I recently had roughly two weeks break and I don’t feel like I missed anything except a few achievement points.
I don’t mind releases like SAB but I’m sort of wondering what happened to the open world and story of the elder dragons. The world does not seem to progress at all. Instead of that we get a lot of stuff that feels very disconnected from the rest of the game. After a few weeks it’s gone and nothing significant was left behind.
I’m not entirely sure why you guys don’t focus more on developing the zones and connect the living world to those through events. There hasn’t been anything that has improved playability of the events and zones themselves. In fact the latest changes (i.e. champion loot) have further driven focus away from events.
Failure of Southsun Cove and the “event updates”
I recall a developer citing that Southsun Cove was a sort of failure and another mentioned that no one even noticed the new events they added on some update.
Southsun cove failed because there’s nothing truly desireable that is exclusive to Southsun Cove or that can’t be gotten easier from some other zone. Once the temporary content was over there was no reason to go there. Karka Queen is much harder than other world bosses so why bother when you can kill multiple bosses in a time it takes to defeat her.
The new events failed largely because of the same reason. Especially since level 80 players have few reasons to go back to do lower level events just for fun.
What I would like to see
Basically: focus on persistent changes to zones and make it worth to go there other than for farming champions. Make things exclusive. If something can be gotten easier from somewhere else that’s where players go. Below is an example of what I mean:
Thematic area: Maguuma Jungle
Thematic meta event: Rise of Tequatl the sunless
Thematic merchants: asura, sylvari
Buildup zones: Caledon Forest, Metria Province, Brisban Wildlands, Sparkfly Fen, Mount Maelstrom
Event monitor: Tool that shows how near completion the meta event is
Doing events in maguuma area reward player karma, gold, and deadly bloom(s) or knowledge crystal(s). Each area has a merchant which sells asura or sylvari themed gear, minipets, thematic items, crafting components in exchange for deadly blooms and knowledge crystals. These merchants must be unlocked for example through a reputation system. They sell weapon skin and other unique stuff that can’t be gotten anywhere else!
Once the build up events are done Tequatl assaults one of these zones with multiple hotspots for activity. Completing the event in any of these locations earns the final reward.
Goal: Players want to go to Maguuma areas for deadly blooms and knowledge crystals as an alternative to dungeons. They also want to earn the exclusive skins and other rewards that can be bought only with blooms/crystals.
Natural completion of these events spawns a world boss (Tequatl) instead of everyone swarming him based on a timer. Allowing him to appear in multiple zones makes it more interesting. Especially if each zone has unique defeat mechanic. Adding multiple spots that need to be simultaneously handled splits the players and reduces lag.
Finally you can tie living world achievements and temporary content to zone overhauls allowing you to tell stories and introduce new enemies while still leaving behind interesting persistent content.
Risk: Players may decide it’s more worthwhile to farm TA or CoE.
(edited by Northlander.4619)