Guild Wars 2 was advertised as a game that was based off of skill rather than gear. However, your run-of-the-mill player doesn’t need any skill to play the bulk of the game, and there aren’t enough ways to show off your Skill as opposed to the amount of time/money invested in the game. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Minigame Leader boards.
I’m realizing, after the most recent patch (Super Adventure Box – Oh my god, what a great idea), that things like this are the future of this game. Keg Brawl has already been instated as a minigame, but few people have ever played it (I include myself as one of them). Why do SPvP and WvW need to be the only PvP’s with leader boards? Why must SPvP be the game’s only E-Sport Viable segment? Put some leader boards and spectator modes to stuff like this! Keg brawl (with some kind of tourney system) could be a really fun PvPesque minigame to play. Put some record boards on the Super Adventure Box for times, coins collected, etc and let it take off! People will always have something to do – especially if the number of minigames of this sort continue.
Polymock! I definitely sense some plans on introducing this to the game at some point – be it in the near future or not – but smack some leaderboards on there and some armor/weapon skins and you’ve got yourself hundreds of hours of content.
The problem with this game is that (in general) there are few things that you can do. There are:
– Killing Things (The same thing you’ve been doing since level 1 with almost no change in how it’s done). You have a couple options in how to kill things, whether it’s in your personal storyline, through dungeons/fractals.
– WvW – I would have put this in under Killing Things, but it differs more from your run-of-the-mill PvE that I figured it deserved its own category.
– SPvP – Aw heck, I gave WvW its own category. Just playing against other players is enough of a gameplay difference as anything else.
– Gathering – Boring as nothing else, in my opinion.
– Exploring – Which (due to added incentive) gives the player the mindset of having to do it, rather than wanting to do it (and that may just be me – I do realize that).
– Crafting – Which really holds no merit. I can level some crafting professions from 0-400 in less than an hour and less than 3g.
- Jumping Puzzles – Hippity Hop.
That’s a fair amount of stuff to do when you look at it in bulk. There is so much to explore… but it’s not enough variety. Many players aren’t big PvP fans. Some don’t have the computer to run WvW optimally. Some find running from A>B>C>D>E>F>G a little monotonous. Because of loot system and all, nothing is competitive. GW2, to be honest, is bottlenecked by being an MMO. So instead of continuing to add personal content, or being shown your limitations by trying to introduce evolving content at a global level, give the players something to compete for. Give them a variety of things to compete for. Give a player more to specialize in and get good at. I find myself swinging my sword, and swinging it again more often than not here. Colin didn’t seem to think that was a great idea, but I feel like that and rolling out of the way of things are the only two things my character knows how to do.
TL;DR – Bring in minigames with leaderboards, and for god’s sake, introduce a little competition.