GW Expansion

[Lurker Wyrm]

I was just thinking, it might be fun to have more conditional effects. Some skills that only work on certain terrains or whatever would be nice, for example a vines skill for the ele (or necro) that slows people down 90% for 10 seconds, but only works in jungle areas, or a Warrior shout that gives him an extra 50 armor if his health is below 25% ("I Cannot Die!" or something like that). Or even less extreme, maybe a weapon modifier like the 15>50 but instead does +15-20% when the target enemy has over 50% health.

(If there is someone who can definately make both all calls (Weds/Fri 10PM EST-midnightish), you should tell me so I can send you an invite...)

*cries*

Friday is Guild Challenge Night!

Oh well, now that the semester is over, I could make them.

btw, what's your IGN? Seems weird having you hang around here and not playing with us. As I told Vanyel, if you want, I'll keep a semi-regular guest invitation up for you (not that we GvG, but it helps us stay in contact).

[KingOfPain]

Just checked to make sure. GvG already has the unrated option.

One thing that changed is henchies cannot make up for more than 50% of the team. I was able to take 4 henchies to make up the minimum party size of 5 before.

KoP

[Xyngynkynyn]

I think allowing the user to input text would be a very bad idea. It will be abused with non-LFG advertisements, obscene suggestions and whatnot. I am thinking the objectives would have to be a list of choices one can choose from a drop down menu or similar UI.

So the question is, what are the bare minimal options to include so one does not have to scroll pages of choices to pick one?

The text box's virtues over the drop down menu are ease of implementation, maintenance, and flexibility. A drop down menu's list will have to be updated whenever new content (mission/quests) is added and it possibly excludes player defined objectives. Would the developers have bothered to add an "IDS farming" entry? I think it's better that players not be left waiting for ANet to add these new activities (which may never be added) before they can actually look for people through this system.

I agree with your concerns that there will be inappropriate messages posted there. It's practically a guarantee that it will happen. Still, in my honest opinion, the pros outweigh the cons on this matter.

More suggestions from me:

1. Ability to change the order of party members on your Party List

Sometimes, certain mission objectives require that the team split into 2. As 1 of 2 monks in a party, it would be very helpful to me if we could reorder the names on our party list window to reflect this division so that each monk will be concerned with only his/her half of the list. I'm not sure if the game's engine requires (due to some oversight or some technical reason) that the order of people on the list be consistent with other members' list but if it doesn't, then one member's reordering of his/her list should not update the other members' list. Since the Party leader won't be the first name on the list in this scenario, also make the party leader's name a different font color or bold text.

Drag-and-drop would be the preferred method of reordering the list.

2. Party leader can assign another member to be party leader

There are people reluctant to be party leader. There are also times when the party leader needs to temporarily zone to get some skill for the mission or re-log to change character, come back, and desire to be leader again (it's happened to me before in ToA). Other times, the leader might need to go afk for a bit while the team's recruiting more members. In these situations it would be helpful to have the ability to assign leadership to someone else. The leader simply right-clicks on a person's name which will bring out a pop-up menu. It's only option right now will be "Assign Leadership". Naturally right clicking will only pop up this menu when you are the leader.

3. More control over the Skill Bar's tool tip

When hovering the mouse over a skill in the skill bar, a tool tip pops up displaying the skills casting time/recharge time/energy/adrenaline needs as well as a brief description of the skill.

I've recently altered my user interface by moving my Conditions Monitor directly above my health and energy bar which is directly above the skill bar. This is so I can see my health, energy, conditions, and recharged skills in a concentrated area of the screen. The problem is, when my mouse is over a skill in the skill bar, the tool tip pops up and obscures some/most of my Conditions Monitor area which pretty much messes up my timing sometimes because I fail to notice an enchantment starting to blink beneath the tool tip.

Allow the user to set a zero to five second delay on when the the tool tip shows up when the mouse is over it or better yet: only show the tool tip when the user right-clicks on the skill in the skill bar.

4. /stuck command

It hasn't happened to me recently but before, I'd sometimes get stuck in the architecture. Either I'd fall through the floor or get frozen in the threshold of a door. Once, I was even suspended in mid-air and couldn't move anymore. I'm not sure how often that happens anymore to players but if it is still a common occurrence to some other unlucky people, implement a stuck command.

Basically, when a character is stuck, the emote commands like /jump and /cheer still work. What I propose is to add a /stuck command that will teleport the stuck character to a nearby valid location. To prevent this from being abused by players to get out of tight spots, the following things must happen first:

1. The character has to /sit before the /stuck will work. Right now, if the character takes damage from combat, any emote action is canceled including /sit so this can't be used in the middle of combat.

2. After sitting, the player can type /stuck. This will begin a 30 second timer (or however long/short you think is appropriate) to ensure that this isn't being abused in some unforeseen way. I suggest a 30 second timer because it's long enough to ensure that the average player will be too bored to spam this repeatedly thus insuring that it will most likely be used legitimately. During this 30 second period, the character shouldn't move (or try to move since he/she's supposed to be stuck) or use a skill. Inventory management should be fine. If the character tries to move or use a skill the timer will stop and the stuck command will abort.

3. After the 30 seconds are up, the character will be teleported to a nearby valid location. I'm not sure if there's already a function that can determine where the nearby valid locations are or if it's even feasible to make such a function. Another alternative would be to teleport the person to a nearby party member's location (hopefully one who isn't stuck as well) much like rebirth. In this case the other party member should be within rebirth range for this to work. Of course this won't work on solo PvE players so I'm hoping ANet will make or already have a function that can determine nearby valid locations.

Internally, maybe ANet can log the character name, date/time, and location (coordinates) whenever someone uses a /stuck command. Repeated calls by the same person over a short period of time may show that the player's just testing while log entries with unique locations where /stuck was asked for could indicate a one time glitch. But if several different characters over several time spans get stuck in the same location (i.e. similar nearby coordinates), then it may indicate that the map makers need to make some adjustments at that spot.

Edited: Addendum

I knew I'd forget something

5. More models for Stonefist Gauntlets, Duelers, Executioners, Dwarven Helms and Bloodstained Boots

As of now Stonefist gauntlets look like Knight gauntlets which kind of clashes with my 15k platemail. I wish that ANet would allow the gauntlets to come in more models; all possible warrior gauntlets both 1.5 and 15k models to be precise so that they look like they match the rest of the armor.

I wish for the same thing with regards to the Duelers, Executioner and Dwarven helms which only come in the Gladiator model.

And let's not forget the Necromancer's Bloodstained Boots which comes in the Cultist's boot model if I'm not mistaken. I'd really like it if I had the option of getting them in Tormentor boot form.

[WarBlade]

1. Ability to change the order of party members on your Party List

Yeah, that's something I started grumbling about almost as soon as I started playing Somewhat Zen. I want to re-work the list on the fly. I'd also love to see the following defaults:
- Standard (status quo where the list is generated with each acceptance.
- Self first (where your own character defaults to top slot and the rest as above)
- Alphabetical
- Profession template (Where you specify a pecking order of primary professions and the list will order itself accordingly)

I've also mentioned in game that being able to colour code all the names would be handy.

2. Party leader can assign another member to be party leader

Yeah. I can certainly see a few merits in that.

That could also be useful if the role of leadership could be tied to target calling. I don't mean eliminate everyone else from the role - We've all been in the situation where we've spotted the heals coming from some hidden monks somewhere and had to spam call the get the team refocused - but just let the player have a priority caller to help get around the problem of two-way calling confusions.

Dunno though. No matter which way I turn the idea I still see downsides.


Needless to say I have my own wishes for updates and expansions just as most other players in the game do. The tradehouse and number of character slots per account are both high on my list.

There's another one that I don't see too often, although it came up in either that UW or FoW run that some of the guild indulged in a few hours back:

MAPS!

Underworld and Fissure of Woe might well be unmappable intentionally, but I'd prefer to see something there. Also the Catacombs in Pre-Searing and now Sorrow's Furnace are all nightmarish in their ability to defy the map. I can foresee a little hurdle in warping back to town from such a map, but you'd really only need a map toggle to flick from a current location map to the regular overland map to get around that. Surely one of the devs have played Master of Magic.

PS. Speaking of that FoW run, what a place for me to lose connection my eh? I hope that book dropped out of Ice Blade's clutches okay. Not that anyone has any use for 10,000XP at that point, but it does complete the picture that we had spend some time in building.

[Lurker Wyrm]

Self first (where your own character defaults to top slot and the rest as above)

That would be a bit tricky, since the top spot is reserved for the party organizer (aka character with the join button). Doesn't necessarily mean they have to be the leader, but that's generally how it all works out.

PS. Speaking of that FoW run, what a place for me to lose connection my eh? I hope that book dropped out of Ice Blade's clutches okay. Not that anyone has any use for 10,000XP at that point, but it does complete the picture that we had spend some time in building.

We were all surprised when that one happened. The book did drop so we still got the reward, and we weren't in it too bad since that was the last thing we were doing anyway, but that's great timing on the part of your ISP. That extra 10k exp is still handy since now that I've unlocked every skill, those extra skill points let me experiment with secondaries (i.e. I bought the mesmer signet stances for Remy, Gale for Wyrm to have a kd, etc.) so they're very much still needed.

On a similar note to that, something I feel would greatly improve playability, especially since character space is so limited and there will be 2 new classes introduced with Chapter 2 (which means another 100+ skills to unlock), it would be really nice if, when you changed secondary profession, you got all of the skills for that profession that you've unlocked. I really don't think that would imbalance the game at all.

First off, in order to switch secondaries you have to ascend, which means play a good chunk of the game, so it's not as if you're letting total newbies do whatever they want. In order to have any worthwhile skills you'll have to have done so at least once before or farmed faction like crazy, so already we're talking around 20 hours of gameplay.

Second of all, skills are expensive. Very expensive. Seriously, 1 platinum per skill to buy? Now, instead of before where you just couldn't get extra skills because skill points required a ton of exp, now it's because they require a ton of cash. ANet themselves said that the majority of players in the game don't even have 20 platinum on their accounts, and yet they expect you to come up with at least that much in order to get skills for your characters.

Third, players want to experiment with different builds in more than just PvP. That gets infinitely harder when you consider the limited space available on an account. While the option for a PvP only character that can use any skill is great, it leaves the PvE people in a bind. Even more so because they also have to bog down their inventory (stash size is another issue) with various weapons and armor to fit each build they want to try. If you could have all of the skills you've unlocked, that would make it so much easier to try out that Me/N Fragility hexer/conditioner, or the Me/Mo fast casting res/heal party, the Me/E damage spiker, and so on and so forth.

The only conditionary effect that I would say is that you couldn't transfer over elite skills, since I can see how that could potentially get unfair, especially since the more powerful ones aren't available until the Ring of Fire island chain.

If for some reason, ANet is completely unwilling to even consider that, then here's another thought: Make the non-primary skill quests doable multiple times so that you can do them for each secondary. The only thing they'd have to change for the fairness factor is that you don't get the exp (or any other rewards, but I don't think there are any) for them the second, third, forth, or fifth time around. While that still leaves a lot of skills in the dark, at least it's something.

[soul]

Third, players want to experiment with different builds in more than just PvP. That gets infinitely harder when you consider the limited space available on an account. While the option for a PvP only character that can use any skill is great, it leaves the PvE people in a bind. Even more so because they also have to bog down their inventory (stash size is another issue) with various weapons and armor to fit each build they want to try. If you could have all of the skills you've unlocked, that would make it so much easier to try out that Me/N Fragility hexer/conditioner, or the Me/Mo fast casting res/heal party, the Me/E damage spiker, and so on and so forth.

The only conditionary effect that I would say is that you couldn't transfer over elite skills, since I can see how that could potentially get unfair, especially since the more powerful ones aren't available until the Ring of Fire island chain.

I was thinking about that the other day, and I remembered that when it had come up before there was some concern about abuse of low level characters dominating the low level arenas with all of their skills open.

I think the best solution to the problem would be to make every skill you have unlocked become availble to a character after said character ascends (as long as they have the correct classes, of course). It could be fair to exclude elite skills from this, but I don't really see any abuse potential here since ascenion alone should put any character well over the level-limited arenas.

Still have a few scattered skills between some professions I haven't unlocked, myself, so the XP we got last night is useful (especially to the N/Me who has the most skills remaining). Also, like Lurker said, having the points for Chapter2 will make it more conveniant to unlock (for those of us who do PvP).

[Green_Gloom]

If for some reason, ANet is completely unwilling to even consider that, then here's another thought: Make the non-primary skill quests doable multiple times so that you can do them for each secondary.

You can already do that, there just aren't any profession specific quests after Yak's Bend. Every skill available from a quest later on is part of a generic quest (gives both a primary and a secondary skill).

Unless of course you meant that people should be able to do those generic quests for their new secondary profession.

[Lurker Wyrm]

I meant the non-class specific quests you get from Kryta through to the Desert.

[Lurker Wyrm]

I was thinking about that the other day, and I remembered that when it had come up before there was some concern about abuse of low level characters dominating the low level arenas with all of their skills open.

Yes, because, as we all know, the low level arenas are completely void of any people with an unfair advantage, say Drok's armor or elite skills. [/sarcasm]

[soul]

Yes, because, as we all know, the low level arenas are completely void of any people with an unfair advantage, say Drok's armor or elite skills. [/sarcasm]

Well, of course, but my point being that at least doing it that way dosen't allow it to be abused in low level arenas, and also is probablly the best time for it considering you get your class change quests right around the same time. It could be nice having access to skills earlier, but theres really no other point in the game that can ensure that particular abuse dosen't come from it.