Guild Wars 2

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Devata.6589:

Duke Blackrose.4981:

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Edit

Attach region/elite karma vendors to quest chains.
(Tobias Trueflight).

Edit – Expand the rewards system to include WvW and PvP.

Earn Zaishen Keys (for winning) or Zaishen Key Pieces (for losing) sPvP/tPvP matches. Use them to open the Zaishen Chest in the Heart of the Mists.

Earn Garnet, Sapphire, or Emerald Key Pieces at random for killing opposing players in the appropriate borderland. Earn guaranteed Key Pieces for capturing towers or supply camps. Earn a guaranteed full key for capturing a keep.

Earn Obsidian Key Pieces at random for killing opposing players in the EB. Earn guaranteed pieces for towers or supply camps. Earn 1 full key for capturing a keep. Earn 3 full keys for capturing Stonemist.

(Modified from Tobias Trueflight’s suggestions).

All guaranteed key rewards have a 3 hour cooldown (to help prevent cross-server abuse through flipping). May need to be extended or the rewards adjusted.

(My addition to the suggestion).

Thanks for reading.

Does not seem to go far enough. Just make specific rewards for specific stuff. One type of mob in a specific area of cave has the possibility to drop x.
Some champion has the possibility to drop y.
Dungeon x bos 1 can drop Z while bos 2… and so on.

I rather disagree with that on principle. It encourages grinding of specific mobs, which, as evidenced by the champ trains, isn’t exactly healthy for the open world as a whole.

In other words – it’s counter-productive. The game was designed to be “play your way,” not kill 10k Risen in -insert swamp here- for a Sword of Something Special.

It does exactly the opposite. Champ trains are there because of open world drops. Not because one specific group of mobs in a specific area drop one specific item (or a dungeons does, or a quest does or a boss does and so on).

And that “play your way” is exactly what now means you can buy everything with gold (well more a good excuse for it, has more to do with gem-sales) so people farm for gold (champ trains) What is not the way I want to play by the way, and then buy it. In my example the item will still get on the AH so you will still be able to pay it with gold if you want to. But at least you can set goals to work towards. I want that skin, I want that mini. Not just some random drop from a chest. What is really more like the stuff we see with champ trains. It are random ‘good’ drops only difference is that one map might drop one item. That will then keep people busy untill they have that one item.. gonna throw more then one item in it you would even more have the champ-train effect.

That will then keep people busy until they have that one item.. gonna throw more then one item in it you would even more have the champ-train effect. People will not get what they want but something somebody else wants so there will be many of those items on the TP making farming for gold once again more interesting then specifically going for an item.
People will then just try to find out what map is most rewarding and start farming there. Exactly as with the champ-train.

Devata.6589:

It does exactly the opposite. Champ trains are there because of open world drops. Not because one specific group of mobs in a specific area drop one specific item (or a dungeons does, or a quest does or a boss does and so on).

No, Champion Trains exist for the Monthly/Daily runners. Especially the Queensdale train, where you can rack up a lot of kills and a lot of events fast without having to think, dodge, or use anything other than auto-attack.

The loot is incidental for that one. The Frostgorge Train on the other hand, is more about loot but serves the same purpose – a fairly steady amount of champion kills and a few events along the way.

People will then just try to find out what map is most rewarding and start farming there. Exactly as with the champ-train.

Sadly, the people who flock into Champion Trains will do so. Much like servers which want to run WvW as one big train capturing things in a circle, or when it was possible, doing Penitent over on Cursed Shore and making a rush of a few events close together with massive amounts of Risen to kill.

There’s no stopping that from going on, I think. Happened in games even where you couldn’t share kill credit.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Devata.6589:

It does exactly the opposite. Champ trains are there because of open world drops. Not because one specific group of mobs in a specific area drop one specific item (or a dungeons does, or a quest does or a boss does and so on).

No, Champion Trains exist for the Monthly/Daily runners. Especially the Queensdale train, where you can rack up a lot of kills and a lot of events fast without having to think, dodge, or use anything other than auto-attack.

The loot is incidental for that one. The Frostgorge Train on the other hand, is more about loot but serves the same purpose – a fairly steady amount of champion kills and a few events along the way.

People will then just try to find out what map is most rewarding and start farming there. Exactly as with the champ-train.

Sadly, the people who flock into Champion Trains will do so. Much like servers which want to run WvW as one big train capturing things in a circle, or when it was possible, doing Penitent over on Cursed Shore and making a rush of a few events close together with massive amounts of Risen to kill.

There’s no stopping that from going on, I think. Happened in games even where you couldn’t share kill credit.

Oow for sure you will always have people farming gold. All I am saying is that if you make specific drops (so also not just one drop in a map chest.. it’s oke for one skin but not as basic system to use) people can set specific goals. I want to work for that one item so then I go do this dungeon or that boss or kill that group of mobs.

It’s gives it much more of a thrill because every kill there is that change it drops. Now it’s brainless gold-farming and slowly the number (gold) go’s up until you can buy it. Sorry but thats so boring.

The value of the items will also be higher because it’s less likely that somebody who is not interested in that specific item gets it. With more general drops (also map-based) you will have that a lot meaning more people selling it, meaning gold-price for that item drops meaning grinding gold works much better then farming an item.. Thats almost impossible with general world loot but maps drops could decrease that problem a little.

Now the idea that people then HAVE to do that once specific part of content to get it is however falls. If you like to do another dungeon you can still do so, make money there and buy the item.

Biggest difference is that at least then you can go directly for an item and farming an item is more rewarding then grinding gold to buy it. The opposite of what is now that case.. well farming a specific item with open world loot it pretty much impossible.

+1

Great ideas overall.

While I agree with increasing incentives to do content in the open world, I disagree with the content being “really good”.

Dynamic events, which make up the vast majority of content, are just plain tedious. All you do in wander around looking for them or run in circles completing the same events over and over while watching timers to see when an event you just completed might pop up again. And this isn’t even starting to touch on the negative impact zergs have on content.

If they want to get people into the open world then they also need to redesign dynamic events in addition to better incentives. Dynamic events need to give the players a better sense of direction, they need to have longer event chains (no more complete 1-2 objectives then its all over with), and something needs to be done to stop zergs which ruin any sort of challenge and turn the content into spamming your auto-attack, trying to tag enemies as fast as possible.

Some more ideas to get people to ‘replay’ sections (some of these I think I already mentioned somewhere, but ill mention them here again).

1. Link the current Dolyaks trails to production areas and on the end point to availability of items in cities and towns. And make sure that in cities and towns the vendors express when they start running low on supplies.

f/e. The traders all have a listing of stock, for all items, these vendors can all call their children, wife, associate, whom/ever when their stocks run low to pick up more. Then when supplies haven’t come into town for while the stock will supposedly be empty or nearly empty. and the vendor(s) could express their concerns and ask players to check for their supplier.

This roughly outlined system would send players out into the world to run Dolyaks, and possibly some will get distracted by event taking place, or people asking for help.

2. Make the hearts ‘refresh’ every month, doing a heart event will give it a green’heart’ symbol, and the first time doing a heart will count for map completion. At the end of each month though, all ‘inner’ hearts will be reset. The ‘complete X heart events’ can then be added to the monthly completion list, and/or can cycle with other monthly achievements (f/e the events one).

3. Reduce the amount of waypoints considerably. While it may seem like a hinderance it will mean that more people will be traversing on foot and thus be more likely to run into events or hear the calls of people in need. I would even advocate removing waypoints entirely in favour of mounts. While it will more then likely kitten when people ride by on their mounts ignoring content, and helping you, at least there will be people passing by, where now, due to the waypoint system there is nobody ever going to pass by. (and lets face it, a large part of the population will more then likely be riding around just to find people in need, or wouldn’t mind at all to come and help a fellow player out).

4. Make sure that Living story updates include multiple maps, and or, contain linked quests that take them through multiple maps (although the waypoint system may well make this less effective, still though, having quests that take people to various places on the map will increase the amount of players on these maps, and as long as a small portion is easily distracted by event popping up, they will stick around for while)

5. Instead of dropping specific loot in a certain area, I have been thinking about additions to the crafting system that in essence do the same thing. See certain creatures drop very specific ‘crap’ (aka the grey items). What now, if some of these grey items would actually be ‘gold crafting trophies’. And these trophies would be linked to very specific creatures (see just a tad below for what these would do), that would mean that players wouldn’t be farming an area for a specific weapon to drop, but for a specific item to craft with.

crafting trophies : these ‘gold variant’ of ‘grey junk’, would give a certain crafted weapon(s) or even armor a specific look. Easiest I think to give an example, is say you slay a Troll, then this troll would give a ‘troll skull’ trophy. Then you could take this trophy and add it to any ‘staff recipe’ in the assembly stage. and the result would be a ‘Troll skull staff’. Obviously all sorts of trophies, linked to all sorts of areas and specific enemies, could be added to all sorts of weapons and armour to create very specific looks for these crafted items. And this can be done because currently, for as far as I have seen, all assembly stage crafting only takes up 3 slots in the crafting discovery system.

Personally I think that the ‘reset hearts and add them to the monthly (and perhaps also daily)’ achievement system will be one of the best ways to get people into area’s they have already done. It will also heartly (pun intended) demand any resources from the Anet team, while at the same time add monthly replay value of every area, and add to the monthly achievements. It almost feels like a no brainer to me…

I don’t care about a reward or loot but I don’t want to have to go through something else to get to the new stuff. Oh boy anet added some new dynamic event with a bunch of pre-reqs that are tedious or impossible to do alone. Useless to me. Or oh boy anet added some new fractals… but its still random as to which ones you’ll get. Silly.

Just make it like how the past stories of Gwen, Togo, and D’Allesio (or w/e his name was) when you open a menu and bam you’re there experiencing the new content.

How about actually making the zones meaningful towards your server, the same way capture points are meaningful to your server/team in pvp.

Knighthonor.4061:

How about actually making the zones meaningful towards your server, the same way capture points are meaningful to your server/team in pvp.

Interesting idea. Care to elaborate?

It’s been a while. Bumping it to keep the thread accessible for the next relevant CDI.

Arghore.8340:

2. Make the hearts ‘refresh’ every month, doing a heart event will give it a green’heart’ symbol, and the first time doing a heart will count for map completion. At the end of each month though, all ‘inner’ hearts will be reset. The ‘complete X heart events’ can then be added to the monthly completion list, and/or can cycle with other monthly achievements (f/e the events one).

Suddenly I got tears in my eyes. YES YES YES and YES!
This is what hooked me into this game. Hearts and events. I have 100% map completion on 3 toons. But why should I bother do them again for no reason/reward (consider hearts can’t be done again with the same char).
And I want to go back. I do. This was the most fun part of my entire gaming life. Playing with friends, doing random events, racing towards the next heart.. oh the joy! And now it’s gone. Been there. Done that.

As a PvE’rs all we do now is farm meta events, redo dungeons for a 429387429384928 time and LS which lasts like 5 hours.

Give me a reason to go back to the world with my friends! There are so many GOOD events and activities out there left behind!!!!

@Etien, even though it’s a bit weird to agree with oneself :P … I will still want to say that I think doing this heart reset is one of the most promising ways to get areas more populated.

Like, I am a bit of a casual player, and recently decided to somewhat work on my 100% map completion. Running through some maps I haven’t set foot in months was really fun. Running into events I never seen b4 or running into ones I had already forgotten.

Only thing that was a bit disappointing, is that I could hardly get 5ppl together for group events. Why is that, because there isn’t really something to get people into these places (other then alt-ing). If the hearts would reset, and it would be part of the monthly, people (the pve’ers) will do these, and while doing so run into events, which are usually also part of the monthly.

And doing hearts will get you into event heavier places, which in turn will make it more likely that you experience all the states of all events…

Hope this will be possible, it will get people out and give pve’ers purpose to actually go out. Meet ppl, meet alts. etc…

I do not like the idea of my Hearts resetting because I would like not to have to play under time pressure to 100% the world.

Bri.8354:

Dynamic events, which make up the vast majority of content, are just plain tedious. All you do in wander around looking for them or run in circles completing the same events over and over while watching timers to see when an event you just completed might pop up again. And this isn’t even starting to touch on the negative impact zergs have on content.

I think the answer to that is simple, more dynamic events. The tedious part comes in when there are no dynamic events or you’ve had to do the same event for the 10th time (of course the number of additional dynamic events to achieve this… well it’s a lot). Alternatively map wide alerts to dynamic events might help, currently you only get notified of the dynamic event if you’re in the same area, which makes it difficult to find new events and also increases the likelihood of doing the same event over and over since you don’t know where other events are.

Bri.8354:

If they want to get people into the open world then they also need to redesign dynamic events in addition to better incentives.

Most players respond to loot as an incentive, that would simply support farming. More fun would be the ideal incentive.

Bri.8354:

Dynamic events need to give the players a better sense of direction, they need to have longer event chains (no more complete 1-2 objectives then its all over with),

Agreed. A good example is in Orr, specifically Malchor’s Leap (although it is rather limited) where you have event to escort pack troops across the map, in doing so you encounter a number of other event. However since it is only a single event and since the map is rather large having numerous such escorts would be better.

Bri.8354:

and something needs to be done to stop zergs which ruin any sort of challenge and turn the content into spamming your auto-attack, trying to tag enemies as fast as possible.

Support the zerg don’t stop it. Include better scaling mechanics, the bigger the zerg the stronger the mob, add new mechanics that force players to dodge (that alone should wipe out 3/4 of the zerg) or to be aware of their posistion.

Arghore.8340:

2. Make the hearts ‘refresh’ every month, doing a heart event will give it a green’heart’ symbol, and the first time doing a heart will count for map completion. At the end of each month though, all ‘inner’ hearts will be reset. The ‘complete X heart events’ can then be added to the monthly completion list, and/or can cycle with other monthly achievements (f/e the events one).

Resetting hearts is the least that ANet can do. However there’s a lot more potential. I’ve previously heard suggestions for heart chain i.e. a heart has multiple levels / mission. This allows for some variety, introduction of new mechanics etc. This can in turn be tied into other mechanics such as reputation.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I do not like the idea of my Hearts resetting because I would like not to have to play under time pressure to 100% the world.

So all you do is reset the hearts but not your heart completion progress.