Before I get into details, I am aware that the personal story can be completed cooperatively, but it isn’t really the same.
The personal story in GW2 is interesting in concept, but rather bland for a number of reasons. The way it is presented is uninteresting, it never seems to place as much importance on the player as it should, and most of all, it is a lonesome experience. This is an MMO and solo content should be somewhat limited and not compose almost the entire story of the game. I’m not saying it should be eliminated, just limited.
GW2 does a great job if facilitating friendly play. It’s great at bringing players together, but rarely does it require interaction. Other players might as well be NPCs at times; they show up to fight in events in silence and then leave. This isn’t really a problem I suppose, but i feel like an MMO should be a more social experience.
To combat these issues, i would suggest bringing back the cooperative story missions of Guild Wars 1. The missions in GW1 brought players together in a way that is different from what we have in GW2. It was a social event that required teamwork, but was a bit more casual than dungeons and friendly to Pugs or organized groups.
The coop missions were great for numerous reasons:
• They required socialization and teamwork.
• They were replayable.
• They could be completed solo with the aid of NPC henchmen.
• They put more emphasis on the player and his/her allies.
• They were presented in a far more interesting and cinematic style (despite primitive animations).
• They offered content to more organized groups in the form of optional objectives or time limits to achieve better rewards and better completion status.
• Completing missions often lead to discovery of new areas or new cities, feeling more like an adventure. It also helps that these new cities often had exclusive new armor sets or merchants that couldn’t be found anywhere else, making the journey even more rewarding.
• Completing them all unlocked bonus rewards like additional armor sets or weapons, as well as perks like hard mode.
Bringing in these missions would be a substantial improvement over personal stories. The personal story could serve more of a small role, interspersed between missions. Personal story could continue to tell the story of your character but would largely take place in the open world. Instead of being instanced, it would naturally group you with players doing similar stories and lead you to climactic open world events and new mission outposts. Instanced missions would take the place of the old personal story, telling the main story of the campaign while not being required to complete in ordemr to further you personal story.
The coop missions would require the addition of instanced mission outposts in order to facilitate optional solo play with the aid of NPC henchmen, since I know that not everyone wants to play in a group. Henchmen could be added to the party in the outpost for those that are playing in offpeak hours, or simply wish to play alone.
These instanced mission outposts could be added to existing zones, as separate additions in between zones, or extensions of existing cities. Missions would offer rewards for completion and, with the completion of optional objectives, offer increased rewards, and a title for 100% completion of every mission. Missions would help you gain access to new cities or outposts with special armor vendors and weapon merchants.
Missions would be easily replayable, and would be presented in a cinematic style similar to GW1, only much improved of course.
Completion of every story mission would unlock Hard Mode for missions. Hard Mode would offer more challenges, new routes, more enemies, and additional/harder boss fights. Completion of a Hard Mode mission would be a chest with the chance of obtaining precursors or rare and sought after unique weapon skins based on the theme of the mission. Completion of all missions of Hard Mode would offer another title and additional rewards, perhaps a special armor skin or weapon skin to signify Hard Mode completion.
Cons:
• It would add extra instanced content, which i know some people are against given that GW2 is supposed to be somewhat open world. However, the personal story sould ensure that the world would remain populated.
• Dungeons would need to be revamped into harder content for elite players, offering better rewards at a substantially higher difficulty since Hard Mode missions would pretty much take their place but offering more diversity and more motivation to complete them.
(Continued in next post…)