Guild Wars 2

Issue – Living story has little replay-ability. Too dialog heavy with no skippable cutscences. This leads to a reluctance for players to repeat content once they have completed achievements.

Suggestion – At the end of each living story chapter, a new instance would open. This instance would be a culmination of the best encounters throughout the living story.

How it would work – 5 players would be teleported into a small locked off chamber taken directly from part of the living story. E.g the Pale tree chamber. A 10 second countdown would begin. Then the shadow of the dragon boss would activate. Players would have to defeat this boss. A portal would then open to the next room. This could be for instant the small cave area where the players fight the terragriff boss. This would repeat for 5-10 bosses.
There would be no WPs. Players could resurrect team members but a full party wipe would result in players being teleported out.

At the end of the trials players would receive a chest with a choice of a small gold reward, some t6 mats or some bolts of silk. The trials can be completed as much as a player wants but rewards are only given out once per day.

This would hopefully add replability to existing well developed living story content without taking too many resources to implement. It would also create repeatable content that would feel rewarding on a daily basis. The living story would still be valuable for providing background lore and ensuring single players can continue to experience the same content that groups can.

Possible Additional suggestions – Some further ideas I thought up to make it more fun and challenging

Competitiveness. Adding a leaderboard and scores to the content could create PVE competitiveness. For those who have played gw1 it could work on a similar basis to the challenge missions. Points could be awarded to teams based upon
- time taken to complete trials
- number of conditions applied to foes
-number of Knockdowns avoided
-amount of direct damage dealt

Bonus points could be awarded for teams who enter with 5 different professions, or 5 of the same profession to increase variety and again, make it more re playable.

Players could choose to add handicaps similar to the queens gauntlet. Would reward more bonus points. Not sure if it should add more rewards.

Issues – Players might skip living story, mitigated somewhat by adding it only at the end of a season. Could also be solved by adding requirements of having completed living story episodes before entering or add a currency cost of badges from silverwastes to enter.

Competitiveness may lead to trashtalking, elitism ect.

Balancing issues – some classes will just be better at clearing it faster and always gain more points. I tried to avoid this with the suggestion to reward bonus points to more unconventional teams.

Reward balancing – would have to be worth players time. If average time of completion is ~20minsutes then 1 gold minimum reward would be necessary. Any longer and more gold would be needed for players to find it worthwhile.