Guild Wars 2

Part 1- Randomisation

2) User-Generated Content
We all know that there is one area that GW2 excels at and thats character customisation. You can change pretty much everything, from facial features to body shape, armour and its colour, hairstyles and the weapon model. Each new model takes time. Weapons, armour, features- they all need designing and implementing and not everything is to everyones taste. But there is one thing that has bothered me for a while – why havent the devs given players the tools to create content themselves?

There are two ways to go about this:
a) Run competitions through the forum/website where players can send in their designs. Winners get in game items as prizes, devs get free designs and more time to work on other things, no one loses out. There are a lot of talented people out there…. let them take some of the workload off of the devs.

b) Give players in game tools to create. Split items into their constituent parts and have the player craft each part separately. Im not just talking Ori>Ingots>Sword Blade here. Im talking about finding rare blueprints in the treasure chests of dungeons… mystical metal that has come from a Balthazar’s armour itself deep in a cave under a pile of old stones…. gems that used to adorn royal crowns…. and just plain old pig-iron from a mine somewhere. You can craft the basic weapons with a bit of effort and adorn them with jewels that you find (slots maybe). You can then replace any one piece (blade, hilt etc) when you wish to ‘upgrade’ your looks or make a rarer looking weapon. Same could go for backpieces, armour etc. Could even make customisable weapons the new legendaries.

Enable players to create their own items and youve got infinite possibilities. Give players the ability to create truly unique, truly rare items (be it in looks only) and youve got the ultimate customisable game. The crafting system could also receive a much needed boost- create a ‘joint use’ crafting bench where one person can craft an accountbound item for another for a fee. Advertising boards to remove chat-spam.

Let me know what you think below!

tl:dr Version of both threads
Randomise boss skills and dungeon paths and youll create exciting content where the player truly doesnt know whats going to happen.
Allow the players to design their own items, either via website competitions or in-game customisation tools. Giving players the tools takes pressure off of the devs and allows for looks that are unique to the player. Also adds a whole lot more mats to collect (rare and common) as well as boosts the crafting system.

Another thought came into my head this morning while I was drinking my coffee (not relevant!). Would it be possible for users to create arenas for PvE content?

Picture this- you pay for a PvE arena with xyz currency (lets be honest, it would be gems). The idea of this room is for you and your friends to go in and take on a challenge. That challenge involves waves of mobs spawning and objectives to complete. The idea is that everything can be customised- the mobs, their spawns, the objectives, the cover (walls, objects etc)…. maybe even new rooms.

The trick is that the mobs themselves are holograms (thank you Scarlet for your tech!) and you would start off with only a few mob types. You would be required to go out into the world and collect scans of x number of a specific mob to then input into your crazy computer device thingy. Same goes for cover- you would have to scan certain items in the open world. You could say that certain world bosses are unable to be scanned for whatever reason should the devs think that having your own personalised world boss is a little too far-fetched!

You would start with x amount of resources which enables y amount of mobs to be spawned and have a way of upgrading the computer to spawn more mobs. You could also enable traps to be placed down to imcrease difficulty…. the options could be endless. You could also create a story around all of the above- holo-mobs escaping and terrorising Tyria.

What would PvE arenas bring? Well players could challenge other teams to complete their arena in the fastest time possible… or maybe just complete the challenge! Players can make their arena as hard or as easy as they wish. You would obviously have to make it so that mobs dont drop items to stop the farming but I think it could be an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon, trying peoples arenas either as a group or on my own.

I would say, in games like Guild Wars 2, “User Generated Content,” comes down to PvP.