Guild Wars 2

Vanquisher Title

Each zone should count toward progress on the overall Vanquisher title. To allow for expansion, the title could be split into region subsets (Maguuma Jungle Vanquisher, Krytan Vanquisher, etc.). Once gained, the title is not lost, but the required zones should expand to match the greater extents of additional zones.

Another possibility for the title is to have different levels based on region completion. Finishing one region awards one achievement and unlocks the next achievement, similar to PvP title progression. One region completed is a “Vanquisher.” Two, “Accomplished Vanquisher.” And so on.

The highest available tier should always be Legendary Vanquisher (as of this writing, that would be 6 regions: Ascalon, Shiverpeaks, Maguuma Jungle, Kryta, Orr, Maguuma Wastes). When new regions are added, the existing highest title should be renamed as appropriate, and the new highest tier renamed Legendary Vanquisher.

Being a “world complete vanquisher” (read: every zone vanquished) should change the map completion star from yellow to red, similar to GW1’s Hard Mode coloring.

Hard Mode Specific Achievements

Doing anything in Hard Mode should be substantially harder, so having simple counter achievements for the following makes sense:

• Kills (Capping at 5000)
• Champion Kills (Capping at 500)
• Sectors Cleared (Capping at a much higher number than the number of sectors in GW2)
• Hard Mode Slayer (Steal the slayer achievements, but at slightly lower caps)

Also, some “introduction to HM” achievements can help ease people in:

• Region Sector Cleared (a 1/1 achievement for clearing a sector in each region)
• Region Zone Cleared (another 1/1)
• Mob Coverage (an achievement for killing each type of mob in Hard Mode; one each of the Slayer title categories)

Unique Rewards

Beyond the long-term goal of some swanky titles and a unique icon, there should be unique rewards that are only available through Hard Mode.

Unique Armor and Weapons

Taking a page out of the Silverwastes Carapace/Luminescent Armor and Dry Top Ambrite, having a unique armor and weapon set obtainable by putting pieces together from zone completions (or champion kills) would be ideal.

Zone completion should have a guaranteed piece, while champion kills only a chance of one. To prevent grinding out the exact same, easier zone to get the required pieces, each region should drop one type, with perhaps one piece overlapping.

In the case of weapons, 4 different pieces per region, with a slight overlap. Or perhaps, each zone has its own unique weapon, the core piece gotten from zone completion, the other pieces from champion kills within the zone, with minor overlap (there are 28 zones in the game at present, only 19 weapons).

The unique gear should be stat-selectable exotic on acquisition, with the option to make it ascended in the Mystic Forge with the application of Hard Mode-only tokens and other related materials.

One possibility is to have the collections repeatable to account for multiple characters wanting to get the gear.

Stat-selectable Drops

Getting the gear someone wants via drops alone is a crapshoot. To compensate for the difficulty of Hard Mode, exotic or ascended drops should have a chance of being a stat-selectable chest similar to Ascended Weapon and Armor chests instead of a specific item. No sigils or runes should be attached to exotic and ascended chests, but can be attached to exotic drops that aren’t within chests.

Ascended Gear

Ascended trinkets, weapons, and armor should have a drop chance in Hard Mode.

Hard Mode Tokens

Similar to Badges of Honor, kills in Hard Mode should have a chance of dropping Hard Mode Tokens (better name likely preferred). Champion kills are guaranteed to drop Hard Mode Tokens. Hard Mode Tokens function as both a currency and an anti-RNG-hate mechanism.

Hard Mode Tokens can be used for the following:

• Upgrading unique exotic rewards into ascended versions via the Mystic Forge.
• Acquiring collection pieces directly for a sizable number of tokens (200-250).
• Acquiring specific gear (exotic and ascended) for an even more sizable number of tokens (1000-1500). Gear acquired this way is account bound.
• Acquiring other rare materials (T6 crafting mats, obsidian shards, etc.).

The idea of the Tokens is to have a deliberate “maximum time” to acquire any unique reward, rather than the unbounded “RNG god hates you” present in some parts of the game (e.g., Fractals).

Increased Rewards

Magic Find

Magic find should have a blanket increase while in Hard Mode. In GW1, it was 3 times more likely to get uncommon/rare gear. That would likely be a bit too good, but that’s the sort of idea. Junk items should have practically zero drop chance.

Unique Bag Drops

Rather than dropping more of the typical normal mode loot bags, Hard Mode drops should be unique versions with a different loot table (crafting mat bags that have more in them, and champion boxes that have a chance of ascended gear, or a collection piece).

One key thing here is that mobs should still retain the proper “crafting tier” of materials for their zone. That way, doing Hard Mode through a zone like Timberline Falls has a higher chance of garnering needed Linen, Platinum, and Hard Wood.

Experience

Experience gained should be 50% higher on everything, from event completion to monster kills.

Gold Find

Gold find should have an increased rate, likely equivalent to Magic Find’s.

Advantages of Adding Hard Mode

Smooth out the Risk/Reward Curve

Doing Hard Mode should be substantially more difficult, and substantially more rewarding. As such, it has the potential to reduce and remove the complaints about a mindless farm being a better use of time than playing difficult content.

Making other Stat Combinations Useful

With updated AI and skillsets based around whittling down and disabling players, zerker and dodge will be less powerful, and in certain cases might even be suicidal. Giving greater use to other stat combinations, particular tanky specs, would be a natural side effect of the change in mob behavior.

A Potential Introduction to sPvP

Hard Mode mobs will act a lot more like players, with similar skills, behavior, and limitations (only so many dodges/minute). Rather than spamming every skill the instant it is off CD, players will have to be more tactical with their choices, lest the Big Nuke get dodged.

Likewise, positioning and movement will be more important as mobs seek to take down the weakest target, or protect their own weakest target.

Finally, intelligent use of disables by players will mitigate a lot of the danger of the updated mobs.

Stick all three things together, and you’ve got a pretty decent introduction to how sPvP works.

Double the Content, Instantly

If anything, GW1’s Hard Mode was a relatively easy masterstroke on ANet’s part. By slapping some level increases, skillset changes, and increased rewards on the exact same existing content, they effectively doubled the amount of content available.
Implementing Hard Mode in GW2 would take much less time than crafting new zones, and generate more playable space.

Easy Implementation of RP-preferred Shards

Since Hard Mode will by default require a flag to denote “send me to the Hard Mode version”, it’s not too far-fetched to have a flag that denotes “send me to the RP-preferred version”. This is a side benefit, but a potential benefit nonetheless.

Expansion Potential

What I’m proposing here only accounts for open world PvE zones, but with the groundwork of something like this, adding Hard Mode dungeons, fractals (though in this case, higher levels should automatically be considered Hard Mode, say 51-100), instances, and achievements would not be as difficult.

Consider that mobs got a complete makeover, and AI has seen vast improvements. Porting that over to the relatively contained areas of dungeons and instances is fairly easy.

Improving Normal Mode

By taking the time to create new Hard Mode AI, and improved mob behavior, porting a toned-down version back to normal mode will reduce the snooze factor of it and make combat more engaging. Though not as deadly.

Adding a Reason to Party

Right now, outside of dungeons, guild missions, and Teq/Wurm, the only reason to party with other people is to increase mob tag chances. With Hard Mode being balanced around a full party, LFG will get a lot more use in areas not named Silverwastes.

Unique Bragging Rights

Vanquishing in Guild Wars 1 was hard (at least until Discordway made everything a joke). Doing it in Guild Wars 2 will also be hard. Being able to walk around with a red star icon that says “I vanquished this entire world” is on the same level as running around in every Luminescent piece that exists, if not higher.

Obstacles to Adding Hard Mode

So having established that Hard Mode would make a good deal of sense, with a potential implementation and some good advantages, what of the difficulty (no pun intended) of adding it to the game?

Programming Requirements

• Refining a better AI. Even if a good start exists in the BWE1 version, Hard Mode would require a lot more than simply having them evade AoE. This is the single biggest obstacle.
• Creating a “shard selection” option to allow players to select a normal zone, or a Hard Mode zone. Handy bonus on this: it also sets the framework for creating RP-friendly zones.
• Creating the ability for different megaserver instances to have different contents (HM vs. NM).

Database Requirements

• Creating two versions of every monster, to include different stats, different skill sets, and better AI. This overlaps with programming.
• Adjusting the loot tables for HM monsters and areas to add new items, as well as updating formerly lower-level mobs to have Level 80 gear exclusively.
• Implementing new rewards, like achievements with attached titles and new “status” items that can only be obtained in Hard Mode.

Art Requirements

• Creating new items (weapons, armor) as exclusive Hard Mode rewards.
• New art to denote a Hard Mode zone (like the “Hard Mode Helmet” of GW1).

Economy Concerns

Having Hard Mode with a blanket increase in magic find and rarity will have an effect on the economy, and we all know that ArenaNet cares a good deal about the GW2 economy. There are three different ways to mitigate the potential effect (or work with it):

1. Let the market shock happen and resettle. At first some materials might crash in value as there is a relative flood, but things will resettle at a slightly lower normal. This assumes that most of the active player base is capable of Hard Mode. (The Twisted Marionette would bely such an assumption)
2. Nerf the Hard Mode drop rate, either by locking down materials as account bound, or making the blanket increase in magic find fairly minimal (e.g., 25-30% instead of 50-60%).
3. Nerf Normal Mode drop rates and let Hard Mode increases compensate for the reduced Normal Mode supply.

Personally, I’m partial to solution 1, though solution 3 is how HM in GW1 panned out. Rare drop rates were so abysmal in Normal Mode that a threefold increase in Hard Mode made them fairly tolerable.

Population Concerns

Doubling the amount of functional content has the knock-on effect of spreading out the player base. Most of this concern can be addressed by the megaserver technology, but it may be too limiting.

However, Hard Mode has the potential to bring back many players who quit the game due to not having enough challenge and things getting repetitive. At least for as long as it takes to run through the new content (which should take a while if implemented well), all those players will be playing again.

Expansion Concerns

One problem that ArenaNet ran into with GW1’s Hard Mode was continuing maintenance of it. Going forward, they had to release not just a Normal Mode of everything, but a Hard Mode, too. Domain of Anguish was delayed from Nightfall’s release, and the Hard Mode of the same was delayed further. The same problem occurred with Eye of the North.

The same potential exists in this system, with any new mob and zone requiring both a Normal Mode and a Hard Mode. However, if a good number of the Hard Mode changes (particularly AI) are ported back to Normal Mode, the amount of time to implement both won’t be double.

Conclusion

In sum, I think there’s a strong incentive to create a Hard Mode in GW2, and that the advantages (both now and future) outweigh the amount of development time that would be required to create it. It will bring more challenge to open world PvE, pave the way for additional content in other areas of the game, and provide an answer to the complaints of not enough reward in difficult content.

Warning: There is statistics in the following posts. If you want a TL;DR, read the Introduction, Concept in a Nutshell, and Conclusion. If you want a stats-less post, skip Setting a Baseline and Setting Priorities.

Introduction

Dungeon rewards are garbage. Let’s be honest. People run Ascalonian Catacombs all the time because the paths are easy, and the monetary reward is ridiculous. People just as often only attempt Arah Path 4 to finish off Dungeon Master or because they have the time for the extra challenge.

The problem is, how does ArenaNet assign proper gold rewards to a given dungeon path without immediately causing an economic glut as people flock to the actually-easy-but-not-tried paths? For that matter, how do they figure a proper risk/reward curve at all? Twilight Arbor’s Aetherpath is a textbook case of not worth it, but how to fix the problem?

The answer is something ArenaNet loves: data and metrics.

What Data and Metrics?

Consider the core complaint about dungeons: most of them aren’t worth the reward (chiefly, gold, which is all this suggestion will be concerned about) for the time spent to complete them. So the first data point is time to complete.

The other major complaint about dungeons is that some paths are difficult to find anybody for. You can start up a LFG, and it’ll take a long time to fill, especially if you’re off-peak. So the second data point is popularity.

One concern with any data set is outliers, things that are well outside the norm (imagine a bell curve, now imagine a point at the far right or left). So another thing to address is ignoring outliers. Content and rewards should be, for the most part, designed for the middle 75%, not the 12.5% on either side.

The Concept in a Nutshell

Every week, an algorithm crunches the numbers of how long every dungeon path took to complete, and how often it was completed. Then based on the results, each path has its bonus end reward changed. Less popular or long completion time dungeons reward the most, and more popular and short completion time dungeons reward the least.

Think of it as a 2-axis graph (see attachment, or this link).

(For those mathematically inclined, my fudged numbers are inverse logarithmic, base 10. I’m trying to approximate the left half of a shifted x^2 curve.)

Other Implementation Possibilities

The suggestion as presented assumes a week-by-week reward adjustment. There are several other ways that the idea could be implemented:

1. Computed daily, taking into account the past week’s data. This is a smoother adjustment, creating the effect of a rolling average. The downside is that the “reward meta” is less likely to change as players are slow to “catch the wave” of good rewards.
2. Computed weekly, taking into account the past 2-3 weeks’ data. Bumpier than the first, but gives more time for players to adjust the meta with popularity shifts.
3. Computed daily or weekly, taking into account all data ever with a weighted average. This is a far more complex (and more demanding) way to run the numbers, but it leverages the full dataset. I think this would be complete overkill, but it’s a possibility.

Advantages

There are a lot of advantages to changing a dungeon’s bonus gold reward based on how the player base itself completes them:

• It smooths out the risk/reward curve, or in this case, the time/reward curve. With the right data, it won’t matter what path a player picks, it will reward roughly the same as another path with a different time to complete.
• It rewards speedrunners while not adjusting the system based on them. A speedrun team will finish a path faster than the average group, but they’ll get the same reward. And due to their speedrun, their actual completion time stands a greater chance of being ignored by the algorithm when generating the next week’s values.
• It dynamically adjusts to the capability and interest of the player base. Other than fine-tuning, implementing something like this is fire-and-forget. If everyone binges on dungeons one week, then barely touches them the next, the algorithm will adjust to proper values on its own.
• Due to the factor of popularity, paths may change in vogue from day to day as players try to maximize their reward. This could create a “rolling meta” of which dungeon paths are popular and which aren’t.

[Example: if the Aetherpath is 5g in total reward this week, a good number of people will try it, upping its popularity, and maybe even dropping its completion time. Next week, it could be 4.25g instead, while Arah Path 4 comes back to 5g since everyone dropped it (at 4.5g) in favor of Aetherpath.]

Programming Difficulties

Like any suggestion, implementing adjusted dungeon rewards will take development time. In this case, the difficulties revolve around data and number-crunching:

• Right now, the number of times a dungeon path is completed and how long it took to complete may not even be tracked. Adding these in as metrics to track would be the single hardest obstacle.
• Establishing an automatic server process to crunch the numbers at an appropriate reset time and readjust the reward values for a given week. The upside on this is that raw number-crunching is a computer’s forte, and wouldn’t take that long at all to execute once built.

For the core idea, that’s it. Creating the database and tracking the data, then crunching the numbers once a week. Maybe if the resulting numbers don’t match what ArenaNet would like to see there would need to be some adjustment to the algorithm, but beyond that, it’s relatively simple to create.

But since there’s a good chance this data doesn’t already exist, the algorithm will need to be seeded with a decent pool of data. Turning on the tracking a week or two before the rewards actually adjust would accomplish this.

Conclusion

Dynamically adjusting the amount of gold a dungeon path rewards based on how long it takes to complete, and secondarily how popular it is, will help reduce (or even eliminate) the cries of dungeons not being worth it, or of certain paths being way out of line for what they reward. By applying the player base’s own metrics, it leverages the advantage of taking such metrics by providing better rewards to that same player base.

Unlike a lot of people, I actually liked Scarlet as a villain. She was smart (though a lot of that was short story-based), she was cunning (didn’t see her until the halfway mark of the season), and she was hilarious (serious +1 to Tara Strong, as if I didn’t like her like crazy already).

What bugs the stuffing out of me is that we, the heroes, went about things in the most direct manner possible. People can be annoyed at how Scarlet evaded our clutches every time, what she wanted already in hand, but when all we ever did was go Big Kitten Heroes (I guess that makes us all Charr) against whatever we saw, it’s trivially easy to plan around that.

Her contingency planning only needed to cover one potential problem: “How do I keep the heroes occupied long enough to get what I need and then leave?” The simplest and easiest answer was to shove bodies at the problem, as illustrated by the Molten Alliance, the Aetherblades, the Twisted Watchworks, and the Toxic Alliance. And we, the ever so heroic heroes, charged right on in the front door each and every time.

This “slay evil first, ask questions later” attitude was defined by Braham’s arrogant “It doesn’t matter now. You’re done” to Scarlet’s pointed “you don’t want to know why?” I bet that ANet’s writers were just trying to avoid a monologue cliche, but it just stuck out to me like crazy because I, the player, the hero, wanted to know. Some big buffoon of a heroic norn (no offense Braham) decided for me that I didn’t care.

The only people questioning motives at any point were Marjory, Kasmeer (and maybe Vorpp), and they didn’t do that until late in the story. As soon as Scarlet came onto the scene in the Jubilee, the behind-the-scenes approach to everything should have been clear. What did we do? Avert the immediate crisis, and then wait for the next one as if she wasn’t still a problem, even while her twisted watchwork minions raged across Tyria through portals.

Ultimately it feels like the story was out of our hands, that the “emergency response hero” approach we were implied to have by the options available to us merely set us up to be the biggest fall guys in Tyrian history, beating out the Chosen (both White Mantle- and Khilbron-duped). At the end of the day, we failed to stop Scarlet from doing exactly what she set out to do. Or maybe, as this other thread put it, we stopped her at the exact moment where we’re the villains instead of the heroes.

Setting a Baseline

To adjust dungeon rewards based on a given path’s time to complete and overall popularity, first there needs to be baselines in place. More specifically, what are the maximum and minimum gold values that a path should give? At what point is a path “too popular”? What about the time it takes to finish? (These latter two questions actually tie in to ignoring outliers)

Minimum/Maximum Gold: Based on ArenaNet’s own existing numbers, 1g should be the minimum for explorables, 50s for story modes. I suggest that the maximum be 5g/2.5g (very unpopular path, crazy-long to finish…sounds like Arah Path 4…or Arah’s story mode).

Popularity: Capping how popular a path is should be based on the total number of completions across all dungeons. Dungeons themselves likely fluctuate in overall popularity, so establishing a hard number isn’t future-proofing the system.

There are a total of 8 story paths and 25 explorable paths. Considering them separately, that means equal popularity for each would mean 12.5% per path for story modes, and 4% per path for explorable paths. Without having any hard numbers at hand, I’ll just say that double that popularity for a path is maximum popularity (so 25% of the total share for a story, 8% for an explorable).

Conversely, anything at half the average is minimum popularity (any lower still garners the same reward). That’s 6.75% for story modes, and 2% for explorables.

Completion Time: Speedruns are a thing, and while they are great, they are outliers, especially record attempts. Likewise, slower, methodical eliminations of everything that moves are rare.

To avoid having either affect the overall reward curve, only the middle 75% of times should be considered. By that I mean, the 12.5% lowest times and the 12.5% highest times should not figure into the number-crunch.

Setting Priorities

Rewards should be based on completion time first, then by popularity. For instance, almost no one runs Honor of the Waves Path 3, but when people do it, it still only takes a half hour. It shouldn’t get the same reward (nowhere close) as Twilight Arbor Aetherpath, which likely takes 2 hours (I haven’t done it since release, truth be told).
With that in mind, think of the overall reward total as being decided in two parts. The first part is the average completion time, which will set between a 1.5g and 4.5g reward in 7 increments (every .5g).

Going back to the data, after throwing out the outliers, the reward should be based on where the completion time is compared to the average of all paths. Here’s a fudged example of it, using the increments 50%, 75%, 100%, 150%, 200%, 250%, and 300% of the average completion time (see attachment, or this link).

Having gotten the base reward, popularity is allowed a 1g “swing”, .5g up or down. 5 increments this time, allowing for even numbers. NOTE: the following graph is logarithmic. I’m assuming that popular paths have more LFGs, causing more people to join runs and creating a runaway effect compared to less-popular paths.

(See this link)

Combine the two, and the reward range of 1g to 5g exists, with potential values at every .25g level.

The same idea can be applied to story modes, with all values halved.

Ensign.2189:

While I disagree with the premise of the original article wholeheartedly (the loot in this game is terrible on its own merits, and the trading post is the glue that makes it work at all), I think there’s something to be said for how different a production economy feels from an exchange economy.

That is, there’s a big difference between using the drops you get yourself, either directly or through a personal crafting / upgrade system, and throwing stuff you get on the trading post to get gold to buy the thing you want.

You haven’t seen a whole lot of work in that area; crafting systems tend to be pretty crude and more of a sideshow to a functioning trading post / auction house – probably because trading posts and auction houses are easy conceptually and do a ton of heavy lifting in keeping even horribly designed systems functional. A really robust upgrading system – Path of Exile has an excellent one, post-expansion Diablo 3 has some good ideas, etc – lowers the importance of exchange and increases the perceived value of drops.

After all, a drop that you can use yourself to achieve some goal feels a whole lot better than a drop that you’re just going to sell for coin to buy what you want. They might act similarly mathematically, but we interpret and respond to the two much differently.

Nail on the head there. The core reason behind my suggestion of offering an alternative, account-bound means for extremely rare/extremely desirable items is that it feels good to get those by something the player has done. So little of the game can be connected to that feeling of accomplishment and “I earned this”.

Adding that, even to things so firmly entrenched in the Gold Standard, would be a net positive due to the fact that it would play on the psychology of players. “I earned this” rather than “I ran the dungeon tour every day for a month.”

Sylvari are created by the jungle dragon! It’s awesome no matter which way you dice it, leading to lots of speculation over what it will mean to have a player race that is capable of being irredeemably evil (even if the players aren’t actually evil).

But rather than speculate on where the story might go with Mordremoth and his estranged creations, I’d like to speculate on what sort of things ArenaNet could build into the expansion to take advantage of the high-level narrative and make it more interesting for the player base to engage in.

NOTE: These are ordered from what I consider most likely to least likely.

Different NPC Reactions

NPC reactions are already confirmed to be a way that ArenaNet will highlight how sylvari are viewed now (see: this teaser trailer and Laranthir’s dialogue in the PAX demo). With a little help from some monstrously large vines, they just downed the entire Pact fleet. No non-sylvari is going to look at their resident salad without being suspicious. Sylvari players will have to deal with the justified suspicion, and maybe even racism, that their kindred’s actions has caused.

Seeing It from Outside

But I consider it just as likely that non-sylvari players will get similar approaches. They’ll get to see strained relations between sylvari and non-sylvari, perhaps even be prodded in dialogue to keep a close eye on “That minion over there.”

What’d be really cool, but I haven’t observed in the existing world, is if conversations were context-sensitive. If I, as an asura, approach with a sylvari in my party nearby, what if a Pact survivor eyes me with disdain and calls out my “untrustworthy ally?”

Proven Worth

Another way to distinguish sylvari could be incorporated into the mastery system, since that’s a clearly tracked total. Sylvari just starting without a wink of Heart of Maguuma mastery are scum of the earth, two steps away from betraying everyone.

Meanwhile, someone with a few dozen points is a proven ally to the cause of taking down Mordremoth, unaffected or able to resist the dragon’s siren call. NPCs might even defer to such a player, as she’s likely been to the darker side of the dragon’s will and survived.

Revisiting a System to Give It More Personality

Between the April and September 2014 Feature Packs, the personality system that used to be part of a character’s identity has been made invisible, outside of select NPC conversations. As best I can figure (I can’t find any developer statement), it was functionally removed because it had no point beyond personal story.

Being a captivating mountebank, or a daring scoundrel, or a noble knight had zero effect on 99% of the game. And the work required to build effects in, even if it’s pre-programmed NPC reaction lines when a player passes by, is immense.

That’s why I think it got quietly swept under the rug of UI updates and never mentioned again, like that embarrassing event at the family reunion seven years ago. For something that would still be minor in effect, tons of hours would have to be devoted to making it a reality.

Exploring Shades of the Spectrum

RPGs are built to encourage personality, even MMOs, a genre famous for either poor story, poor player agency, or both. And with the overall narrative of who sylvari are, I see a golden opportunity to build into Heart of Thorns the central tension of who a given sylvari really is, minion or friend.

It’s a given that no player is going to be allowed to be evil; it doesn’t fit the “you’re a hero, this is your story” meta-narrative that the game as a whole has. The same reasoning has been why the Inquest, Nightmare Court, and the like haven’t been options for players.

But what if a sylvari could shift among all points of the evil/good spectrum without actually being evil? What if during the personal story and other instances, a sylvari has the option to do some shadowy work, infiltrating among corrupted sylvari or Nightmare Court? What if they could listen to “the voice” just that little bit, but refuse the corruption?

On the other side, another sylvari can be bound and determined to clear his name against the scourge of Mordremoth’s name. He hates the accursed dragon and wants to take it down even more than his allies.

For non-sylvari, a similar spectrum is present: suspicion vs. sympathy. Either a charr doesn’t trust a salad as far as she can throw them, or she doesn’t believe her leafy friends are weak enough to fall to a dragon’s influence. Or anywhere in between.

Black Frog.9274:

This is sort of a pointless argument. TP/auction houses promote gem to gold conversion, which goes straight to the company’s bottom line. If you don’t want to pay subscription fees, the company has to keep a steady income stream through some other means.

With the wealth of purchases available in the gemstore, I don’t think that is necessarily true. There is plenty to spend money on that isn’t just gem to gold conversion. Sure, gems to gold is pretty universal because of the Gold Standard, but that hasn’t stopped the popularity of items that are inherently decoupled from it. Or the plethora of armor skins and outfits that you see people sporting all over the game.

It’s intentional for the sake of the economy: The Gold Standard

That’s an overall “structure of open world” problem that I haven’t sought to solve here. I have ideas, but none of them fit under the umbrella of “not penalizing the next player who shows up,” which is an ANet design cornerstone.

I’m inherently using different definitions from you both. For me, casual vs. hardcore is a matter of level of skill and desire to get more skill. I’m aware that very few places in Guild Wars 2 actually require such a mentality (some parts of WvW, sPvP, Gauntlet, maybe high level Fractals). But casual and hardcore have nothing to do with time available to play.

Yes, you’re right in that someone who’s casual (both in a time and skill interest sense) might want a legendary, but the existing method of getting one should be adequate for such a person. Implementing another skill-based (or at least, anti-bad luck via tokens/escalating luck) method does not exclude those people from acquiring the same thing, but it does reward the hardcore with what, for them, would be an easier way of acquisition.

As a member of SBI from release onward, I’m also going to say I will never leave this server. We fight as hard as we can, but more importantly we have fun while doing it. Trolls get talked down really quick and it’s easier to find examples of kindness and respect than it is of the opposite.

We’ve been through a lot, and with the loss of a LOT of WvW guilds we’re going to drop tier, but we won’t stop fighting and having fun. If you want fun and community, SBI is the place to go.

Okay, another observation: the “joined segments” are cases where characters have segments in common. For example, the first character (“|-|_”) is actually “|-|” AND “|_” at the same time. It also explains why there’s random spaces: the segments aren’t in common.

EDIT: Put Photoshop to work, here’s the graph paper version I was mentioning:

Link to the reddit discussion as it has a lot of varying thoughts expressed on it as well.

As for the argument “they owe the community nothing”, yes, that is true. However, silently leaving doesn’t give reasons, nor does it truly help in the long-term.

As someone interested in seeing the game succeed (even if I don’t have a literal financial stake in it), it is better that I say why I don’t like something, and what it causes than to remain silent and go away. Only a lot of people leaving have a similar effect, and that’s assuming that ArenaNet is able to tease out why they left.

In essence, I’m communicating what I see in as clear a means I can, rather than simply walking away without a word. And based on the responses I’ve gotten, I’m not alone.

maddoctor.2738:

My solutions to both problems:

A) Make harder content more rewarding. Period. Someone posted on these forums a nice idea of variable rewards based on how the community is performing on certain dungeon paths. Those done quickly and more often will start offering less rewards, while those who are rarely done, and take considerable amount of time, will offer far more rewards. By making the rewards variable, Anet devs won’t have to balance them every few months by hand, let the system do it on its own.

I wrote both the Dungeon Reward post, and the one linked in the OP.

Problem 1: It’s Completely Expansion Exclusive
Negative Incentive: Why Not to Make Masteries Expansion Exclusive

TL;DR, The masteries associated with the core game should not be locked behind the expansion, but given to any owner of Guild Wars 2. This functions as both an incentive to get the expansion for the cooler Heart of Thorns part, and a way to keep the community together even when it “splits” over the expansion.

Problem 2: Mastery Track Tiers aren’t Horizontal
Levels by Any Other Name: Mastery Track Tiers

TL;DR, Masteries are vertical progression, just like the existing leveling system is. Calling it “not the typical” is disingenuous and builds hype that is bound to get disappointed. But with a few simple changes, it can shift from raw vertical to almost horizontal, with added benefits.

As someone who’s been on SBI since launch, Nikkinella couldn’t be more wrong about us being bored. We’ve gotten more organized, and stronger in all timezones, especially EU and OCX where we used to be fairly weak. And yes, we are sore about you all hacking and somehow convincing the weaker 3rd server to 2v1 with you when it gained them nothing other than the reputation of being YB’s whipping boy. Enjoy the curbstomps until you leave our tier. It’s rather fun seeing your tears everywhere about it.

Please see the below PSA.

You fastposted my entire suggestion. I reserved so many posts for a reason.

If ArenaNet has been good about one thing, it’s producing new visual content for the game. Sure, most of it is on the gemstore or tied up in Black Lion Key RNG, but skins are not something the game lacks a consistent stream of.

So if the rare skins are easier to acquire, that isn’t a bad thing. ArenaNet is producing new, rare skins on a regular basis anyway, so the whole “people will run out!” argument falls apart unless specifically applied to the Top .001% of the playerbase that turbo-acquire everything.

Making It Matter

What Did You Say?

At the very least, injecting a touch of personality around the core conflict would have to trigger different conversations, similar to the first set. To do it well, it couldn’t just be the current dignity/charm/ferocity dialogue tree choice. NPCs would have to have different lines depending on the sort of character approaching. Taking a minimal approach, that’s six potential lines per NPC (good/neutral/“evil” sylvari, suspicious/neutral/sympathetic non-sylvari).

That’s a tall order, which is why I don’t think it’s as likely. But consider if it was there. A player’s choices over the course of the story would matter, and be directly experienced in ways that text can never convey. Sure, it’s minor nods here and there, but imagine the first time a Pact survivor screams “_Stay away from me, you traitor!_” That would have an effect.

Now what if that sylvari came back, having explored the Heart of Maguuma and survived against Mordremoth’s wiles, and that same NPC quietly mumbled, “I’m…sorry for what I said. I was wrong. Thank you.”

This is my Story

Want four of the most hopeful words ever uttered in an opening cinematic? “This is my story.” Depending on who you ask, it was your story through level 30, level 50, or not ever at any point. Honestly, the personal story became a “pick two almost-identical-options, neither is wrong” very soon after the initial two arcs. And after picking an order, the plot from thenceforth was functionally determined. It didn’t feel personal, it didn’t have the feeling of choice.

With detection of where on the spectrum a character lies over time, a character can get the option to branch their storyline in that direction. A sylvari daring the corruption could get different missions than the one refusing to be seen in wrong company. A sympathetic non-sylvari could be assigned as leader of a sylvari-based advance scout, while a suspicious one goes with a different set of folks entirely.

Unique Rewards

With six different possible stances, it’s a low enough number that offering unique rewards for finishing the campaign in one stance confers a cosmetic benefit related to their choices. These could be specifically character-bound, even as skins, conferring a character permanence while not really locking players off (5 character slots by default in Guild Wars 2 and Heart of Thorns might add more if previous expansions from Guild Wars are indicative).*

*Granted, those folks who either love sylvari or hate them might be SoL, but there is always an edge case.

To give some thrown-out-there examples:

• Corrupted sylvari: Mordremoth-exclusive orange glow
• Noble sylvari: Pale Tree-type white facial aura
• Suspicious of sylvari: Unique fire-based skin (Burn them all!)

PvP Adventures

Since adventures, leaderboards, and timed activities are going to be a thing going forward in the expansion, why not riff on the Branded Corruption event of Beta Weekend Event 2?

In a PvP-based activity, one team is “corrupted” sylvari, while the other is either uncorrupted or non-sylvari. Cull the infestation with each side having different skills across jungle terrain, sort’ve like Evolve but with even numbers.

To give a nod to the sylvari part of the equation, no player is restricted from being on the corrupted team, but they will get a random “corrupted skin” as opposed to getting to keep their character’s look for the activity.

And since it’s an activity/adventure/pick-your-nomenclature, there is no extreme negative of open world PvP. Players decide to do the activity instead of it being forced upon them.

Dancing with the Dragon

WARNING: The following is extreme speculation bordering on outright wishful thinking. I don’t expect to see it at all, but it would be endlessly cool if it did happen.

What if we take this one step forward from direct or indirect interactions with NPCs and situations, and apply it to every interaction with the denizens of the Heart of Maguuma?

Facing the Corruption

Sylvari don’t just get special dialogue, their position on the spectrum changes their options entirely. Rather than dealing with the same threats, having the same allies in all situations, and playing the exact same events as everyone else, who they have shown themselves to be determines a portion of their experience.

On the one side, let a corrupted sylvari obtain an optional buff that marks them as such. While holding the buff, their damage to Mordremoth’s specific minions is much lower, but Mordrem will see them as allies in certain areas and ignore them completely.

Likewise, events that would usually be inaccessible because of their location deep in hostile territory (vines blocking the way, environmental hazards, etc.), are available to someone masquerading as a servant of the jungle dragon.

Flipping it to the other side, a noble sylvari becomes a walking target with his buff. Mordrem try to take him down and bring him under the dragon’s thrall. But allies that would have normally been indifferent or hostile come to his aid regularly. Just like a corrupted one, events unavailable to others are open to him.

Taking a Side

For non-sylvari, their choices can also result in a buff. A suspicious character would get the option to open fire on (non-player) sylvari when they aren’t clearly under control, and accept the consequences that might entail. Potentially despicable? Sure, but it’s directly integrating the narrative into the gameplay. In the midst of their general pogrom, they will gain the favor of noble sylvari and their allies, giving them similar benefits.

For sympathetic characters, the reverse is true. They get the option to help isolated sylvari, gaining the favor of those courting corruption itself, and giving similar benefits.

(I should note that for both these cases, this is on the edge of what I consider ArenaNet would accept as potential features and content, but leaving the sylvari as the only race with special options is exclusionary and I’d prefer to avoid it)

Rewarding the Choice

Taking things in this direction is directly informing the experience of Heart of Thorns by a character’s personal choices. It’s utterly unlike anything we’ve seen before in Guild Wars 2. (Hence, why I think it extremely unlikely.)

But aside from the exclusive content (which will likely be minor), offer a title for time spent or events completed while under the more stringent requirements of the buff. A player will have to change his or her play style to accommodate either Mordrem being near-impossible to kill or that local bunch of sylvari being an escort load. It’s gameplay-reinforced roleplaying, and the achievement of having done it should be recognized.

What About Us?

With all of these ways that Heart of Thorns could extend the narrative beyond simply being a story point, it begs the question, “what about us, the players?” This is a terrific opportunity to have fun with the lore and story, having light roleplaying among players of different in-game races and backgrounds.

Even if most of what I wrote isn’t going to happen, the chance for the player base to make their own fun in a different direction than the norm should not be missed. It can mean attending the next MordyMoot or equipping an entire skill bar with nothing but fire and napalm and tromping off to the Village of Astorea loaded for bear.

By the way, my sylvari Talifa wanted to say, #PraiseMordy.

This post was copied and formatted verbatim from its original location.

But the truly casual crowd doesn’t care about precursors or legendaries. They’re indifferent no matter if the existing Gold Standard system is in place, a new challenge-based system replaces it, or (as I suggested) both exist at the same time.

It’s the hardcore, or the people with hardcore interests (but not hardcore time) that worry about precursors and legendaries, and my suggestion would split the difference between status quo and challenging content.