Guild Wars 2

…other zones.

Seeing daily achievement categories like “Ascalonian Slayer”, “Maguuma Veteran Slayer” got me thinking; Anet obviously wants players to stop mingling in Orr/CoF p1 and visit the lower traffic areas. Other adjustments such as the new event scaling system that destroyed penitent/shelter farming, increased cooldown between plinx resets all directly/indirectly push players towards the same direction.

While the intention behind these subtle pushes are sound, I believe they could have been implemented better.

• Increasing Plinx cooldowns simply made players migrate to the next best thing: Penitent/Shelter.

• Penitent/Shelter nerf pretty much removed the only effective way to earn gold and high tier fine crafting materials in the open world without doing dungeons or fractals, which not everyone has the time to do or enjoys.

• Daily achievements that point players to “Kill X mobs in Y zones” are bandaid solutions that lose effectiveness immediately upon completion. People will simply get it done and overwith and return immediately to their normal routine in one zone.

• Recent boosts to boss chests are working somewhat better as people seek out stuff to do while waiting for bosses to spawn, but suffers the same limitation of the above daily categories. Upon completion, everyone leaves.

Instead of negative reinforcement(nerfing of popular farming spots/events, meaningless achievement goals that are only a chore), give players some positive encouragement(buffs to unpopular events) so that they would voluntarily get their kittens moving. Don’t punish “bad” behavior, but reward good ones.

Players need something more to intice them to spread out, if that is what you want them to do. And apart from those who explore for the sake of exploring, the single most important motivation for most players is of course, loot.

For example:

• Players receive a 15% magic find bonus boon for every different zone they visit. Limit one zone per 30~60 minutes and players must have spent a reasonable time/completed a certain number of events or hearts/done a JP/etc inside the zone. Capped at maximum 5 bonuses and unlimited duration but resets everyday.

or

• Rewards for completing events increase for every different zone you’ve visited in the past 2~3 hours with similar conditions as above. For example the current average rewards that give a lousy 200 karma and 2 silvers slowly increases in increments to perhaps a maximum of 600 karma and 12 silvers per event. Players must be present near the event area at its completion or they will receive the normal unbuffed rewards to prevent event tagging. Resets everyday.

or

• Similar boon/zone counter as first idea, but for every boon stack you receive a significant bonus in the chance of mobs to drop loot. Currently as it is, even if somebody decides on a whim to explore, they have no reason to bother fighting any mobs along the way; the chance of mobs to drop loot is too low and your time is better spent elsewhere. Hence everyone simply runs as fast as they can to their destination and ignores everything along the way. This kind of boon will make it worthwhile to fight everything that crosses your path and even go out on your way to explore every nook and cranny for those hidden veterans/events.

or

• Similar boon/counter blah blah. For every stack vendors now pay you more for your loot than the current default when you sell them. Found loot only.

or

• Bounty hunt. Not the guild missions, but lootwise. The attention recently given to the exotic staff Final Rest(and the thread in the general discussion forum with it) would have already given you some great ideas to pique people’s interests. Give only a few clues to its whereabouts and make the item rotate every week?

If players feel it’s too pressurising to visit different zones everyday, make it a weekly system. If a player spends most of his time in Cursed Shore on Monday but more in Frostgorge Sound on Tuesday, then the player qualifies for one stack of boon. Resets every week. Be flexible.

Any kind of method is fine. As long as you can make players feel that they are genuinely missing out on goodies if they don’t explore instead of chasing them away from popular areas, grumbling and disheartened.

Make players look foward to it.