Guild Wars 2

How about creating a real living world (with some limitations), not the actual one with temporary changes (Frost and Flame, new Map after Lost shores) or nearly no change (Eventchains that switch a city frome friends to foes, if you fail) – the world really changes theough flooding, burning, storms, enemy-armys, …

• These changes are not triggered through players alone but appear.
• These changes change the appearence of the map including things on it (Hearts remain, but they have other tasks, the eventchains in these areas are different, some (higher) areas change their difficulties (especially orr could often go back to it’s actual state, but could go green for some time…)
• These changes remain longer (a few days instead of the duration of an eventchain).

I know, it is a lot of work, but you were the one, that want to give us excitement in already visited maps. A few new eventchains alone may would be nice, but they don’t change too much. Too visit a old map, that is now completly flooded/burned/overrun with a type of enemy is far more interesting, especially, if this change pauses often again.

Indeed.

Add new chain events: the flood destroyed the croops from the farmer and some water elementals appeared.
Also visual effects like rain, sun, night, new illumination, more active events…

That will most likely come in the game patch called Guild Wars 3…..

You heard the man. Shut down all the servers immediately, cease product sales, and spend another 7 years in development.

Also add in perma-death, which leaves your corpse permanently rendered on the landscape for others to find and laugh at.

You can’t create a living world without giving NPCs an actual purpose (I am thinking of how an entire ant hill is modeled by creating individual ants with a tiny set of like 3 behavorial algorithms which produce very complex macro behaviors) and allowing players and NPCs to actually interact with the world and each other. I really think such a task is beyond the capabilities of the hardware, software, resources and experience of video game developers.

But even still the world lacks any feeling of life or purpose.

Actually if memory serves me right GW 2 was originally supposed to be a lot more dynamic and interactive than it currently is but this design goal had to be scrapped because it was untenable because of the aforementioned reasons.

nahh, my suggestions are not such difficult stuff. It is rather like around three maps for any actual maps and “living” means, it switches between this three maps to get at least a kind if a big change instead of only this hilarious near to nothing change through events. Furthermore, two additional maps is still a lot of work, but they are not completly different, making it far easyer instead on creating a real new map.

Soo, some really living world suggestions are needed. Let me start with the two problems with the actual living world:

1. You will come up with one living world event before the last one is only finished, but I dont get the changes. I ran around in the world, i get post, that informs me, but the world did not change… The world is not a living one, if the change is limited to one certain area!

2. The actual living world sucks. The new living world comes up with many achievments and I try to finish these achievements. That is no fun, because I do it cause the limited time, not cause i really want to play the mini game. Furthermore, do you really believe, that anyone has fun firering 150 fireworks? Or running after these spots, which you have to reach the sky pirates? Or killing a special amount of foes?

So here some suggestions from me:

More realistic foe groups on the maps
Yeah, it is an open world, you have to keep respawning foes and you have to give enough foes, that stand alone, otherwise solo players cannot kill them… But the actual way is annoying, the foes standing around and waiting to be killed and than the respawning destroy any atmosphere. Also, the respawning one after another is a risk for solo players. There should be a reason, why the foes are, where they are. Reduce the amount of foes a lot. Add a new type of small events, that gives a bonus instead of an reward. For example, it only explains, that a group of cats starts to hunt some friendly does. The amount of cats depends on the players, so solo players will not be overwhelmed, but if there are other players, they have to fight also, especially, because the hunting cats will prefer hunting players and have a big aggro radius.

1. friendly foes like does, boars, moas (…) are part of the map and pretty unimportant. If you only have to kill foes, they are enough. Make them maybe more interesting, you could increase their population and add champs/veterans, they are friendly afterall. There could be events, that make them aggressive (because something near the did explode or because the are is poisoned).
2. aggressive foes like wesps or minotaurs or fire elementals, that do not hunt should be reduced extreme. They should be only in very limited areas, for example spiders and larvaes in caves. These areas could be more dangerous (you can see afterall, that there are foes, so as solo player, you should not go there). Events cause them to increase their area. I mean, actually, they are no thrill, you run through them without fighting, if they hit you, you are annoyed, if you pull many foes, “the train” could hit another player, killing him…
3. foe groups, organisations or families should have a base, from there they will respawn, I think, you made this already very well. Maybe you should not let them only stand around, for example instead of let thiefs in queensdale stand alone around, waiting for you, they could sit in a big group together around a fire. If you run around in the area, there are traps and on running into one, the thief runs or teleports to you.

Multiple kinds of events
Are the events also annoying you? They interface is annoying (the signs of the events). The heartquest are annoying. Soo overwork them. Instead of these yellow symbols, there are now only fields with texts, the type decides over the colour of the field:

1. Instance events. These events have a field, that explains short the story and the start point has a mark on the map. These events have a story and there are only one or two per map. Also dungeons are such events. If you have them done once, the text field changes, so you can see by only entering the map, if you have done the dungeon story already. Also all heart quests are such events. They are not too easy and have a small story, which would make no sense to come over and over again. There is also a NPC on the map, a story teller, where you can play hear instances and finished story instances again.
2. Foe Events. Instead of kill foes, collect something or such things and gaining rewards afterwards, you will get a very small reward for each foe killed and coleccted thing given to the NPC. Most events are such events and produce the foes like explained before. If there is a time limitation, there is a bar going down. The amounts of such events increases a lot.
3. One type of events meens capturing a point. These events come often together with foe events. the bar filld up for you or the foes. Capturing a point gives a big reward.
4. The next point means champ-events, these give a big reward and the bar shows foes health.
5. One text field shows actual “party events”, explained below.
6. Another text field explains the situation on the map, explained.

Party events
There exist one per month, coming again each year. For example Dragon bash in June, the market in July, Wintersday in December, Halloween in october. They bring Event-JPs, Minigames,… the content will increase from year to year and there should be no other mini games beside the monthly ones.

Map changing events
They change the maps in an extreme way. The change is slow (3 whole days or so) and each time it is promoted stron on the map. there are at least two versions of the map (added slowly), the change can be seen (overflowed map, new houses of the centaurs, changes areas and foe populations) and the map will change back.

1. Flame and frost: Some new leaders of them come up and start their attack again, the map changes stronger, burning places, instead of these annoiying burn events, the foes will replave many of the normal foes, during this time you can enter the dungeon.
2. Last stand on southsun: Some of the captured foes (skypirates, canach), they flee to southsun and bring chaos over the island…