I think this will be beneficial to both people who think there’s no end-game to GW2 and those that love it the way it is. It’ll use mechanics and methods already readily available within GW2 but tweaked and amplified. Now, I don’t know how difficult it would be to pull this off or if it fits within Anet’s content budget, but I wouldn’t mind seeing something like this in a future expansion either.
Make a zone and essentially create an in-world raid that anyone can hop into at any stage for an extended epic feeling and chances at great loot. When Anet said that endgame begins at level 1, I believe them. Failing to move out of AoE and dodge a boss’s registered attacks will be punishable by death and mid battle revives are the norm to ensure group integrity, but what some people crave is a cavalcade of giant bosses launching sweeping attacks and finding shiny loot from their bodies. We have that with events like the Shatterer or Shadow Behemoth but they have really long respawn timers (3 hours) and it leaves the playerbase wanting more.
So in this proposed zone, you’ve got a left/right side versus center scenario. Your “trash pull” will be one event on each side that leads to a boss spawning. Now I’d prefer a giant monster like the previously mentioned beasties but I’m sure everyone would be happy with a difficult champion style mob to kill that takes a little communication and pre-planning to defeat. (Like in WvW, there are strategies and voices amidst the chaos and plans do actually get formed on the fly.) There’s two of these baddies on each side and once both are killed the center of the zone opens up.
Here you’ve got another “trash pull” event and another boss fight ensues. Once that guy’s gone Anet can get creative. Maybe there’s three other beasties protecting the end boss by holding up a barrier. Maybe you have to wait until NPC’s arrive with support before you continue. The sky’s the limit in this regard, as long as it culminates in a final showdown of final showdowns.
Now, people will be getting loot. Awesome. If they do the bosses in this “raid” zone again they’ll either no longer get to click on the chests that spawn or they get greatly diminished rewards until whatever time period has passed that Anet feels comfortable with. It can be account-wide or character based, whatever floats everyone’s boat.
You could even deny entrance to the zone if a character has done everything there until a set period of time. This gives the zone and activity within more weight in people’s minds. People love it when a closed door opens, you know? It breeds excitement.
The more I mull this over, it’s kind of like a pure PvE variant of WvW, but instead of towers and castles, it’s giant bosses. You can work it into the lore of Tyria as well. A great example would be the Charr’s constant battle with the ghosts of Ascalon. They’re always reforming, you could make the excuse that the zone you’re in is so dangerous because the energy and hatred of the dead is much stronger there.
Imagine if more and more of these zones as the game continued popped up, expansion after expansion. You’d end up with a huge collection of large scale epic battles across Tyria to visit.
Long story short: Imagine a zone dedicated to events like the Shatterer, but it wasn’t over in 10 minutes.
What do you guys think about that?
(edited by Zuckerhund.4179)