Guild Wars 2

Goal of Proposal

Ensure that rewards properly drive players to engage in challenging and difficult content instead of choosing the easier content because it is more profitable (not simply because it is easier.)

What problem are you trying to solve with your proposal

GW2 has a wonderful combat system that is well utilized in many encounters. Unfortunately, the most easily completed content is often also the most profitable. This provides little drive to the challenging content.

Proposal Functionality

I am sure that this is not intentional. It is unlikely that Anet devs decided “Hey, lets make sure that the hardest game content isn’t as rewarding as easier content.” Instead, I know this is a matter of it being difficult to accurately judge what a proper reward is. After all, players are constantly surprising, and giving a place improper rewards can have disastrous effects on other content.

It’s important to give difficult content unique and tradeable rewards. Prestige items like the fractal weapons are great, and their lack of tradeability causes them to be a testament to one’s devotion. The Twilight Aether weapons are an example of a good reward, though valuable skins unfortunately must be rare enough to maintain value that they often fail as a compelling reward system.

Instead, I propose that you ensure that difficult content provides a frequently liquid item that other players will want, but that many will be unwilling to earn due to the difficulty of the content. If the new content has an item awarded similar to how Fractal Relics are (something which scales with the content) but is desired by the playerbase in a way such as foxfire clusters are (used in large quantities to make an item that most players, specifically those even those who won’t be running the content as well, will want) then balancing the rewards will be much easier as the players themselves will determine as a group what the value of running this content is.

Associated Risks

Many players dislike having to purchase items to create something that they want or feel they “need”. (For example, people who farm for materials to use instead of farm for gold to buy the materials) These players might feel that they are being “forced” to play content they’d rather not do. However, much of the economy of an MMO is entirely based around the idea of paying money to people who perform an action you don’t want to do (for example, farming materials) using gold you earned from actions you do want to do; so I don’t think these complaints are worthy of great concern. As long as they can be earned with gold, everyone should (hypothetically) be pleased.

I’ve gotten really into Trixel Art lately, and The Symbol of the Inquest struck me!

Tumblr Link: http://ericdoesadraw.tumblr.com/post/97752318704/symbol-of-the-inquest

Exosferatu.2961:

If I could turn Braham into a villain in Guild Wars 2:

• Cragstead was attacked by the Molten Alliance once more, Braham promised Ottilia that he will come back for her and get help.
• Braham sought for aid from Hoelbrak again and but did not received help from his own people like before; not even his own mother, Eir Stegalkin.
• Braham then asked Rox to help him but she apologized that she cannot anymore because she is now part of a new warband and she can’t just abandon her responsibilities.
• He went to Divinity’s Reach and talked to Countess Anise and asked for her help but she said that the Shining Blade cannot leave DR because their priority is protecting Queen Jennah.
• Braham came back to Cragstead to see only its ruins. The worried Braham ran back to Ottilia’s place and saw her cold body lying on floor stabbed by her own weapon. He stood in front of his dead beloved for a good five minutes. His knees weakened and he kneel down and prayed to the Spirits of the Wild but they did not answer.
• Now the torn Braham thought that the world is against him. Then, Jormag whispered into his hear: “Come to me, my child. The North. Far Shiverpeaks as the mortals have called it. I shall aid you. . .”
• Braham came back from Far Shiverpeaks with his own army of Sons of Svanir, Icebrood Kodan, and two Claws of Jormag. They marched towards Hoelbrak.
• Knut Whitebear underestimated Braham and led the downfall of the norn settlement.
• After the fall of Hoelbrak, Braham and his army entered Ascalon. Their path become covered in ice and snow.
• An Ash Legion Scout reported to Rytlock Brimstone. The Charr knows about Braham’s intention – to invade the Black Citadel.
• In battle, Braham and Rox met:
  “You know I’m ready. I can’t speak for Frostbite. Then again, neither can he, because he can’t talk.” Braham said.
  Rox remembered the exact same conversation she had with Braham in Crown Pavillion and replied: “He talks. You just have to know how to listen. Right, boy?” Frostbite then purrs. “See? Frostbite’s ready. Let’s show Braham what happens when you mess with our pals.” And the two clashed.

This is amazing. I think Braham is the best candidate for fallen hero.

Most LS events are two-parts, remember. We’ve had a number of single-release ones recently (Tequatl, TA, Halloween), but “1 month = 2 updates = 1 LS event” is the norm.

The first event usually sets up the situation and gives the players some stuff to work towards.

The second event releases the dungeon or instance or main stuff.

So, with that said, here’s what I’m guessing we will see.

The mesmer alliance breaks the wall, catching the Krait in their evil.

A bunch of new events in Kessex and one (maybe two) Living Story instances to complete. The tower will be mostly closed, or only part of it will be accessible.

Two weeks later, everything breaks loose! Krait finish whatever the thing they were doing / the final barrier is broken open / something else. Now the conclusion occurs and the new instance or dungeon or whatever the main “meat” part is revealed.

Two weeks later, the krait tower has been destroyed and their schemes have been stopped! (Alternatively, and this I hope, there still is permanent content left behind.)

I would most enjoy this to be the reveal of a new dungeon a new type of 5-man instanced PVE content. (Say, a multi-layered dungeon where each “path” is a different floor and you have to unlock the previous one to do the next. Yes this is similar to fractals, no this is not fractals.) If not instanced, it’d be nice if there was a semi complicated event that had to be done to open the door into the tower, which is then resealed soon after. This would make the open world groups have to attempt the tower’s event chain completion in waves instead of constantly reflowing in (also makes a full wipe a real wipe.) We already see stuff like this in the Opening Instances when you create your race, where people only get to enter the fight with Issormir etc in waves. (Not as noticeable now though, since there aren’t throngs of new characters being made like at launch.)

The Krait finding their own seed would probably be my favorite development.

If you insist that you must have AH, I’d I’d consider:

0 / 0 / 30 / 20 / 20

or

0 / 30 / 30 / 5 / 5

The daily activities and the Festival ones are always games that I think are pretty fun.

However, I just can’t bring myself to really enjoy it because all I want is to play these games with my friends. Because of this, these minigames essentially don’t event exist to me. I want to race him in sanctum sprint, track him down in Lunatic, and steal the crab from him in crab toss.

I can’t do any of this though, because I’m only allowed to be paired with random players.

The point of this is the stop people from planning intentional fails or something to help others grind achievements and rewards? I’d be more than happy to play in a game mode where I received no rewards or achievements. I just want the play the game with my friend!

You can an exotic glove of the mad king with the stat set of your choosing.

Good if you want an alternative equipment set or having finished gearing an alt.

jheryn.8390:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Probably tried to overthrow his old man.

The joko theory works too.

Or he worked with Ascalon’s royalty. Or Orrian. Thorn could have reigned during the second guild war.

Or maybe he was a ‘monster’ because he was nice to people and tried to help them. LOL. That would really shame Thorn.

Though in one of his dialogues, he admits to torturing and killing his favorite step-mom. So I doubt he was kind.

It’s much easier to swallow if you simply think to yourself that the Recipe Sheet is now a discontinued item.

The weapons themselves are not discontinued items, however. Plenty of people made recipes or ate them in the past and will readily jump on the possibility of turning 500 Dungeon tokens into a pile of gold.

Competition among Halloween Weapon crafters will never allow this to go absolutely bonkers. After all, 500 Dungeon tokens is not very hard to obtain.

Walhalla.5473:

Riot Inducer.8964:

Exosferatu.2961:

To people that are saying the Krait may have allied themselves to Scarlet Briar, I completely disagree with you. The Krait are very xenophobic and will enslave or kill all other species on sight. Why would they affiliate themselves to Scarlet? That is ridiculous. And if the krait did ally themselves that will make Scarlet the ultimate Villain Sue.

To Arena Net, I am impressed. We need more of this living and breathing in game, though. Please put more in game for future Living Worlds and not just the upcoming patch.

The dredge and flame legion were pretty xenophobic too but that didn’t stop them from following little miss perfect around.

Not trying to dispute your point, I really hope scarlet isn’t involved in this, all I’m saying is there’s a precedent for her flying in the face of established lore, logic and reason.

Yes the Dredge and Flame Legion are xenophobic, but it isn’t unlikely fot them, to build the Molten Alliance under Scarlet. It was a dire situation for them when they founded it. ( Dredge Moletariat facing a revolution, and some very important persons dead. Flame Legion facing war against an enemy too powerful. Even Gaheron as a god couldn’t win it. )

But the Krait. They are xenophobic to the extreme. They kill, eat and sacrifice every non Krait they see. It’s impossible for Scarlet to work with them, they would just attack her on sight. Perhaps this one is a prelude to another Living Story Arc that will come after the Scarlet Arc.

I really like it how Anet changed Kessex. Little or big changes, foreshadowing events are a good way to make this world more living and less static. I wish you could do that more frequently Anet

Indeed, the Krait are so xenophobic that you can even see them attacking living races while said living race is under attack by risen.

You’d think at the very least you’d side with life.. But not with Krait.

Ooh wow, good catch. This is very ominous.

I would love this. There were similar systems in DDO which I enjoyed greatly.

I think time-related bonuses would also be nice.

If you don’t think you can handle wearing Berserker, then theres a couple things you should do.

Knights: At least damage is still okay and you have toughness.
Celestial: I guess this plays into your “support” role since it’s got some healing power tacked on too.

In either case, you don’t need PVT armor or even armor with any healing power to be a proper “support.” Support will originate from your skills and virtues (popping out aoe protections / blinds / aegis / might / pulling enemies close together / using wardings to control the field / etc). Healing power scales pretty badly save a few moves so I wouldn’t use clerics, only celestial. More importantly though, the game is much more about avoiding damage than healing it, and as a guardian you can bring a lot of options for your party to avoid damage.

In either case, when you feel comfortable with what you’re wearing, consider swapping one part out for a zerker.

Relentliss.2170:

Did you complete the run?

If so I am wondering what the issue is.

The OP mentioned that these were speed-runs.

The TA Aetherpath achievements for the Mini Clockheart are going to stay.

The other meta for the Slickpack will not.

Lankmaster.6507:

Dragons would be nice…..

I know, me too.

Wait hold on, wasn’t everything to do with Zhaitan pretty much a disaster?

I’d really like a Branded Explorable Dungeon, I meant to say.

It will probably be a new dungeon to do with the prince instead, and will be released on the second part.

It would make sense to me if we could buy Bloodstone Dust and Dragonite Ingots for fractal relics. (Yeah, I know nobody would EVER pay anything for dust.)

I think the path is probably my favorite dungeon in the game. It is quite unfortunate to me that it seems that it’s less efficient for money than a train of fast dungeons like COF1, SE1+3, etc.

However, I am very glad it exists and plan on running in frequently. I want to hunt out all the achievements, at least! Probably hunt for a few of those Blue weapons too.

Nah, he’s saying it like we would say “The devil take these oozes.” He doesn’t like Jormag, which is why he’s saying it like that.

If Caithe gets corrupted, I’d get the rest of destinys edge together to drag her back to the altar of glaust and patch that up.

Actually why don’t we get faolain in there? I’m sure Caithe would appreciate it and we can always use more Firstborn dragonslayers, especially those with detailed information on Mordremoth.

Just grab your Fiery Greatswords, Ice Bows, and Fire Ele powder and he gets burned down.

Throw in seed turrets, mortars, and stuff and you’re even better off.

In all honesty, it’s true that teq is not as exciting now that I know that theres pretty much no chance I’ll fail every time I go in. Pushing for records is where the anxiety can come in.

But at least I cant leave and go make a sandwich during the battle!

Oh you guys had better watch out, us in [teq] are going to be taking back that world record any day now!

I don’t have a problem getting people to kill him, I do it at least once a day unless I’m otherwise busy or only have a little time.

I know I’ll be waiting a while, I’m okay with this. I’m anxious and looking forward to the next awesome fights but I’m not impatient.

I think the new Tequatl fight is probably the best update I’ve ever seen in the game. Nothing instilled pure excitement in it like for over a week. I was checking the forums practically every hour to see who held the new record, what new server had succeeded, and everything. For once in my life, I cared about server identity beyond just WvW.

I’ve got my Sunbringer now, and killed teq quite a few times. I plan trying to go kill him every day, mostly just because I love the fight. But now that I’ve had a taste of what these dragons can be, I wan’t more.

Looking forward to what you do with The Shatterer and Claw of Jormag. Let’s make it so it takes over a day this time though, yeah?

I think Cadeyrn is the best villain in GW2.

Which really makes it shame that all he does is say almost nothing and then die in TA Story.

I think the red weapons would be cool, I’d like them.

With that out of the way, I actually like what they’ve done so far instead of dying weapons. Different colors carrying different levels of prestige are a thing I actually think is pretty cool.

I love this path, the boss is an example of a case where organization and skill trumps other methods. I recently just beat it again, and taking down the tree is pretty glorious feeling.

However, it does need a fix! Failing the boss ends up causing there to be a mess of spiders waiting around the room. In any other similar case in the game, the ads would despawn, but not here.

If all they do to this path is make it so the spiders despawn when killed, then we will have a nice path!

Indeed, I’d like to see the other Nightmare Trees made more challenging too. Giving the Mesmer Nightmare tree some chaos storms and the F/F Nightmare Tree’s seed turrets a longer spawning range would be great.

I was thinking about this, and something I realized is that the karma gain is pretty substantial. The karma faucet has pretty much been turned off in this game, making this actually a pretty remarkable source.

I really like the labyrinth idea.

They’re not full yet! You should still be able to get invites. Hope you see you all in the field.

I’m pretty much fine with most of the ordinary bosses after the new rework, but I really would like to see all the Dragon Champions have the same power as teq.

I’d like to be in!

I’ve been obsessed with Teq since the new one came out, checking constantly for the current records. I’m a level 80 Guardian with full exotic (celestial), the will to defeat Tequatl (indeed, the will to get a Sunbringer title) and I’ve been using Powerful Potions of Undead Slaying and food at almost all the fights i’ve participated in.

I would absolutely love to be a part of this. I want to kill Teq over and over again.