Hey guys,
My golden moments of this game were during the inital launch days. Days when I saw other players out in the wilderness. Days when I’d show a player a hidden event, puzzle, or area and watch their reaction in chat. Exploring depths of caves, saving villages, killing bosses.
It was an amazing game. Then players hit 80. They realized what they were supposed to do at 80 was a progression of gold. So nautally they each found the best way to make gold. The world become a wasteland. Dragons roamed freely. Risen invaded lands un challenged. Players farmed CoE and played WvW/sPvP. The other dungeons were populated, but making money was with CoE. Few rose to the call for heroes in the open world. Then the buffs to open world bosses came. Dragon timers became a norm. Players did the same as before, only stopping to do an occasional world boss. Then the champion buff came. What were once foes that presented a challenge to kill were quickly trampled by zerg “trains”. The game lost all immersion in the open world. What was once a vibrant land of players and activities turned into what seemed like a factory with workers trying to work as maximum capacity.
We need to fix this. Not only to give us end game players something to do that is more immersive/less grindy feeling, but also for the new players. Having these players go into zones that are void of players is bad. Very bad.
What are you ideas and/or philosophy on why these zones are dead.
Ill start it.
Why are they dead? Lack of progression. Lack of noticeable and important change on the world.
Suggestions:
1. Scale down 100%. This opens up so many options for you for future content. If you dont do that any content you add in lower zones will be insanely easy for 80s as it already is.
2. Start implementing skill progression in the zones. Not just walk up to this point and push F. Have players interact with NPCs and the world. Win the favor of villages. Defend people. Slay monsters. Find hidden areas.
3. Give special buffs that last 2 hours that you can get inside zones after doing certain events in the zones. Not only special “zone buffs”, but give players access to food buffs too. Special foods they can only get and are good (to the point where players want to get them ebfore going into lets say EB or a dungeon) in this zone.
4. Weapon crafting. Put in new weapons, but make it so you actually have to do stuff in the world instead of grinding it.
Example: Horn of the Dragon- Warhorn. Unique look. Slay 4 bosses with a special condition (lets say without dieing). The weapon can’t be sold.
5. Put in things in the home instance like player museums. Don’t call them that. Take what you did with the hall of monuments in gw1 (where you could showcase items) and do that in the instance.
I want Guild wars 2 to be the game that it was at launch. A rich and vibrant world. Not a either WvW, sPvP, or sit in LA. Dragonbrand lay waste to the citizens in the charr/ebonhawke lands. Ogres rampage through villages. Centaur and seraph fight a bloody war where many lives are lost. The slyvari fight their bretheron of the nightmare court. All these interesting things are going on around us but no one wants to look because there is no point too. Lets give them a point!