Sometimes less is more!
Yeah I’ll give you a plus 10 on that one.
I’m fed up with chasing crap that I don’t even need and is clogging up my bank.
How many other different things are we going to get to collect, it’s just all rubbish.
Jumping puzzles, love them or hate them, I hate them. Thread killer.
I do like the progressive story and having something new every couple weeks to try out. I’m mostly just in a holding pattern based on supposed upcoming releases that will change the core game mechanics, like MF shifting from gear to account and such. The current large group bash missions are pretty neat and massive amounts of loot drops make it worth trying for stuff in the mystic forge. But my banks are filled up with all these items that I’m hanging on to because I’m not sure how the Magic Find changes will affect the game, my characters, the economy, etc.
If these “farming” events were after the game mechanics have changed and the economies have settled, I wouldn’t feel like I’m in a holding pattern, waiting for something that’s going to happen soon, yet I can’t do anything about right now.
As for the OP, I’d definitely like more intricacy in the event missions and more involvement as opposed to just following the herd from point to point to point. I do like the big battles, but I haven’t felt like a battle was epic since the southshore end event.
I do like getting the volume of loot drops as the current and previous event provide, but eventually it just had the feeling of 2 weeks of farming for the sake of farming. There was no goal, no objective, no purpose other than acquire loot and fill up bags to dump into the mystic forge or salvage for crafting.
These farming runs can definitely be part of the events, but they shouldn’t be the core of the event.
One idea that might be worth looking into would be to have events where they sort of guide the player base along doing the normal achievements that they normally wouldn’t be able to do. The dailies kind of do this, but they are objective based. I think it would be neat if there were, say an NPC who has similar achievement goals as the ones you and a group of people do. He says, “Ya know, I’ve always wanted to dive off of the cliff near X, would you accompany me?”. Then a random group of players who all need that particular objective head off with him across zones, going on adventures, finding misc things along the way that weren’t necessary a part of the original adventure, sometimes having a specific mob fest that happened to appear on your way there. Eventually, you make it to your original destination, but you’ve gone through many events along the way that added to your adventure and all contributed toward achievements.
Adding to the previous, it could double in pvp/wvw. NPC wants to do several different objectives that are in the pve areas, one in the pvp area, and 2 final ones in the wvw areas. That moves players through various normal objectives and achievements while exposing them to the various points of the game, and, at the same time, helping them along adventures similar to the main story arch. All the while having commentary and interaction with the player.
Anyway, there are many different approaches to making the living world more interactive, more fun, and more interesting. I, personally, really enjoyed the southsun event, the labrinthine area, and the queens pavillion mobfest. I also really liked the mad king boss fight and the southsun end fight (except there were too many people in a localized area and I rarely got drops or xp from normal enemies because I couldn’t cause enough damage to register as having contributed).
I look forward to seeing where Anet takes GW2 in the future.