Guild Wars 2

ArenaNet put a ton of effort into the open world and it was meant to serve as the core of PvE, but past leveling up a character it lacks incentives and once you finish map completion there’s no reason to go back.

I remember shortly after I got map completion standing in Lions Arch thinking “Now what”? I opened the map and saw a huge world, of which only Orr gave me any reason to go back to it, and even then it was becoming dull repeating the same events day after day.

I continued farming, not enjoying, Orr until the nerfs to drops, changes to the event timers, and the buffs to dungeon rewards, after which I saw no reason to head back to the open world outside dailies. I’m still an active player many months later, but my activities in PvE are almost entirely limited to dungeons and I only head out into the open world for 5 minutes if I need to for my daily achievement.

When I look at my own activities it’s pretty saddening. Out of the huge world that this game offers, there just isn’t any incentive or enjoyment to be found in the vast majority of it. And when I look at the population of these maps and the activities of other players, I don’t believe I’m alone in this view or behavior.

I see this as a serious issue because a huge chunk of the game world is pretty much “dead” once you finish up map completion. What this does is create a poor end game (I know this is a loaded word, but in its simplest definition being interesting activities you can do once you have explored the entire game) experience where most of the world feels void of purpose and enjoyment.

The core of the problem is that once you finish map completion all you are left with is dynamic events, where you can either wander aimlessly around the map completing events you come across, or go around in circles completing the same events over and over, neither of which are fun.

Dynamic events just don’t offer much substance in their current state and they do not begin to live up to what the developers had envisioned. Just watching the manifesto should make this blatantly clear, and the open world is suffering because of it.

So far their attempts to strengthen the open world have had little impact because their approach doesn’t address the issue with dynamic events. Southsun cove, despite all their efforts to bring life to it, has been dead since the living story event ended, suffering the same fundamental problems as the rest of the open-world maps. For guild missions, dragons, and living story events players just flock to the area for the event and ignore the rest of the world, then abandon it once the event is completed.

What we need are reasons to go back into the open world and actually do the entirety of the content. There needs to be a clear direction, goals, and for dynamic events to actually have a meaningful impact on the world or rewards/benefits the players receive.

The poor state of the game world may also have a strong negative impact on the expansion of the game and is a possible reason why we haven’t seen a permanent map added since southsun cove.

Players are always asking to visit another region like Cantha, but would it be worth the development time to create an entirely new region when players are just going to abandon it? Or would it make more sense to make single zones via the living story which are removed after the event is over and player interest has died off?

These temporary zones and events are fine to have once in a while, but they have turned them into the primary form of content, and that is not good for the long-term health of the game. Things cannot only change, they must expand as well, and players need content which provides lasting value, not content which they do once or twice and never go back to.

Something definitely needs to be done to improve the game world, not only for the sake of the existing game, but also for its ability to expand.

One thing which could really help the game world, but not necessarily the open world, is a vanquishing system similar to that in GW1. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, if you killed everything in the map you would get a reward and progress towards a title. In GW2 this could be more based around dynamic event completion. However this would need to be instanced as zergs would ruin any sort of challenging mechanics that a vanquishing system would need to be interesting.

And while this wouldn’t address the issue with the open world, it would give a lot more meaning and value to the game world which would strongly benefit the game.

Getting all the events would put you up players against other players, as you may want a certain event in a chain, and they may want a different one.

So, at least when it comes to chains, only the “perfect” combination of vents in which no events are failed should count, or at least just the last one that makes the chain a ‘success’.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Getting all the events would put you up players against other players, as you may want a certain event in a chain, and they may want a different one.

So, at least when it comes to chains, only the “perfect” combination of vents in which no events are failed should count, or at least just the last one that makes the chain a ‘success’.

This is one of the reasons why I suggested instanced maps to be used in a vanquishing system. The open-world (referring to the huge amount of players who may come and go as they please) may be a great starting experience, but it has issues with things like replayability, challenge, co-operation, and your actions having significance or a lasting impact, which would very likely ruin any sort of vanquishing system.

Instanced maps would be a great idea, if they didn’t take people out of the open world. And you know, I liked vanquishing too, but it only worked because you had an instance, and that nothing could respawn.

It would become just another dungeon, not the open world. You’d go in with a pug or with guildies, but the open world would end up suffering for it.

Indeed, there are some people who think the open world is a great place to be, because they find reasons to go back to the open world…even though you don’t. You play for reward, or loot. Some people play for experience.

People like me and most of the people in my guild see less reason to do dungeons or Orr and more reason to return to the open world.

I think making instanced zones would be a big mistake on Anet’s part unless they only made one at a time and rotated them. Because if they’re not rewarding enough no one would do them and if they were rewarding enough, they’d pull people from the world and everyone would just say the game was dead.

Bri.8354:

This is one of the reasons why I suggested instanced maps to be used in a vanquishing system. The open-world (referring to the huge amount of players who may come and go as they please) may be a great starting experience, but it has issues with things like replayability, challenge, co-operation, and your actions having significance or a lasting impact, which would very likely ruin any sort of vanquishing system.

If they made a mode where I could enter a solo instance of a zone and the difficulty was increased of all mobs and my objective was to clear it, here are my thoughts.

I would try to do everyzone and most likely have a lot of fun doing it.

There might be other things that were more fun they could implement however this would be more fun then any perm content they’ve made to date since launch, so I can say yea do it but make it hard. I want certain zones to be notorious and people come to the forums and cry but some keep practicing and eventually get it.

I definitely wouldn’t mind it and would have a fun time doing it. Seems like it would be easy-ish to implement. Certain classes might be OP and people would cry, not that I care. Adults crying that video games are to hard or not perfectly fair is quite sad imo.

If they could make a duo mode also (same thing with monsters twice as powerful as solo and separate achievements) then I would be double happy since I could do it with the GF.

I think it’s apparent you can’t design meaningful “open world” content that the entire zone participates in as the full spectrum of player ability, focus, level, equipment can access these. They can’t be strict on what merits as contribution either. For now open world content is piniata style. I enjoy the landscapes and environment in guild wars 2 very much. I would love more reason to be in them regardless if there was a zerg of people running around the zone while I am there or if I was all by myself.

Vayne.8563:

snip

Yeah, an instance would likely take people out of the open world which wouldn’t be a good thing. It also wouldn’t address the issues with the open maps, but would give players a wealth of highly replayable content, which would make the game world more filled activity wise.

Maybe a sort of instanced hard-mode-vanquishing system would be better suited for the game after they address some of the issues with the open world as to not harm it further, if something like it should be added at all.

The core of the issue seems to be dynamic events, and I think that’s what they should focus on the most. Players need more incentives to go out and do events across the world, and the pacing of these events needs to be better; wandering around or repeating events in circles isn’t good.

Perhaps more and longer chain events and giving players individual, map, or server-wide buffs for completing certain events and holding certain areas, would be a good start.

Maybe they can also add some randomly spawning chests around the world that would change location every hour or so, that would give nice rewards, to give people more reasons to go out and explore.

I would love it if they added in something similar to vanquishing, however I would not like this to be done with instances because the open world would still be empty and devoid of other players. Right now the world is mostly an empty and barren place which is just depressing.

A vanquishing reward system should be added as a way to give players incentive to return to zones they have already completed. Vanquishing should be repeatable for any zone, but time-gated to prevent players from vanquishing the same area every day. This would encourage players to spread throughout the open world by rewarding players for experiencing a variety of content.

Players could earn progress towards vanquishing a zone by killing champions, completing a variety of events and group events, completing jumping puzzles, etc.) The completion of every event would not be required to vanquish. Each of the aforementioned activities would give progress towards vanquishing the zone. Group events, for example could be weighted to give more progress than regular events to make them more worth while.

After vanquishing a zone the player would receive a reward chest that could have rares/exotics, gold, karma, and perhaps even tokens that could be traded for unique weapons/armor. Vanquishing could also have it’s own achievements/titles.

Besides adding a vanquishing system I think event rewards should be increased to make events more worth doing. They could also be time-gated with diminishing returns to prevent grinding the same set of events from being the most profitable option.

Living Open World =
1) Territorial Conquest (Players entering this zones will be flag for Pvp.)
2) GvG Hotspots Weekly (Designated random zones for GvG in the Open with Legendary Npc Guards guarding around the large perimeter. Need Pass to enter but could be viewed from outside)
3) More frequent Boss Event in all zones. Not just specific zones only.
4) Standard 30% RARE DROPS!! From those events kitten MF.
5) Blade Radio Party Giveaway!! (lol those were the days)

Just an idea :P

I suggested (in a long post) a while back that ANet could kill two flies with one swat by giving guilds a possibility to buy a guild hall/base in the open world (there are plenty of unused buildings/caves that would be perfect for this) and then give them an ability to fight each other over the territories.

While I don’t think Vanquishing would work in GW2, I do think Hard Mode versions of areas could work. They’d all be lvl 80, non-instanced zones in which you’d play with other lvl 80 players.

I have been disappointed for some time that they created a fantastic world and then just abandoned it in favour of instances, LS etc…

Well word is the next living story chapter will revolve around Divinity’s Reach, which is at least a change from the LA-centric LS so far.

GW1 feels lonlier with the way the explorable maps are. I like that I might run across other players anywhere. In GW1, I know if I am alone or not, cause its limited to the party…lame.

As for exploring in GW2, there are alot of interesting things to find, just need to push yourself to look around. I still find events in places I go often that are new to me.

Also new characters help me re-see old locations.

Gilburt.9146:

I would love it if they added in something similar to vanquishing, however I would not like this to be done with instances because the open world would still be empty and devoid of other players. Right now the world is mostly an empty and barren place which is just depressing.

A vanquishing reward system should be added as a way to give players incentive to return to zones they have already completed. Vanquishing should be repeatable for any zone, but time-gated to prevent players from vanquishing the same area every day. This would encourage players to spread throughout the open world by rewarding players for experiencing a variety of content.

Players could earn progress towards vanquishing a zone by killing champions, completing a variety of events and group events, completing jumping puzzles, etc.) The completion of every event would not be required to vanquish. Each of the aforementioned activities would give progress towards vanquishing the zone. Group events, for example could be weighted to give more progress than regular events to make them more worth while.

After vanquishing a zone the player would receive a reward chest that could have rares/exotics, gold, karma, and perhaps even tokens that could be traded for unique weapons/armor. Vanquishing could also have it’s own achievements/titles.

Besides adding a vanquishing system I think event rewards should be increased to make events more worth doing. They could also be time-gated with diminishing returns to prevent grinding the same set of events from being the most profitable option.

This would work perfectly. If they added in tokens for vanquishing which players could spend on new weapon/armor skins and town clothes, and also gave a cash/karma reward, we’d see a lot more players out in the open world, rather than farming CoF 1/CoE/Fractals/Orr endlessly.

I think, though, making completion of every event required would be nice to have. There are a lot of events out there that people leveling/going for map completion never see because they mainly focus on going from one heart/vista/POI to the next. One of the things I really liked about GW1 vanquishing was that you often would end up in little out of the way areas that you wouldn’t have visited otherwise.

Optional extras: Daily/Monthly Vanquisher, and a Hard Mode, where you’re further downscaled to zone area level -3.

Oh the topic of going back to non-Orr zones to make money, I used to have very profitable farming spots in different maps. Perhaps they’ve reduced the global drop rates, or perhaps I’m just better at clearing dungeons for gold now than I used to be… but I went back to one of my non-Orr farming spots today and the drops were absolutely terrible… I only had a single crafting mat drop, some whites, junk, and a whole bunch of voting tokens, from a half hour of farming.

Everything about farming in this game keeps pointing to the tired old, inflation inducing, CoF P1 farm.

In the very beginning ArenaNet decided to create a living world by getting rid of the old and stale quest systems, that leads you through every map, and making it more vivid with dynamic events and the personal story.

The idea was great.
The implementation was mediocre.

Events are just too similar and not rly dynamic, they have only one or two possible outcomes and repeat all over the same. The personal story was interesting in the first place but got terrible with trähöööörn. And there weren’t enough stories in my opionion, only one every 3-4 lvls.

So I’d suggest to take a step back and to combine the old and stale but working quest system with the new, interesting and amazing event system. As daily random quests or as guild quests you can accept missions, for example to deliver something from place A to B. Randomly you get a mission to go to an Npc in the blazeridge steps that wants you to deliver a pack of weapons across the battlefield. The player himself now would trigger an event to get protected and to reach a certain point. He can’t use waypoints while delivering and would be slowed down, similar to the PvP orbs, maybe he would even get some new skillsets.
Or you get a quest to support the Priory for an experiment. Or to help the other orders to kill a certain boss – or whatever. The sky is the limit.

Something like that would:
- keep players busy
- encourage them to get to special places all over the world
- makes the world more vivid and dynamic

I like the way it is now because my whole guild can play together. Fortunately, for the OP there are myriad other games that do what they are talking about.

The concept for Dynamic Events was nice in theory, but the implementation is a little be disappointing, it is certainly an BIG, HUGE upgrade from the usual questing system, but it till underwhelming especially orr.

I expected Orr to be like a PvE version of WvW with sieging (NPC sieging) and capturing which would eventually lead to a giant boss appearing and fighting it. Also the conflict between the Centuar and Humans seems too simplistic. Part of me also expected zone effecting events like snow storm in kissex for example.

I believe Arenanet should moved back the 2 week schedule to 1 month but focus on the current Zones to revitalize them and change the story of them, instead of sticking to lion arch. Obviously this might lock out some players from being able to do it, but it would be better overall.

silvermember.8941:

I expected Orr to be like a PvE version of WvW with sieging (NPC sieging) and capturing which would eventually lead to a giant boss appearing and fighting it.

The open world being like WvW, where both you and the NPCs dynamically fight over the map would have been cool, and from reading some of the design statements they made about the open world, it sounds like that is what they may have been going for.

As it stands however, events are far too static and do not respond to the events taking place throughout the rest of the world. No matter what happens, plinx is always going to show up every X-Y minutes and the completion or failure of the event doesn’t impact the game world. Oh and the jungle worm should be up in X minutes, lets head there then back to Orr afterwards, ignoring all the poor sylvari in the events nearby because there’s no reason to help them.

The current state of things Is just so far away from a dynamic world that it would take a MASSIVE overhaul to even come close to what they had envisioned.

Anet could instance zones, they still have the code in game in some form. Parts of the Personal Story take place in them.. with an artificial boundary imposed. They don’t put you in a small instance created for the story, you get a zone map with boundaries within it, much like Norn Moot in GW1. HM could probably be done, Vanquishing could probably be done, and Vayne… before you even start… would not impact Open world players doing the normal zones.

And also Vayne, I would vehemently disagree with your casual dismissal of intanced zoning, as it allowed a flexibility, per char, that just isn’t allowed in open zones. Flexibility that allowed them to introduce storylines like WIK, WOC, etc to advanced characters, and leaving normal zones for people who needed them.

In GW1 your chars could enter a changed “world” without imposing that world on new characters or people not participating in it.

I don’t get the either/or mentality. One or the Other, and never consider elements of both, in the open world.

Half a year later and nothing has been done about this issue. So far they have been focused on funneling everyone into a single map for living story releases and invasions, but none of that addresses the real issue and only gives a temporary boost in life for the duration of the event.

I think as long as they think about it as an incentive thing or a gameplay thing, it will fail. If they want people there, it needs to be an interesting place to visit, and the only way for that to last beyond the initial run and whatever rewards there are to farm is other players.

So, at a minimum, some more hooks and tools for people to do RP stuff in different places. Maybe add some very challenging content, but design it in such a way that it is meant to have an audience, and be entertaining for those that don’t have the skill to hope to participate. Things like that. Ways for players to use existing areas to create additional content (without inviting griefing) for other players, and to notify other players about that content, using the LFG tool or something.

All this talk of vanquishing does give me an idea; sorry, not one related to the open world, but dungeons.
Currently, the standard way of playing dungeons seems to be to skip as many mobs as possible.
I reckon they should implement a vanquishing mode in dungeons that rewards killing every last thing. Just progress towards a title and some cash, nothing major.