The world doesn’t feel alive, dangerous, or challenging. Our actions don’t feel like they have any impact on the world other than micro events that simply reset.
First off I’m not hating on this game I really like it a lot and think it’s got so much potential which is why I even bother to post. I didn’t play GW1 but I’ve been playing MMO’s since Ultima Online. A dynamic world is like the holy grail of MMO’s and it’s why I was so excited about this game because that’s what I understood the goal to be. The problem is that the world isn’t really dynamic at all from what I can tell and everything from the bosses to the event’s are scripted in such a simple way as to make it feel like nothing is really happening at all. What do you mean you ask? Let me try and explain what I was hoping for:
1. I want challenges that bring us together as a community. Right now from what I can tell we can kill everything and the world bosses aren’t even a threat to us or the world at all. What is there to strive for? There isn’t really a crusade to fight. No real goals to strive for. There should always be a huge array of content that’s extremely hard, challenging, and inspiring that really makes us want to tackle it. I’m not talking about a new dungeon or making the ones we have harder etc I’m talking about entire zones, and undiscovered dungeons, as well as underwater worlds and entire continents places that we want to strive to discover and tackle but are also very challenging and dangerous places which means they will stay undiscovered for a long time. People love concepts like bottomless dungeons, ladder pvp, epic random unique gear, and impossible bosses because it gives them something to strive for. Right now as I can see it there is none of that. There isn’t even a way to get involved in farming or industry to boost the economy of your racial kingdom possibly for xp or gold bonuses. This type of stuff keeps people engaged.
2. World bosses. It’s been said many times but the bosses feel super easy and don’t move around etc. They need to be slaying players left and right moving, jumping, dodging, breathing fire etc. If they get hurt badly they should attempt to flee and come back stronger next time. Maybe they should bring an army with them and not just spawn things in a scripted manner. They should actually be able to win especially if there is a weak player base around them and if the world were truly dynamic they would then immediately begin changing the zone around them creating all kinds of negative consequences perhaps negative xp awards or maybe they slowly begin to grow in power. When the bosses win there should be a number of different scenarios that play out which are completely randomized and other types of creatures and events should spawn in the area to reflect the change in power.
3. Dynamic events simply aren’t dynamic enough. They feel like micro scripts that have a very limited impact on the world and zone and don’t actually tie together or have a real impact on anything. Say for example in Qeensdale if too many events start to fail more mighty centaurs and structures should begin to form and at some point a centaur champion should spawn to reflect the growing power and influence. All of this should be completely randomized though and it shouldn’t be a linear progression of if A fails B happens etc it should be much more dynamic and unexpected than that. Right now although the leveling itself is very fun the world itself still very static on a macro level.
4. If 1, 2, and 3 above were to actually move forward in a meaningful way then players who are very active, involved, skilled, whatever should be incentivized to stay that way. I know you this game isn’t supposed to be a gear grind but you can make unique and interesting gear that’s equal in power to other gear or make the increase in power near negligible. You can also add titles and other creative rewards to recognized players and make them want to help the world around them and stay involved.
Those are the major things call it a wish list if you will. I see so many threads in here talking about the most mundane of things that I consider non-issues but the ones I’ve listed are the ones that I think will make the game so much more interesting, engaging, and create an actual game that will both bring us together and become highly addicting.