Hello,
First let me say the concept behind the LS and everything about it is awesome. However, I feel like I need to bring up the following points. I will be using WoW as an example considering it is one of, if not the, most successful MMO to date
1. The current perm content can’t support a LS
2. The LS has yet to really change anything in the world
Point #1:
Right now there needs to be more content for players to work on in between LS. Right now if people need anything, they’ll be running CoF farms a lot. Since most of everything can be bought with gold, running CoF farms is very popular. Usually people are going for a legendary this late in release and I notice that peoples overall acitveness decreases significantly. This got me to realize that people view Legendary as the endgame and once they’ve got it, they seem to play less and less. Now there is no gear grind in this game, so getting players to stick with it can be a bit hard. Here is what I think makes successful content.
A. Make CoF less viable to farm. Get people to spread out what they do so they dont get burnt out so easy
B. New content must have unique skins and/or weapons.
C. New content should be repeatable. Putting DR on dungeons and what not can be quite annoying. I understand you dont want to make things very easy to get in one day, ill cover that in the following parameters.
D. It needs to challenge the players and promote organization. It should also be kind of long. We already have a lot of easy/1-2 hour dungeons to do. Give us some ones that actually take time to do so that farming them a bunch in one day isn’t very viable.
E. It should offer immediate and over time rewards. A big thing about WoW was that when you’d kill a boss there was always a drop people would roll on. In Gw2 there is no drops. You kill a boss and you get the same gear you get off of a chest at the end of a JP. You have to keep doing this to earn tokens. While it rewards you offer time, it is missing the immediate satisfaction and feeling of rewards after killing a tough enemy.
F. Competitive draw. With no gear grind, players should feel some kind of competitive with other players or guilds to complete something. There should be more things to show off that someone has reached level 40+ in fractals. PvE players need something to show off to others besides random rewards that many levels can achieve. Special titles, special armor/weapons (frac weapons do an O.K job with this), perhaps some kind of in game leaderboard system.
Point #2:
Right now the LS has barely changed anything in the world. It comes and it goes. The only content that has been left and actually changed the world is Southsun and everyone ignores that place. It takes quite a long time to form a group for the boss because of the pre-events. The place is a barren wasteland. The whole point of the LS was to make the world feel alive, yet it feels like a moving carnival that leaves nothing in its wake. To make content that you leave behind feel important and like the players are actually doing something…
A. It needs to change the environment. Environmental change is a huge way to show change. Southsun did ok with this with the new settlements attacks and what not, thought its not amazing.
B. Content needs to be on level with the rest of the game. Right now Karka Queen is viewed as a hard and tedious meta event because of the pre events and numbers required. It only gives you two rares. Why do this event when there are 7 other world bosses you can do that take little effort, some you can sit there and autoattack with. Sure you wont get 2 rares, but you’ll get one. It isn’t that huge of a difference.
C. Rewards need to be unique. Nobody is going to go to a place for a new stat set. A big draw for players is skins. If you give the players skin from low level items in an 80 zone, no body is going to care for them. We see this with the settlers armor.
I just feel like that Anet needs to take a step back, address the problems in the permanent part of the game before giving us the LS things.