Archive Mode
Idea
A location in the mists that serve the purpose of allowing players to replay older, retired content. Such as season 1 of the Living Story.
Exampel of a problem this can help solve
I recently came back to Guild Wars 2 after a break due to school getting a bit intense for a while. What I came back to was a story quest, celebrating things I have not taken part in, and I felt completely confused for a while. I did go and research what happened during the Battle for Lion’s Arch story, and all this really achieved was to break my immersion for a while.
If it was established that our character in the game basically was a time traveler, and that this Archive place in the mists was our Tardis. We could justify to our selves, both in real life and in the game, that we’ve simply gotten out of line with the Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey stuff that is time.
Here’s a small list of some positive and negative stuff.
Positive
- Everyone can actually take part in the story, regardless of when they bought the game.
- The writers can go from a base that everyone has done the content, and hopefully bring back things like the fact that you were the commander, or that you’re part of one of the orders.
- You could one day retire the original personal story into this place, and go wild by reforming the entire world without having to worry about tons of work being wasted and gone.
- If someone can’t play for two weeks they won’t be extra sad becuase they missed out on stuff.
Negative
- Everything would have to be rebalanced for solo play, and this could take alotta work away from new content.
- Sense of exclusivity will definitely be lessend.
- Game might become too much like a single player game.
- Everything that was open world, like the Twisted Marionette, would probably need story instances made for them. Taking even more development time.
I’ve envisioned it like so that you unlock this place by either beating the Personal story, or having it introduced in a Season 2 Living story episode. Maybe the writers can have fun with the idea of the ingame character being controlled by some mystical force (the player) from the mists. and that once you have access to this place, you need to get the achievement that says you’ve completed one episode before you can go to the next one.
And then there is the question of rewards, both the Cosmetic ones and Titles. I know there are alotta people that value exclusivity over the chance for everyone to get it, so the compromise I have thought abit about would be a “hard mode” version. Basically you need to play the hard mode version to unlock Titles and Cosmetics, that includes Cosmetics like the Spinal Blades.
I hope i havn’t been either to rambley or that my english has been to bad (it is my 2nd language), thank you for reading. And please… Have a good day!