Guild Wars 2

In lieu of the fact that dungeons are arguably the easiest way to get exotics…

I would like to propose the following idea:

Apply the same Tokens and Vendors system to Meta Events that yield major chests like Glorious/Dragon Chests

Examples of those meta events

• The Secrets of the Swamp (Queensdale)
• The Frozen Maw (Wayfarer Foothills)
• Kralkatorrik’s Legacy (Blazeridge Steppes – The Shatterer)

Outline of the Ways it’d be the same and different

1. There’d be only one type token, I’ll refer to this as a “Token of Tyria”

• This way, you can work towards your exotics, no matter which zone you’re in
• You can keep your daily progress feeling fresh can going to any zone with a meta boss

2. Tokens would be obtained from acquiring a bag similar to Wondrous Bag

• It would drop 10~20 tokens, 5~10 silver, and possibly a karma-container
• There would be no major token-reward at the end of an event like in dungeons where you normally get 60 for the first run. This is to keep the system from making dungeons obsolete.
• The bag would be provided through the chests at the end of the major boss fights as a guaranteed drop.

3. The Exotics Vendors would be in the Major Cities (Divinity’s Reach, Rata Sum, etc.)

• Partly to encourage more traffic in those cities
• They would all accept the same type of token
• Each vendor would offer different types of stats and skins unique to the vendor, allowing for variety of stat-customization like with the dungeon exotics

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The focus of my idea is to reward players who enjoy roaming the open-world, over grinding dungeons or Orr dynamics.

Those major meta events are honestly the closest thing we have to “big raids”, but we can’t work on our top-tier gear with them like players can with karma-vendors or dungeon-tokens.

And the extra gold and karma wouldn’t hurt either…

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An expansion of this would be to have all open-world Champion mobs drop 1~3 tokens, so make it more noticeable.

Upvoted.

The basic idea is sound – people complain about sinking a lot of time into an event-chain and boss fight and then getting “rewarded” with a few blue/green items. The token would reduce the sting of a bad loot drop, since the player would know that they’re one step closer to [Tyrian Defender Shiny Pants of Justice] or whatever.

Balance-wise, it might be prudent to restrict the tokens to one drop per account, per event/boss, per day. Otherwise is would encourage “camping” and “grinding” rather than roaming and exploration. The dragon loot DR system suggests that ANet doesn’t want people to park an alt beside each dragon fight and just activate them at the appropriate moment, so it’s unlikely that they’d implement a token reward system which incentivizes such behaviour.

One thing that you may need to consider, though: dungeons items are offered at the recommended player level (e.g. Ascalonian Catacombs rewards include items usable by a level 35 character). A relatively low-level character might be able to accumulate enough world-tokens for an Exotic item, assuming that the player logged in only to fight low-level bosses (e.g. Shadow Behemoth, Enraged Cave Troll). If the token merchants carry only L80 Exotics, then that player might be a bit annoyed. Perhaps, like Laurel Vendors, the token merchants could carry a variety of items (e.g. mini-pets and crafting recipes) so that even a low-level character with a handful of tokens could obtain something fun/useful.

“Balance-wise”, a restriction isn’t necessary.

• All that’s needed is to apply diminishing returns on the tokens in the “bag”.
  So, if players complete more then one event every hour, they get half the usual tokens, and so forth if they do it even faster.

As for items being at the recommended level,

• No one buys the non-exotic gear anyway (aside from for salvaging purposes). And those vendors don’t offer weapons at recommended level
• The point of this is to give players a way to obtain level80 exotics in non-Orr zones.
  I did just fine with blues/greens before hitting 80 and I still don’t feel I need anything better with my alts.

I would suggest doing something with the achievement points every account has. They can be a exchanged to any other currency in the game except gold or gems