Guild Wars 2

See what I did there?

This post is more about addressing the issue with gaining Karma, and touches on the Orr farming topic as well.

What Is Karma?

In game, it’s an alternative currency exchangeable for gear, consumables ect.

In human theology though, in Layman’s Terms, ’it’s what goes around, comes around’. In Paganism, it’s known as The Rule Of Three. This is the only reason I can think they named it Karma: You do a good thing (in an event), and you get Karma in return (remember this concept, we’ll be using it later).

What’s The Issue?

At the moment at cap, the most efficient way of getting Karma is The Cursed Shore. Yes, lower events give Karma as well, but not as much. Take Plinx. He’s a chain of 5 events, each giving ~370 Karma. This totals to 1850 Karma per run, and he spawns quite regularly.

This results in overcrowding in some areas, and a lack of players in lower level areas unable to do events because there’s no-one around.

What’s The Solution?

More activities that give Karma. Activities that would have to be ‘lucrative’ enough to tempt people away from their fave spot and out into the world.

Now remember that concept from earlier? We’ll be using this as the basis for thinking up suggestions to create more Karma production, and hopefully easing up overcrowding in Orr.

Make Ameranth the new Nicolas

Order and Pact Tasks

At the moment, aside from the storyline, the Orders and the Pact don’t seem to play much of a part, considering at some point you become high-ranking. This suggestion aims to not only provide an additional source of Karma, but also give these Organisations more importance.

Rather than be Daily Tasks, whenever these tasks are available for people to complete, The Order of their choice, and Pact will send them a letter. Completing this task will then award coin and Karma.

Tasks would vary in theme, depending on the order.

Of course, this could be worked further:

The Order of Whispers needs you to create a diversion so they can sneak in. Being The Vigil, you do what you do best; decide to attack them. You’d have to create chaos for a time period while fighting waves of enemies (kind of like a survival challenge) until they get out of there. A notification will pop up (or maybe an NPC will come running in saying important documents are missing), and that’s it. Task complete. Helping someone with this task (you’d have to be of the same Order to be eligible) would also award you Karma, even if you’re not on it, while if you were on the task with someone else who was on the same task, you’d both get bonus Karma.

Travelling The World, Helping People

Assisting Heart Vendors you’ve completed with problems would award Karma.

Helping Wild Animals

Helping Neutral animals fight off attackers would award a small amount of Karma.

Help A Newbie

One thing that we can take from this concept is using it as a tool to build the community, by rewarding higher level, more experienced players for helping lower level, less experienced players.

For example, a group hasn’t done a particular Dungeon run before that you have. Helping them right to the end would award you bonus Karma. Showing someone through a jumping puzzle you’ve done would award Karma at the end. Grouping up with a lower-level player and helping them level would grant bonus Karma per event for you (although down-scaling would have to be harsher).

Assisting and Reviving

In the place of XP, grant a small amount of Karma for reviving players, a slightly larger amount for helping players in Downed state, but grant a larger amount for assisting a player with a kill they’re having trouble with.

So, there are some of my suggestions. Feel free to criticise them or post your own.

Remember to try and keep with the theme ‘What Goes Around, Comes Around’ though.

The main issue is that karma-rewards are unbalanced.
Some events just need a bit of a boost, whereas others (like Cursed Shore or w/e it’s called) needs its reward toned down.

However, I like the idea of rewarding people for grouping up with a newbie whose never been in the dungeon before.

But, I do not like the idea of rewarding people for grouping up out of dungeons
Boiled down, that just leads to reward for partying, which will inevitably indirectly punish solo players.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Helping Wild Animals

Helping Neutral animals fight off attackers would award a small amount of Karma.

Too bad whenever I try to do this, the neutral mob will end up attacking me afterward.
Then I gotta put the poor thing ‘down’.

Here are some acts where I would like to see Karma rewarded, event or no event

• Reviving an NPC
• Participating in the entire duration of an event from beginning to end (as opposed to jumping in the last minute and still achieving Gold-rank, I find this kind of lame)
• Reviving a downed player who you had no prior line-of-sight on in the last 10 seconds. (Going to the aid of a stranger) (But not defeated players, because then reviving bots would give karma)
• Putting out fires with buckets of water

Note: These would be small pocket-change level bonuses. We wouldn’t want to discourage the players who jump into an event half-way.
It’d just be something that adds up for those who do go the extra mile in immersion.

DreamOfACure.4382:

But, I do not like the idea of rewarding people for grouping up out of dungeons.

Boiled down, that just leads to reward for partying, which will inevitably indirectly punish solo players.

I was implying that you’d only get the reward for helping significantly lower level players, and the Karma boost would bring the event up to the level of a level 80 event, maybe slightly higher, but not too much. Should have made that clearer.

However, you do have a point.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Helping Wild Animals

Helping Neutral animals fight off attackers would award a small amount of Karma.

Too bad whenever I try to do this, the neutral mob will end up attacking me afterward.

Then I gotta put the poor thing ‘down’.[/quote]

Yeah, tends to be with attacks with arcs and AoE. >.<

-Reviving an NPC

Didn’t I type that? :/

- Participating in the entire duration of an event (as opposed to jumping in the last minute and still achieving Gold-rank)

Agreed

- Reviving a player who you had no line-of-sight on before they went down. (Going to the aid of a stranger)

That’s kind of why I put in the different levels: That you’d get more of a reward for helping them while they were still alive than if they died, since people are bound to exploit it.

TheDaiBish.9735:

I was implying that you’d only get the reward for helping significantly lower level players, and the Karma boost would bring the event up to the level of a level 80 event, maybe slightly higher, but not too much. Should have made that clearer.

Same thing.

It’s rewarding people for partying with others as opposed to those who like to solo.

It would have tons of greedy players rushing off to low-level zones to get easy level80 karma, while the more straight-forward players trying to finish exploring feel cheated.

And many low level players would probably feel bothered by all the high-levels pestering to ‘help’ them.

DreamOfACure.4382:

TheDaiBish.9735:

I was implying that you’d only get the reward for helping significantly lower level players, and the Karma boost would bring the event up to the level of a level 80 event, maybe slightly higher, but not too much. Should have made that clearer.

Same thing.

It’s rewarding people for partying with others as opposed to those who like to solo.

It would have tons of greedy players rushing off to low-level zones to get easy level80 karma, while the more straight-forward players trying to finish exploring feel cheated.

That’s why I said down-scaling would have to be harsher.

However, thinking more about it now, you’re right.

Daily missions from your order will do just fine because they will be an add-on for the Daily Achievements. Split out the zones between the 3 orders so they don’t all farm the same zone of their quest. Switch zones daily. Do not reset the daily order mission until its done or abandoned by the player. Keep a maximum of 3 Daily order missions active: the player wont receive the current daily unless they ahve solved the previous 3 or abandoned them (similar to zashen quests or shining balde quests in GW1)

i agree that where max levelers get the best “rewards” in terms of things like money, items and karma, should be leveled out more, thus encouraging higher level players to “spread out” better across the zones and not just stagnate in the Cursed Shore.

And such rewards should just single out “forced grouping”.

In other words, the activities that a high level player gets involved in a low level area should yield the same level of rewards as if they were getting involved in the same type of events in Cursed Shore (e.g. grouping in CS or Queensdale should yield the same, soloing in either should yield the same).