I’ve had this idea in my head bugging me for some time now, and I thought I better put it down “on paper”.
For a while now I’ve been talking to friends, guildies, and random players around the game and there seems to be a consensus that we need large group content. Now when I say large group content I don’t mean Tequatl, the Evolved Jungle Wurm, and etc. Those are great, but they require a relative large amount of people (too large) , as well as a lot of organization (the Wurm specially); and they are also timed. What I mean is challenging, instanced content, for mid. size groups. A small scale raid if you will.
Here’s what I often find. I log in and there are 10-15 people in guild, and they all want to do something together, because we’re a guild and we’re all friends. Ok let’s do dungeons, a fractal… okay cool but those automatically split our group into smaller ones. We’re not really doing something together anymore. Now if we really want to stay together we have to go to some open world content, which translate into a farm. Not only that, but there’s usually more people there and things scale, and now it’s no longer a guild/team activity it’s a map one. We don’t want to mindlessly farm, or be dependent on random people to achieve something. We want to get together experience challenging content, at our own time and pace, and be well rewarded for our efforts. In Guild Wars we had Fissure of Woe, The Underworld, Urgoz’s Warren, The Deep, The Domain of Anguish, amongst other areas which were challenging and required good team work. Many of them even had exclusive rewards, which made these areas even more rewarding when you did in fact get said rewards.
I don’t know what Hearts of Thorn will bring, but here is what I thought could be done based on what we currently have:
Thanks to the living story way of introducing content in the game, we can use that to introduce a 10-15 person raid. I say 10-15 person because I just read about an instance that has been changed to scale, and I think that would be a great way to make something like a raid more flexible and accessible. At any rate, first we need a setting. I think we need to go back to Southsun Cove. There was a lot of work that went into making that area, however after LS season 1 people have no real reason to go back there other than guild missions, the timed Karka Queen event, and the rarely put together Karka farm. Since the area is already there, why not take it to it’s full potential? Let’s also bring back the Consortium. They are a mercantile corporation, but when was the last time you actually bought something from them? Heck, when was the last time you even interacted with any of their NPCs? They are still in game, but ask a player that joined after the LS Season 1 what the Consortium is, and they’ll probably have no idea.
As far as story goes. Let’s have the Consortium begin reconstruction of their resort again, and have players help; the resort of course being a cover for what they really want. I suggest changing the events in Southsun to be more like the events in Silverwastes. Have it so that by completing events players will have some sort of currency (for the sake of this post let’s call it C-money) to trade with the consortium for exclusive armor and weapon skins. As the weeks past, have the resort construction as well as the story progress, till it eventually leads players to access the raid area. In fact, in order to keep the events relevant in the area, have players need C-money in order to get into the raid grouping area once it’s introduced. C-money could also used to get discounts on other items for example, Master’s Salvage Kit usually costs a bit over 15 Silver, but in Southsun with C-money it costs 10 Silver. Having a variety of items selling at discount could make the area a real popular player spot. As far as the Karka queen is concern, make her an “end map event” boss like the Vine Wrath. Take advantage of that Karka Hive to introduce a fun mechanic to the boss.
I didn’t delve too much into specifics because I feel that Devs are the only ones who know the full extent of what can be accomplished. Though I believe if these suggestions were implemented, they would not only bring a new wanted addition to the game, but also rehabilitate an area of the game that is not being used nearly as much as it could or should be.