Dear Tyria,
Going through Arah, I thought and said to my companions, ‘Imagine, all this and it is just one dungeon (well, it IS a former capital city of Tyria, it SHOULD be large). Don’t you feel like we’ve been …well, the new maps are smaller than even this dungeon, and they are given the status of entire zones.’
I feel cheated.
Yes, the Maguuma Jungle is wonderful. As a playground, that is.
But it is nowhere as… connected? Relevant to the main story of Tyria?.. as the rest of Tyria proper. It’s a complex farming ground, starring Mordremoth. The Exalted and their tale, their relation to Glint, is crucial. Then forgotten. There is also far less independence of spirit in the zones of the Maguuma Jungle. The characters have less …spike? Don’t mean to make plant puns, that is the Mad King’s domain, but, they feel less like independent realms than an interconnected playground where we jump from tree to tree.
Bloodstone Fen is tiny. Ember Bay/The Ring of Fire? With all its relevance to the story of Tyria, should be more than a passing mini-game.
There is a marked dilution of the importance and relevance of the character story as one further rises in skill in the game. Remember the choices one can make by increasing ferocity, charm and dignity? What good do those do, in stat terms, in-game?
The starting zones have so much detail, so much work in them that whenever I return, I find something else that I have missed.
THIS WORLD IS BEAUTIFUL.
I know I am asking for too much when you had promised us never to have to pay again for an expansion/expac.
It is expensive business to make a huge map like that of Arah or Orr.
It takes time. Your money department is probably waving papers over your heads.
I am willing to pay and wait for Season 3… well, 4.
A full, complete map. About time we went to Elona.
Deldrimor…what is left of you now?
And those Canthans, how long are they going to trade internally?
The Dominion of the Winds cannot remain aloof for long, much, either.
Will the Largos permit safe passage across the sea?
Will there be pirates? Whales, puffing?
Are the White Mantle gone forever? Is their current presence a final gasp before their death-rattle?
Will we ever meet the Forgotten?
Will the Jotun recover their lost heritage?
Will the Kodan lead the North to a final victory against Jormag?
Or will Tyria explode from the constant draining and return of magic, or die with the final death of all dragons, eliminating all life, save for a few souls able to foresee this and settle on another planet?
What will happen?
Where will you take us next?
Please do not hurriedly put anything together, and please do make sure it is vast and each point worth exploring (and is numerically profitable (stats if not loot) to those less of a ‘game tourist’ mindset).
Let participation in living world/open events provide a stat boost depending on where and whom (power boost for helping the Vigil in Timberline Falls, for example) and how (carrying tasks build power, sneaking stuff past aggressives gives precision, etc). The boost fades by the end of the week, and you can have, say, boost combinations for certain stats to encourage participation in different live events. Say +1 per stat per event with a maximum cap of +5 in one stat, plus a cap of +4 and +3 in other stats per week – not valid for PvP. Actually, make it valid for all playing formats, if you want more people out there in Tyria.
Have a rotation of stat rewards from all open world events within a map, minus world bosses.
There is plenty of material for us to experience while we wait for you to carefully smith new horizons for us.
This has turned into a two-in-one topic. I have digressed.
The idea is, I am willing to wait.
Keep the more advanced busy by appealing to their thirst for bigger numbers.
Allow the less advanced to gain more mobility by enticing them with stat rewards hidden in events and interaction with the denizens of Tyria.
Meanwhile, I am waiting for the rest of the map to slowly open.
Slowly, plentifully, in full size and detail.
(edited by Asumir.1978)
Charm/Dignity/etc. never did anything in the game, but change the icon, afair.
There was never a promise not to charge for expansions.
Temporary stat boosts would not appeal to me. /shrug
I’m all for large maps, but if smaller maps with content is what’s on offer every 2-3 months, rather than waiting 6 months or a year, I’d rather have that.
Good luck.
HoT maps may have been smaller when viewed from the world map but they had considerably more going on within them than core maps.
HoT maps may have been smaller when viewed from the world map but they had considerably more going on within them than core maps.
True, but some players like to explore larger zones, that also have less mob density. Personally I don’t mind the HoT zones, but I still believe that having a variety of different zone structures is best. Having every new zone be a dense meta map can get repetitive if done too much. These kinds of maps also compete with each other for players who want to choose a meta to run at a certain time. If you introduce too many, you will dillute the population too much to complete some of them. In HoT release every single map was a dense meta map, which was a mistake in my opinion.
HoT maps may have been smaller when viewed from the world map but they had considerably more going on within them than core maps.
True, but some players like to explore larger zones, that also have less mob density. Personally I don’t mind the HoT zones, but I still believe that having a variety of different zone structures is best. Having every new zone be a dense meta map can get repetitive if done too much. These kinds of maps also compete with each other for players who want to choose a meta to run at a certain time. If you introduce too many, you will dillute the population too much to complete some of them. In HoT release every single map was a dense meta map, which was a mistake in my opinion.
Yeah. It doesn’t hurt to have variety.
HoT maps may have been smaller when viewed from the world map but they had considerably more going on within them than core maps.
Hot maps may look smaller and they may seem larger due to it’s vertical nature. However a simple look at the first map shows the problems with that statement within minutes of exploring. Most of the ground floor you can’t explore nothing but veins that will instantly kill you. The mid is filled with holes to allow people to get to the bottom pockmarked across the entire map it creates a series of hallways. The top area is are a few floating land marks in the clouds with primarily empty skies. The amount of non traversable or empty space along with constant narrow passages more than puts the original maps above them. Even more so that we can glide in the original maps.
Even desert borderland falls flat due to locking people in paths among other things
HoT maps may have been smaller when viewed from the world map but they had considerably more going on within them than core maps.
True, but some players like to explore larger zones, that also have less mob density. Personally I don’t mind the HoT zones, but I still believe that having a variety of different zone structures is best. Having every new zone be a dense meta map can get repetitive if done too much. These kinds of maps also compete with each other for players who want to choose a meta to run at a certain time. If you introduce too many, you will dillute the population too much to complete some of them. In HoT release every single map was a dense meta map, which was a mistake in my opinion.
Yeah. It doesn’t hurt to have variety.
Variety for the win
HoT maps may have been smaller when viewed from the world map but they had considerably more going on within them than core maps.
Hot maps may look smaller and they may seem larger due to it’s vertical nature. However a simple look at the first map shows the problems with that statement within minutes of exploring. Most of the ground floor you can’t explore nothing but veins that will instantly kill you. The mid is filled with holes to allow people to get to the bottom pockmarked across the entire map it creates a series of hallways. The top area is are a few floating land marks in the clouds with primarily empty skies. The amount of non traversable or empty space along with constant narrow passages more than puts the original maps above them. Even more so that we can glide in the original maps.
Even desert borderland falls flat due to locking people in paths among other things
+1
The repetitive if not down-right frustrating nature of the use of vertical map structures that wasted such a tremendous amount of space severely limits exploration and versatility within the design of the maps. A huge amount of time and effort was used just to create functional maps based solely to sell the gliding gimmick that was probably the only beneficial aspect of the expansion itself.
HoT maps may have been smaller when viewed from the world map but they had considerably more going on within them than core maps.
Hot maps may look smaller and they may seem larger due to it’s vertical nature. However a simple look at the first map shows the problems with that statement within minutes of exploring. Most of the ground floor you can’t explore nothing but veins that will instantly kill you. The mid is filled with holes to allow people to get to the bottom pockmarked across the entire map it creates a series of hallways. The top area is are a few floating land marks in the clouds with primarily empty skies. The amount of non traversable or empty space along with constant narrow passages more than puts the original maps above them. Even more so that we can glide in the original maps.
Even desert borderland falls flat due to locking people in paths among other things
As opposed to all of the empty space in core Tyria maps?
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