Guild Wars 2

The concept of “bringing the content to the players” seems to have been a core part of Arena Net’s philosophy when it came to the development of Guild Wars 2, and I feel that for the most part they’ve done a good job of bringing that philosophy to life.

Particularly the Structured PvP environments and to a lesser extent WvW both do a great job of letting the player just jump into the real meat of the content without needing to worry about grinding a ton of gear or prerequisites.

Where I feel the game is somewhat lacking is in the offerings of challenging, tuned and competitive PvE content. As it stands, the Group PvE content in Guild Wars 2 really doesn’t offer anything that other MMO’s haven’t in the past. A handful of 5-man instances that are – quite frankly – easily farmed right from the start.

Furthermore, these instances all abide by the standard MMO rules. You have to be of a particular level to attempt them, and having decent gear certainly doesn’t hurt.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t want that kind of content to be removed. The entire outdoor world of GW2 is very well done in most every aspect and I don’t see any reason that any part of that “Adventure Mode” should be altered or removed.

What I propose – and what could really truly embody the philosophy of “bringing the content to the players” in a way that I don’t think any AAA MMO has done in the past – is a Structured PvE system that mirrors the sPvP system already in the game. Most of the mechanics regarding player elements would be the same. Everyone bumped to maximum level, with access to all their traits and slot skills and vendors happily providing a variety of gear to them.

As players tackle the challenges set before them, new tiers of cosmetic gear, titles, achievements, etc. would become available to them, just like in sPvP. Gamers tend to be extremely competitive about just about anything, so even simple things like leaderboards showing who has defeated each encounter the most times, or in the fastest time, or with the least amount of deaths, could be added.

The content? Well, to start with, you already have a lot extremely impressive opponents out there. The Shatterer, Claw of Jormag, Tequatl the Sunless, and many other large models that already exist in the world today.

Before anyone brings up the topic of “raiding”…this need NOT be traditional raiding as people understand it. In fact, it could even be 5-man content just like existing dungeons. The important part is that it is a system that offers finely tuned, challenging PvE content to the players with the same all-inclusive, “jump right in” philosophy that the current PvP systems embody.

If people want that sort of thing, I wouldn’t be bothered by it’s existence (though if it came with achievements the completionist in me would be sort of annoyed at yet another thing to never be completed).

However, I’m personally not excited about the idea. Competitive gamers are usually the PvP crowd. The competitive PvE people already got explorable dungeons. (Maybe I should also note that I found the story mode to be difficult to do in a PUG without losing days worth of money on it.)
It’s not been done before, so there’s no way to tell how it would be received, but I don’t know… it just doesn’t sound fun to my ears. Non-competitive gamers will probably take a look and enjoy the full PvE gear/skills and explore that area like it was regular PvE at max level, while the competitve gamers are either a) the PvP people who prefer the unpredictability of a real opponent than a scrpted NPC foe or b) the raiders.

Just my 2 coppers, though…

I agree that it could be a very niche part of the content, but then I’ll wager that paid tournaments and such will be extremely niche as well.

However, I feel like one of the stumbling blocks to people enjoying this sort of content in other MMO’s is all the barriers to entry involved. The sPvP concept in Guild Wars 2 has shown me that even players that thought they disliked PvP in other games can actually come to enjoy it when the grinding elements and “getting one-shot by people in uber gear” are removed.

Perhaps a system that removes the barriers to entry and encourages people to simply jump in and attempt some difficult content together would have a similar result on people that thought they hated “raiding” in other MMO’s.

True. You’re suggestion is very newbie friendly and invites to experiment with / learn different classes in a PvE setting.

The importance of skill over gear and that everyone starts from an equal footing has been an appealing factor of GW1 as well and it’s doing good for GW2, too. Perhaps the same will be true for PvE when you are not limited by per-requirements like leveling up and getting the best gear.
Though exactly that part is the most interesting one for a lot of PvE enthusiasts who like to show off the good stuff they accomplished and managed to get. A sPvE feature, however, may take away the “sense” of doing max level things in regular PvE. Why go through all the trouble and get ready for Orr, Frostgorge Sound, explorable Arah and other level 80 content, when you can just jump into sPvE?

In any event, I hope this thread will find more people to talk about this idea.

/Quote Bovinity
Everyone bumped to maximum level, with access to all their traits and slot skills and vendors happily providing a variety of gear to them.
/Endquote

This idea is absolutely brilliant. This would allow players to experience the content with different characters without having to grind them all to level 80. This also completely removes all/any equipment grind in order to be at a plain level playing field with all other players!

On top of that, this game mode would allow players to test out all trait/stat combinations for all professions so they can build their character exactly as they want!

Instanced content provides a highly controllable environment that allows you to fine-tune the difficulty of each instance. A ranking system would allow you to see what content is the most challenging.

While I understand that dynamic event have been the focus of ARENANET in the past, I hope that they will consider making this kind of content part of their game. The current dungeon system is not nearly as good as the things suggested by the original poster in this thread.