Guild Wars 2

Hello , friends.
It suddenly occurred to me that PvE here is rather poorly motivated, basically. The result is that a lot of complaints about uselessness and boredom of completionist and statements in the spirit of " I login just to do my daily" . The developers have promised to add new skills and traits obtainable through exploration, but I think it’s still will not come to the extent of gw1 and will be very limited. So I paid attention to the implementation of various vertical progress in other games and came up with an option.

I started from the fact that we need a system that will simultaneously engage not only skill points, but the exploration aspect of the game itself too.

I came to the next idea (I’m not going to paint all the mechanics and mathematics in particular, I just want to convey the essence of the idea in general)

So imagine that we have a branch of PvE talents. To be not boring, let it has a few (2-3) of the basic directions. For example 1) explorer 2) adventurer 3) fighter.

First about the mechanics of improvement. In each direction, will be a unique talent tree. Each talent has several levels. And improved by inserting skill points. Number of relevant skill points will increase with every level of the talent and depend on the “coolness” and “seniority” of talent in general.

And now about the involvement of exploration. Assume that initially only basic talents will be available to improve. To gain access to senior talent we will need to complete an improvement of one or more of the younger ones. Then we will bet access to a certain set of quests in this direction. For example to find some number of secret places. Complete certain puzzles. Collect a set of objects in hidden chests in some area. Find and talk to the right NPCs. Perform certain events.
The goal will be visible to us through the window of talent. The higher the level of talent, the more difficult it will be to receive access to improve it. For example, to get access to the master fighter, you will need to find and kill a particular champion and get some trophie from it, then collect the items from the veterans of this type of creatures, find and show collected trophies to famous hunter and listen to his advice. Then, for example, destroy a certain boss, whom he directs.
In that spirit. Gain access, invest skill points, obtain benefit.

It is important that the branches were different, and their improvement has brought some benefit, but the MINOR benefit, but noticeable coupled.

Example. The branch of fighter will give us plus damage to veterans and less damage from them. Then it will be divided in subgroups by groups of existing int Tyria creatures. For example moa killer. After killing the moa we will get a buff of 1% movement speed to (stacking to 25-33%). Improved loot from the moa. More exp from moa. Chance to get a unique loot (for example – rare feathers which are more expensive than regular loot from them when selling to vendor). On the master tier increased damage on the moa champions and we will be able to get 2-3 karma for each dead moa. Each type of creatures will give a different effects. And talents will affect them in different ways. For example stacks of vitality from killing giants. -Cond duration stacks and -5% damage from aetherblades.
And so on.

Let branch of adventurer affects game events and awards from them. For example more karma and money from events. Buffs of damage reduction to friendly event NPCs. The increase of effectiveness against megabosses. Making a stacking boons from other branches not disappear when changing location\death.

A branch of the explorer will be responsible for improving the movement around the world. Improving loot from chests. The unique loot from It. Various strengthening dependent of areas. Reducing the price of WP. Increasing the speed of swimming on the surface of water. Buffs dependent of time of day. Reduces damage from falling. Affect the gathering and show chests on the map. Etc.

In general the idea is that it is a very slow and long-lasting progress. It’s influence is noticeable but does not break the game balance, not simplifying all too much. Minor improvements, like the one that WvW now has. Create a goal to be attained. Some kind of hoarding of minor reinforcements.
To create the effect of constant progress. In this case, progress will not only be gained through hoarding of skill points, but also exploring of the world.

Since the population of gw2’s forum is crowded with casual whiners anything that is challenging will get 9 out of 10 post something like “too hard, neeeeerf !!!”
“You said we could play how we want, now you force me to do something I don’t like and bla bla bla bla”
You get the point, not very encouraging for the devs to go for vertical progression. Though I totally like your idea !

Well, this is not meant as something difficult or challenging. Just an interesting constant progress

I’d better like it if the last two tier skill would be something interesting other than just a plain easy mission, for exemple, for the fighter, the last tier being i.e +0.5s dodge effect duration, there is an instance you can do alone or in group, with a boss that, like the one in ascalonian fractal, change weapon and you have to adapt to his weapon and each set of weapon have a one shot skill that you must dodge or die, he can have like 6 set of weapon that is changed every 10% of his life with the first 6 weapon preset so you discover his pattern with the last 40% where he enrage with a random weapon for 10% of his life.