Guild Wars 2

ColinJohanson.2394:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

You know, since the game was initially sold to be all about cosmetic reward and character customization… And so far we only have seen a couple of new armor sets and they are only on the gem store…
I’d like to see specific skins for armors and weapons bound to different regions of the world.
Like, doing events in frostgorge sounds to get glacial or nordic themed skins.

For dynamic events and their rewards…

I think one of the main issues with dynamic events right now is that there’s no good in-game way of knowing where they are, when they are happening, and which ones you’ve already seen/completed. I love to wander, but with no way at all to know where events are happening or when a new one is added, it’s very difficult to enjoy the content. I agree with earlier posters that I would LOVE to see DE content/stories expanded… but in order for that to work, we need a way to know when and where new stuff is taking place.

I think a map journal or some form of basic checklist would be an awesome UI addition, and go a long way to getting people into the fun of seeking out and completing DEs around the world. Something that provides a basic name and description of the event, a general location, and checks the event off when you complete it. It could be arranged by map, broken down by storyline…

If you wanted to get really ambitious, you could include the story for each event in the journal, so players could fill it in step by step and then go back and read it (somewhat like the personals story journal we have now).

Attach a reward structure like we have in WvW or like the achievement point reward system to the DE completion checklist. As you check them off, you get chests and titles at certain milestones. 10 unique events checked off… a chest. 25…another chest and a title. When you complete all events in a particular map, you get a map completion chest, and a “hero of X_zone” title. etc, etc.

Then, put a map-unique reward (allow players to choose a weapon skin from a set unique to the zone) in the chest that you get when you complete all DEs in a certain map.

Then, as you add new content to dynamic events… it could show up as starred or highlighted in the checklist.

In terms of the types of content being added to the game…

I feel some disappointment and confusion with the direction of content additions. I think the game has gone backwards in terms of innovation and what makes it unique, and the realization of the depth and promise of the dynamic event system has gone by the wayside in favor of content much more like previous MMOs.

Somewhere along the line, we went from:

“This is MY story!”

To:

“Buffed champ at X_waypoint! Follow zerg to next loot and checkbox!”

Compare toxic offshoots (events?) to the original dynamic event chains that shipped with the game. Why would you go backwards in terms of innovation? Sure, not every event in the original game was a branching chain of events that moved around the map and told a story semi-directed by the players…but enough of them were to get us excited about the prospect of more. More branches, more story, more depth to each map and area. That hasn’t ended up happening, though.

You went from a system with branches, success/failure states, localized stories and depth, and noticeable effects (even if temporary) on the surrounding areas that were somewhat controllable by the actions of players…to a system where you add 1-off semi-random events that have no story and just pop and disappear in the same fixed locations (sounds like Rift, instead of GW2).

Things happening by the direction of the developers (like plopping a big ugly tower in one of the prettiest areas of the game, having us run a dungeon, then making it disappear) is not the same as allowing things to change based on player interaction with the story/world. It just feels forced and artificial. We know each living story release is predetermined and the story just plays out. The TV analogy may be a little too apt…we’re watching stories now instead of taking part in them and to some extent directing their outcome.

I really loved the way the stories played out around you with certain DE chains, especially in some of the early maps. I loved the way a player could see different outcomes and discover new story through their actions. I like the story instances included with some living story releases…the ones that actually have the story play out through actions and dialogue and involve the player…but again, it’s no longer in any way alterable by ME. Also, those story instances are seemingly a very small part of the recent releases. Most of what we get is the other stuff…the random event spawns and loot farms we run around in a circle.

I would not mind at all if the pace of releases slowed, and we saw the original promise of GW2 better realized through expansion of the DE system and the explorable world…more maps with hearts, DEs, vistas, jumping puzzles, the whole fairy tale. More branches and story and depth to existing DEs… and a system to track DEs and their completion so we can experience it all. Give us reasons to wander and explore and take our time…to experience the story at our own pace, not some arbitrary schedule.

Continue our personal story… bring back a character or two thought dead. Let us push on to new challenges. Give us some continuity that feels personal and keeps us going.

Nike.2631:

On adding a time based bonus for unused events…

I really wouldn’t look forward to people being more irritated with other players for having ‘stolen’ their timer bonus by having done the event ahead of them.

The game goes to a lot of trouble to make everybody on the server allies – people shrieking about “ninja’ing” champs is bad enough. We don’t need to extend the phenomenal to every event in the game…

…Further, I’d mention the Devs are experimenting with this right now as part of the Tower of Nightmares chapter and I my opinion it’s not working.

The new Toxic Spore buff encourages waiting to engage or attacking event-champs that have been up a long time – triggering the new buff increasing the difficulty slightly and adding to the rewards for success. The emergent reality is a lot of people yelling “Wait. WAIT. No buff yet!” which is sowing discord with players who just want to get it done. Just as tedious, the buff/reward is essentially unavoidable on the trillion hit-point DPS snoozefest champions that take longer to erode than the delay before the buff appears.

This is really interesting feedback, something I hadn’t thought about, but there’s a few reasons I think it might still work:

1) Instead of being an off or on mechanic – the champ is buffed or not buffed, buffed counts for the achievement and unbuffed does not – it’s a scale mechanic. It scales over time. If that scale was fine enough, adjusting on a per-minute basis, there’d be no reason to wait. (If, instead, it was something like 1x rewards for 0-60 minutes and 3x rewards for 61-120 minutes, you’d be right.)

2) With the number of events that are in the game, I think zerging would be less likely. You’d have people move throughout the maps to complete events.

3) This might only be a temporary thing, but as of right now, there’s no way to see how long it’s been since an event was completed. This change in rewards might lead timer sites to include a list of “longest uncompleted events,” but I’m wondering if that would matter or not.

But thanks for the feedback, you’re literally the first person who’s commented on this idea in the half-dozen times I’ve mentioned it.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I think where the failure is lies in the rewards. You don’t get nowhere near enough rewards for doing DEs compared to other things, because karma is not very useful. Also, doing something extremely short and simple like killing a champion gives the same if not more rewards than a long DE like escorting someone, so no one does the escorts.

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

Personally I would love if dynamic events could be content you can play for any kind of reward. It would be nice for me if in addition to what they give now they’d also give often, 1-3 of either dragonite, Bloodstone or Empyreal fragement. uncommonly other Crafting material, a random dungeon token, fractal relic etc.. Very rarely a laurel

It would also be beneficial if it were possible to get a big reward if you take part in a whole event chain. It takes time to wait for an event to spawn and waiting for it to chain so I would think its fair if in addition to the rewards you get for doing a single event completing a whole chain would give you an extra reward (perhaps a chest or maybe the rewards as if you finished an extra event or perhaps even two to make it more compelling)

I realize this might be considered a bad idea in that it might drive people away from content (like some choosing to do dynamic events instead of dungeons) but as long as the actual activity rewards a lot more of the sought after material I think the impact will be pretty small.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I think where the failure is lies in the rewards. You don’t get nowhere near enough rewards for doing DEs compared to other things, because karma is not very useful. Also, doing something extremely short and simple like killing a champion gives the same if not more rewards than a long DE like escorting someone, so no one does the escorts.

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

This is true! and a perfect segway in to my next topic!
(continue…)
Rewards: (OOooO shinys) I don’t think it’s a secret, Gold is king in gw2, you need it, you want more of it and as much as you can get as quickly as you can spam the 1 skill. Why is this? Well the game revolves around it, there tons of gold sinks throughout the game from armors, to gems to waypoints and even the trading post, the game has the gold sinks covered. Why is this bad? Well it sets the farmer mentality and puts and empathizes on acquiring it. Now there’s the easy solution to solving this, which is DR, slap on DR to champs and call it a day. Nope the may hinder the gold inflation but does not solve the gold is king issue. You have other currency (Karma/Skill Points/Dungeon tokens/Laurels/Gems/Fractal/Guild commendations and Badges ), spread that wealth.

Possible Solutions:
Step 1. DE give Loot boxes (like champ boxes) upon completion, while decreasing the coin in champ loot bags. This essentially won’t be a nerf but an incentive to move the optimization. (Thou the money in champ loot bags was nerf, the money in DE was increased) Champ still give good loot for there efforts but finishing a DE, is even more rewarding.

Exp: After completing a DE:
(Lost)
Xp + sum coin
(Win)
Gold-> Karma/Xp + (rare) Loot bag
Silver-> Karma/Xp + (green) Loot bag
Bronze-> Karma/Xp + (blue) Loot bag

Step 2.Add value to Karma and skill points, currently there useless. The karma nerf wasn’t necessary, you just needed sinks, all the nerf did was hurt new players. Adding new skills in the future or tagging karma and/or skill points to weapon/armor skins is a great way to increase the need to go out there and do DE/dungeons etc for the exp and karma.

Exp: The new TA dungeon path ( keep the blue rare drop in path but add a red one you can buy)

Scarlet path: After completing you get Data Fragments that the priory wants.

• 5 fragments + 5,000 karma = A new weapon skin
  or
• 5 fragments + 10 SkillPoints = A New weapon skin

This creates a need to get exp and karma, its rewards players for doing ANYTHING in the game, to still achieve things they want to get. The adding of Ectos to items was the opposite; it again sets Gold as king and the need for more ways to get it.

Next till look into other kind of rewards, LS rewards (Aka backpack City)

Kingmutez.4931:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I think where the failure is lies in the rewards. You don’t get nowhere near enough rewards for doing DEs compared to other things, because karma is not very useful. Also, doing something extremely short and simple like killing a champion gives the same if not more rewards than a long DE like escorting someone, so no one does the escorts.

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

…
Exp: After completing a DE:
(Lost)
Xp + sum coin
(Win)
Gold-> Karma/Xp + (rare) Loot bag
Silver-> Karma/Xp + (green) Loot bag
Bronze-> Karma/Xp + (blue) Loot bag

This can’t be implemented properly until they fix the Gold, Silver, Bronze requirements as it should have been way before hand. Playing the epic support role (rezzing, boon application etc) while everyone plays DPS does not net you a Gold rank.

Pifil.5193:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Our take on phasing, and why we never did it to begin with is: the world isn’t progressing, it’s just fake progressing for you and the person next to you isn’t seeing it progress simultaneously. One of the biggest things we wanted to accomplish with Gw2 is that the things that happen do matter, they happen for everyone, and everyone experiences them together. This is really putting the social aspect of the game and immersion, above the personal aspect.

That doesn’t make phasing wrong, but if you judge by the above pillar it makes phasing wrong for Gw2. Each design decision we make takes that into account as one of the games core pillars. When something in the open world happens, it needs to happen for everyone, and we gauge everything that way.

Edited to add: This specifically applies to experiences in the open world, and doesn’t mean we couldn’t do things like letting you see moments in time in the past, or experience living world instanced (or “phased”) moments on their own timeline.

But by putting the group above the individual you further diminish the importance of the individual in a game where our actions are already pretty irrelevant because the Living World just carries on regardless. To put it another way; if a tree falls in the forest and I wasn’t logged in and able to see it fall then does my presence matter at all? No. It does not.

The benefit of phasing is that the world changes for your character permanently due to your characters actions, due to something you initialised. Not just because some other group of people did something while you were off screen. With phasing you have the benefit of still being a hero in a game where there are thousands of heroes. You don’t just arrive a second too late to contribute to an event and then come back when it refreshes.

Now I’m not saying that everything should be phased but it wouldn’t be a bad way of handling Living World “quest” areas, if phasing was a possibility then we could go back and play through the Flame and Frost or see the toxic Kessex Hills on a new character in the future and you would be constantly adding a body of new content that could remain accessible and completable by new customers rather than content that is lost forever after its two weeks in the spotlight are up.

While I wouldn’t necessarily argue that the game really needs phasing, I agree with the general sentiment here. Colin seems to be hung up on the idea that the world changing and being disrupted independently of the player-character (defined as ‘living’) is some awesome concept when I would argue that it simply isn’t, and is the primary reason why the LW has all but doomed the game to failure.

Here’s what the Living World should be – Arenanet doing the world building, perpetually adding new content and setting the framework for stories that individual or groups of players can tackle as part of their hero’s development on their own timeline and can be enjoyed by everyone. This is how the game was at launch and is encapsulated by the various explorable zones, dungeons, dynamic events, and personal story.

Here’s what’s happening – Arenanet is trying to modify the world on a rushed schedule in a piecemeal way (making the content feel kitten), then also forcefully driving the narrative, removing the significance of individual characters and consequently disengaging players. This is the current “Living World” model, which is mostly an abysmal failure despite having some interesting content.

The simple reality is that the current model does more harm to the game than good. Arenanet needs to shift away from thinking that constantly disrupting existing content to drive an uninteresting narrative that is divorced from player immersion is somehow a better design approach than simply expanding the world with new permanent content that players can enjoy on their own schedule as part of their character’s development and timeline.

They don’t even really have to make sacrifices to do this – they can still use monthly ‘special events’ in the form of autonomous side-stories to help create some focus around the end-game and direct players to certain areas. They can still use special holiday events or recurring festivals, and can even do the occasional temporary side-story event that is similar to some of the living world content that came out in the past year, it just shouldn’t try to disrupt, change, or remove existing content.

Hi
One thing that arenanet needs to acknowledge and avoid is including achievements/content that mindlessly send the player out into the world to find things on a scavenger hunt.

This type of content is boring, unimaginative, and doesn’t solve the problems we face at all. The whole idea is to get people into a myriad of zones to play the content that is already there(in addition to living story arc/content). But when traversing these zones to find balloons for queens jub, or to find obelisks for krait historian achievement, I ignore everything else. You really might as well lined up all the oblisks and just let me click them one by one because sending me out into these zones to find these things is more punishment than anything.

If you want us to hangout in the zones, build some memories in the zones and experience the content, you need to let us do just that. You need to encourage us to participate in stuff thats already there. Not patch in some more stuff for us to do or find or click on. It is on you to encourage us to freely enjoy our favorite zones without fear of falling behind in achievements for the LS, achievement points as a whole, and currency/gold farm. You should WANT us to go into whatever zone we want and kick off random dynamic events that have been there since launch and NOT follow a zerg train around.

Pifil.5193:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Our take on phasing, and why we never did it to begin with is: the world isn’t progressing, it’s just fake progressing for you and the person next to you isn’t seeing it progress simultaneously. One of the biggest things we wanted to accomplish with Gw2 is that the things that happen do matter, they happen for everyone, and everyone experiences them together. This is really putting the social aspect of the game and immersion, above the personal aspect.

That doesn’t make phasing wrong, but if you judge by the above pillar it makes phasing wrong for Gw2. Each design decision we make takes that into account as one of the games core pillars. When something in the open world happens, it needs to happen for everyone, and we gauge everything that way.

Edited to add: This specifically applies to experiences in the open world, and doesn’t mean we couldn’t do things like letting you see moments in time in the past, or experience living world instanced (or “phased”) moments on their own timeline.

But by putting the group above the individual you further diminish the importance of the individual in a game where our actions are already pretty irrelevant because the Living World just carries on regardless. To put it another way; if a tree falls in the forest and I wasn’t logged in and able to see it fall then does my presence matter at all? No. It does not.

The benefit of phasing is that the world changes for your character permanently due to your characters actions, due to something you initialised. Not just because some other group of people did something while you were off screen. With phasing you have the benefit of still being a hero in a game where there are thousands of heroes. You don’t just arrive a second too late to contribute to an event and then come back when it refreshes.

Now I’m not saying that everything should be phased but it wouldn’t be a bad way of handling Living World “quest” areas, if phasing was a possibility then we could go back and play through the Flame and Frost or see the toxic Kessex Hills on a new character in the future and you would be constantly adding a body of new content that could remain accessible and completable by new customers rather than content that is lost forever after its two weeks in the spotlight are up.

While I wouldn’t necessarily argue that the game really needs phasing, I agree with the general sentiment here. Colin seems to be hung up on the idea that the world changing and being disrupted independently of the player-character (defined as ‘living’) is some awesome concept when I would argue that it simply isn’t, and is the primary reason why the LW has all but doomed the game to failure.

Here’s what the Living World should be – Arenanet doing the world building, perpetually adding new content and setting the framework for the story that is to be told through the perspective of individual and groups of players/characters on their own timeline. This is how the game was at launch.

Here’s what’s happening – Arenanet is trying to modify the world on a rushed schedule in a piecemeal way (making the content feel kitten), then also forcefully driving the narrative, removing the significance of individual characters and consequently disengaging players. This is the current “Living World” model.

The simple reality is that the current model does more harm to the game than good. Arenanet needs to shift away from thinking that constantly disrupting existing content to drive a narrative that’s broken anyway and is divorced from player immersion is somehow a better design approach than simply expanding the world with new permanent content that players can enjoy on their own schedule as part of their character’s development and timeline.

They don’t even really have to make sacrifices to do this – they can still use monthly ‘special events’ in the form of autonomous side-stories to help create some focus around the end-game and direct players to certain areas. They can still use recurring holiday events and festivals, and can even do occasional side-stories as temporary content as long as it doesn’t try to disrupt existing content in a permanent way.

People stopped doing DEs and then ANet gave up on them.

ANet made a few new DEs, released them in the middle of a busy NEW holiday update and got no response about them because 1) people were doing the new exciting content and 2) no one had a clue where they were or would be able to tell a new one from one they hadn’t done before, assuming they saw it when they were in the area and were able to trigger it. So ANet threw up its hands said welp, that failed. No point in trying again. And abandoned the heart of the game.

But why did players abandon DEs? Because the game is cosmetic driven and now also Ascended gear driven and both of these cost money. Lots of money. Money that the DEs don’t give. The DEs are primarily a karma source and only good if you are going for temple armor or a Legendary. If you have sufficient karma for them or you aren’t going for them, then the game penalizes you if you do DEs. If you want cultural armor, or a particular new weapon skin from the TP then doing DEs is a mind meltingly slow way to get money.

By making karma useless except for those 2 reasons, ANet guaranteed at the start of the game that the heart of the game would be abandoned.

To get players back to doing DEs, the rewards need to be reworked so there is a reason to do them rather than endless champ farming. Or endless dungeon running for that matter. Either karma needs to be more useful or doing events in a map need to have cosmetic rewards for doing them or they need to give other things people want.

Hi
One thing that arenanet needs to acknowledge and avoid is including achievements/content that mindlessly send the player out into the world to find things on a scavenger hunt.

This type of content is boring, unimaginative, and doesn’t solve the problems we face at all. The whole idea is to get people into a myriad of zones to play the content that is already there(in addition to living story arc/content). But when traversing these zones to find balloons for queens jub, or to find obelisks for krait historian achievement, I ignore everything else. You really might as well lined up all the oblisks and just let me click them one by one because sending me out into these zones to find these things is more punishment than anything.

If you want us to hangout in the zones, build some memories in the zones and experience the content, you need to let us do just that. You need to encourage us to participate in stuff thats already there. Not patch in some more stuff for us to do or find or click on. It is on you to encourage us to freely enjoy our favorite zones without fear of falling behind in achievements for the LS, achievement points as a whole, and currency/gold farm. You should WANT us to go into whatever zone we want and kick off random dynamic events that have been there since launch and NOT follow a zerg train around.

I also wanted to add that if, despite the opinions of many, they feel that constantly changing/disrupting/removing content to achieve the concept of a ‘living world’ is really the way to go, then they need to just go ahead and dismantle the Personal Story so that it is no longer controlling the evolution of the lore and creating cognitive dissonance.

The conceptual conflict between the PS and LW is very detrimental to the evolution of the game and finding a way to resolve it, even if it isn’t a way I would consider optimal, should be a top priority,

Einlanzer.1627:

I also wanted to add that if, despite the opinions of many, they feel that constantly changing/disrupting/removing content to achieve the concept of a ‘living world’ is really the way to go, then they need to just go ahead and dismantle the Personal Story so that it is no longer controlling the evolution of the lore and creating cognitive dissonance.

The conceptual conflict between the PS and LW is very detrimental to the evolution of the game and finding a way to resolve it, even if it isn’t a way I would consider optimal, should be a top priority,

Curious to compare them like this, but I do think that more people would rather have instanced personal stories than living world.

Im just so tired of these patches being so achievement driven. Its all you do is go through a checklist. Who cares about the story? (sad but true)

cesmode.4257:

Einlanzer.1627:

I also wanted to add that if, despite the opinions of many, they feel that constantly changing/disrupting/removing content to achieve the concept of a ‘living world’ is really the way to go, then they need to just go ahead and dismantle the Personal Story so that it is no longer controlling the evolution of the lore and creating cognitive dissonance.

The conceptual conflict between the PS and LW is very detrimental to the evolution of the game and finding a way to resolve it, even if it isn’t a way I would consider optimal, should be a top priority,

Curious to compare them like this, but I do think that more people would rather have instanced personal stories than living world.

Im just so tired of these patches being so achievement driven. Its all you do is go through a checklist. Who cares about the story? (sad but true)

Yes, I agree (see my above post), but Arenanet seems convinced that their living world concept is the way to go. If they are going to continue on as planned with it, they need to get rid of obstacles that are interfering with their creative freedom with it and resulting in immersion-destroying cognitive dissonance for players.

To that end, the PS leading up to the battle in Arah and the story modes of the launch dungeons should be treated as ‘completed stories’ and be removed (at least until they figure out a way to let players play past content) because the persistent presence of the PS hogties the lore to those events which restricts their ability to truly change the world through the LW.

In other words – it needs to be one or the other, it’s not sustainable trying to have a persistent PS (which is driven by the player/character) and a dynamic LW (which is driven by Anet) at the same time.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I think where the failure is lies in the rewards. You don’t get nowhere near enough rewards for doing DEs compared to other things, because karma is not very useful. Also, doing something extremely short and simple like killing a champion gives the same if not more rewards than a long DE like escorting someone, so no one does the escorts.

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

I would like to see events more impact. Actually having my actions matter. Success or failure has no real impact on the area besides some NPC/mob swap. Even that is only for a couple of minutes. If I complete an event then go grab a drink, by the time I get back it will be as if I was never there. I guess you can say I am looking for a more rewarding experience. I guess I am okay with the loot/gold/karma. If the events themselves are worth doing then any shinies I get on top is just icing.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I think where the failure is lies in the rewards. You don’t get nowhere near enough rewards for doing DEs compared to other things, because karma is not very useful. Also, doing something extremely short and simple like killing a champion gives the same if not more rewards than a long DE like escorting someone, so no one does the escorts.

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

A few ideas:

1) Unique skin rewards at-level for a given zone, similarly to GW’s green weapons. The skin(s) is only available from that zone, and each DE has a low chance to reward a completion chest with the skin. Perhaps the DE could have a slightly higher chance depending on its inherent difficulty. This gives players incentive to play zones at an appropriate level as they are leveling a character, but it also gives lvl 80s a cosmetic incentive.

1B) The unique skins could be parts of a full set of armor: Each region (Ascalon, Kryta, etc) has multiple zones, so if each zone offered one or two of the pieces of the set, you could collect a full cosmetic set of skins participating in DEs and exploring that entire region of the map. One of the primary pieces of the set (chest maybe) could be a reward for map completion of that region.

2) Scaling rewards based on when the event was last completed. This would be similar to the way a player receives bonus exp when a mob hasn’t been killed for a while. Make the loot tables gradually increase the chance of receiving a higher-tier drop from the event the longer it’s been since anyone completed the event. This gives incentive for players to actually explore and participate in events. IMO, there should not be any indication in the event UI that an event’s reward is scaled up, so that players simply participate in as many as they want to and occasionally get a pleasant surprise out of the event.

3) Similarly to how the personal story completion offers a selection of three gear pieces, add a completion window to DEs that allows the player to pick all gold, all karma, or 50:50 as their reward.

The following one’s not really an incentive to change zones, and it’s really out there, but you could add cosmetics that are participation-dependent for their effects. Using a headpiece idea that I’ve seen requests for as an example, it could be a halo that glows brighter as the player participates in DEs or hearts in different zones. It could be devil’s horns that glow red the more player kills the player has made that day. It sounds incredibly complicated even just written down, so for all I know it’d be nearly impossible to implement, but it was wacky enough that I thought it might be worth a mention.

While it’s certainly worth talking about at some point, I wish we could get away from focusing on the execution and various mechanics surrounding the LW and instead work on pinning down the concept itself.

In particular, more attention needs to be given to the conundrum of the conflict that exists between the PS and LW. Reconciling those two on a conceptual level should be the top priority of this conversation, IMO. I feel like most people actually prefer the former over the latter, but regardless of which one Anet chooses to roll with, something needs to be done so that the disjoint between the two isn’t controlling the evolution of the world and the lore going forward.

I enoy the concept of a living world, but I agree it’s not working well at the moment. The last patch was nothing but a generic acchievement checklist and an overcosted, useless new healing skill. I don’t have much hope for the one coming next to be any better, either. I do enjoy the story instances, but they’re few and far between, can’t be enjoyed by friends, and (excluding the last one) can’t be replayed.

When I enjoy the linear storytelling in a single instance far more than the “living story” patch as a whole, then clearly, the “living story” is not working very well. For me, at least.

The problem with Living World, is that it is sharing the same philosophy that dynamic events have, but it’s not working alongside them. I think initially, everyone expected the living world concept to be an opportunity to greatly expand the way the dynamic event system works, which truly is the heart of GW2’s pve.

There’s so many things that dynamic events need improvements at:
- story-telling (they’re not as good as instances or quest’s texts)
- permanent impact (there should exist long-term dynamic events, that take hours, days or weeks to complete, and generate many sub-events within)
- consequences (winning or failing them should have deeper consequences. make them lock/ unlock important NPCs, important areas of the world, important merchants)
- map-wide events (already done with scarlet’s invasions, now they need to exist in more contexts)
- tieing dynamic events with fort building and some player generated or player triggered content. Guild missions are just a very shy first step into that.

Each living world release should, in my opinion, take an existing map with an existing story, and expand its dynamic events, by adding new ones, improving older ones, making some more challenging, adding more sequences to others, improving the consequences of others, etc.

ColinJohanson.2394:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

I don’t really need specific rewards to get me going around the world doing different DEs. What I do need is for rewards not to drag me away.

What I mean by that, is that there have been times where I’ve happily wandered through the world exploring, discovering DEs, without any thought of reward. This game is wonderfully immersive that way.

Then ascended gear happened. At first it was dailies. If I was adventuring in Ascalon and “Maguuman Events” and “Shiverpeaks Veterans” popped up, I’d have to steer that direction. Not too big a deal, I can still wander through whatever zone and hit those.

But Ascended weapons? If I could get Dragonite from doing events outside of Orr and World Bosses, I’d be back in those mid level zones in a heartbeat! I have seven characters, 4 at level 80, 2 at 60+.

My current play looks like “log on, open up world boss timer overlay, cycle through level 80s parked at jumping puzzles, switch to main, open up resource map website on second monitor, get crafting daily, and t5 and t6 mats in run through Frostgorge, do current Living Story daily (because it’s more efficient to do dailies to get the meta than a lot of the other grindy achievements), go wherever it’s most efficient to get the other three dailies needed for daily reward, making sure to port in to a world boss whenever one procs, head to champ farm or WvW if there’s still play time left.” :P

I don’t particularly need incentive to go do other DEs. What I need is to be free from the incentives not to do them.

Yes, I could just ignore Ascended Weapons because it’s a small increase and all that. But why do I have to choose between getting BiS gear in any sort of reasonable time frame and avoiding this kind of checklist play?

timmyf.1490:

Colin-

I’ve suggested this a couple times, but just in case it’s been overlooked… If you want to make doing Dynamic Events more rewarding, just increase the rewards! They don’t need to be different. Gold, Experience, and Karma all have useful sinks/conversions in game already.

I think that, rather than flatly increasing the rewards, you should scale the rewards based on how long the event went uncompleted. For example, an event like Champ Boar that gets fired off as soon as it’s ready will give the same rewards. An event that is often neglected, failed, or uncompleted, (like most of the escort quests), would scale gold, experience, and karma up based on a timer.

For example, if it goes 30 minutes before completion, you get double the normal rewards. If it’s 4 hours, you get 5x rewards. If it’s 8 hours, you get 10x rewards. That kind of thing.

This means that zones with low player population suddenly become very rewarding for groups of players who want to run through and complete events. Suddenly, these zones which are mostly empty are full of people. Players on high-population servers are guesting down to less-populated servers for the extra rewards (and those on the low-pop servers suddenly have open-world friends).

Very good idea. This will encourage players trying different events and has the added benefit of making leveling in places we hardly visit more enjoyable.

Colin, instead of just increasing these rewards, you should increase the skin diversity you can buy with them. For example, Karma only buys one exotic armor (temple). Gold only buys basic looking exotic armor sets on the TP. If you give us more to buy, then the rewards will feel more important like Karma did at launch (which is why players were farming karma in Orr).

ColinJohanson.2394:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I think where the failure is lies in the rewards. You don’t get nowhere near enough rewards for doing DEs compared to other things, because karma is not very useful. Also, doing something extremely short and simple like killing a champion gives the same if not more rewards than a long DE like escorting someone, so no one does the escorts.

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

What worked really well in GW1:

Unique cosmetic rewards for unique content.

Currently you draw from the same skin pool for all the champ boxes, and the vast majority of all world loot, with only a handful of commonm skins being region specific. Contrast that with GW1’s boss uniques and many unique skins that were region or zone-specific drops.

In addition, rewards need to be somewhat content TYPE unique. karma is a semi-unique resource, and while leveling the act of unlocking and finding new merchants for it is a lot of fun. What if we used a sort of long-term “reputation” system to unlock karma vendors for unique rewards? Think of this as hearts on a much grander scale. Each event grouping is given to certain individuals or groups of NPCs. Doing events will, naturally, improve your reputation with NPC factions realted to that event. So, say Orr zones would give a lot of pact rep, while queensdale might give Krytan rep, etc.

Tie these reputation standing to reward unlocks, and even the ability to buy karma-based titles or single use “Important mission orders” Which would allow an influential player to function AS an event starter.

Imagine a situation in which you’ve been fighting for the pact for a while, gaining pact faction, and you’ve been given the opportunity to deliver an important message from fort trinity to camp penitent. This starts by telling an NPC, once you’ve reached the appropriate faction standing that you’d be interested in “special assignments”

When the map decides it’s time for a meta, it’ll look through its DB for all players with the “pact special special assignment” flag that are online. It will mail one of them ingame with a short brief and a pickup location. If the player doesn’t respond for a while it’ll choose a new player and mail the original player with something like “hey don’t worry about it, we didn’t hear from you so we sent someone else.”

When you pick up the package, you become a meta event. The risen populate around you, build catapults, walls, whatever. If you fall or log off, someone else can pick up the mission by grabbing the dropped package. Success gives everyone involved substantial meta-level rewards, failure is simply allowing the package to be dropped and not picked up within X time. If you’ve managed to carry the mission from start to finish, you gain a unique title and an achievement. If you manage to finish the mission without being the main guy you ALSO get a unique title/achievement, just not the same one.

This is a “relay marathon” type of player based meta, but you could easily do things like having the key player drive a war machine (like that awesome golem from the LS) operate a cannon, solve a puzzle, or any number of other activites. This entices people to really get out there and do some DEs for a shot at being the guy, and makes DEs entertaining as you have the ability to look after the fate of another player, or even be the heroic clutch guy that saved the mission when the main guy went down.
This adds some “long haul” to the event system without creating a farm.

In addition, the more mundane functions of a faction point system make karma more valuable, and you can treat karma gains like EOTN faction titles. The higher your faction in specific areas, the better your karma intake/better rewards on offer.

In addition, you could use the “called upon” system in conjunction with a player’s race or order to further filter and diversify these types of events. For instance, if a Charr with high iron legion standings, maybe you’re called upon by the the Legion itself for a mission that they wouldn’t dare give to a non-charr.

Brimwald.5894:

timmyf.1490:

Colin-

I’ve suggested this a couple times, but just in case it’s been overlooked… If you want to make doing Dynamic Events more rewarding, just increase the rewards! They don’t need to be different. Gold, Experience, and Karma all have useful sinks/conversions in game already.

I think that, rather than flatly increasing the rewards, you should scale the rewards based on how long the event went uncompleted. For example, an event like Champ Boar that gets fired off as soon as it’s ready will give the same rewards. An event that is often neglected, failed, or uncompleted, (like most of the escort quests), would scale gold, experience, and karma up based on a timer.

For example, if it goes 30 minutes before completion, you get double the normal rewards. If it’s 4 hours, you get 5x rewards. If it’s 8 hours, you get 10x rewards. That kind of thing.

This means that zones with low player population suddenly become very rewarding for groups of players who want to run through and complete events. Suddenly, these zones which are mostly empty are full of people. Players on high-population servers are guesting down to less-populated servers for the extra rewards (and those on the low-pop servers suddenly have open-world friends).

Very good idea. This will encourage players trying different events and has the added benefit of making leveling in places we hardly visit more enjoyable.

Colin, instead of just increasing these rewards, you should increase the skin diversity you can buy with them. For example, Karma only buys one exotic armor (temple). Gold only buys basic looking exotic armor sets on the TP. If you give us more to buy, then the rewards will feel more important like Karma did at launch (which is why players were farming karma in Orr).

I have to say I think this is a good idea as well, and it bridges off something already in the game – the xp scaling of mobs based on how long they’ve persisted.

I also agree with expanding uses for Karma in particular.

I also want to reiterate again that I think that enhancing DEs and adding new ones should be the primary focus of the LW. Instanced content and new dungeons should be treated as expansions to the PS and should be mostly permanent so they can be player/character focused.

I think some of the content that was bundled with the LW in the past year should be placed back in the game permanently as expansions to the PS (unlocking as you progress along a chain and ending with, say the MWF dungeon) along with upgrades to the PS allowing you to replay missions and see story events again.

cesmode.4257:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I think where the failure is lies in the rewards. You don’t get nowhere near enough rewards for doing DEs compared to other things, because karma is not very useful. Also, doing something extremely short and simple like killing a champion gives the same if not more rewards than a long DE like escorting someone, so no one does the escorts.

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

Hi,
Earlier in this thread I suggested a system called Global Dominance where as a server, we need to control the world map(all zones, all towns..as much as possible) against onslaughts of enemy NPCs. If an enemy NPC like a band of centaurs take over a town, they gain a foothold thus increasing their presence. After a short while they attack another town, and gain another foothold. We have to defeat these footholds and drive them back. Our world dominance % dictates a server-wide bonus, or something to that effect similar to WvW,

This does at least two good things:
-Allows the player to truly play in any zone they want without following the champ train
-Spreads the population out to all zones rather than just a few

Search for my post earlier in the thread. I explain it a bit more.

If you give bonuses for keeping the world free of NPC invaders, then you should get server wide negative bonuses for areas being conquered. ie -12% magic find because the enemy controls too much of your territory (obviously having less territory means less resources). This encourages people to fight, and people should have to fight, the world is in conflict after all.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

To tell what motivates me i have to first tell what does not motivates me.
1- Three to 30 pieces of some material while i need hundreds to finely get what i need is greatly demotivating for me.
2- Bunch of blues, greens and rares are not worthy reward too especialy for harder or time consuming content. Becouse they are easy to get everywhere and it is very demotivating to get same reward for (for example) Tequatl as it is for any other event or easy dungeon like CoF 1. And no providing us higher number of those things for harder content doest not make it more rewarding. Those things are so common that i just don feel rewarded. You can say that rares means ectos but then i can refer you to my first point :-)
This 2 points represent biggest issue of GW2 rewards. And what would motivate me?
1 – I dont like gear grind, but if you really want to have it in game give me that gear directly and not some material. It is very boring now. And if i would have to do different types of events for different type of gear it would motivate me to go for all possible events. Just quick example: Temple of Dwayna drops helms,
while Grenth drops rings, Golem mark swords and spears and so on, those are just examples how it could work. And this gear should be usable so at least exotic with reliable chance for ascendeds. And if that gear will be account bound there will be no problem with economy.
And of cource events can also drop common loot from chests like it does now so people that have every gear they need will still get something from it.
I would take something like this to eliminate that boring material grind and no usefull reward.
2 – But what i really love on GW2 is variety of armor and weapon skins. I absolutely need no gear grind in game if i can have so huge visual progression in game as it is in game now.
And focus on horizontal progression. Reward us with new skills that are not better then others but provide another variability in combat.
Seriosly who need to farm material for gear for months? There is enough of this in every other game.
First point is some kind of compromise how i could get motivated but second would make me to explore every piece of game and do every DE in game

ColinJohanson.2394:

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

First of all, reward bags from Dynamic Events should be come once a day / event / account. So it would not be worthwhile to run just 4 – 5 same Dynamic Events.

These rewards I would like to see from Dynamic Events if they are success:
- Random Precursor (very rarely, no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, only from Gold rewards)
- Ascended items ( very rarely, no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, only from Gold rewards)
- Exotic item (armor or weapon), (normal exotic weapon no precursor weapon) (rarely, no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, only from Gold rewards)
- Karma bottle (randomly no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- Rare item ( randomly, no matter what level character is, but under lvl 25 no higher than level 25 rare item. When character is above lvl 25 higher rare items, lvl 1 – 80 areas Gold or Silver rewards )
- Masterwork item (mostly, no matter what level character is, level 1 – 80 areas, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- Fine item (never)
- White item (never)
- T1 – T6 crafting materials ( always, depending characters level, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- Gold (always, level 1 – 15 area 15 silvers, level 15 – 25 area 25 silvers, level 25 – 35 area 35 silvers, level 35 – 45 area 45 silvers, level 45 – 55 area 55 silvers, level 55 – 65 area 65 silvers, level 65 – 75 area 75 silvers, level 70 – 80 area 85 silver, level 80 area 1 gold, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- No extra rewards from Champion events, Champion Bags are reward itself.
- Fail, no bag

ColinJohanson.2394:

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

To unlock new skills and to progress with your character is the absolute BEST REWARD that you can give us.
It felt always awesome in GW1, when you were able to hunt down a new boss enemy to receive from them a new class related Elite Skill.

The same way we could have that too again in GW2 under a slightly changed core mechanic… instead of having to hunt down just only boss monsters. place all over Tyria various types of “Skill Masters” which can take you as their pupils from which you can learn over the course of various tasks you have to fulfill for them new skills, new traits, new abilities and new talents
(Please take a look onto my suggestion about splittign up the trait system into Traits, Abilities and Talents!
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Skill-Alteration-1-5/first#post3100373
Yes it would make character progression more complex, but also like sooooo much more rewarding when you simply have alot more options to customize your character into a very unique class build in which you can chance how your skills look like, how your skills functionize and where you can improve specific basic talents of your class to unlock over tiem new sub classes for them into which they can specialize to unlock other new things, like new weapon types with new weapon skills and alot more things)

There could be Skill Masters for every kind of Trait Line a Class has…
For example a Thief could find a “Sage of Shadows” somewhere wandering around in a dark place of Tyria that would teach a player new Skills, Abilities, Traits and Talents that are associated to the Shadow Arts of a Thief.
Then again we could find somewhere else a “Sage of Assassinations”, that could teach us alot more things about Deadly Arts.
The “Sage of Betrayals” on the other hand could teach us alot more things about Trickery. The “Sage of Movements” would be our master for teaching us alot more about Acrobatics and finalyl the “Sage of Dexterity” would be our man for teachings around Critical Strikes.

This could be just a concept, that you could stretch out all over tyria over the Course of Expansions like you did with GW1, where we were able to learn with every new part of the game new skills. These types of Npcs could become of higher ranks, so nearer we reach our own personal perfection.
For me personally, this all would feel over the course of time like 10000000x more rewarding, than chasing down millions of champions to kill them for loot.

Character Progression is for me the most rewarding thing in MMORPG’s that motivates me to keep playing games like these for yearsto come…
—-

I’ve more points, regarding RNG/Black Lion Chest Keys ect, but I felt, the most impactful thing that lets us receive the most best feeling for something being rewarding is based all around Character Progression and systems like the Trait System based around that. Thats also the reason, why I listed up Character Progression under my 3 Main Topic wishes for discussions, because I absolutely think this is something together with rewards, where GW2 is heavily lacking in currently and why the game oftenly feels so unrewarding, because most of the current rewards add absolutely nothing to our Character Progression, once we reach Level 80

The whole Character Progression System of GW2 needs to become more complex, complex not in regard of “too hard to understand”, but instead of that complex in regard of making up for more interesting character builds through specializing our classes and lettign the game feel always rewarding due to learning new skills, traits, abilities to modify our skills and talents to improve our traits and unlock new sub classes ect. on the long road, even once we are able to explore Cantha and other continents again (new ones hopefully included someday like Utopia, please don’t throw that over board)

Briefly said, get more back to the roots, there are just certain mechanics of GW1, that are missing for GW2, which made GW1 so successful.

Sinope.5630:

First of all, reward bags from Dynamic Events should be come once a day / event / account. So it would not be worthwhile to run just 4 – 5 same Dynamic Events.

These rewards I would like to see from Dynamic Events if they are success:
- Random Precursor (very rarely, no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, only from Gold rewards)
- Ascended items ( very rarely, no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, only from Gold rewards)
- Exotic item (armor or weapon), (normal exotic weapon no precursor weapon) (rarely, no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, only from Gold rewards)
- Karma bottle (randomly no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- Rare item ( randomly, no matter what level character is, but under lvl 25 no higher than level 25 rare item. When character is above lvl 25 higher rare items, lvl 1 – 80 areas Gold or Silver rewards )
- Masterwork item (mostly, no matter what level character is, level 1 – 80 areas, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- Fine item (never)
- White item (never)
- kitten crafting materials ( always, depending characters level, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- Gold (always, level 1 – 15 area 15 silvers, level 15 – 25 area 25 silvers, level 25 – 35 area 35 silvers, level 35 – 45 area 45 silvers, level kitten area 55 silvers, level 55 – 65 area 65 silvers, level 65 – 75 area 75 silvers, level 70 – 80 area 85 silver, level 80 area 1 gold, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- No extra rewards from Champion events, Champion Bags are reward itself.
- Fail, no bag

Woow! I am just wondering why no one thought of this before. They just make us go in different zones only for the LS event but no one cares about the others.

I would add to your suggestion that, the rewards from repeating events will be only experience according to your level and possibly the karma as we get now, but no money or chests rewards anymore and the drops will be as now.
It will give the option for people to run the same vents but the profit rate will become minimum to null if the players are interested in items and gold.

Seeing a reward chest on the low right of the screen will definitely make people want more.
Your idea fits those who can play only one hour in a day…. they will mostly play the Queensdale events like they do now, but the others who play over 1 hour will be “forced” sort of speak to go into other zones for the rewards.

I see them running the lvl 80 zones events for the gold rewards and then start to go to low level zones. while low level characters will start to move into higher zones.

Anyway, brilliant idea.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I think where the failure is lies in the rewards. You don’t get nowhere near enough rewards for doing DEs compared to other things, because karma is not very useful. Also, doing something extremely short and simple like killing a champion gives the same if not more rewards than a long DE like escorting someone, so no one does the escorts.

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

Actually, Karma is very useful for crafting ascended items. I go to Orr and get those jewelry boxes and enjoy all the obsidian shards that I get from them.

I know there are other ways to get Obsidian shards, but Karma is a great way to get them.

BobbyStein.2315:

So you’d like the game to react to you on a more personal level, such that people, places, etc. respond differently depending on your accomplishments, decisions, and so on?

Let me add a different perspective from the poster you quoted, at least for a specific area.

One of the things that I didn’t like in the personal story instances, is the fact that content can be forever skipped. The fact that by choosing between a noble human or not, or all the personal story instances where I had to choose to go either to point A or point B. I hated that, because I felt that the story was more immersing when I could experience the whole of it, and not just part of it. In fact, having replayed the human’s story with three different characters made me enjoy it a lot more than with just one, because it made Divinity’s Reach feel richer and more layered in complexity. And even then, there have been instances that I didn’t have the opportunity to ver try, and that I’ll probably never see them ever, unless you somehow revamp that system and allow us to replay every single instance.

I hope something like that is never done again, especially because I also believe it’s a waste of budget and effort from you guys to create so many instances that are meant to be skipped.

If someday you build, say, 30 new story instances for a specific area, then I hope you (= or whoever is responsible for this) allow each character to go through all 30 of them, not just 5 and skip the other 25 for alts.

On a side note, I also hope that future instances allow (and scale) for party content so I can experience them with my friends, and that I can replay them whenever I want, and perhaps, unlock an “hard mode” for each of them. I believe that an hard mode creates incentive to replay this kind of stuff, and replaying can be healthy to storytelling, because it allows players to better memorize what’s happening, and to take a closer look at all the secondary details that they might have otherwise missed in the dialogue or somewhere else. Of course, that would also require scene skipping for those who don’t want to see cutscenes a second time, or (after losing if content is hard enough) after 10 times. :P In sum, something like what GW1 offered with its mission structure.

However, and I think that this is the point of the poster you quoted, I would like to see more non-linear stuff in open-world gameplay. Dynamic events are a rich pot of untapped potential for that. Events that can lock or unlock important places, important NPCs, buffs/ debuffs, unique cosmetic items, and of course, modify NPC’s dialogue. I believe that, from an open-world point of view, the structure you had with the personal story (where you would choose between going to point A or point B, skipping one for the other), could work very well. Especially because you can always replay the event.

This creates the opportunity of existing dynamic events that lead to two simultaneous sequence events instead of one. So after scouting an NPC to their home, you could either follow them through an underground passage to prepare an ambush, being the only mean to get access to that passage and what lies within, or protecting his house from invaders, and both situations would be two different dynamic events instead of a single one with two objectives, and both would tell different stories, or the same story in different ways, and both would unlock different rewards from each other, and affect NPC’s dialogue differently.

DiogoSilva.7089:

One of the things that I didn’t like in the personal story instances, is the fact that content can be forever skipped. The fact that by choosing between a noble human or not, or all the personal story instances where I had to choose to go either to point A or point B. I hated that, because I felt that the story was more immersing when I could experience the whole of it, and not just part of it. In fact, having replayed the human’s story with three different characters made me enjoy it a lot more than with just one, because it made Divinity’s Reach feel richer and more layered in complexity. And even then, there have been instances that I didn’t have the opportunity to ver try, and that I’ll probably never see them ever, unless you somehow revamp that system and allow us to replay every single instance.

I think the idea in Guild Wars 2 is that you’d play the Personal Story of other players in order to see all the different story lines, etc. This is complicated by two things:

1) Unlike in Guild Wars 1 (where missions and most quests required other players – unless you wanted to risk it with henchmen… and prior to the introduction of Heroes), you had to party up with people to play content. This made the content more social. Because the PS can be completed almost in its entirety as a solo venture, there’s really no reason to attempt to party up with others. I’ve tried using LFG to find folks to play PS with me, but I’ve never once had anybody join.

2) The rewards for completing the PS of others are pretty low given the time investment…

BobbyStein.2315:

So you’d like the game to react to you on a more personal level, such that people, places, etc. respond differently depending on your accomplishments, decisions, and so on?

Who would not want that? Does the ‘personality’ (charming, honorable, brute) actually have any impact outside of some dialogue choices?

timmyf.1490:

DiogoSilva.7089:

One of the things that I didn’t like in the personal story instances, is the fact that content can be forever skipped. The fact that by choosing between a noble human or not, or all the personal story instances where I had to choose to go either to point A or point B. I hated that, because I felt that the story was more immersing when I could experience the whole of it, and not just part of it. In fact, having replayed the human’s story with three different characters made me enjoy it a lot more than with just one, because it made Divinity’s Reach feel richer and more layered in complexity. And even then, there have been instances that I didn’t have the opportunity to ver try, and that I’ll probably never see them ever, unless you somehow revamp that system and allow us to replay every single instance.

I think the idea in Guild Wars 2 is that you’d play the Personal Story of other players in order to see all the different story lines, etc. This is complicated by two things:

1) Unlike in Guild Wars 1 (where missions and most quests required other players – unless you wanted to risk it with henchmen… and prior to the introduction of Heroes), you had to party up with people to play content. This made the content more social. Because the PS can be completed almost in its entirety as a solo venture, there’s really no reason to attempt to party up with others. I’ve tried using LFG to find folks to play PS with me, but I’ve never once had anybody join.

2) The rewards for completing the PS of others are pretty low given the time investment…

in GW1, the story was mandatory in here is just optional. You couldn’t unlock zones unless you beat the mission so people were “forced” to play together while in GW2 you can skip the whole story because it feels just an option not a requirement.

One of my best PvE-experiences in any game up to now was probably the ‘War in Kryta’-story in GW1. The concept behind it is/was probably the same than the one of the living story, but in opposite to most of the living story content we’ve seen so far, I really enjoyed ‘War in Kryta’. I played every quest of it with every character I had (10, one per class), it was just awesome. ‘Winds of Change’, it’s follower, had also some very nice quests, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as WiK since there were a bit too many quests in the sense of ‘kill them. x/y left’. The good thing about WoC was that there was also a hardmode version of it, letting the player face challenges which belonged definitly to the hardest content available in GW1.

I think the major difference between those questlines and the living story (or stories) is that those questlines felt authentic, or at least I felt that way. The white mantle was always a threat to Kryta, it wasn’t something completly new. And the ‘Ministry of Purity’ was introduced very slowly, letting the player in the dark about it’s true intent for a very long time.
In GW2, it’s every four week something almost totally new: One week it rains pirates from the sky, than there are big crabs invading an island the player has never heard of before, and another week there is suddendly a new big toxic tower in the middle of a lake where some kraits and quaggans lived before. For me, it seems totally unrelated, I really do not see any connection between it.

What I personally would like to see as ‘living story’ is the ‘rise and fall’ of the different ‘evil forces’ Kryta already has: The sons of Svanir, the Inquest, the Nightmare Court, the Flame Legion, the Dredge, and so on (without any fancy alliances which seem to be out of the blue). I can imagine a lot of cool storyquests/instances the player could be sent trough, leading to the deafeat of the enemy forces at the very end. This doesn’t meant they are gone forever, they can rise again (this allows you to build content in a way that it doesn’t interfere with any personal storyline). Take WiK as an example – let, for example, the sons of Svanir gather, defeating various Norn-outposts on their march to Hoelbrak, and, as big final, the final battle for Hoelbrak itsself (just like the final WiK-quest, the battle for lions arch).

This is just an example, there are plenty of other possibilities. But please, stop delivering new super-villains with new mega-evil-plans every two weeks/month, because like that, people just forget about them after having done the achievements, because there’s already a new super-mega-evil villain with new achievements waiting that have to be done.

PS: Sorry for my bad English, tried my best but it’s not my mother tongue.

BobbyStein.2315:

Einlanzer.1627:

In particular, more attention needs to be given to the conundrum of the conflict that exists between the PS and LW. Reconciling those two on a conceptual level should be the top priority of this conversation, IMO. I feel like most people actually prefer the former over the latter, but regardless of which one Anet chooses to roll with, something needs to be done so that the disjoint between the two isn’t controlling the evolution of the world and the lore going forward.

This is something that we’ve been discussing extensively. We’ll share more details when we’re able.

Thanks for commenting. I have a personal fear (fear is perhaps a little melodramatic, but bear with me) that there isn’t as much concern about the world ‘making sense’, so to speak, as I feel there ought to be. Being a bit of an over-analytical nerd, I suffer cognitive dissonance easily when two opposing concepts exist simultaneously within the same setting or continuity.

Having given it a fair bit of thought, I definitely feel like much of what we’ve seen labeled as “LW” (including most instances and dungeons) should have been implemented as PS expansions that could be triggered, unlocked, and progressed through on a player-by-player basis along upgrades to the PS like being able to replay content, reset your story (gem shop item), read NPC bios, and ‘upgrade’ your home instance, and maybe even recruit NPC henchmen to join you in instanced content.

The LW should instead be about enhancements to the aesthetics of the open world and the DE systems that are focused on enriching existing lore and adding new sandboxy content rather than changing existing content to conform to a new monthly story. You could even throw in the occasional temporary mini-story (autonomous from the PS and the development of the larger story) alongside holiday or recurring events just for the charm and novelty of it as well as.

This would allow the two to exist simultaneously without stumbling over each other too much. But, if you really, really want to go forward with how the LW has been set up and crafted over the last year, then you should really just more or less remove the PS and transform it into completed LW content that can be reintroduced later as “in the past” missions.

Nike.2631:

Ug. Worst of all possible solutions. Gold carries no intrinsic value whatsoever (beyond the fixed rate of conversion to Icy runestones). Pumping more gold into the system doesn’t get anyone closer to their goal, it just shuffles the order of who gets theirs first.

And when everybody gets more gold… nobody gets there any faster.

The value necessary to advance towards Legendaries and Ascended is in the accumulation of crating mats. With the built in alternative that if you get mats you don’t want/need, you can sell them for gold. No one ever makes a Gift of Bifrost faster than 250 unidentified dyes enter the system. You could multiply our gold acquisition by a factor of a thousand and the real “progress clock” wouldn’t change.

Items that can be traded for gold would work, so high tier mats, rare and exotic items, laurels, champion bags… as long as the end result can be turned into gold and the earning rate is comparable to other sources.

Unique rewards like specific zone armor skins can (and should!) be added on top of it, but those alone will only draw a limited pool of players (those who want said skin) for a limited time (until they get it), after which they’ll go back to champ farming.

It is also important to avoid the too common case where just farming gold to buy your desired item is easier than trying to get the item itself.

ColinJohanson.2394:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Dynamic Reward Scaling

1. Rewards scale up based on effort.

I have no idea how complicated this would be to code, and can imagine there are traps inherent in the idea like creating exploits or violating the “happy to see other players” value. You have a system that rates bronze/silver/gold, however, so there’s something like it already in game.

If a friend and I duo a champion, setting up combos together, swapping aggro, and generally bring all our skills to bear to avoid death and defeat it, that should give us better loot than autoattacking the same champ down in ninety seconds with a zerg train. Doing a 15 minute event chain in a mid-level zone with a couple other players should reward as well as a 15 minute world boss with the zerg.

As well means a similar chance at ascended crafting mats, gold, karma, exotic, ascended, precursor.

If you can create a “reward for sweat” algorithm you’ll make some areas of the game a lot more rewarding without creating the new farm spot.

2. Reward scales with infrequent traffic

Champs, Elites, Veterans and DEs that are relatively infrequently done should give better rewards the longer they remain undone. This creates a whole new adventure of going out into the world and trying to find the less-traveled corners, and it automatically eliminates the chances of creating the new fotm farm spot. Since players often follow the path of least resistance, this may even correlate nicely with “reward for sweat” as events people avoid because they take more effort become more rewarding.

If you implement something like this, please make sure the API doesn’t report information that could be used to pinpoint which areas of the game have been idle longest. That would create a ridiculous zerg race and defeat the whole purpose. Part of the benefit of this idea is to put a sense of discovery/adventure back into the world.

3. Please do not just slap a daily cooldown on rewards for all champs and DEs!

This will just spread the farm. People will simply create longer farming loops or a rotation of loops so that they hit each thing once in a couple hour play session. We don’t need more restrictions on farming, we need reward equity brought to non-farm activities.

BobbyStein.2315:

So you’d like the game to react to you on a more personal level, such that people, places, etc. respond differently depending on your accomplishments, decisions, and so on?

There are examples of this in LotRO that work well – If my main in that game walks across almost any of the primary town/hubs, there are characters that call out greetings in passing, often with specific thanks because of tasks I’ve done to their benefit. Rescuing kids toggles on the thankful parents dialogue, etc. It’s not a system that maps to many things in GuildWars 2, but it is particularly gratifying as a player. I think more of the PS steps could trigger mail deliveries hours or days later as someone sends delayed thanks after they catch their breath. I think in particular you could rig the Order headquarters to have more pop-up ambient dialogue like that triggered by you advance through the Personal Story. Make the HQ something of a verbal trophy room for your successes and give me a reason to check back periodically as I move through the later half of the Personal Story.

I will point to one curiously cool bit I have seen in GuildWars 2 – the aide in Rytlock’s office has a whole dialogue chain that only appears if you are a Ranger, and I suspect it may only appear if you are non-Charr Ranger (I don’t have a Charr ranger to test this). Proof the technology already exists in the engine.

I realize that these more responsive pieces of narrative have a huge overhead – likely only one character in 8 will ever trigger that conversation line, but I think if there were more of them, many more of them, people would be more inclined to play their alts more slowly and fully, knowing that the experience from race to race or class to class will be genuinely different on their second, third, and fourth play through of areas that are otherwise burned through without a backwards glance. Even if the player only has one character, talking to an NPC that recognizes you are an Asura and reacts appropriately will make the experience more personal and engaging.

This may be a manifestation of critical mass again, instead of it being a piece of real estate that has 4+ events that bring it to life in the minds of the player, its a character that responds differently to 4+ classes or races, making them seem like a person and not a person-shaped sign post.

I think the root of the problem has been found. The LS and the PS don’t match up. Because of the iterative nature of the development of the game, the PS wasn’t designed to be able to give enough lenience to the LS because the LS didn’t exist when the PS was created. I would say that the iterative design in this game is 99% awesome, but it has created a huge issue when you guys shifted the focus of the design of the game. Because the two don’t match up, it is causing dissonance.

I would say it’s time for the LS to be altered so that the LS can focus on what GW2 should be about: Fighting the Elder Dragons. Go back to your roots and reshift the LS focus so that it matches up with the PS.

I think that is an easier thing to do than to alter the PS. Heck, put a disclaimer for the PS that says, “You are reliving events that have already happened. The world is changed now.”

BobbyStein.2315:

So you’d like the game to react to you on a more personal level, such that people, places, etc. respond differently depending on your accomplishments, decisions, and so on?

No. That would be neat, of course…and add to immersion, but it’s not what I was getting at.

I want the story to on some level be under the control of the player(s). I want our decisions, actions, or inaction to cause changes in the story and the world.

To be honest, I don’t care if the world changes are permanent…I understand the limitations of a persistent online world and I’m okay suspending disbelief as long as I get to develop my character’s story and have something to show for it. This was one of the coolest aspects to dynamic events which could be greatly expanded on and better realized. I could take part in a story that would turn out different ways depending on what I did. I was involved and invested in the world, and I could come back and help it turn out a different way next time.

Producing story lines that branch, and letting the player(s) navigate.

The personal story was a simple version of this…we had at least some choice which lead to us seeing different story lines (although they all ended up in the same place…which maybe is unavoidable).

Some of the dynamic event chains also offered this. Again, it was a simple version that I would love to see expanded on and improved.

I guess the central point I was trying to make is that the content I enjoy is content which is more personal…building my own story in the context of the story of the world. I felt like the personal story instances and DEs that the game launched with were good basic tools which could be used to do that. I think they could be expanded on and improved to do that even better.

I feel like on a high level, right now the living story is running completely contrary to that… not just because it is not at all connected to my character’s story in any real way (or the story of the world for that matter), but also because it is taking up all the development time and leaving none (at least this is how it seems) for expanding the parts of the game I enjoy.

The living story content we’re getting every two weeks seems much more like standard MMO fare… the kind of time sink stuff that old MMOs did to keep players paying a monthly fee. I’d like to see the great and innovative game design that sets GW2 apart be expanded on and more fully realized.

Hello!
First of all I need to thank Anet for making such a beautiful game! No other MMO that has no subscription fee is nowhere near as good as GW2 and people should really be more thankful for that!

One problem that i have with Living World is that when you add a dungeon such as the molten alliance or the sky pirates one, is that they are still there, we didn’t destroy the areas or anything. After the living story patch and when the enemy is defeated i am sure someone would take over the dungeons.
For example the molten alliance one: Maybe some oozes, cave bats or spiders live there now or maybe even destroyers or maybe inquest took over the place and made a research spot out of it. If players go in that dungeon they have a choice to battle the existing threat (Destroyers have taken over the cave and attack nearby settlements or something like that) or we can choose the " Once upon a time this cave was the base of molten alliance, but the heroes of Tyria battled them for the sake of us all" and then we could play the old version of the dungeon( the one we had in the LS).
Same goes for the one near Lions Arch. Maybe pirates took it as their base or even some merchants now sell their goodies there.

I feel like this would make the world feel more living. It would feel like the way things would go if someone abandons a good spot – someone will take it over.

One more thing, that maybe doesn’t effect LS that much.
I feel like there is not enough to do. For the last year we have been doing the same things over and over again. People are waiting for the LS patch to have new things to do. I feel like if you would add more activities to the game people wouldn’t be so critical about the LS updates. I feel like we really need some fun mini-games and leaderboards. I even feel that a damage meter would be good. It doesn’t have to be like the traditional dps meter, it can just be a statistic chart in the end of a dungeon that shows the damage done, healing done, boons given(protection,regeneration etc), revives, weakness and vulnerability applied and so on. It would even show people that every profession is a good asset to the group and maybe it would even help you balance some skills. Some people like to create builds and this would be a really good way to test them out and get some good feedback.
I know you don’t want to split the community or anything but different people like different things.

I will add some more ideas on the suggestion forum. If someone found anything i wrote helpful or interesting i can talk more about them.

Thanks again Anet.

Zaxares.5419:

ColinJohanson.2394:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Perhaps another look is needed at long-term rewards and goals that players strive for. It seems a lot of angst is directed at long-term rewards that players feel are “too grindy”, such as Legendaries, Ascended gear, and more recently, festive content such as the Halloween items. Of course we want to have long-term goals to work towards, as this heightens the feeling of satisfaction when we finally do get it. However, to avoid creating that feeling of “grind”, requirements for these rewards could be spread out across a variety of game content with lower tiers of completion. For example:

- Instead of relying on a Precursor to drop by chance, the player could acquire one (per character) by undertaking a quest to defeat a number of powerful bosses scattered across the world. This includes not just World Bosses, but also foes that are rarely tackled, such as Lieutenant Kholer in Ascalonian Catacombs, or Guild Bounty targets. This would encourage players to seek out foes and dungeon paths that are unpopular or rarely seen.
- Once they have defeated all of these foes, the player is then sent to a special solo instance where they have to defeat one last powerful enemy (a Doppelganger, perhaps?), after which they receive their Precursor. This Precursor can then be sold or kept for personal use as usual.

Another idea might be putting special NPCs in a player’s Home Instance that grant special rewards based on the player’s activity in-game. For example, suppose there is a Seraph Liaison in the Home Instance who tracks how much effort the player has put into the war with the centaurs. Completing Hearts/Dynamic Events/bosses linked to the Seraph/Centaur war grants karma (increased from the current amount) and increases the player’s “renown”. Depending on their Renown level, karma can be spent at the Liaison NPC to obtain materials, weapon/armor skins, or even special items that are used for Ascended/Legendary crafting.

For instance, to reach Renown Level 1, the player must have completed all Hearts in Queensdale linked to the centaurs, completed all the centaur-linked Dynamic Events in Queensdale, and killed the three Veteran Centaur Chieftains at the Righteous Hoofmoot. To reach Level 6 (the highest level), the player must have completed all Hearts in all maps linked to centaurs, completed all centaur-linked DE’s, and slain the World Boss Ulgoth the Modniir.

At each level, a new tier of rewards is unlocked at the Seraph Liaison, allowing the player to purchase things like Centaur weapon skins, Vials of Blood fine crafting mats, Onyx rare crafting mats, special minis etc. for karma. (Possibly also gold.)

Similar systems could be set up for wars against the Nightmare Court, Flame Legion, the Sons of Svanir/Icebrood, Destroyers etc.

To encourage players to return to past maps they’ve already completed, utilise the Daily system! Having a Daily task like “Centaur Crusher: Fight the centaurs by completing <X> centaur-related DE in Queensdale/Kessex Hills/Gendarran Fields/Harathi Hinterlands” would encourage players to go to a specific map and aim for particular events.

This is actually a pretty good idea. You need to accomplish certain things to get a precursor (not a legendary). e.g. complete ALL paths of ALL dungeons which will reward one precursor of your choice, but only one dungeon master precursor per account.

There are so many great feedback and ideas here. Great job to everyone:).

I will put in my two cents as well than. Not sure if someone already type this…just so much to read…haha.

Here goes:

I love the DE system, however, having them happening again and again in matters of minutes made them all so pointless and useless. They don’t happen enough to farm nor are they different enough or fun to do and reward is not great.

I mean, do have some DE that just happen on its own or due to event within the world. But have them do so once a day or two times a day with greater reward behind them so people will do them.

Also I believe it will be great if some DE only happen by what story path that our character has chosen (as a way to activate some DE). Different players can activate certain DE chain base on their personal story path that they have pick. That way it gives the player some control and effect within the world. Who knows, it might even have people be more social and try to group up with certain players to play certain DE.

Have it so that some DE only happen at night or day. Some only happen base on the number of players on the map. There are just so many interactive ways to play around with DE system rather it just happen out of the blue or by a time-base and “ok, whatever, it will happen again in 5 minute.”

I think that way player can feel more interactive with the world they are in.

Tamps.6125:

One problem that i have with Living World is that when you add a dungeon such as the molten alliance or the sky pirates one, is that they are still there, we didn’t destroy the areas or anything. After the living story patch and when the enemy is defeated i am sure someone would take over the dungeons.
For example the molten alliance one: Maybe some oozes, cave bats or spiders live there now or maybe even destroyers or maybe inquest took over the place and made a research spot out of it. If players go in that dungeon they have a choice to battle the existing threat (Destroyers have taken over the cave and attack nearby settlements or something like that) or we can choose the " Once upon a time this cave was the base of molten alliance, but the heroes of Tyria battled them for the sake of us all" and then we could play the old version of the dungeon( the one we had in the LS).
Same goes for the one near Lions Arch. Maybe pirates took it as their base or even some merchants now sell their goodies there.

Pretty much like dungeons work now. None is complaining that getting to repeat a dungeon story parts is killing their immersion or what else. I think GW2 has a strong core which should be build upon and expanded rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind seeing the whole living world idea ditched and instead keep expanding the personal story. Adding dungeons, new zones and other content updates should still happen, just without the constraints of the Living World.

BobbyStein.2315:

So you’d like the game to react to you on a more personal level, such that people, places, etc. respond differently depending on your accomplishments, decisions, and so on?

Fozzik.1742:

No. That would be neat, of course…and add to immersion, but it’s not what I was getting at.

I want the story to on some level be under the control of the player(s). I want our decisions, actions, or inaction to cause changes in the story and the world.

Then you want to play a table-top roleplaying game, because until MMOs are powered by Story-Engines that can pass a Turing test and qualify as full blown AIs all you can do is choose the depth to which you maintain the illusions of Choice & Consequence.

They can do a better job of maintaining the illusion with tools already to hand, but the cost is very, very steep. I think threads like this have a lot to do with helping them choose which paths will deliver the greatest gains from costs they are able to pay.

Fozzik.1742:

To be honest, I don’t care if the world changes are permanent…I understand the limitations of a persistent online world and I’m okay suspending disbelief as long as I get to develop my character’s story and have something to show for it. This was one of the coolest aspects to dynamic events which could be greatly expanded on and better realized. I could take part in a story that would turn out different ways depending on what I did. I was involved and invested in the world, and I could come back and help it turn out a different way next time.

Producing story lines that branch, and letting the player(s) navigate.

The personal story was a simple version of this…we had at least some choice which lead to us seeing different story lines (although they all ended up in the same place…which maybe is unavoidable).

Some of the dynamic event chains also offered this. Again, it was a simple version that I would love to see expanded on and improved.

I guess the central point I was trying to make is that the content I enjoy is content which is more personal…building my own story in the context of the story of the world. I felt like the personal story instances and DEs that the game launched with were good basic tools which could be used to do that. I think they could be expanded on and improved to do that even better.

And though put another way, we see another voice for the critical mass issue. The game launched with great presence. The world IS RICH. Building directly on that richness isn’t additive, it’s multiplicative. More isn’t just more, its MUCH MORE.

Think of the value of DEs or unique reactive dialogue pieces as N.
The impact on the players is N^2.

1 event in the area = 1 impact = “Eh, its whatcha get.”
2 events in the area = 4 impact = “Yeah, I remember that place.”
3 events in the area = 9 impact = “Oh yeah. I totally thought that was cool!”
4 events in the area = 16 impact = “This. This is a LIVING world!”

Giving us 50 new events was a great idea, but the formlessness of the presentation buried it. Use your bi-weekly cadence to highlight a clustered burst of them and you’ll see a far different result.

Some thoughts…

Living stories need different interaction types instead of just farms then a dungeon then next living story with some remnants left over that no one visits anymore. Point in case:

• Southsun: Karka Queen is hardly ever done anymore. The pre event is annoying full of annoying and some overpowered massive mobs and the rewards are terrible. No unique skins and very niche stats. No one goes there anymore outside of the rare gathering of nodes.
  • The skins should have been island/tiki themed like they were in the first release.
  • The armor should have been based on Alastia Crows armor, which is still in the PvP locker but not yet available for PvE (Please add this armor as a skin).
  • The event should be reworked so that we actually have impact and stop all the crazed animals for good.
  • As various updates happen the island should become a bit more developed in the rough settler area/villages to be more “resort like” keeping the story going.

Zone changes are far too abrupt per patch and should have a smoother transition over a few patches, with some sort of gossip from npcs around various areas to get people interested in what’s going on.

• Take the current Krait changes to Kessek Hills.
  • One patch trees everywhere, second patch no trees in sections, yet no sign of anyone actually chopping them down or moving them to another place.
  • Next patch green toxic stuff everywhere, tower, and plank-walkways all over.
  • There should have been krait chopping trees down and dragging them to the water for at least a week or two before the first patch with no trees, then planked pathways starting to show up in the water and toxic stuff starting to spread out, then the tower reveal.

There should be player interaction that isn’t just “A Farm with Achievement Reward”, then “A Dungeon with Achievement Reward”.

• Examples:
  • Players must work together to build a structure or repair a destroyed place by gathering various materials and crafting them into ingots/planks/whatever for building. Then these are applied to various buildings (requiring various levels of crafting skills) until said structure is built. Then something happens/moves on to next part of scripted event+rewards.
  • This would require some players to gather and some to craft to complete the event. Perhaps an NPC could be created at the event that would take the gathered items and give specific items to other players that couldn’t be sold to prevent profiteering and event failure due to greed. Those specific items would then be used to craft the materials used to repair/build whatever and also could not be sold.
    • Example: Woodsman needs 10,000 wooden planks to rebuild destroyed library.
    • Hundreds of Players bring 30,000 wood to Woodsman.
    • Woodsman passes out “quality wood sections” to players with Artificer/Huntsman/Weaponsmith of skill 300+ to turn into “quality planks” (non sellable to npcs and not list-able on Trading Post)
    • Players give planks back to Woodsman or can apply them to broke structure (like repairing in wvw).
    • Structure is built/repaired and event moves on and everyone who participated is rewarded via Achievement Panel for collecting X wood or crafting X planks but only when structure is built/repaired.
    • For those who hate collecting/crafting there would be a parallel event where they have to defend the structure or something similar to get credit for when it’s built/repaired.

• Suggested Rewards Quest / Achievement Chains to…
  • unlock a bank slot
  • get a black lion key or a ticket or a ticket scrap.
  • get town clothing
  • get guild influence scrolls
  • duplicate a node in your home instance so you have 2 of them
  • make the home nodes gather-able on all your characters
  • various sized bags from 15 to 20 slot
  • more armor skins like Alastia Crows, or weapons skins
  • trophies for your home instance
  • unique merchants for home instance that would sell unique items/consumables.
  • unlock a bag slot on a character
  • get a consumable that lets you account unlock a single dye or turn an already unlocked dye into an account unlocked dye.
  • Personal Gate in home instance that lets you set any single waypoint as a free teleport (can be changed 1/week) and then gives you a travel stone to travel there.
  • Personal home stone to transport back to your home instance for free.
  • Previously gone tickets for skins

about the part where a dev states “we don’t create long texts because people don’t read it”… This makes me sad. While reading isn’t for everyone, there are still tons of people out there who enjoy a good read.

Anet shouldn’t ignore successful RPGs out there. Skyrim has ingame books with hundrets, if not thousands, of pages of text. Pushing the game towards the Fast Food consumer just makes for a poor quality imho.

As I’m playing Skyrim at the moment because I’m a bit burned out of GW2, I can see that big difference which I haven’t seen before. Quests seem to make the big difference in the storytelling department. I like how Bethesta can create THAT huge amount of stories/quests/lore in that short time (since Oblivion).

I’d bring back a form of the traditional quests. Not the same, but something (a system) that tells us stories again. I’m tired of the generic events.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

Even if I commented that some of the ideas in here are great for making people go into another zones and do the events, it will not actually make people break their habits. Everything in this universe is described by its cycle and rotation: the electrons around the atom, the daily activities like eating sleeping, drinking, working, the planets rotation around the sun, the galaxies around their center, and so on. And all these are done with the minimum energy consumption

No one can stop or change these cycles and rotations so it will never end in GW2 either. People’s lives are very robotic doing the same things all day everyday. Any change will work for a short time but in long term people will still be coming back to their habits using the less energy as possible.

I know this is not a constructive comment but like someone said above, the train will go on and on, only it will have a longer or shorter track.