As with most new games there is much excitement about jumping into a new world and not knowing what you might find around the corner or in the depths of a new dungeon. For me, exploration, finding new creatures and new items is the allure to keep me coming back. Unfortunately, and with most games, after creating a few characters and exploring a good portion of the world, things begin to feel common and dare I say “boring”. There is nothing better than the feeling of finding something for the first time or being the first to loot an item that hasn’t been found before. EQ2 did a good job of at least letting you know when you found a world first or server first discovery and having a website to track those type of player stats.
While I love mostly everything about GW2, I am starting to feel the old “been there done that” feeling that I get just before considering jumping to another game. I am even getting annoyed in some aspect now that timers are available for boss events and it feels like I am competing with other players just to just get a hit on a mob before it is downed. The meta events have become one of the de facto standards for getting loot and, while being cool, are becoming stale and overused leading to people getting kicked to overflow servers and building up even more frustration.
I know that complaining about these things might be common but I thought I’d provide some suggestions that might help alleviate the problems I perceive.
How to improve the lack of explorable content:
-How about dynamic portals that randomly spawn that port people/groups to random dungeons or events.
-Rabbit holes that appear that could possible open up new areas (maybe randomly generated maps?)
-Storms that pull people in unexplored areas of zones they haven’t yet been to
-Blind areas in the game where you lose access to your mini map and map functions. Make areas like EQ1 where people had to draw their own maps and take mental notes of the environment
-Spawn random bosses in zones (in random areas) that are very difficult to kill but provide better loot tables. This might encourage more exploration of the map.
Loot issues:
-I know that new particle effects, skins and models take time but perhaps make some really rare ones that anyone can find off any particular creature. This would give people more incentive to run around and kill mobs rather than run by them. You could also have rare recipe drops that might make crafting more exciting and profitable
-Have loot drops that kick off events. For instance…. someone finds a rare ring off a creature. When examining or looting the ring, mobs spawn trying to steal it. The event could fail with the mobs stealing it back or be a success with the mobs dropping a component that actually makes the ring usable as well as providing experience for those who helped.
These are just some examples but I would love to feel like there is a chance for my character to come across something that few others have experienced and then having a way to “brag” about it. Warhammer used a trophy system that allowed things to be attached to armor to show off accomplishments, I really liked that. EQ2 made use of name Suffix and Prefixes that made your character stick out. Unique pets, dyes, potions and buffs are all things that would keep me killing creatures hoping to discover something new.