Season of Discovery and the future of GW2 character progression

[Caffynated.5713]

With the launch of WoW's Season of Discovery a lot of people have been playing and enjoying their new way of obtaining new traits and abilities. For those who haven't been paying attention, they've added in Runes that you obtain through various quests and puzzles scattered throughout the world that give your character new abilities and traits that improve or entirely change the way your class plays. It's been wildly popular and the feedback overwhelmingly positive. 

As GW2 is shifting development away from new Elite Specializations, and fast running out of suitable weapons to give to everyone, this could be a path forward. 

Instead of gaining an entire new weapon set, you could unlock new weapon abilities through achievements, raids and meta events. These new abilities would be swappable like utilities are now, but for existing weapon sets. 

Do you have a weapon you enjoy but its damage is split between power and conditions? New weapon abilities could allow you to change out weapon powers to fit your playstyle, such as swapping a condition auto attack for one with more power damage, or the reverse with less power damage and adding conditions. 

Perhaps you're a warrior who loves the kit that great sword provides, but find few opportunities to put Hundred Blades to good use in your playstyle. A new ability could allow you to swap it for a more mobile ability with less damage. 

Elementalists could change an entire attunement to function differently, such as Earth becoming Magma attunement and having Fire traits active for the skills in that attunement instead of Earth traits and bleeding stacks converted to a comparable amount of damage from burning (adjusting number of stacks and duration to maintain an equal amount of damage). 

This system would allow more creative flexibility going forward and offer more players improvements to their spec, instead of having a new weapon they either adopt or get nothing from the new content. A new expansion might launch with 5 abilities per class with more released in each phase so that players continue to get new options as the content is rolled out. 

[Omega.6801]

Well if WoW has it, every other game in existence has to have it too, right? Because God forbid that two games are different these days every game needs to be the forevergame that seemlessly blends Fortnite, FiFa, Wow, CoD and Pinball Simulator97 ino this perfect amalgamate that evrey one will want to play forever and will make an infinite amount of money. /s

The Idea is not bad and GW1 did something similiar but:
1) it's a balancing nightmare
2) crybabies will cry that cretain skills will be locked behind certain content until all skill wil be unlockable everywhere making the system moot
3) the sysem we seem to have now is less fun but more streamlined, i.e. more cost efficient i assume

[DanAlcedo.3281]

All Skills that launch/knockback in PvE should have a version that has knockdown instead. 

Breakbar dmg staying the same. 

Launch and knockback is really bad for most situations. 

For example, Hammer 4 on Warrior. I want to use it for Trait Synergies but at the same time I knock enemies away from my allies AoE. 

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

nah, if we are going to copy WoW, copy that dragon mount they have. That would be neat...

[Cyninja.2954]

Not going to shut down the idea but instead just ask: who or which mode is this aimed at?

1. Spvp and WvW are either in heavy maintenance mode or already suffering under the PvE heavy balance

2. 95% of this games open world content is absolutely irrelevant build wise

3. the little remaining instanced content and the even smaller part of that which is challenging will have players min/max, essentially at best keeping options similar or worst case reducing them

With elite specs, there was at least somewhat of a change in game play (less now with removing unique access to elite weapons).

WoW's SoD is drawing off the nostalgia of classic, which was already dropping if ones looks at how classic servers were emptying and were getting merged, and spicing stuff up just enough so players were interested in messing around a little more. All the while the lower level cap of 25 meant not having to grind to much to get to "end level".

I believe we got an answer to a question in the latest developer post in regard to classic and alternative game modes:
 

Quote

There is a growing interest in alternate modes, like hardcore servers, classic servers, etc., in the MMORPG genre. Do you have any plans to offer anything like servers with more challenging PvE difficulty, for example?

It’s an interesting idea, but it’s not a priority for us. Trend chasing is inherently risky and can potentially alienate your existing fans if it goes poorly. From what we’ve observed in the industry over the past few years, it usually doesn’t pan out. For now, we’re focused on serving our current community and making Guild Wars 2 the best it can be.

WoW and their entire approach to alternate modes is based around them trying to desperately overcome shortcomings and design issues with their retail version of the game. Issues which to some extent exist here as well, but in many cases do not.

WoW classic and WoW SoD are running their course and continually result in empty servers after that initial nostalgia kick. At least that's the outside impression one gets.

If you want to look at a game which does "classic" well, I'd say Runescape is a much better case study, though I'll be honest, I haven't kept up with how the server situation there has developed.

EDIT:

just to be clear, and since this turned into more of a WoW bashing than intended, obviously the developers should come up with some idea to keep things interesting. Those ideas should be designed around what this game needs though instead of copying what another game does.

Edited December 30, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[Caffynated.5713]

1 hour ago, Omega.6801 said:

Well if WoW has it, every other game in existence has to have it too, right?

If WoW upsets you then pick another game with similar options. I use it as an example because it's recent and popular, so more people will have direct experience to reference. 

Lost Ark lets you modify almost every skill to change some combination of damage type, AoE shape, damage amount, damage/effect duration, cast time, add or remove CC, change CC type and more. 

 

[Parasite.5389]

it sounds a lot like the old https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Signet_of_Capture from GW1
which honestly wouldn't be a bad idea for a future expansion feature: players could buy a blank Signet (in the form of an inventory item) from an expansion vendor, which can be used after defeating a Worldboss, Raid/Strike/Fractal/Dungeon, or a special enemy type from the expansion; this then opens a dialogue box letting them select a new skill which will be added to their available Elite skills or Healing Skill pool:
limiting the available skill to the specific slot would reduce the number of new skills that need to be made, and give better control for further balancing.

[BlueJin.4127]

I don't know much about WoW's SoD, but the OP's post does sound awesome.

The only thing I'll say is that GW2 is very different from WoW and I really don't want to see more character based enhancements. Jade Bots are a good example. It costs a lot of gold to upgrade the Jade Bot. I think I'm looking at like 30g per character for the enhancements I want. That doesn't sound like a lot, except that I play 27 characters equally, and would like to create even more characters some day. For me, anything expensive that's character based (gives dirty look to build/equipment templates) is a no-no.

[Ashen.2907]

Sounds interesting.

[Randulf.7614]

Adding in a new system is usually the bane of mmos. You have to bear in mind that hero points and mastery points already confused large numbers of players. Adding in another system to unlock new ways to play via might seem great in theory, but is unlikely to be popular across the board. People want access to skills immediately and we're already seeing further dumbing down by selling hero points on the store.

Adding new progression methods on top of Elites (which are not off the table) and masteries is a recipe for a mess. I'd rather just see them develop more elites and incorprorate some of the ideas above that way. It's simpler

[Linken.6345]

Dident we use to have something similar with grandmaster traits awhile back and people hated it.

[Caffynated.5713]

46 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

Dident we use to have something similar with grandmaster traits awhile back and people hated it.

They added a gate to something that was already in the game. That's bound to be unpopular. Adding new abilities into the game that you need to unlock (as you need to unlock your elite specs, and weapon mastery in the expansions) isn't going to have the same reaction. 

 

1 hour ago, Randulf.7614 said:

Adding in a new system is usually the bane of mmos. You have to bear in mind that hero points and mastery points already confused large numbers of players. Adding in another system to unlock new ways to play via might seem great in theory, but is unlikely to be popular across the board. People want access to skills immediately and we're already seeing further dumbing down by selling hero points on the store.

Adding new progression methods on top of Elites (which are not off the table) and masteries is a recipe for a mess. I'd rather just see them develop more elites and incorprorate some of the ideas above that way. It's simpler

Elite specs were a new system and people seem to have adopted them just fine. I think they can handle the ability to swap weapon skills like utility skills. 

2 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Not going to shut down the idea but instead just ask: who or which mode is this aimed at?

1. Spvp and WvW are either in heavy maintenance mode or already suffering under the PvE heavy balance

2. 95% of this games open world content is absolutely irrelevant build wise

3. the little remaining instanced content and the even smaller part of that which is challenging will have players min/max, essentially at best keeping options similar or worst case reducing them

With elite specs, there was at least somewhat of a change in game play (less now with removing unique access to elite weapons).

WoW's SoD is drawing off the nostalgia of classic, which was already dropping if ones looks at how classic servers were emptying and were getting merged, and spicing stuff up just enough so players were interested in messing around a little more. All the while the lower level cap of 25 meant not having to grind to much to get to "end level".

I believe we got an answer to a question in the latest developer post in regard to classic and alternative game modes:
 

WoW and their entire approach to alternate modes is based around them trying to desperately overcome shortcomings and design issues with their retail version of the game. Issues which to some extent exist here as well, but in many cases do not.

WoW classic and WoW SoD are running their course and continually result in empty servers after that initial nostalgia kick. At least that's the outside impression one gets.

If you want to look at a game which does "classic" well, I'd say Runescape is a much better case study, though I'll be honest, I haven't kept up with how the server situation there has developed.

EDIT:

just to be clear, and since this turned into more of a WoW bashing than intended, obviously the developers should come up with some idea to keep things interesting. Those ideas should be designed around what this game needs though instead of copying what another game does.

You're focusing entirely too much on the example. Beyond "this exists, is wildly popular and you can look at it for reference to aid in understanding" it doesn't matter what game it's from. 

To point 3 Players are always going to optimize no matter what you add. In Lost Ark I change my abilities constantly to fit the needs of the encounter. A faster fight doesn't have room for long casts that might have been great in a slower fight. A fight with swarms of enemies needs more AoE, especially PBAoE, than a boss fight. 

This system, after some time and a good number of skills have been added, will allow players to tailor their build choices to what they're doing and should ultimately increase diversity in how the game is played. 

1 hour ago, Parasite.5389 said:

it sounds a lot like the old https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Signet_of_Capture from GW1
which honestly wouldn't be a bad idea for a future expansion feature: players could buy a blank Signet (in the form of an inventory item) from an expansion vendor, which can be used after defeating a Worldboss, Raid/Strike/Fractal/Dungeon, or a special enemy type from the expansion; this then opens a dialogue box letting them select a new skill which will be added to their available Elite skills or Healing Skill pool:
limiting the available skill to the specific slot would reduce the number of new skills that need to be made, and give better control for further balancing.

Yes, but I avoided GW1 to not confuse the average forum poster. I didn't want to explain 15 times that I'm not saying you should just be able to pick your favorite 5 weapon skills to create a customized weapon set, which with this forum would 100% be necessary. 

 

[enigmatic.3576]

They already tried this with one of their many iterations of the trait system.  People hated it.

[kiroho.4738]

4 hours ago, Caffynated.5713 said:

For those who haven't been paying attention, they've added in Runes that you obtain through various quests and puzzles scattered throughout the world that give your character new abilities and traits that improve or entirely change the way your class plays. It's been wildly popular and the feedback overwhelmingly positive. 

At some point such system was implemented in GW2 for traits. Turned out that it wasn't fun at all so it was removed again.

And to some degree, we have such a system with masteries since HoT. You need to reach certain points, do achievements or adventures to gain mastery points to unlock masteries that improve/change your gameplay.

[Shuzuru.3651]

47 minutes ago, Caffynated.5713 said:

They added a gate to something that was already in the game. That's bound to be unpopular. Adding new abilities into the game that you need to unlock (as you need to unlock your elite specs, and weapon mastery in the expansions) isn't going to have the same reaction

From what i remember, not really, it was simply an alternative, before, you could only buy them, then they added a system where you could either buy them or do something to unlock them, people hated that even more, so they ended up with the full hero point system.

And for alternative skills, from what i heard (in some old dev interview), they did try to have some in early stage of development, but didn't manage to find good other alternative, so they scrapped the idea.

[Caffynated.5713]

18 minutes ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

From what i remember, not really, it was simply an alternative, before, you could only buy them, then they added a system where you could either buy them or do something to unlock them, people hated that even more, so they ended up with the full hero point system.

And for alternative skills, from what i heard (in some old dev interview), they did try to have some in early stage of development, but didn't manage to find good other alternative, so they scrapped the idea.

At launch you needed to purchase a manual to unlock each tier of traits for adept, master and grand master (1 time purchase covered all trait lines). Everything was available as long as you spent the small amount of gold with no further effort required. 

2014 they added trait unlocks for all major traits, which was unpopular because they had previously been freely available without any extra effort. 

[Ashantara.8731]

5 hours ago, Caffynated.5713 said:

This system would allow more creative flexibility going forward and offer more players improvements to their spec

That's a thing for GW1, but it can't be done in GW2 due to the skill system. Also, imagine the balacing nightmare for the devs if GW2 had a flexible skill system.

I wish they'd remake GW1, really. 😄

[BlueJin.4127]

56 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

That's a thing for GW1, but it can't be done in GW2 due to the skill system. Also, imagine the balacing nightmare for the devs if GW2 had a flexible skill system.

I wish they'd remake GW1, really. 😄

OMG... a modern remake of the entire GW1 saga... With modern graphics, QoL changes, and better profession balance... Sigh... one can only dream.

[Linken.6345]

2 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

That's a thing for GW1, but it can't be done in GW2 due to the skill system. Also, imagine the balacing nightmare for the devs if GW2 had a flexible skill system.

I wish they'd remake GW1, really. 😄

Yea imagine 2 people have sabetha flame wall 1 from left and other from right obliterating enemy zerges at choke points 😁

[DeanBB.4268]

5 hours ago, Randulf.7614 said:

Adding in a new system is usually the bane of mmos. You have to bear in mind that hero points and mastery points already confused large numbers of players. Adding in another system to unlock new ways to play via might seem great in theory, but is unlikely to be popular across the board. People want access to skills immediately and we're already seeing further dumbing down by selling hero points on the store.

Adding new progression methods on top of Elites (which are not off the table) and masteries is a recipe for a mess. I'd rather just see them develop more elites and incorprorate some of the ideas above that way. It's simpler

IF Anet added something like the OP's idea to the game, wouldn't it just be the masteries for whatever expansion introduced it? So nothing new in acquiring the new <whatever-unlock>, just a new power-creep, impossible to balance progression.

[Cuks.8241]

Sounds very interesting. Gw2 has probably the most boring loot in rpgs. Usually big bad bosses drop iconic weapons or other items, some also with unique effects. In Gw2 you get some random generic items and some generic currency. 

If killing a boss would enable you to get skill modifiers which can be completely horizontal progression, that would improve the feel of killing a tough boss. 

[starlinvf.1358]

10 hours ago, Parasite.5389 said:

it sounds a lot like the old https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Signet_of_Capture from GW1
which honestly wouldn't be a bad idea for a future expansion feature: players could buy a blank Signet (in the form of an inventory item) from an expansion vendor, which can be used after defeating a Worldboss, Raid/Strike/Fractal/Dungeon, or a special enemy type from the expansion; this then opens a dialogue box letting them select a new skill which will be added to their available Elite skills or Healing Skill pool:
limiting the available skill to the specific slot would reduce the number of new skills that need to be made, and give better control for further balancing.

They almost tried that with POF.   The idea didn't get very far.  

[Balsa.3951]

On 12/30/2023 at 8:05 PM, Caffynated.5713 said:

With the launch of WoW's Season of Discovery a lot of people have been playing and enjoying their new way of obtaining new traits and abilities. For those who haven't been paying attention, they've added in Runes that you obtain through various quests and puzzles scattered throughout the world that give your character new abilities and traits that improve or entirely change the way your class plays. It's been wildly popular and the feedback overwhelmingly positive. 

As GW2 is shifting development away from new Elite Specializations, and fast running out of suitable weapons to give to everyone, this could be a path forward. 

Instead of gaining an entire new weapon set, you could unlock new weapon abilities through achievements, raids and meta events. These new abilities would be swappable like utilities are now, but for existing weapon sets. 

Do you have a weapon you enjoy but its damage is split between power and conditions? New weapon abilities could allow you to change out weapon powers to fit your playstyle, such as swapping a condition auto attack for one with more power damage, or the reverse with less power damage and adding conditions. 

Perhaps you're a warrior who loves the kit that great sword provides, but find few opportunities to put Hundred Blades to good use in your playstyle. A new ability could allow you to swap it for a more mobile ability with less damage. 

Elementalists could change an entire attunement to function differently, such as Earth becoming Magma attunement and having Fire traits active for the skills in that attunement instead of Earth traits and bleeding stacks converted to a comparable amount of damage from burning (adjusting number of stacks and duration to maintain an equal amount of damage). 

This system would allow more creative flexibility going forward and offer more players improvements to their spec, instead of having a new weapon they either adopt or get nothing from the new content. A new expansion might launch with 5 abilities per class with more released in each phase so that players continue to get new options as the content is rolled out. 

ppl will downvote u for mention WOW thats a insta ppl sadly do here.

doing quest to get skills is a good idea to a.extend with masteries we have that now.

i personal love how u need hunt go on quest to get rare pets as Ranger.

or class specific quest 

i could see anet do class elite specific quest to obtain ur elite. i think its a win win situation. when elites become a big part of game content.

it could be of course uncomfortable some time as we saw with legendary collections where events are bugged or need to fail to succeed.

i anyway hope elites comming back. 

everything is possible with anets faster paced xpacts.

i remember ashes of creation had the option for a skill behavior to doge forward or backwards or both depend on which key u press. 

looking at the reactions feeling over facts as usual

Edited December 31, 2023 by Balsa.3951

[Leger.3724]

Is character progression the new euphemism for grind to make it sound better?

I think customizability is a good thing to have as an option but professions are already way too complex, I'm not sure adding more would help attract anyone.

Sure, Season of Discovery might be getting great reviews from active players. But how many are logging back on World of Warcraft and playing regularly now because of it? I doubt it's many beyond your typical expansion pack bump and then slow decline.

[LSD.4673]

27 minutes ago, Leger.3724 said:

Is character progression the new euphemism for grind to make it sound better?

No, that's "horizontal progression".