Guild Wars 2

What’s more important for the long-term survival of GW2? A game that rewards players with loot at a not-too-fast rate that keeps them going like crack-addicted mice or a game that provides rewarding experiences to new and experienced players?

With the exception of the new Living Story (and its too early to make a call on that), pretty much all the PvE events have become focused on loot. Southsun Cove promised a whole new zone, but what we got was a crowded one-time weekend event that many didn’t even get to finish. I was more disappointed about not being able to face the Ancient Karka than losing out on the chest. Right now, what reason is there to go to SC other than crafting mats?

Dungeons are fun to run a few times. After that, all that’s left is to go for the gear. Full sets of armor and a weapon require what, 25 runs to earn?

Fractals introduced a whole new level of stat gear that requires grinding to acquire and are needed to survive in the fractals…and added a new dominant currency to further complicate the economy. I do my dailies with the same enthusiasm that I clean the bathroom every week.

Prior to the recent World Event chest changes, players were farming Orr for Tier 6 mats and money, leaving the rest of the world bare. The guaranteed rares did spread the players out, but only to the areas with easily-won scheduled boss battles, and created overflow issues themselves. The solution to the overflow problems? Limitations on the loot.

Right now when players reach level 80 and want to make use of crafting to make exotic gear… what’s the main concern? Ectos, which again requires farming equipment to salvage and/or money to buy off the market. The new dual-cost ascended gear is ridiculous.

What I don’t see on the PvE side is any significant and long-lasting endgame content that takes advantage of the massive world ANet created. Right now the only time players step into many of the zones is the Personal Story. The Living Story looks to be heading in the right direction… hopefully it will do more to permanently refurbish and breathe new life into the existing zones rather than end up like Lost Shores.

So, my suggestions -

1) Make the Living Story the priority for PvE to increase the rate of new content. Focus on multiple zones each time. Small changes across many zones will be more effective than big changes in one or two zones. Don’t feel the need to end it all in one massive boss battle.

2) Lessen the influence of loot and crafting mats on player distribution by making the nodes and drops specific to the player’s level and not the area level. Give a player with an orichalcum pick an equal chance of getting orichalcum in Queensdale as in Orr. Give all champs and meta-bosses a chance to drop level 80 rares and exotics for level 80 players. Every zone should be equally rewarding to endgame players.

3) Keep working on the down-leveling system. Level 80’s with exotic equipment still have a significant advantage in low-level areas. Increase the challenge for high-level players in these areas. Every zone should be equally challenging to endgame players.

4) Let players replay personal story quests at will. Add a PvE button to the UI that tracks completed quests and allows them to be reactivated. Personally, I’d love to get more time in the golem battlesuit.

5) Give every major city the same functions… for example, put a Mystic Forge and dungeon vendors in each of them.

6) Introduce multi-zone Dynamic Events.

7) More armor and weapon skins!

I understand the game is new and ANet needs time to grow the game… but it seems that the time they have spent on the updates so far has been wasted as the primary legacy the updates have left has been on the economy. The PvE world is pretty much identical to what it was at launch.

Ideally, if the players’ enjoyment is ANet’s major goal, then all functional non-content differences between the zones should be eliminated, allowing players to choose where to play based upon their personal preferences and not the need to grind mats or loot. The Living Story is a great chance for ANet to reach for this.

And the worst part is that some of these, specifically the loot and mat drop suggestions, have been bouncing around these forums for months with plenty of support and seem to be a quick fix on ANet’s part. This leads me to believe that they are consciously choosing not to address this, and the only reason I can see why is that they are concerned about destabilizing the market economy, which if it’s the case, is lame. The more they do to control the economy the worse it’ll get. Meanwhile they’ll sacrifice players who are looking to play, not make a buck.

for suggestion 1 it really comes down to how the living story actually comes out, the “prelude” has been, frankly, rubbish. Ridiculously slow uninvolving content.

2 is not a good idea, it prevents high levels getting materials needed to craft low level stuff, some people like being able to make armour for low level friends or alts or just to sell.

3 I agree with, it still needs work BUT I also beleive if your level 80 in full exotics or higher you should have an advantage, else there would be no point at all in gear grades and levels, but theres lots of tweaks needed all over (such as some area’s leveling you down way below the mob level or way above the mob level)

rest of them I don’t have any complaints about though with 5 it would be nice if they linked city chats if they did that.

Dasorine

Regarding 2 – it wouldn’t prevent them from harvesting low level materials… the mats would be determined by equipped tools and chance. A copper pick would produce copper 100% of the time, while an orichalcum pick could produce all the metals. When I stated level dependent, I was referring to the level requirement on the tools…sorry for any confusion. As for mob-dropped mats like cloth and leather, the drops could be controlled by the player’s level and odds, with the player’s level setting the tier ceiling. So while a level 5 player would get jute 100% of the time, a level 80 would have a 30% chance of jute, 25% of wool, 20% of cotton, 15% of linen, 7% of silk, and 3% of gossamer (or numbers like that). While it may make it a little harder to find mats and craft on demand, it would allow an endgame player to play in high level zones while still harvesting low-level mats and vice versa.

Regarding 3 – I always wondered what the purpose of the rare and exotic tiers was. By the time players start getting them, players have been using mostly fine and masterpiece. High level basics and fines are useless… GW2 could have just had a three tier system, bumping the labels on the masterpiece, rare, and exotic equipment down to form the high-level basic, fine, and masterpiece tiers.

It’s about the economy. For events though, that first day of the Mad Kind was pretty fun. Christmas event wasn’t bad either. I enjoyed the PvP snowball fight (whatever it was called) event.

When you look at things, it seems to be obvious when “The Dev’s” makes their choices to control the economy that get under our skin. Then there’s the artist’s whom we seem to like their work. The problem I see as a long term problem is, we’d like to reward one and not the other.

Originally, I had the “Let’s reward Anet for a great game” feeling. I bought Gem’s every month. Then that washed away with how agitated I was getting which each FotM run. How gated wealth was/is in Dungeons. It just turned me off. Now I pretty much never want to buy gem again. That’s a long term problem.

Anet needs to give us more freedom, appearance items, and things to build or cultivate. Endless killing really isn’t fulfilling. Silly achievement points aren’t fulfilling to me. Give us housing like Farmville. Look how well that works for them. When we’re happy and feel fulfilled, then we’ll be much more inclined to reward them again by buying gems.

I think I like all of these suggestions… although when it comes to resources, I’d prefer they all have an equal chance to drop/be farmed (jute 17% chance, wool 16% chance, cotton 16% chance, linen 16% chance, silk 16% chance and gossamer 16% chance).

But yea, all points are awesome.

callidus.7085:

I think I like all of these suggestions… although when it comes to resources, I’d prefer they all have an equal chance to drop/be farmed (jute 17% chance, wool 16% chance, cotton 16% chance, linen 16% chance, silk 16% chance and gossamer 16% chance).

But yea, all points are awesome.

Feel free to +1 the post then… the more it gets, the better chance the devs will consider it.
Regarding the harvesting rates, I was trying to maintain the rarity of the higher tier materials to minimize the change in supply for them.