Guild Wars 2

Put those pitchforks, crosses and holy water away folks! By larger group content, I don’t mean ‘Raids’. Instead, I’m going to look at a suggestion for larger group instanced content, somewhat akin to the Elite Areas in GW1, and what dungeons (and crypts) should be like.

Rethinking Larger Group Content

At the moment, the largest group content is out in the world, while the one that has the most scaling is the Dragons (The Shatterer, Tequatl and Jormag’s Claw).

However, the problem with these events are the lack of co-ordination they require, as well as the there being a limit on how much co-ordination you can put into events like this, since the people participating are essentially strangers, and it’s hard to type in the midst of battle.

So, larger group content. Traditionally done with a group of 10, they require a lot of preparation. However, this goes against ANets philosophy of ‘Preparing To Have Fun’. Since this is traditionally at level cap as well, it goes against ‘All Game Is End Game’. Finally, they wanted all the epic fights to be out in the world.

Another problem these larger group ‘dungeons’ possess is that as soon as you got the boss fight down to a tee, it can become boring.

So, any solution to re-working larger group content would have to adhere to:

- No Preparation
- Available At All Levels And All Players
- Not Become A Gate To Epic Fights
- Content Needs To Be Easily Recycled And Randomised To Keep Interest While New Content Is In Development

My Solution

Labyrinths.

Areas where two groups of 5 (not one group of 10. You’ll see why now) have to find their way around a maze to get to the chest and get out.

Now, labyrinths don’t necessarily have to have combat in them. The focus of these would be to work together to get past obstacles, puzzles and such, as two separate groups.

For example, a basic labyrinth would have two separate paths. Each path would need a group of 5 to get past stuff, such as pressure plates, riddles ect ect. Because you don’t have the stress of combat, these could be more difficult puzzles, riddles and possibly even some translation from Krytan. All the torchs need to be lit up at once? Fire Blast Combo. Traversing all the pitfalls and such will get you to the treasure room, where untold riches of a piece of town clothing / rare weapon or armour skin and some coin await you…

…only that? Yes. No statted gear, or if it is statted, then make the stats rubbish as to not make it a form of gearing up. Also, I said town clothes for the simple reason: You’d get to dress up as Indiana Jones if you do all of them, with a cool whip emote. Neat huh?

The higher the ‘level’ of the labyrinth, the more complex it is. The more chance you got of getting lost (I’m talking about many different branching paths that just send you around in circles if you don’t pay attention), the more dangers you face.

Oh, and them being Labyrinths and all, they’ll change every time you enter. Meaning if you had to go down the left path the first time, you’d need to go down the right the next.

Does This Tie In With ANet’s Philosophy?

No Preparation – You don’t need a particular group setup, since Labyrinths don’t rely on Combat for teamwork and organisation, meaning groups can take their time.

Available At All Levels And Players – These would be spread throughout the world, and have no level or gear requirements. As above, no particular player will have an advantage. Some Labyrinths might even force you to swap your weapon out for a Torch, since it’s pitch black.

Not Become A Gate To Epic Fights – No fighting involved. This would be purely exploration, puzzle solving and running from large boulders.

Content Needs To Be Recycled And Randomised To Keep Interest – Although there is a limit to how many possible combinations you can have in terms of the randomisation, careful planning could increase the amount without too much effort. Say you have to choose two paths twice, Left and Right. The total number of combinations you could have is 4 (Left + Left, Left + Right, Right + Left, Right + Right). If you have three paths, Left, Center and Right this increases to 9:

Left + Left
Left + Center
Left + Right
Center +Left….you get the idea.

I can’t believe that no one has commented on this….

It sounds like a really fun idea. If it was implemented for skins only, I think that would be amazing!!!!

Want to pretty up your character? Find a group and do the Labyrinth!!!!

An idea a co-worker of mine had was very similar. It basically consisted of 16 rooms, each of which has 4 doors. 1 door is the one from which you entered the room. The other 3 doors go into one of the other 15 rooms. There is a starting room with a single door to get into the maze and an ending room with a “treasure”.

Once you enter, the shortest possible path would go through 4 rooms, where the longest path would go through all 16.

Each room could have encounters, puzzles, or could possibly be completely empty of anything to do other than going through another door.

It could also be used as an ever expanding way to add content.

Back on topic….I like your idea. ;-)

I also like this idea and have actually commented about it before. I think it would be cool if it was largely underground and perhaps your map didn’t work so you couldn’t see where you were underground—only see entrypoints to the surface. Then there are titles and skins you can get for finding really hard places to find—like legendary places.

I really like the idea of a puzzle dungeon. There have been similar threads before, and I was sad to see them get buried.

The only problem I foresee is that ANet would need a vast supply of puzzles in order to have enough in the rotation that it didn’t get monotonous very quickly. But, I think ANet could do it well.

A puzzle dungeon would be great! I loved finding all the traps and dealing with them when I was a rogue in DDO.

labyrinth concept is awesome!

now we need to find some way to monetize it or else they will never consider it. unfortunately.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

they will never consider it.

Just look at the difference in dates between your post and the last one.
They haven’t.