How to improve open world grinding
TL DR: make champions harder to kill by giving them random abilities, this will make grinding far more interesting and slightly less repetitive. Make champions across all zones gain more random abilities and more champ bags/exp along with the additional abilities to motivate players to visit random zones. Show markers of where those champs are on the map.
Intro:
Like many of you, I’ve been waiting for this game for about 3-4 years before it launched and I have been playing it ever since then, ranking up to some 2500 hours ingame.
Quite a few of us got burned out on the game after a few months and after we decided what our main/mains will be we started searching for our own endgame. Many people found it in WvW but I did not manage to get really into it that much back then. And since I am on-of-those players that mainly seek rewards from their favorite MMORPG I resorted to cof p1 grinding. This lasted for quite a while, after which I switched to orichalcum farming (when ascended weapons came out) and a lot of Frostgorge running around. I’ve ended up with some 5 legendaries and a full ascended berserker Mesmer and I am always more than happy to annoyingly link them in chat.
The subject:
If you read the intro to this text you probably came to the conclusion that I grinded quite a lot (definetly not as much as some people, but hey) and I’ve kinda burnt out on it.
In this text I will be getting into how to improve open world champion grinding in order to make the game more interesting.
The current problem is that champion grinding is way too mindless to be enjoyable for longer periods of time. Sure, the rewards are nice, but at one point, you will be so bored that you will not be able to keep yourself awake. One of many answers to this problem is to give champions 2 RANDOM ADDITIONAL ABILITES just like many aRPG’s have, for example:
-Electric orb –channel a huge orb, that slowly moves forward (or spirals out) dealing massive damage to all enemies
-Flame orb –copies the above ability but leaves a flaming trail that deals just as much damage
-Spikes –spikes emerge from the champion in random forward or spiraling patterns
-Flash –flashes to a place with the most players and deals aoe 2seconds after landing (he basically targets a nearby area with most players in it)
-Charge –charges forward and leaves a burning damaging trail
-Vortex –channels for 3seconds and then pulls all surrounding players to him (2000range) dealing heavy aoe damage after the initial pull
-Tornado –the champion spins dealing massive aoe damage to all surrounding enemies (300range)
-Reflect – constantly reflects back projectiles
-Retaliate- constantly reflects back all attacks dealt form less than 300 range
This list could go on for an eternity but I think you get the idea. Now, here’s where we spice it up a bit
-every hour a champion is alive, he gains 2 additional abilities but also drops an additional champion bag- also, waypointing is horrible in Fs and it sometimes leads to players with less powerful pc’s being forced to miss out on a certain champion. So basically, add champions IN EVERY ZONE so that a full circle around a map can be done and is more profitable that waypoitning all over. Why? Well, everyone I ever talked to about this subject seems to agree with me that there is something magical about ‘’running with the pack’’ and that waypointing is not the most fun thing in this game since looking at the same loading screen 150times a day (not even kidding) is annoying.
Now, here’s what you’ve accomplished with these changes, at one point, Timberline Falls is going to be full of champions that drop 5 or more champion bags per kill and they are difficult. People will die while trying to take them down no doubts about it, and if they are unprepared, they will even wipe (and I can’t remember when’s the last time 20+ ppl wiped at a champion in Fs). And what happens after you got rid of all the champions in Timberline Falls and they now just drop 1champ box again? Try another zone, there will almost always be a zone where the champions drop more champ boxes.
This will not only lead to grinding being more challenging ( but not too challenging), it will also lead to variety in the patterns you take.