So, I was out just romping about Tyria as I sometimes do, completing events simply for the sake of completing events because I don’t fall into the rewards-motivated player majority. It’s lonely out there sometimes, especially at 4 AM (I’m kind of a night owl), and as I was moving between Ascalon Settlement to Nebo Terrace, I started thinking: “What might bring those rewards-motivated players out here to join me?”
So here’s an idea I had: A separate daily achievement that players could do for an extra laurel, and some loot with rarity scaled according to level, including a small chance at choose-your-own-stats profession-based ascended gear for level 80 characters (removing a key complaint about ascended gear, the crafting requirement, making it optional and allowing players to gear their characters in ascended simply by playing the game).
This would be a daily objective shown in your achievement pane that would assign you to participate in events in a certain map, or maybe even work your way toward a meta event completion. These objectives, assigned according to character level, would be doled out on daily reset to the entire player base at random, instead of all players receiving the same objective as we see in the current daily achievements. That way, the players are spread out and bringing the entire world to life, instead of being clumped into one area.
Lore-wise, this could also trigger some sort of flavorful way to get the player involved, bringing it beyond a mere “do this, get this” checklist (like the current daily system). A letter could arrive by mail from the Pact asking the player to assist in taking all of the Temples in a map, or a personal invitation to Meatoberfest, or from Balfouris Humancleaver looking for aid in retaking Ascalon city. For some of these objectives, maybe an NPC could spawn near the player in a city and run up to him/her, triggering a short dialogue about how he’s come seeking aid. It could be a sylvari citizen saying how they’re worried about Gamarien going out into Wychmire all alone and asking you to accompany him, or someone from Eldvin Monastery could plead with the player to investigate the swamp because he’s felt an incredibly powerful dark presence there but the Seraph won’t take him seriously.
In this way, rewards-motivated players could find themselves going out into the world and bringing it to life every day — each day would present every player with some fresh, lengthy adventure — and we could see some of the events that largely go unnoticed get done. It could even go beyond this, with permanent, large-scale change in Tyria coming about as a result of the players’ efforts (and with it, new challenges opening up), but this kind of idea should be taken one step at a time.
Addendum: Let’s try to keep feedback constructive. This largely off-topic game-bashing for the sake of game-bashing is getting old, and I will report every post rooted in it.
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Main Character: Dathius Eventide | Say “hi” to the Tribulation Clouds for me. :)
