Guild Wars 2

From what i’ve read on these forums as well as issues people have in general i Think Anet has a good opportunity to fix things while keeping what they want. and here’s how – from an idea i’ve had at least.

1 – Storyline Fix for Arah final battle:

Pretty much everyone agrees that the final battle against Zhaitan was a bit… underwhelming to say the least. Spam 1 and win, that’s it. I think a better way to make the final battle feel a little bit more like a final battle is to extend this confrontation. An example of what I had in mind.

-After Zhaitan falls from the tower, the victor would want to make sure that he really is dead, so the commander calls in a helicopter to send his party and destinys edge below to find zhaitans corpse.

-They find that Zhaitan, though severely injured and unable to fly, is still up and fighting. He begins spawning a lot of risen around him and calls down his champions to protect him in the style of a ‘last stand.’

-In order to reach him the players need to make their way through the minions, meeting up with various pact members along the way – benn tenstrikes and his mercenaries, carys, galina and snarl, etc. who all do their best to keep the risen off of the two hero groups and to clear a path for zhaitan.

-Before finally reaching Zhaitan, 3 of his champions blocks the way – the only way to keep the champions at bay is for destinys edge to stay behind and allow the players to ‘finish what they came here for – to succeed where they had failed.’ and thus the players move on to face Zhaitan himself.

-Zhaitan as a boss would , obviously, have tons of conditions and potentially be able to give all stacks on some attacks (combined 25 stacks of both bleeding and torment. shiver) on top of still being able to summon risen as well as using his fangs and claws on players that get too close. This way the player would actually need do more than spam the 1 box to win – to actually have a difficult fight on their hands. If Anet wanted to add a bit of fractals into the mix and introduce players to fractals effects he could also do mild agony damage. His breath attack would also, i think, be able to instant KO characters caught in its path (basically an instant death beam since, you know, he’s an elder dragon of death and undeath after all)

-Finally as the last blow is dealt Zhaitan gives one final roar before slamming to the ground, defeated at last. His minions and champions scatter, confused with the sudden loss of their master. Airships and Helicopters converge on the site as pact soldiers along with destinys edge reunites with the player to congratulate them on a job well done.

This can be used as a sort of ‘first step’ for improving the later parts of the personal story/main campaign. The storyline was great in the beginning but as soon as you hit claw island is when things become messy. so, in this case, start from the bottom – the end – and work your way back to the front. This can also help the ‘trehearne’ issue a lot of players have. he’s perfectly fine in the sylvari story as hes pretty much been there with you from the beginning and only ran off to do his own thing, you reuniting with him at claw island and from there you two – brothers of the tree – each stand back to back to finish your respective wyld hunts against arah and zhaitan. (kind of symbolic if you have a guardian sylvari – light and dark working together) It’s the other four races that have a problem, as you are given absolutely no introduction to trehearne beforehand and he basically seems to ‘take your place’ when it comes to going against arah. so i propose this – an idea i saw on the sylvari board which i think is great. (whoever had this idea i give credits to you – I just can’t remember who it is i’m sorry XD)

-Introduce trehearne in the personal storylines involving the orders dealing with undead influence in your areas. such as for the charr, trehearne may be asked to come in as a consultant on how to deal with zhaitans crystals, or for asura he may also be at gorr’s announcement and runs into you after gorr went missing. things like this that would be something he would do in your area. and from there he would help you out and get to know you as you got to know him.

-second, give a little more credit to the player and a little less to trehearne as the orr campaign goes on. Trehearne was an expert on orr and the leader of the pact, yes, but you’re doing more substantial effort than he is in these areas. not too much, just enough to sort of have people equal out the importance of you and trehearne and to make why obvious. trehearne is the figure all the races and orders can rally behind but you’re the force driving them to victory. two sides of the coin basically.

Part two coming due to character limit.

2 – Ascended Weapons And Items: This actually ties in with the first. To give a slight feeling of accomplishment as well as to help support the manifesto of ‘people should keep up in terms of gear.’

-Anet should revamp the dungeon rewards – beginning with pact weapons. Change the pact weapons to match ascended quality – Beigarth helped make a pact golem made of deldrimor steel, and what’s one of the components for ascended weapons? besides, makes sense he would use the same steel to smith ‘official’ weapons – and obviously the weapons would be account bound. non-retroactive change to make this a fair field, and the vendor who gives pact weapons would have all of the different insignia (a tab for knights pact weapons, a tab for berserkers, etc.)

-For players who already finished Victory Or Death in their personal storyline they would get a second version of that quest and be allowed to redo it to get a new Pact Victory token to claim their “free” ascended weapon.

I chose this as it would basically show that you have done something near legendary, so thus you would have a reward that is the best the pact can offer with their vast yet stretched resources. It also allows players to have at least one ascended weapon by exerting pretty much the same effort necessary to make one, thus you can at least have one weapon that is on the same playing field as ‘top tier’ weapons. on top of this is also another change.

-Dungeon weapons available from the token vendors in lions arch should be ascended, with the chosen insignia matching the theme of that zone (berserkers from CoF and celestial from fractals weapons for example) but have the cost in tokens increased exponentially to make it match roughly the same effort as though you hunted the materials yourself. (say, 5000 flame charr carvings for one weapon or ten gift of thorns for a TA weapon.) – this would be non-retroactive as well.

-When ascended armors come out this can also apply to dungeon armor as well, matching said themes again. It is recommended to reduce the amount of tokens necessary in comparison to ascended weapons but whatever works in balance issues. again non-retroactive.

This would help players get into dungeons more and give players an alternative to getting ascended equipment through only crafting. At this same time, however, this would also help players get said crafting materials for ascended weapons at the same time as they do the tokens and reduce the strain a lot of players have on time gated materials and the sheer number of items needed. It will still take some substantial effort to obtain these weapons – you don’t find baby legendaries in trash bins every day after all – but this also helps alleviate the strain for players which has turned some people off. (a lot of players, especially from GW1, have sort of been spoiled with the thought of ‘little effort for lots of reward’ and i believe some of the drama is that players confuse effort with grinding. There’s a fine blurry line between effort and grind yes but i don’t personally see this as a grind. I see this as anet sort of putting their foot down on spoiling players and having said players actually have to work for something and not just buy top tier gear as soon as they hit 80.)

All in all these are the changes i would recommend. I know it’s quite a bit and some of it will require animation teams working round the clock (Zhaitan in particular to make him ‘battle ready and believable’) not to mention anet might not exactly want the final battle planned exactly that way, maybe do like a midway aerial battle or something, but these i think would help. and here’s hoping ncsoft doesn’t put their foot down because it costs ‘money.’

Thank you for reading! Please don’t flame too much.

I second this, Bump