Guild Wars 2

(Post #1)
IF YOU HAVE DON’T HAVE TIME TO READ, basically post #1 is facts, post #2 & 3 are my thoughts about the old temporary updates, and dungeon reward nerfs, and my ideal solutions to the problem.

Quick facts, about PVE ~ both past and present:

Originally when GW2 came out in August 2012 it came out with 32 different maps:
6 Ascalon maps, 1 Ascalon city (Black Citadel)
6 Shiverpeak maps, 1 Shiverpeak city (Hoelbrak)
5 Krytan maps, 2 Krytan cities (Divinity’s Reach & Lion’s Arch), Claw Island(personal
story exclusive map)
5 Maguuma maps, 2 Maguuma cities (Rata Sum & The Grove)
3 Orr maps

With Living World Season 1 we got:
1 new Krytan map(Southsun Cove)
1 non-permanent Deldrimor Front map (Labyrinthine Cliffs)
additions of Cragstead and North Nolan Hatchery, Crown Pavilion, Aetherblade
Hideout(w/ the jumping puzzle), Scarlet’s Secret Room and Marionette’s Landing
to the world map.
1 non-permanent dungeon – Molten Base(became a fractal map, although shortened)

With Living World Season 2 we got:
2 new Maguuma Wastes maps(Dry Top & The Silverwastes)
and permanent(repeatable) 8 storyline acts

with Heart of Thorns expansion we got:
4 new Maguuma Wastes maps which have 3 different biomes/levels
2 Guild Hall maps
and again like Living World Season 2, NEW permanent (repeatable) story.
Also, so far 1 raid map(1st Wing) visible in the world map

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Dungeons:
8 unique dungeons – that comes with 8 story dungeon paths, and 17 explorable
dungeon paths – total of 25 dungeon paths

Fractals:
50 levels pre-HoT(bumped to 100 levels with HoT) – 14 unique fractal map encouters

World Bosses:
29 world boss encouters all across the maps of Tyria before Heart of Thorns.

Map Wide Meta Events: (6 total)
2 maps from Living World Season 2, and 4 maps from Heart of Thorns expansion.

Activities: 6 total(4 on daily rotation), not counting Historical/recurring activities.
→ Crab Toss, Southsun Survival, Sanctum Sprinter, Keg Brawl (all of which are player against player type content), Belcher’s Bluff(drinking game vs npcs/player), and Costume Brawl.

Scavenger Hunts: The ones i know of are….Speedy Reader & Cleaning up the neighborhood(Ebonhawke), Diving Goggles (45 locations), Coin Collector (Dry Top), Lost Badges/Go for Gold (The Silverwastes), Mariner’s Plaque and Lion’s Arch Exterminator, A Study in Gold & No Masks Left Behind(Auric Basin).

Adventures:
15 new adventures have been introduced with the Heart of Thorns expansion.
→ 5 adventures in each of the HoT maps except Dragon’s Stand.

Jumping Puzzles: 48 total
44 Jumping Puzzles all across Tyria~PVE ( 2 of which are temporary and only comes
once a year~Winter Wonderland, Mad King’s Clock Tower).
4 WvW jumping puzzles ~ 3 from alpine borderlands(which were all the same
“copy-paste” on every borderland, but are now gone with the replacement of the the
NEW Desert Borderlands), and 1 from Obsidian Sanctum.

Personal Story:
Original – 49 chapters

Living World Season 1 – not counted by chapters, since its more about new but temporary content; but overall, in my opinion it has more playable content than both living world season 2 and Heart of Thorns combined. This has 25 storyline updates.

Living World Season 2 – 32 chapters

Heart of Thorns – 16 chapters

Guild Missions:
Guild Trek – 180 possible locations
Guild Puzzle – 3 unique puzzles
Guild Race – 7 different races
Guild Bounty – 18 possible targets
Guild Challenge – 6 unique challenges

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I would add the fact that there have been Temporary updates in the game during the Living World Season 1 (some of which comes back once every year)that are not shown in the world map but has content comparable to the size of 1 map, such as:

1. Shadow of the Mad King(Haloween event) – that came out with the Mad King’s
Realm(mini dungeon), Mad King’s clocktower(jumping puzzle), Mad King’s
Labyrinth(map), Reaper’s Rumble(structured pvp-moba style map), and Lunatic
Inquisition(new pvp type mode). Not to mention a new area in the Black Citadel
that shows the tomb of the Bloody Prince.

2. Wintersday – that came out with Tixx Infinirarium(mini dungeon), Winter
Wonderland(jumping puzzle), Bell Choir & Toypocalypse(group activites), and
Snowball Mayhem(new pvp type mode).

3. Super Adventure Box, a new world, dungeon type mixed together with jumping
puzzle. Huge content especially with Season 2 SAB addition.

4.Cutthroat Politics/Festival of the Four Winds – Candidate Trials(challenge mission),
Southsun Survival & Aspect Arena(both of which are new pvp type modes)

5. Tower of Nightmares(group content/dungeon/seen in the world map), first signs
of raid type content in my opinion, with additions of champions both inside the
tower and all over the map of Kessex Hills.

6. Escape from/Battle for Lion’s Arch – new map wide events in Lion’s Arch with
group/raid type content from Scarlet’s 3 Assault Knights, and Scarlet’s Prime
Hologram. Moa Racing(activity) was removed with Escape from Lion’s Arch patch.

7. Origins of Madness – Twisted Marionette(group content/raid type), Triple Trouble
Worm(new world boss), Map Invasions all across different maps in Tyria (meta wide
events)

8. Miscellaneous:
Dragon Bash – Dragon Ball(new pvp type mode)
Queen’s Jubilee – Beacons of Kryta(torch race), Crown Pavilion: Boss Blitz (group
event content), and Queen’s Gauntlet (1v1 arena w/ unique bosses)
Aetherblade Retreat (dungeon that became a fractal, although shortened)
Twilight Aetherpath permanently added to dungeons.

(continue’d ~ post #2)

LONG TEXT INCOMING!!!

Now with all that said, Arena Net has made tons of content that made us play thousand and thousands of hours into this game just on PVE alone, with the addition of raids and more raids in the future there would have been way to much content in the game to keep us playing for many years to come. Sadly, one thing that is really sad, is that alot of content that Anet has made, are/were temporary and were exclusive only during its release and up to a month after, before the next content patch removes it and adds a another temporary content.

I know its been said before, people want Living World Season 1 back to replayable, and due to technical difficulties, its not as easy to put back into the game, but imagine, all that content that i have mentioned above, if all that content are accessible whenever you want to do them, and be rewarded one way or another for doing them, then even veterans like myself would have too many things on our plate that we would be so preoccupied and overwhelmed that we would never run out of things to do on PVE alone.

Bringing back some/if not all of this temporary content and making them available to play again would greatly increase the variety of game modes in this game ~which players, both new and veterans alike will greatly enjoy, while not making new content(new Hot maps) dead, it will only give people way more ways to enjoy the game and reward them differently. Obviously with balance patches rewards can be fixed and be more in-tuned to what they should be and not exploited.

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I also want to talk about the subject, dungeon liquid reward nerfs. This topic is sad and really needs to be fixed. As alot of people know, Anet has moved on from dungeon content and put there resources into fractals and raids, which definitely choked a big part in the PVE community, this made dungeons from having bursting population into a deserted area of the game.

If liquid rewards are the sole purpose of this change, which means gold generated out of thin air and into the hands of players as they complete a dungeon path, has been the main reason for gold inflation in the game, then i would counter it by saying, that yes it was a great decision to nerf gold rewards, but leaving the dungeon so unappetizing the way it is now, only leaves a vacuum that cannot be filled by fractals(less maps, less unique encounters, less variety, less unique challenges) or raids(weekly gated rewards) alone.

I suggest that if your intention is to fix the gold inflation problem, then find a way, one way or the other to reward players that would bring them back to loving and playing your dungeons. Dungeons that you have worked for years, time that you the Dev’s put into this are just being wasted right now as majority of the dungeon running population have moved to different parts of the game, but are left missing and uncontent with the said changes.

(continue’d ~ post #3)

My suggestion on fixing this mess is to add some sort of reward like t5/t6 materials exclusive to specific dungeons(each path reward different mats which obviously can only be rewarded once daily, example: Cof p1 will reward 2 molten lodestones, p2 will reward 10 bolts of linen, and so forth). Players can then either sell this materials in the Trading Post to lower the prices of materials that have become over-priced due to people hoarding/buying low, selling high, or solely due to high demand and lack of supply, or just keep them for future use.

The changes to map rewards are the start of this, but you can apply the same style of rewards to balance out and lower prices of more crafting materials, whether common, fine, rare or ascended crafting materials, gemstones and jewels, cooking materials, festive materials, you can fix and balance the prices of all this materials, by adding this type of bonus reward into dungeon rewards and other old content.

This change will not only revitalized the number of people playing your dungeons, you also have more ways to balance items in the Trading Post, which promotes players to be more active in playing the game, than playing the Trading Post(as this is also one of the problems that has caused gold inflation, richest people in the game don’t even play your game the the fullest, all they need to do is play the Trading Post and profit, which as you know, contributes to gold selling as well, not saying all TP pro’s are, because that is definitely not true, but a number of people have been known to use this method)~that is like hitting two birds, with one stone.

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My hopes for the future….

All in all, the PVE that is now feels to constrained, people are not forced to do just specific parts of the game, but nonetheless you are pushed to doing only a specific content as some are rewarding and others are not(most people/veterans would not touch content that are unrewarding). Most people will do things that will reward them, it is what drives people to play a specific type of content over and over again, other than playing new content/challenging content. Like myself and many other players, I’m sure the Dev’s don’t wan’t to put the hours that they put into making content for the game in the past just wasted because the content they made were only temporary or are not rewarding. This can only be fixed by bringing back all this content into the game and making them available and rewarding.

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Thank you for reading this far.

If you have other ideas of fixing this type of content rewards other than the one i mentioned, please share, as i am curious and would really like to know.

TL’DR: I hope there comes a time when most/if not all content in this game’s both past and present, becomes rewarding one way or another; more varieties in the game, by bringing back old temporary content and dead content(dungeons) and making them rewarding (again). It doesn’t have to be liquid rewards, it can be rewards that may help stabilize the economy like crafting material rewards. This will also widen the variety of rewarding playable content in the game.

added facts on Guild Missions & Jumping Puzzles, comments would be appreciated

Thanks for putting all these numbers together. I’ve been meaning to do this, mostly for a comparison between GW2 release and HoT. Something significant to note is that some of the temporary content also dropped tickets or other means of getting exclusive skins and minis, no gem store required.

Soa Cirri.6012:

Thanks for putting all these numbers together. I’ve been meaning to do this, mostly for a comparison between GW2 release and HoT. Something significant to note is that some of the temporary content also dropped tickets or other means of getting exclusive skins and minis, no gem store required.

I’ve been meaning to do this as well for a few weeks now after HoT came out, but had a lot of free time so i decided to put up a quick info type facts that people can bookmark for future use.

On the topic about exclusive items, some/ or alot of those items can still be acquired from the laurel vendor, just did not want to add that in the initial post, as i was trying to aim for more hard content. Sadly the gem store pops out outfits every 2 weeks, that there will come a time where there are way more gem store outfits in the game than actual unique armor sets that can be acquired through tokens/currencies.
I was never fond of outfits, you can’t mix n match and can’t feel original, i only use them to hide my ugly starting armor when i level new alts or when i share ascended armor through different characters.

I meant, specifically, the tickets that dropped for the flame&frost and dragonbash events, which could be turned in for Black Lion weapons. There were the karka weapon redeemables, too, obtainable via drops (although those were about as rare as BLKeys).

That of course is the other interesting comparison to make: armor and weapon skins, per piece, per release (GW2 core vs HoT)

Labyrinthine Cliffs isn’t Crystal Desert. I’d say it’s what is left of Ice Floe and possibly the eastern part of Ice Caves of Sorrow.

Sorry to much to read, Im sure you made a great point tho!

anasantos.1263:

Sorry to much to read, Im sure you made a great point tho!

/sigh

The Twitter generation.

PVE – past,present,future…

Past : best MMO experience I had since WoW vanilla.

Present : I need to schedule my time in order to complete meta , I depend on other 50 to 100 players in order to succeed a meta ……quite mediocre experience

Future : Black Desert online ? :P

You forgot Aetherbalde Retreat dungeon. I never understood why the removed those two (the other is the molten one) from the world map, shortened and cut them in pieces and crammed them into fractals. Also there is a new dungeon for Twilight Arbor called Aetherpath which never was really popular be cause they filled it up with gimmicky gameplay so it was too hard to be run for normal PUGs.

Other than that:
Past: good first impression, fun leveling for the first time. Rather boring after it, no challenging content, only thing to do was making a legendary.

Present: much better, finally some hard daunting content, I love the feel that I just can’t faceroll something with randoms.

Future: With more raids and maps added there will be a rather good future. Population seams healthy and so their gem shop/income.

On a sidenote: the monetisation is taking overhand sometimes, keep in mind to not upset your consumers.

Exotrax.4207:

PVE – past,present,future…

Past : best MMO experience I had since WoW vanilla.

Present : I need to schedule my time in order to complete meta , I depend on other 50 to 100 players in order to succeed a meta ……quite mediocre experience

Future : Black Desert online ? :P

i agree with past and present; as for future, i’ve known about black desert since 2014, been waiting for it myself, the only thing i probably won’t like about it is the grind, korean mmos have that bad stigma, and based from NA players trying out black desert either from the japanese or russian or korean servers, most of them said the grind is real; but nonetheless, i’d probably still get the game. I don’t know if it will take over gw2 for me though, but its probably the only mmo i’ve been really excited and looking forward to for the past year.

ProtoGunner.4953:

You forgot Aetherbalde Retreat dungeon. I never understood why the removed those two (the other is the molten one) from the world map, shortened and cut them in peaces and crammed it into fractals. Also there is a new dungeon for Twilight Arbor called Aetherpath which never was really popular be cause the filled it with gimmicky gameplay and was too hard to be run for normal PUGs.

Other than that:
Past: good first impression, fun leveling for the first time. Rather boring after it, no challenging content, only thing to do was making a legendary.

Present: much better, finally some hard daunting content, I love the feel that I just can’t faceroll something with randoms.

Future: With more raids and maps added there will be a rather good future. Population seams healthy and so their gem shop/income.

On a sidenote: the monetisation is taking overhand sometimes, keep in mind to not upset your consumers.

i actually have info about aetherblade dungeon and twilight aetherpath on the first post, you probably just missed it.

As far as past goes, i love this game too much that i bring this post up to hopefully get the ear of a dev or two, there are more things to do in this game than making a legendary, although this post is about pve, i actually do pvp and wvw(roaming and zerging)alot, i probably would have quit a long time ago if i did not make those changes in my game, oh and i play 9 classes, for the same reasons.

I do hope that raids keep coming and keep us preoccupied, but going back to my original post, i really hope Anet does something to make dungeons worth playing again, one way or another.

updated, added some new info, and made the original posts text friendly, i know its hard to read a long wall of text. Anyway, would love to hear more comments.