Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone,

I, like many of you, am a veteran MMO player and I also developed on a few private communities that had their own version of the game running (if you know what I mean). Not the “one mob -> 5 Levels”, but more with the mindset of a fun game for casual and real challenges for the veterans. I’m also a programmer in RL.

So, after more then a month playing GW2, I feel I can give my share of suggestions with the objective to improve this game.

GW2 So Far

When I first saw GW2, I saw not the best MMO, but the best base/core/fundation ever on a game, and this core can turn this game into one of the best MMO’s ever. It’s like an artist who just found the perfect landscape to paint his masterpiece.

Now, this is all theory, the chance exists, and its all up to the Devs, they can screw it or sieze it. Sure that the development of the game in these past 5 years was important or we would not have this core I’m talking about, but I think the most important part starts now. Let’s see how the Devs will “paint this landscape”.

For the players that keep writing some of the more negative posts, I think they should look at the game this way: The game hasn’t even started yet, sure it was released “before it was ready” – some might say, but now they have a large player base to test things and to write feedback, and things will work a lot faster now. It’s better to release a “playable” version and work from there on vs keep the game in closed betas forever.

My message:

Try to look at the big picture and on what this game might become in the future and not how it is now.

I know that nowadays, the MMO Community is very hard to please with giants like WoW, with lots of content, several expansions and close to 0 bugs, but lets be a little more understanding and try to look on how to work on this wonderful core and future that this game might have. So far, the Devs seem to be handling things just fine, with yesterdays post about the teams that are working on the various aspects of the game, well, let’s hope that everything on that post is so, because it’s a step on the right direction.

GW2 – Game inside a Game

Like many other MMO’s, GW2 has the usual PvP and PvE “games” and we also have WvWvW, the less usual “game” for this genre. So we have 3 main branches on which to play, we know that PvP is beeing addressed, WvWvW will shortly follow and how about PvE? Why not improve the PvE to be as great as the other “games”? I’m sure the Devs want that, and this post will be about possible ways to improve the current PvE.

Many players just ask for “new end game content”, but “new content” takes a fair amount to time to create. I say, why not use what we already have (which is really good btw) to improve the gaming experience?

GW2 – Dungeons

For all suggestions I’ll make about Dungeons let’s say that we are a couple of months ahead and every dungeon has a fair amount of dificulty, every boss offers a challenging and strategic fight, etc, etc. This is a know problem and there are a lot of talk about this on the foruns so, I’ll not elaborate, I’ll just assume that we already have this.

Story Mode

Should be fun and easier then explorable, tell a story, and give some form of decent reward for everyone (first timers, ppl helping other players etc more on that later). This will encourage players to re visit the story modes which can also be considered a path and with good implementation we sundenly have 4 paths on each dungeon (example of “new end game content” using what we already have with low implementation time)

Explorable Mode

Explorable Modes should provide a harder challenge, the rewards should be better then story, and this should be considered the “raid-like casual hardmode”. You try to clear it fast, not dying many times, to reduce repair costs and this is your main way to get dungeon tokens. (more on rewards later on)

New – Iron Man Mode

Based on the explorer paths and dificulty, you try to clear the dungeon without anyone dying, you can be downed, but if anyone dies the dungeon will simply reset. (remember that all dungeons should be somewaht balanced by now!). This should provide a better challenge to the hardcore players. On this mode strategy and team work is everything, mistakes cannot be made and clear time is not an issue, you will have to go steady and safe to be able to full clear the dungeon. Rewards should be better than Explorer.

New – Timed Explorable Mode and Iron Man

I know, I know… total rip off from other MMOs, but lets face it: it’s pure genius to bring this to the PvE world, a way for the PvEer’s to compete is really wonderful. Also, soon every PvE oriented MMO will probably sport this, so let’s just focus on GW2 for now.

Both this modes will surely challenge and provide enough content to keep even the more hardcore players occupied and it would also turn GW2 into an competitive PvE MMO which in my opinion is the key success for online games and theres very few titles that have competitive PvE.

You can have the best Devs in the world but static content without competion will always be that, static content and it becomes boring after a while.

Of course these modes would have to have ladders, and this would really start the “eSport version of Team PvE” on GW2.

this ladder part is pure brainstorming and is a bit confusing, there are surelly 1001 ways to better implement the ladders

Ladders would be based on Guild groups, Guilds would compete with each other and groups inside the same Guild could also compete among them. (if you want to compete and rank the ladders with ppl or friends from another guild just create a mini guild and represent that guild while clearing the dungeon) and there would be all time Ladders, montly or trimestral ladders that would be the center of the competition/rewards and all would be divided by Game Wide or Server Wide Ladders (ok maybe its too many ladders but this is only brainstorming). Other types of ladders could also be created like Profession Ladders (fastest necro to clear AC Ghost Eater) among others. (I like Ladders)

Another good and truly unique system that could be added would be a “Pve Ranking”, where it would be the sum/calculation of your PvE carrier: achievments/ladder rankings/etc.

All Modes Rewards

I think that a “first clear of the day” is a system that can stop the problems that the Devs are having with the DR System, not that I think that speed running, etc, is a bad thing but the Devs do so lets use that because it’s their game : ) and encourage a farming group to clear every dungeon on the game, not just farm one or two.

With a first clear of the day system, you can have the rewards distributed equaly throughout the dungeon so no one gets penalized if something goes terrible wrong, since you only have that “first clear of the day” chance, you will still get some rewards. I find this system much better then the dreadful DR System that is implemented right now.

The daily rewards could be adjusted in a way to provide decent rewards to casual and hardcore players: something like a casual player would probly farm 1 full clear dungeon each day trying to get his favorite set (with a good dificulty, each path, with an avg party, takes 1h each path, so it’s like a 3h raid), while the more harcore would full clear the daily of like 5-6 and then keep on running the next clears with reduced rewards or competing in the other modes.

Right now the rewards are focused on the end, I also think that that is wrong, I’ll also give some hints on how this can be improved and have a few good side effects.

First Clear

I dont’ know about quantities that should be rewarded so I’ll just use values that are similiar to what we have implemented now.

• Story/Explorable/Iron Man – XX Tokens per Boss, according to Mode, every mob drops silver (trash low amounts, champs a little more, bosses a lot more), (explanation: dungeons reward ~25 silver at the end, we eliminate that and players that full clear the dungeon, like, kill every pack/boss get ~30 silver, players that skip 2-3 packs get ~20 silver, don’t get me wrong, the side effect and objective of this is to reward players that dont skip content, distribute the rewards, a reason to kill trash, etc, basically, this way you get a just reward for what you killed ), and chests have a decent amount chance to drop something good, a good rare or exotic depending on your level. Chests are a bit boring right now, a chance to drop useful items to use/sell, crafting materials, a change to drop extra tokens, mini pets or other colectibles, even Gems would be nice. Other ideas about Chests would also be welcome, couldn’t think of many other options.

• Timed Explorable/Iron Man – Rewards would be based on the highest ladder position that the player has atm. No rewards for the clear, except maybe for some small amount of gold from mobs. There would be daily/weekly/monthly rewards for the top players in the ladders in the form of currency, Karma, Gold, Tokens, Gems, etc, or items, titles, unique rewards. Example: Everyday I get 3 AC Tokens because my Guild Group is ranked in the Top 1000 Game Wide on the Timed Explorable Mode of AC Ghost Eater Path. Tournaments could be organized with great prizes. Example: Guild Tournament for AC Full Clear Timed Explorable – Players would have to buy a Gem based ticket to access this tournament and during that day and using that ticket a special instanced version of AC would spawn and the times of the 3 runs would be recorded, at the end of the day the guild with the best combined times would win.

Runs after the First

This is the hard part, how to make farmable versions of the dungeons without breaking the vision that the Devs have for this game?

• Tokens – Every single mob would a chance to drop Tokens, trash very low chance, champs / bosses a bit more, and chests a decent amount of chance, but in low quantities. The avg amount of tokens per run would be something around ~10 tokens, with a chance to get 0 tokens but a streak of good luck would net ~20 Tokens. (these numbers are only examples). Regarding to tokens this could work a bit better then the DR system. First runs would at least give you XX Tokens, runs after the first would give you random amount of Tokens.

• Gold – Again every mob would drop small amounts of gold, to encourage full clears/prevent skips, but again in reduced amounts. If a First run of the Day gives around ~25 Silver, these runs would drop around ~10-15 Silver for a full clear.

• Items/Colectibles – Chests and random drops from mobs would at least have a better then avg chance to drop a mini-pet, some rare material, some rare item with a crazy look, etc. Each dungeon could have an incredible well made loot table which could provide players fun reasons to farm dungeons, other then the normal rewards. Example: I am an hardcore player and I want to farm TA because theres this Great Sword that I want, that only drops there and has a 0.00001% to drop.

Objective: Give the casuals a fixed reward with the First Run of the Day, and give the hardcores farmable Dungeons with decent rewards.

More Brainstorming

In my humble opinion, the above sugestions would generate incredible amounts of content and would keep the game alive for many years to come, regarding only the PvE aspect of the game, I can write, and similar can be made to the other 2 “games”, the PvP and the WvWvW.

With a solid ranking/ladder system, the only other thing that needs to be implemented is the balancing of the dungeons which is already beeing done. I dont know the GW2 engine, I dont know if anything of this is possible, so my suggestions tried to use stuff thats already done to cut the implementation time.

I have a few more ideas, this time regarding the Single Player experience, but they are a bit diferent, because they change some core aspects of the game and its more brainstorming then actual suggestions so I will not elabore much, for suggestions my long write above about the Dungeons should be red.

Wonderful World

GW2 has one of the most impressive persistent worlds, sadly, Level 80 Players have to stick to a few zones to farm their stuff. We only get to enjoy the well made zones once, and its while leveling.

To counter this the downleveling should be more agressive and there could be an option to reset the hearts after you 100% an area, only to be reseted again after you completed them all.

This way a L80 can go to Queensdale or any other zone, reset the hearths (cause a L80 can´t just run around Queensdale waiting on DEs) and the hearts+DEs would provide challenge/rewards/ farm time similar to the higher level zones. This would encourage players to spread out and enjoy the zones several times over while having a challenge and decent rewards. I know that its really hard to provide a challenge to an 80, with the amount of stats and traits, but well, it’s just an idea. Only L80 could reset hearts, so the leveling would stay the same.

An extension to this, and another way to use this persistent world would be the implementation of timed single player (yes the ladders are comming) challenges using the quest system. L80s would have the option to go to an instanced area of Queendale (similar to personal story) and a timed chalenge would start with the objective of clearing the Hearts/POIs/Vistas the fastest you can.

Zones would probably be divided into 2-3 “circuits” because 16 Hearts is a bit too much, and players would compete on Profession Ladders on all circuits. This system, well implemented, would create an anourous amount of competitive content that would please the more “solo” players, again only using stuff thats already made. Of course that a similar to dungeons ranking/ladder/rewards system would be implemented to support this game mode.

Theres a downside to this system because while competing players would be separated from the world and the zones could become more empty, but if the “L80 coming to Queensdale” ideia is implemented server populations would be more spread out to counter this.

Conclusion

It’s a great game that has way to many ways to grow up, don’t give up yet, let’s give time to the Devs and see what they can do with what they have so far.

I know it’s a long post, and thank you for those who red it, any comments would be mostly apreciated.

Thank you,
kant @ Seafarer’s Rest

Very well thought out suggestions, I agree with most though some I have a few concerns with. Thanks for taking the time to think up and write such in-depth suggestions!

Good suggestions, the game has a wonderfull core, just need , some extra work and more features on both PvP and PvE .

Agreed with all your pve suggestions

I love the idea of iron man and timed, but in my opinion dungeons are short, very short. It would take about 20 minutes top to clear any of the 8 dungeons, I think it would be cool to get a chance of unique gear off one of the bosses, IE Frost Scythe off one of the HoTW champions in explorable mode. It would be nice to get other items rather than a few useless blues I’m just going to end up vendoring. If we had that people wouldn’t just repeat the easier path, they would actually do different paths in order to get special cosmetic items.