Guild Wars 2

There is currently little incentive for players to spend time on many of the game’s maps. This causes several problems for both the players and developers, and steps need to be taken to resolve this before new permanent explorable maps can be brought out.

Here is my idea for a system that—balanced with other improvements—could bring players into the lesser played zones.

• Give each explorable map a fluctuating Control score.
• Completed events drive the score up. Failed or lapsed events drive the score down.
• All events should have a timer. It can be a generous one, but it should be there.
• Event frequency and scaling should adjust according to how active the server currently is. (So players aren’t punished for going to bed, or for simply being on a low population server.)
• Program daily achievements to automatically include objectives specific to maps that have low Control scores.
• Change daily achievement rewards to scale up when more maps have a high Control score.
• Scale event frequency and rewards up on low Control maps.
• Scale event difficulty up dramatically on high Control maps. (Not so much in a way that makes players die a lot, but more in shortening timers and increasing fail rates.)
• Make more of the champion spawns, (such as most in Frostgorge Sound), count as events, so their frequency, difficulty, and rewards will scale with this system.
• Balance the frequency of champion spawning between all maps. Stagger and slightly randomize frequencies and locations of different champions within each map, to break up trains.

If balanced correctly and used in conjunction with other improvements, players should find that they get the best rewards by shifting their focus across every part of Tyria.

Of course, this demands that every event be both fun and rewarding. It would take a fair amount of work to implement, but I believe the results would be worth it.

Quite interesting suggestion,
except for

Gulesave.5073:

• Scale event difficulty up dramatically on high Control maps. (Not so much in a way that makes players die a lot, but more in shortening timers and increasing fail rates.)

I’m sure all the new players at Queensdale would just love not being able to play / participate in events without dying multiple times.

Read the part in parenthesis. Also, zone level and player group size should always be a larger consideration in scaling.

I would say the current situation for newbies in Queensdale is worse, anyway. They’re made to feel downright unwelcome, even being called “poachers” if they try to play some content as it’s intended.

Gulesave.5073:

Read the part in parenthesis. Also, zone level and player group size should always be a larger consideration in scaling.

I would say the current situation for newbies in Queensdale is worse, anyway. They’re made to feel downright unwelcome, even being called “poachers” if they try to play some content as it’s intended.

I don’t disagree that rude Train riders can make new players unwelcome, but “poacher” is much nicer than some of the things I’ve seen typed in Queensdale Map chat….

I think this is a great suggestion that would really help spread around the population. My only question is how would you go about implementing a Scoreboard to demonstrate which maps require attention, and how long do you believe a Zerg or Train would need to work in a map before they could move on to another?

And that’s why most mmos have an area that you can’t access past lvl 20. Queensdale should have that feature…

I still like the idea of an underflow. Somehow the game determines how many are in each zone from each server. If the number is too low, the option to enter an underflow (where everyone will be dumped) opens up. Perhaps the popup can display roughly how many are in your server zone versus how many are in the underflow. It might breathe some life into those zones and allow for the completion of events that would otherwise be left unfulfilled.

Vexander: Good questions.

Status could be displayed right on the world map, with a subtle little icon next to each map name. You should be able to see at a glance which maps need attention, without going out of your way into a special screen. It’s important to avoid things like a ranked list, or flashing up a worldwide alert naming the lowest map. Those tactics would only serve to funnel players into a single map.

Trains should be able to stick with a map rotation for a day or two before swapping anything out. However, the goal should also be to make more events per map worth doing, so the existing mindless zergs would probably need to break up into a few more organized groups to try and hit everything.

Part of the trick would be balancing the swing of score updating, so it keeps players spread out and moving around, without making them all feel like they’re riding a rodeo bull. Perhaps scores could only update at server refreshes, (same time as daily achievements, etc.), and change by a regulated increment each time.