Hello there everyone. This is not the first time I’ve brought this up, I created a thread on guru, I’ve posted this in many threads, especially regarding challenge/reward in this game, but I’d like to make an extra thread about this anyway. I’m pretty sure it’s been brought up before, but if there’s something that usually doesn’t work out well, it’s necro’ing threads…
Now, as we all know, certain dungeons or certain paths in the game are pretty abandoned and people just run them for their DM title. Heck, I don’t even have that title yet, just because I haven’t even bothered doing HotW p2 and 3 and some story dungeons. Now, there’s a multitude of ways to fix this, but one of the easiest ways, and one that has proven in many games to be a very effective way is to introduce dungeon or path, or even boss-specific skins. In GW1 we had the system where certain skins like Bone Dragon Staffs, Voltaic Spears, Emerald Blades, Frog Scepters were highly sought after, but they only dropped in remote areas in the game. Some of them, like the Voltaic Spear were tied to multiple dungeons, others like the Frog Scepter and the Bone Dragon Staff could only drop in 1 dungeon. Their aesthetic and general appeal meant they were wanted. The fact that they were wanted made them somewhat expensive, especially in certain attributes (I think by the end of the game, q9 prot BDS was still selling for 350-400 ecto’s). The fact that they were expensive meant people wanted to go out of their way and do the dungeons that dropped them. Be it either because they wanted the skin for themselves, or because they wanted the cash associated with getting one of the skins. Imagine if those skins were not around. If dungeons in EotN only gave their quest rewards, some locked chests, some hidden treasures and an endchest that dropped greens, blues and maybe a rare you could sell as a unid. Do you think anyone would have bothered with doing them outside of their titles or maybe for grinding reputation points? I hardly doubt it. But because of those skins, dungeons in EotN were highly popular, especially among PUGs, because there were very wide-spread team builds that didn’t require too much coordination and could be pulled off pretty efficiently, even for PUGs. It was safer than doing UW, where a fail would be very likely, and better than doing DoA, because PUGs could only run Glaiveway.
Right now, we have a situation where there is absolutely no incentive for players to go and do harder dungeon paths than CoF unless they need/want certain dungeon token weapons or armor. When I need money, I run CoE with the guild, and I run Arah because I like the dungeon and like melee’ing lupi, because it’s the only thing in this game that comes close to a challenge that isn’t based on bloated health bars and annoying, unimaginative mechanics like that invulnerability on the new Southsun boss.
Imagine if every boss chest in Arah path 4 could drop a non-account bound weapon skin that was specific to the boss? Balthazar’s Greatsword/axe, Melandru’s long/shortbow, Lyssa’s wand/staff/Focus, Dwayna’s shield/mace (Exalted Aegis?), Grenth’s dagger/axe… Imagine those skins would sell for like 50 gold each? Do you think that PUGs would then avoid the path as much as they do now? No, probably not, people would probably go ahead and try running that path, because there might be a good reward at the end. Imagine doing this for every dungeon, adding a weapon skin at certain bosses, at the end of a path, etc. What would happen is that the skins on the easier paths would have a lot of supply, and thus would cost little. The skins on the harder paths would have less supply, and thus would be worth more, but that would also mean that there would be more of an incentive for players to go out of their way to actually go and try to run the path.
“People wanting content where Berserker sucks should remember that it needs be so hard
that they will cry, not just a river, but a huge ocean.” – Wethospu
(edited by Bright.9160)
