Guild Wars 2

Don’t know if this’ll get bundled into the main thread about Whiteside’s latest post, but I thought it was worth specifically calling out two bullet points. They are:

- Adding more variation to creatures, enhancing our open world scaling system, as well as evolving many events and experiences across Tyria.

- Fixing and improving existing content throughout the game, and better tying it into the overall sense of player progression within Guild Wars 2.

GW2’s best asset is its beautiful huge world, and the fact that much of it is obsoleted as you level as things stand currently is a real waste of resources.

Finding a way to have exploration throughout the map remain meaningful for long-term players will really, really help the game’s longevity, and I’m very pleased to see that some of the coming updates show that ANet knows that.

I’ve been saying since release that Champion mobs should drop loot at actual, not scaled level.

And I think having seasonal events focused on a particular zone (which Halloween did to some extent) would help too. Christmas in Hoelbrak! Valentine’s Day in the Grove! Back-to-school in Rata Sum! Each with its own cluster of temporary level 80 (or scaled) content encouraging players to revisit a low-level zone.

Anyway, whether these are the solutions chosen or not, I’m glad to see that the solutions are being looked for.

One simple way ANet can make all PvE content relevant is expanding on what skill points and karma can be spent on. This alone would make running event chains in the PvE world worth doing. Then all they need to do is add new events and keep the events going to keep players moving through the zones.

If they wanted to condense players into certain zones and encourage exploration they could modify the daily reward to include “X mobs killed in Y zone” or “X events done in Y zone”, changing the zone daily to keep it from feeling repetitive.

There’s a lot of simple things like this that could help to keep the world feeling relevant and populated.

They should just make champions and veterans mobs in the open world drop the tokens from the new fractal dungeon. That alone will certainly make people head for champion when someone does a shoutout over map chat.

I agree completely – it’s a shame to see some of these beautiful zones so underpopulated now, and it can cause difficulties with the balance of dynamic event chains which often seem to be stuck in the ‘bad guys have won and taken over the camp’ phase.

Great suggestions above – especially for themed seasonal events.

Three more suggestions – two of them are not particularly original but deserve repeating…

1) Zaishen Dailies, from GW1 – you could have the Zaishen Bounty (kill a particular champion); Zaishen Vanquish – redo a particular zone completion; Zaishen Event – picks a dynamic event or chain. For those not familiar with these from GW1, the dailies would have players flocking to different zones and would given a number of special coins or tokens in reward, which could be exchanged for valuable items from a vendor.

2) Easter Eggs and Scavenger Hunts – perhaps a little like the Halloween ones but spread over a longer period, with a new step added every week, in different zones around the world. Again, make the end reward a unique and useful or fun item such as an ascended trinket or exotic minipet, make it tricky to solve and last over several months.

3) Nick the Traveller’s descendents roam the world once more. This was a really fun feature in GW1 and had people farming a different trophy each week in a different zone.

The part that boggles me is that they already have a system in place to reward moving instead of staying in one spot and farming. You can get up to 2.5x kill EXP by killing things that have been up for a long time? That you haven’t personally killed? Not sure the specifics.

That principle could easily be applied to zones. 250% MF, experience, reknown, and cash from a zone you’ve never been to before, and each DE would decrease it, resetting each week? Two weeks? month?

Its better to reward people for doing something than to penalize them for not doing what you want them to do.

I would really love if they brought back Zaishen Dailies from GW1.

And I’d love to see the vampiric dragon sword make a comeback as one of the unique rewards!!

Rynarx.6124:

They should just make champions and veterans mobs in the open world drop the tokens from the new fractal dungeon. That alone will certainly make people head for champion when someone does a shoutout over map chat.

I just made a post on the suggestion forum about possibly adding some dynamic events with that currency as a reward for the same reason. While I despise all of the whining people are doing about FotM on the forums, I can’t say that having instanced content be a bottleneck to the best gear is a good thing. They should be encouraging people to stay in the open world, not the other way around.

@ Rynarx -

An excellent point – while I think the Fractals are a very clever design for a dungeon, it would be sensible to have ways to get the same rewards in the open world or risk losing most of the player population to The Mists.

That way playing FotM would be by choice and for the fun of the excellent dungeon, not because it is the only way to progress your character.

Kain Francois.4328:

I would really love if they brought back Zaishen Dailies from GW1.

I would really love it if they didn’t. Not every thing from GW1 was good.

Rynarx.6124:

They should just make champions and veterans mobs in the open world drop the tokens from the new fractal dungeon. That alone will certainly make people head for champion when someone does a shoutout over map chat.

Name them. Give them a chance for a unique drop. Just a skin that’s level appropriate. Stats can be transmuted later. Like the Champion boar, one of my favorites. Name him Buttons or somesuch and a weapon or Armour skin that’s Queensdale level. If it looks nice I’d transmute it.

dybryd.1358:

And I think having seasonal events focused on a particular zone (which Halloween did to some extent) would help too. Christmas in Hoelbrak! Valentine’s Day in the Grove! Back-to-school in Rata Sum! Each with its own cluster of temporary level 80 (or scaled) content encouraging players to revisit a low-level zone.

This sounds like an awesome idea it would make these zones lively!

They simply need to go back to their previous idea from before the patch.
Make rewards able to be earned multiple places, karma, WvW badges etc and not just by grinding FoTM.
The little time I spend in PvE I ran low level zones because my character didn’t become kittened by not grinding another zone.

And by this I mean not just talk about it coming “later” but it actually implement it at the same time as one avenue is introduced.
Talk is cheap. Actions matter. And saying something will come later can mean next year or two years or actually never.

Azure Prower.8701:

Kain Francois.4328:

I would really love if they brought back Zaishen Dailies from GW1.

I would really love it if they didn’t. Not every thing from GW1 was good.

I think the Zaishen Dailies are represented better in the Daily Achievements. 5 silver, some experience, a Mystic Coin and now 4500 Karma for roughly 30min to an hour of meandering through a zone you like. There’s no “ohgoditsRotwingagain” ZBounty, there’s no “LFG ZBounty” when it’s a Fissure or UW mob . . .

There’s no stacking Urgoz in there for when you can get enough people having it at once to do a run at the dungeon.

There’s no “screw that I never want to ever go back to Vehjin Mines for that quest” vs “Tihark Orchard? Meh, okay, free coins time”.

I don’t think it was a bad idea in and of itself but the implementation was a bit clunky and uneven. Early Ascalon missions in HM were a bear sometimes (especially that one, and you all know which one I mean) but you weren’t given as many coins as the aforementioned Tihark Orchard (where you attend a party as a solo character and have a fight at the end).

And the rewards were of dubious value except once I needed ZKeys.

Gandolfi.1507:

3) Nick the Traveller’s descendents roam the world once more. This was a really fun feature in GW1 and had people farming a different trophy each week in a different zone.

Whatever happened to http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117314-Guild-Wars-Inspires-Woman-to-Walk-Across-America ?

At the time, I thought Amaranth might be the new Nicholas.