First of all I want to say I love this game, I’ve played from the start and have continually been finding ways to keep myself occupied and attached to continue playing. I genuinely want the game to succeed and the playerbase to grow, and for the game to generate revenue for the company to continue giving us frequent updates and bonus content.
With that said, one important complaint I have is how fun content somehow ends up limited or ends up being removed altogether. One prime example is fractals; the fact that there was no cap (except at 80) previously made progression alot of fun. Sure the content gets a lot tougher and you have to cheese your way through certain maps at high levels, but progression of any kind keeps players interested and wanting to continue through higher and higher levels. Whether it was kitten or just another thing to do, it was something that kept alot of players interested and having fun to progress. Capping it at 50 just leaves a large portion of players doing only 48 or 38 daily (if even that anymore) and not touching fractals outside of that. Take off the cap, let us be able to progress passed Maw and it’ll give alot of players something more to do.
Another example of content that was removed was the orbs in WvW. Now I understand there were incidents of orb flying and whatever, and some people had a problem with a strong server getting even stronger statistically by controlling more orbs, but instead of just altering the the emphasis of the orb (such as changing it so instead of +50 to all stats, maybe the green orb provided +20% karma; blue orb provided +20% MF, red orb provided +20% exp or GF, or have each orb provide 10 or 20 of each), the exact specifics don’t matter but the point is that they could have kept the orbs but made their value much less game-changing by removing the raw stats portion and replacing it with something much less meaningful. That way strong servers weren’t really getting any real advantage besides some bonus karma or MF that isn’t much different from banners. Instead, the whole orb aspect was removed and a fun component that kept WvW activity diverse was lost.
My point is, look for ways to improve and diversify current content as opposed to rushing to cap or pigeonholing players to play a certain way all the time. Yes many of us appreciate the new temporary content we get once a month, but there are so many other things you could add just to keep players invested into your game. One example that I always thought would be fun was adding a world boss with a megachest (similar to shatterer or SB etc) into a WvW. It’d actually be fun fighting with other servers over a world boss for good loot. Yes there are bosses in EB already but they have crappy loot and not a real world boss. And obviously I realize we don’t want to fill EB cap with a bunch of people looking to loot a boss rather than helping their server, which is why it should be placed in something like Obsidian Sanctum. Instead of it being just a place for a JP, it could be a more PVE like area where you have the option to fight with other players over a boss and loot (in this case other servers). I’m not a game developer so I can’t give mechanics on how I think it would work, but many other MMOs have content like this and I’m sure ANET would find a way to make this work as well. And obviously there are a ton of world bosses in regular PVE areas already, so players can always choose not to be go to a PVP area if they prefer not to.
I’m sorry for the long post, but I’m a GW2 supporter and I always have wanted the game to succeed. I just believe there are many changes like this that could be incorporated that will really spark player interest into continuing to play and having diverse content to experience.
I know I’m not alone on some of these sentiments, any other changes that people may like to see or be brought back?
(edited by koolmutt.9827)