Constructive time:
Obviously the duping bug will have to be fixed before any further considerations, so these are ideas to be presented for after that time.
Hopefully that will be remedied during the down time. Of course all of these suggestions would take a large amount of time, if considered and implemented.
Weapon skills, a third tree should be added specifically for pvp, this tree should receive separate points and clicky skills, and will only be active when flagged or in a pvp instance. This would also disable the pve skills during those times. This tree would have 12 to 13 points in it by level 60. Of course the devs will have to come up with pvp specifics for each weapon that are of course balanced and not bugged. This is just an idea, which might remedy some issues such as healers being nerfed, hatched users going wild, etc.
New weapon skills. Obviously the npcs/monsters are using some very unique and interesting weapons and skills, which of course as a player I would love to learn and use as well.
Void gauntlet/staff with the burst aoe, beam shot, floating mines
Earth Staff with the side and frontal earth spikes, limited healing, aoe burst
Dual swords with rush and slice and such
Dual pistols
Hatchet and shield
Pistol and shield
Spear and shield
The lightning anchor with the numbered/limited hit dr buff
And so on. These weapons would be amazing additions to add to quest lines to learn and even forge as a crafter.
Being able to learn appearances/transmogs from the base game gear dropped would be an excellent economy boost and additional rp tool as well as crafting system addition.
Allowing for more than one mod to be used with azoth pump on weapons, armors, etc. The way this would work is that the higher the tier of weapon/armor/etc you obviously can boost the materials and azoth into an item. Say crafting levels also factored in. So at level 50 you can add 1 mod slotted item (stats) with an azoth pump into the item, at 100 add 2 slotted mods with azoth pump, at 150 add 3 with azoth pump, at 200 add 4 modded slots with azoth pump. This would ensure that not only would you have to use a great deal of azoth, but crafters could also specifically tailor their goods to their prospective clients. This is suggested because, lets face it, the legendary recipes are junk for the time and materials required.
The crafting system should also allow for the crafter to choose the item appearance from a list of learned appearances which could be gained from a dismantling feature added to the crafting system at the benches. Base is off a percentage gained from each item of the same type (desecrated, corrupted, dryad, etc.) dismantled, requiring several of said same item type (shield, bow, etc.) to be dismantled at the bench before being learned for use.
If the item turns out as epic or legendary:
The crafters name should appear on the item some where below the flavor text.
The crafter should be able to name the item and put in a short description for flavor text (if they so choose).
Item names for dropped named items should be looked into and corrected from their tag entries.
Dropped items and quest items from level 50+ quests and bosses should be looked at and ensured that they are of appropriate durability and level.
Adjust the mobs and bosses appropriately and fix any bugs for their quest levels, i.e. the well guardian, the bugged out sword quest demon, etc. and so on.
Allow for different tiered benches in the outpost areas depending on the level of the area, as previously suggested.
Allow for guilds/companies to rent out buildings to set up not only a crafting and shared storage space, but also a place to set up a place to put up an npc merchant and store front. It doesn’t have to be in a town, but could be a building out in the wild which can be improved and set up as an instance like the houses. You could even throw in smaller scaled invasions (vastly toned down from the over powered ones attacking the territories) to give companies and their members a chance to earn their own money with out having to worry about possibly getting a slot in a war or invasion.
Of course, expand the map. I am fairly certain there are expansions already planned, and I very much look forward to them. I hope that the desert and other areas will host new and amazing monsters, materials, levels (crafting and basic), and so on. Some minor info on what may come would go a long way in assuring the player base that there is more to look forward to.
Modify the quests and story lines to make them less linear. Allow for choices and differing outcomes in some situations. I would suggest the dev team takes a close look at star wars the old republic and how they have set up some of their questing. This would go a long way to improving moral, player support, and enjoyment of this game. Obviously you wouldn’t follow the same story line though, it would be unique to new world. (Perhaps adding in the ability to join with the angry earth, corrupted, lost, ancients, etc.)
Adjust the ai of your monsters. I cannot stress how frustrating it is to a ranged character or even a melee character to have mobs constantly retreating. Even if you are standing in front of them and smacking them they still can retreat, fully heal, and then attack you before doing it again. The ai in the game is fairly decent, save for that aspect. After all, only an idiot using ranged would hop down from a perch and get right in somethings face that could one or two shot them.
Fix the agro ai. Healing staves, fire staves, ice gauntles, and bows draw so much agro that a tank can have a difficult time, even with a 300% agro gem, full hate gear, and so on.
Fix the stamina damage from hits for tanks with shields. There is absolutely no point in being a shield tank if you cannot hold up a damn shield and block more than the first two attacks of a chain of three or four. Lack of thought went into the stamina damage pve side there.
Add npc merchants, as listed previously, which will buy and sell materials based on profession and tier level of benches in towns. These merchants will start with a set amount of gold, say 5k, and will buy materials initially, and will no longer buy once they run out of gold, they will then be able to buy more once players buy those sold materials from them. Say they start with a 5k base (cap their limit at 50k), one is a smelter, buys iron ingots at .50 each, sells them for 1 gold. This is how you add in a real economy to the game. You can do this with a carpenter, smelter, cook, stone cutter (gems and bricks), arcane mystic (motes and potions), etc. But all of the materials must be refined ones, they cannot be raw materials. And, of course what they will buy will be based on the bench level with in the city they are in, so some incentive to upgrade. If their gold is capped have them stop sales of items until people sell them more materials. This will keep the gold in the economy.
Return the healing abilities to healers for pve, but add the above suggested third tree for pvp.
Allow for the third tree for pvp to be useful in pve environments as well, that way those who wish to flag while adventuring are not at a disadvantage.
Allow for pvp players to retain their 10% bonus xp, but also give them a bonus to gold drops and azoth drops as well. This should satisfy them, hopefully.
Adjust xp gain. Take the total amount of xp needed for level 60, take the total amount of quests in the game, add 20, and divide the xp by that number. This is the amount of xp that should be given per quest, regardless of level. (This does not include board or faction quests by the way, only main and side quests)
This should mitigate some of the power leveling. Also, decrease the xp gain from board, faction, and corruption portals and increase azoth and gold in it’s place.
Adjust damages across the board. Weapon damage needs to be addressed, especially at higher levels, as does item durability on weapons. The rifle should do more damage than the bow per hit, the long sword should do more damage than the hatchet per hit, etc. The overall dps will of course be based on speed, but the initial hits should be more attributed to the weapon types.
The weapon system and armor system could also benefit from a penetration stat, and penetration resistance stat. These would be based on materials and level, not the skills of the players. A rifle would have more armor penetration than a bow, a rapier more than a long sword or great ax, spear more than a hammer, etc. and so on.
For a visual fix, give the spells a basic retexture of color based on the faction a player is in. While this is not an amazing solution, it may be the simplest and fastest way to tell friend from foe with flagged players spells. Green, yellow, purple, just a slight tint modification.
To help adjust and balance out wars, allow an assailing party to upgrade their potential war gear while building influence just as the forts can upgrade turrets, explosives, etc. They could have say a 3 day grace period after declaring to build up said strength.
Adjust resources in other territories. Everfall is typically the main hub of things, this is possibly because some other territories (weavers, ebonscale, etc.) are missing primary quantities of resources. Iron, iron wood, wyrd wood, silver, etc. Some of the lands are rather devoid of the very basics required, mainly iron in easily mined large quantities. Solution to this might be to add and turn some of those occupied mines in areas into harvest zones as well with nodes o the most basic material required for nearly everything, iron.
Allow for pve and pvp larger adventuring groups, maxing out at 20 people. This will make questing in some areas vastly easier and allow for those involved to benefit from large groups.
Also, on that note, remove the red/green/etc. barriers from quest entry areas. This blockage is hindering others from helping people in game with main story line quests. And, given the absurdity of the creatures in these areas (such as the well guardian), help is needed for people. If people also want to farm those bosses so be it, it’s not like they won’t be back in a minute or less with the current respawn timers.
There has been a great deal of talk about the hatchet exploit/bug/glitch? Having used the hatchet, I can honestly say that other than on one lucky crit (for 4k), damage has never gotten above 2.5k per hit (other than crits around 3k). While this is a massive amount of damage for such a fast weapon, it is not game breaking in pve at high levels, it actually levels the playing fields in the elite areas very minorly against basic trash mobs with 20-100k hp. If some one has intentionally built around the bug however, and is using it for max fast damage, maxing str and dex secondary, then I can see it possibly hitting 5k or more dmg a hit.
Meanwhile, the long sword at the same base is only doing around 1k to 2k(on a crit 2k) per hit.
The spear will do between 1500 and 2.5k a hit.
The great ax 2.5k to 5k per hit.
The hammer 1k to 1.8k per hit.
The rapier. . .250 per hit.
The bow 2k to 4k per hit (charged shot)
The rifle 800 to 1200 per hit.
I do not have the stats to give an accurate assessment on the ice gauntlet, fire staff, or healing staff, and paying 500 gold per respec just doesn’t appeal to me, not to mention making a new gear set just to set up stats for such.
Additional territory gain ideas: Gold increase on rewards for board quests. Item transfers despite faction control. Reduced item transfer costs. Reduced azoth travel costs. Increased refining outcomes. Increased crafting skill bonuses for crafting skills (armor, weapon, engineering, jewelry), say 1 point per selection up to a bonus of 5.