for Anet. Transmogs being used more often (if that's the case), won't be sufficient to off-set the headaches they will have to endure to make this happen and get many more customer complaints about clipping and mismatching.

21 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

Everyone loves skins, there’s actually a decent amount in game at the minute, but putting skins in dungeons as extra loot, that boosts player numbers as more would be farming for them. Put rare skins everywhere, rare drops from chests or mobs, spices up the loot.

Nope, not everybody loves skins. A lot of people do, but not everybody. I feel like you really want dungeons to drop the loot you want. There are skins you can get with Dungeon currency but you want to just easy mode it even more it seems.

21 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

Glider skins, would be nice if they were tied into equipment sets, currently if I switch sets and had yellow wings and swap to a loadout with blue orbs, I have to then go change my glider and dye it to match.

The first interesting idea. 

21 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

Finally outfits, if these were to be split into parts (helm, chest etc.), so players can combine them with existing armour, it opens up so much more customisation. Again this benefits both players and Anet, a player might see an outfit they like the chest piece of but not the legs, they’d be able to buy the outfit and use just the parts they want as transmogs (as well as still having the outfit page for the full piece of course as it exists now). This means that you’d be able to be a magical princess with a unicorn horn and have your feet our in invisible shoes if you’d like.

Outfits can be with or without the helmet but for the rest the point of outfits is that they're designed as one design. So I think that's not a request they'll honor.

21 hours ago, Bolthead.2567 said:

If you made it this far, thanks for taking the time to read, I look forward to seeing other ideas and any responses.

Sorry that I don't have a lot of positives, but I can see a theme here and that's you want Dungeons to provide you with everything you want via loot instead of having to craft or do other content for it. I don't think that's a reasonable expectation.

Besides, not everybody likes to do dungeons as it is. In fact most people don't do them. You'll just have to get your HoT stat sets from HoT content or WvW or the TP, etc.

[Svarty.8019]

What a waste of 1,350 words.

[Bolthead.2567]

1 hour ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

Sorry that I don't have a lot of positives, but I can see a theme here and that's you want Dungeons to provide you with everything you want via loot instead of having to craft or do other content for it. I don't think that's a reasonable expectation.

Besides, not everybody likes to do dungeons as it is. In fact most people don't do them. You'll just have to get your HoT stat sets from HoT content or WvW or the TP, etc.

No worries, I think that you took things a little bit too literal with some responses (such as everyone liking skins) but I appreciate the response. The post is more of a list of some thoughts mixed with feedback, the dungeons mentions are not so much put everything in them, but do at least something with them, I saw the update to currency as though they wanted to but in reality it's more likely just tidying that up and putting it aside. Thanks again for the response.

[Bolthead.2567]

18 minutes ago, Svarty.8019 said:

What a waste of 1,350 words.

How unfortunate.

[DeanBB.4268]

Regarding leveling, the test they are running now makes it trivial. 10 hours to level 80. "Down time" is non-existent, if they keep this. Not that I found it a problem with the original pacing, there's plenty to do between story steps, and those steps give 2-3 levels as well.