I love going to the different zones and playing through the events. Not only do I get a ton of experience, but when you’re fighting with even a small group of people it makes the whole leveling process much more enjoyable. A-Net put a lot of effort into making this game an enjoyable experience from the beginner zone all the way through the end zones. The events are all unique, challenging, and fun. They are also very nearly impossible to solo.
What we have now is a large group of people zerging from champion to champion in Queensdale and grinding experience there instead of going through the game and actually playing. Do I think that people do this because it’s more enjoyable to grind Queensdale? No. I believe they do it because of the economy of experience gain. People are finding it far easier, safer, and faster to level up in a beginner area than they do to go through the other zones more in tune with their level.
Why is this important to discourage? From a business stand point, grinding creates a sort of burnout feeling that players get from working too hard in an MMO. These players take long breaks and leave, not returning for long periods of time. That’s money lost, since some of those players are buying gems. It also burns out players trying to go through other zones, but who can never seem to find another person or two to fight a champion or help with a group event. From a another view, it’s just sad to see all the creativity and ingenuity in other events go unrecognized.
To this I offer a fix, because I don’t believe that A-Net intended the game to be all about grinding in beginner areas (and quite frankly the events in other areas are too cool to miss out on). First, once your actual level reaches a certain point the amount of experience gain you get from completing events in an area should be cut sharply down, and loot chance for exotics and rares should increase slightly. This gives an incentive to help lower level players when they need it, but it discourages people from remaining in one spot from level 1-80. Second, scale up the loot chance for exotics and rares slightly in areas that are in tune with your level until you reach 80, and increase experience gains from completing events in those areas.
A quick fix would be to change the spawn times so that these champions aren’t able to provide players with as much experience/hour as they’re getting now. But that’s a short term strategy since players would simply find another area to grind experience to 80.
It would also help if there was an event screen you could pop that would show any events on a list or map (or both).