People keep saying “please make it skill-based”
1.) You need to expand on this. I just cannot envision a scenario where a quest for a precursor would be challenging enough to be difficult for the top 5% of the playerbase, and one that would take a lot of time to complete.
2.) Jumping puzzle? Bosses? Those aren’t skill based. Jumping puzzles are extremely easy for the average gamer. People who stink at those just do not have the hand-eye coordination of the average gamer. Bosses can be easily exploited, zerged and hard to design so that all classes will be able to handle it equally.
And then there are the casual players who will suddenly complain that said content is ‘too difficult’ and that they want a precursor handed to them in mere hours.
3.) Unfortunately, the best way to ‘gate’ legendary items, which are (or will be) BIS items is time and gold. Time shows commitment to the game which is more important than ‘skill’.
1.) the precursor imho should be the skill-dependant part where all the lore is, the rest is already pretty time consuming… tons of mats you have to collect. So both: challenging and time consuming is in there.
2.) Not to be rude, but where’s your imagination? + you didn’t read my suggestion but only pick parts of it out of context. You can make (as I explained above) JPs challenging by instancing those and add new layers to it. Like a NPC who spawns veterans/champions behind him so that you have to
- be fast enough to let them spawn behind you —> it’s a race between you and the npc, OR
- be strong enough to beat the veterans while they try to knock you off the ledges.
Furthermore: instanced bosses can’t be rushed and exploits are quite easy to fix in 1-player instances. Hard to design? It worked pretty well in the personal story missions.
3.) time and gold only is good for
- people who flip trading post offers for hours (which is quite boring and not worth a legendary imho)
- people who farm for hours the most efficient route (which is also quite boring imho and favours players with a constant group)
EDIT: As I can see from your Sig that you already had 20(!!!) exotic drops I assume that you love farming. Nothing wrong with that. I see though, why you don’t like the idea of rewards for challenge instead of grind. Just to add, I play since release and had not a single exotic drop from open world mobs yet.
Actually I’ve had +60 open world exotic drops (it’s cause of MF) since January (that’s when I started recording)
-So let’s talk about the race. How is that going to be fair for all classes? A class like mesmer, if I recall, does not have any speed buffs. While a class like guardian or ele can maintain 100% speed buffs
-As for vets – again, some classes are shortchanged than others. Just equip stability (if you have it) to handle it.
-Personal story missions were very easy. Interesting, yes, but they were easy.
There is little to no skill potential when it comes to PvE. Anything that is difficult the first time will be learned quickly and it will not be easy anymore. I remember having so much difficult with the Mad King JP when it came out, and I was very good at JP. But it was difficult because I was still learning the paths and the most efficient routes. As soon as I finished that JP, I never had trouble again.
THAT is why it is difficult to design ‘SKILLFUL’ content. You need to design a system that will always be difficult whether it’s your first or 12th run. Because as soon as people figure out the system that supposedly makes it difficult, it will be exploited to the fullest extent.
Regarding time and gold
-I think you are overestimating the number of people who make gold off of flipping. If everyone did it, there would be no profit. It’s called arbitrage and it’s very interesting, you can wiki it. And it’s not as easy as it sounds. People who make money off of arbitrage deserve it
[Currently Inactive, Playing BF4]
Magic find works. http://sinasdf.imgur.com/