Guild Wars 2

Hi GW2 team and community.

I’m actually a design student in university and I sometimes come up with ideas for this game. So I thought to myself why not post them!? (FYI I don’t study video game design specifically.)

I recently thought of an idea that could help add replay ability and longevity to GW2. I thought that this game really needs a weekly “ladder”. By ladder I mean a place or instance where groups or guilds can fight bosses; If they defeat the current boss they move up the ladder and so on until they either defeat the final boss or wipe.

Since its weekly a group wiping would mean that they have to wait till the next week to try again. Similarly if they managed to complete the ladder they would still have to wait till next week to attempt it again.

This would give the more PvE inclined players something competitive to show their guilds doing, and I’m sure is something WvW as well as possibly sPvP players might be interested in.

From a design standpoint I think that a arena PvE ladder has some advantages:
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- The fact that developers would be spending less time on the environment and more on the bosses during creation. (So they can plan around their other events, or add small new content)

- By adding on bosses developers can continuously offer a challenge without having to create a whole dungeon first. Which would be great since having another boss to immediately fight with a chance of loot is almost a reward in itself, and if they make the ladder longer makes the loss of wiping higher.

- The ability to recycle and re-introduce seasonal or event bosses in a way which still feels natural, ect.

- A PvE system that will encourage guild unity, weekly log ins, and casual play. If for instance you use an ncp as a mediator to summon the bosses instead of having them auto-spawn a guild may choose to spread out the ladder over a week.

- Additionally including things like waypointing before the boss is dead is considered as a player wipe removing them from the ladder, and enraged boss buffs which are stronger as they go up the ladder.

- Finally a “ladder” system is something simple enough that after testing could be potentially be used in other areas of the game, and from my consumer experience of MMO’s it would be pretty original.
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My final ideas about the concept of a “ladder” style of play are mainly about how they could potentially be used in other context’s. The conceptual idea of using “ladder” based structure in PvE or WvW is interesting.

In PvE rather you could make an monthly “Epic Area” where a server has to fight its way up a boss chain over an extended period. It would stay competitive by making it so that players have to be resurrected or if a player waypoints that player is then limited to the area before they died until the end of the month. This would push players to work cooperatively to make sure they have a good balance of different builds at the final boss; also it would unbiasedly weed out players that need to work on their skill level.

In WvW holding strategic areas could have timed mini-ladders which could reward supply to their server and give a valid reason to improve the level of drops in WvW. Additionally the server holding SM could have a more elaborate ladder that adds a high risk vs reward element to WvW. Obviously another server trying to bombard their way in and steal the players rewards being a big risk.

Thats all im going to say for now folks. Hoped you like my idea and I look forward to reading your responses.

It’s an interesting idea. And I immediately imagined that at higher difficulty levels, the game could perhaps throw two random bosses at the players at once. Sort of like a big arena. Where perhaps you don’t know what you’re up against next. I like this idea of having some sort of PVE boss ladder for guilds or groups of players to partake in.

What is especially interesting, is that by not having to design a whole dungeon, more focus could be placed on the boss mechanics themselves.

Thanks, I like PvE play as much as anyone else. I remember doing the “safety” dances from older mmo’s. But right now it seems that people don’t like the dungeons as much; But I really think that a “ladder” type of thing that would play to GW2 developers strengths and skill set .

People don’t like the current dungeons, because they were rushed to completion upon release of the game. Many of them were clearly not well designed, and are thus no fun what so ever. Now that the team has received a lot of criticism, and dungeon population is dwindling, more focus is being placed on the design of such areas. Fractals and MF are a good example of much better dungeons.

I hope we’ll see better dungeons and other PVE challenges in the near future. In another topic it was already suggested to have the Underworld make a return. A giant high end dungeon, with good rewards, and high difficulty. And I think your idea of a boss ladder would also make for a great addition.

I see what you mean. I just think in general that games need to introduce more PvP / PvE content thats a mix of both enough that the players can enjoy it. The current WvW misses the intricate things that people find in PvE bosses, Zerging is all thats really going on at the moment. The servers with the highest population versus gold spent. PvE content could possibly lessen the general players attitudes towards zerging.

You can find this exact suggestion implemented at www.wow-europe.com/en/

Zero.5307:

I see what you mean. I just think in general that games need to introduce more PvP / PvE content thats a mix of both enough that the players can enjoy it. The current WvW misses the intricate things that people find in PvE bosses, Zerging is all thats really going on at the moment. The servers with the highest population versus gold spent. PvE content could possibly lessen the general players attitudes towards zerging.

I think the two are hard to compare, to be honest. The reason people zerg, is because currently in WVW it is an effective winning strategy. Does WVW need more stuff from PVE? I don’t think so. I think WVW currently has plenty of strengths, and they should build further on that. What they should probably do is add better ways to counter zerg strategies, and promote alternative strategies. But to be honest, I don’t play enough WVW to comment on it.

But what I’m trying to say is, WVW has its strengths, and PVE has its strengths. I don’t think the two need to be combined further. I’d rather see GW2 build further on the PVE elements, and add depth to it. A boss ladder for example, provides a semi-competitive element that still focuses on fighting monsters (and not players), and playing together with your friends.

What attracts people to WvW is the competitive nature of it, all I really meant is that PvE needs a “competitive” nature for the majority of players to want to do it. If theres something else thats competitive like boss fights, it will coordinate people alot better in the long run. The world bosses right now are all Zurgable, same with most of the living story. Also a fair amount of dungeons are just zerg warriors running through with less room for casters.

I’m not sure if PVE “needs” a competitive element. For a lot of players, the lack of competition is what draws them to play PVE exclusively. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea however, but I think a lot of PVE players are probably turned off from competition, and not drawn to it.

However, if it’s simply prestige, and players aren’t directly fighting each other, then I think PVE players would be interested. It’s certainly good to have more PVE things in the game that can be enjoyed as a guild.

In GW1 they added a competitive element to the Factions campaign. Players could fight each other for control over the respective Luxon and Kurzick outposts, and a guild could own a town or outpost (granting them access to special merchants in that town/outpost). I can’t exactly say how successful that was. Sometimes the Jade Quarry and Fort Aspenwood would be like a ghost town. Other times they were quite populated.

As an exclusively PVE player myself, I’ve never found myself particularly drawn to anything remotely competitive in PVE.