Guild Wars 2

I would have liked for the post to be entitled, “Ascended Armors, New Personal Storylines, Reasons to go back to Starter Cities,” but that exceeded the 45 character limit. Anyways…

[TL;DR: Have spiritual entities in racial starter cities that start new personal storylines in a mission to acquire unique Ascended Armors.]

Today, while leveling my thief, I was chatting on the guild channel and exploring Divinity’s Reach for the umpteenth time and I was reveling in the realization of how empty Divinity’s Reach is! Fortunately, the plethora of NPC’s and ambient talking noise definitely made this less noticeable, and I thank ANet for that, but upon further looking, I was noticing how few of the blueish-greenish names were hovering above characters’ heads and thinking to myself, “Man, I wish there was more of a reason for people to come back here!” I identify with Divinity’s Reach like nowhere else in any game I’ve ever played (which, to be honest isn’t very broad – pretty much exclusive to GW1 and the long-ago Runescape). Divinity’s Reach makes me think, “I wish I could actually live here. I wish I could move out of my house in Knoxville, Tennessee and come live here in the Salma District.” The art is so fantastic, there are so many places to explore, it’s so vast and expansive, and (in my opinion at least) got more attention from the devs than any of the other starter city in the game. Don’t get me wrong, I think Rata Sum is freaking impressive, and will be even more after Polymock gets set up among other things (Polymock is something that gives me real hope that the starter areas will receive some kind of buff before its all over with). I love the feel of Hoelbrak, the intricacies of the Grove, and the imperialistic “oomph” of the Black Citadel. But Divinity’s Reach is home to me, and it bothers me that it gets abandoned so early on in the storyline (and that storyline that exists is mainly housed in the Salma District – I mean, COME ON! So much of Divinity’s Reach story is confided to the tiny instances and blah blah blah).

Back in Guild Wars 1, endgame content was not hard to come by. The player hit the level cap very early in the game so that the world was then opened up to the player afterwards. I would argue that Guild Wars 2 actually discourages exploration – despite the illusionary incentives via exp gain by exploring and whatnot – this game focuses too much on leveling in my opinion to fully support the exploration that it attempts to promote. But that’s a different topic altogether. The fact of the matter is, after you completed all of the Missions and everything in GW1, and you felt you were “done” with the game, you still had elite missions (Fissure of Woe, The Underworld, Domain of Anguish, etc) to go back to and farm for rewards. In UW, it was the familiar Globs of Ectoplasm, which served as the main currency for high-value transactions, having a variable value of anywhere from 5,000g to 7,500g. In UW, you farmed for Obsidian Shards, worth 2.5k to 6k a piece. Domain of Anguish provided four different types of [essentially] dungeon tokens that you could trade in later for crazy awesome weapon skins, or sell them on the market for about 2k a piece. FoW and UW were based on the Human gods of Grenth and Balthazar. Now, GW2 DOES have human god-based rewards via the Karma vendors in Orr, despite the claims that the gods have truly abandoned Tyria. However, I had another idea that could use these gods (or other, more racial specific variations) to provide endgame content to players.

Imagine this. You’ve beaten the personal storyline. You’re level 80 now, and you don’t really know where to go next. You could go to WvW, do some Dungeons, Fractals, explore (which you’ve already used as a method of grinding to achieve your level 80), grind for money to get gear off of the TP, etc. You return to your nostalgic starter town and find something different.

In Divinity’s Reach, there is a shrine to each of the gods. As I was brainstorming, my mind went to the jumping puzzle in the Shrine to Melandru (http://bit.ly/UXwuGp). A character would go there and kneel to the shrine and an Avatar of Melandru would emerge. You would either talk to her like you would any NPC or there would be some kind of cutscene. If you did the non-gw2 cutscene where there is actually live action, a moment could occur where you see yourself in a brand new God-Armor (to take the place of the equipment viewer in an artsy-er way). You could go back to this Avatar and request to see yourself in this armor again to assure you like it whenever you wanted to. This would be the gateway to an ascended armor set.

For humans, this could be with any of the gods. Each armor set would look different, but the player would be able to choose at the end which stats he/she would want for the individual armor piece. After speaking to the god, you would pledge Allegiance to the god, and you would have a new personal storyline.

As I mentioned before, I used to play Runescape. While I’ve never seen this game on any list of MMO’s ever (nor do I really know if it counts as an MMO), it had its ups and downs. I really enjoyed the activities idea, where the player could go do minigame-like activities for tokens, thus rewards at the end. But what it also did right were the quests. Now I know I’ve said the god-forsaken Q-Word here, but hear me out. One of my favorite quests in the game was one called Desert Treasure, in which the player stumbled upon an archeologist who found an ancient pyramid in the desert. When exploring this pyramid, the player found out it held some kind of ancient magic. The player went through four long journeys to obtain four Diamonds (Smoke, Blood, Ice, and Rock) to open the pyramid. After all of this, a final boss battle and access to the “Ancient Magicks” which were far more effective than your default spellbook. Now, for any of you Runescape aficionados out there, I just recited the quest by memory, so excuse me for any false information. My point is: Quests in that game were very complex, and each told a story – even if the story was pointless and didn’t affect anything as a whole. GW2 can’t currently tell any kind of story with a Renown Heart, and events don’t last long enough to provide for any kind of meaningful experience.

But after you’ve finished your personal storyline in GW2, I feel like that should just be the beginning. After you become an Acolyte of your respective god, you are given a new personal storyline. I would imagine that this one would be 1/2 to 1/3 as long as your default storyline, but it takes all of the silly chance and guesswork out of acquiring the objects (ie Lengendaries… QQ). I’m not suggesting that all of the items be acquirable in the way that skill points are, for instance (in the way that you go to Location X and there it is). You might have to spend skill points on items and throw them into the mystic forge to get what you want, but the game still guides you through it. I know that GW2 is really against handholding, but if the game doesn’t do it, the wiki will. And you might as well just incorporate it into the game, ya know?

One acquires each armor piece one by one through different – dare I say it – questlines. Once a player owns all six pieces of the armor, the armor does something. It could glow, it could… I don’t know, provide an extra 1%-10% speed boost. It could act as a Rune and after 25 kills, it does something for you. Or, it could be purely aesthetic, because it seems like I’m building up to suggest some kind of gear progression model, and I’m really not. But give the player a diminished legendary-esque aesthetic change so people can look at him/her and be like, “Whoa, that’s really cool. And I could totally do that.” Give the player an “Acolyte of Melandru” title for completing the armor set and storyline.

There are several reasons to why I prefer this way of gaining prestigious items or gear. First, I love the idea of adding some sort of meaning to obtaining the item. Sure, it’s really nice to have the item and boast it to everyone when you’re pwning n00bs in WvW, but this really gives ANet the chance to explain some of the lore in the game, ranging from Pre-GW1 era to the gap in between. In using the gods, you have the perfect tool to explain the past and kindle a new hope because the gods have apparently abandoned Tyria long ago. Putting the avatar at a shrine that isn’t the official god statue in Divinity’s Reach gives the feeling that it’s unique to you because you don’t have the “Priestess of Melandru” breathing down your neck while you chat it up with the Avatar of a deity that apparently abandoned you thousands of years ago.

Now, I’ve pretty much used this entire post so far explaining it exclusively in the perspective of the human gods. However, it needs to open up to all races, and in my opinion needs to be race exclusive in the way that the cultural armor is race exclusive. For the humans, I would suggest picking 3-4 gods to do this with, maybe using the Avatar of [Dwayna, Grenth, Kormir, Lyssa] Representing the gods of Life, Death, Truth, and Illusion. With the Asura, you have an Elder Professor from the College of [Dynamics, Statics, Synergetics]. With the Norn, you have the Legendary Seer of the [Bear, Raven, Snow Leopard, Wolf]. With the Charr, you have the [Blood, Ash, Iron] Heir of Khan-Ur. With the Sylvari, you’d have Ventari’s Prophet of [Wisdom, Life, Fate].

Let me know what you think about this. Personally, I think it would be a great mechanic for “endgame” progression while solving a couple other problems in the mix.

-redhand

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+1 I like it. Obviously needs some small changes but I love it so far.

Great idea OP, it would be an Awesome idea.

Would the playerbase prefer this method of obtaining higher-level’d items as opposed to the current system that utilizes [ideally] simply the mystic forge and a little experimentation (but realistically uses the wiki)? I guess that for me more than anything, I’d like to see more method to the madness instead of a straight grind that I’m currently seeing.