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Guild Wars 2 - New Zones & Replayability - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Guild Wars 2 - New Zones & Replayability - MMORPG.com
The biggest way for Arenanet to add new open world content comes in the form of new and engaging maps, which are accompanied by useful, game changing masteries. It's a tool for putting out exciting content that players can explore and enjoy, and makes the world feel like it is expanding. The issue is that the new maps are becoming deserted as people finish the content, making meta events and rewards harder to obtain for anyone still wanting to try it out.
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Most games tend to let the old stuff rot. I do remember a letter from YoshiP from Square Enix talking about the challenges of trying to find ways to keep old zones relevant.
Even the 800-pound gorilla WoW suffers the same fate, with older zones ghost towns for the most part on all but the busiest servers.
I think the biggest problem for most games is the way they present their stories, they sort of box themselves in the way they have written them, and it becomes even harder to fit any future content into old zones that makes any sense.
As for your question about GW2, I would like to see them utilise the 1-60 zones again for new content.
One thing that's nice is being able to temporally go to another busier server if you need help in an area. Being able to log out switch servers and still be in the same spot came in handy a few times when I needed to find groups.
I still spend most of my time in the original areas doing world bosses, exploration on other characters, and redoing the dynamic events I like the best.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Additionally the storyline especially the final episodes require more than one player to complete so you actually have to ask for help to complete the main storyline which is typically supposed to be solo. Why they did this is beyond me!
The major upset with the old way of delivering net content by remaking the maps it resulted in content that was timed and when it was gone it was gone. That would have left GW2 in a state where only the most recent content is playable. Then ppl would come complaining the game has no content as old content is removed to make room for new. This also wouldn't resolve the author's point that some areas are more profitable than others leaving the areas rather empty.
First off, Dry Top is pretty decently populated almost everyday and there are multiple reasons to go back there: Achievements, story, map completion, geode farm for legendary collection/ exclusive items from vendors, and the "current event" bloodstone legendary bosses that appear there. (Contributes towards getting the red bloodstone eyes skin) Its also the only place to mine quartz crystals
You also can't discount the fact that Anet has already done this and continues to do so. Has no one ever heard of "Current Events?" I feel like barely anyone knows what they are or brings it up at all. These are events that have been added into the existing zones. All you gotta do is press H and look at your achievements tab to see what I'm talking about.
And besides, this whole "old maps/ content not seeing as many players as the new ones" can be applied to any MMO. After mapping the world about 8 times on all my characters, I would way rather see a new place rather then some extra events on the same maps I've seen 100s of times.
And for those of you complaining about HOT. Are you guys even playing the same game as I am? HOT added so much more into the game. After playing through everything it had to offer and seeing it from the top down, it was indeed a worth while adventure. But hey, thats just my opinion.
Yes, the content of Season 1 was free. Yes, it came every two weeks. But the quality of content was wildly inconsistent. Over the entirety of season 1, we had a handful of standout updates, with the rest being entirely forgettable, if not outright broken.
Of those, very few have had a lasting impact on the game. The Battle for Lion's Arch, the Marionette, the Zephyrite Sanctum, and the Crown Pavilion have not delivered any lasting content (though I think most of us would pay good money to have the Crown Pavilion permanently open). The Molten Alliance Dungeon and the Tower of Nightmares have been crudely butchered into Fractals to awkwardly preserve some of the work that was put into them. Southsun and its associated Karka Queen event were so broken that Southsun remains, to this day, the most unpopular map in the game despite a feeble attempt to rework and resurrect it. No one plays the Aether path. No one really cares about the incredibly minor changes to Kessex Hills and Lornar's Pass.
And ultimately, Guild Wars 2 was bleeding players before the announcement of an expansion. The Heart of Thorns announcement saw a huge resurgence in player activity. People actually had some form of promised quality content to look forward to. Nevermind that the end result was rushed and limited in scope. The expansion announcement was absolutely necessary for the life of the game, because Anet couldn't maintain the breakneck pace of Season 1, and the playerbase was not satisfied with being spammed with low quality content that had little to no lasting impact on the game.
Now, we're in the best position that the game has ever been in. We have high quality maps being added regularly FOR FREE. We have actual endgame in the form of raids. We have another expansion being worked on in the background without sacrificing the live development of the game. And we even, occasionally, get Season 1-esque world tweaks in the form of Current Events patches. I would not trade that development for free biweekly updates - especially because I have enough of a memory to know that half of them were crap and few of them brought lasting positive change to the game.
Agree the problem is they forgot what made this game fun when it launched. Its just not as fun as it was back then. Most of the stuff they keep adding is garbage or overly grindy for no reason . The game used to be so much fun back then.
All of the new maps are insanely high quality, but quality isn't the issue. The problem of all new maps (every single map since and including Southsun) is that they are designed with a fundamentally different philosophy from core Tyria.
The reason why core Tyria maps are excellent and lasting is that they are built with exploration, not coordination in mind. Dynamic events and metas don't define a central goal for everyone as with new maps. Instead, they are spontaneous and scattered. They encourage you to play your own way, explore at your own speed, and organically bump into other players. It's a beautiful system that creates interactions, rather than forces them.
New maps, on the other hand, feel less like maps and more like arenas. High quality arenas, but arenas nonetheless. They live and die by their meta events, and they can't function without a sustained player count.
And this is a great illustration of a flaw in the community of this forum. Most of us believe that MMOs are defined by map bosses and zerg rushes. They aren't. MMOs are defined by the ability to organically explore and meet other players and form groups.
I agree with you completely.
Seriously though casual of the casual gw2 base wants gw2 more casual!? I think these guys would be better off watching a movie. Narnia maybe?
An slightly less fun version would be to improve the downleveling thing so that lower zones you enter would be closer to the difficulty it is to when you are at the right level for it, right now a downlevel character tend to be way to powerful, particularly in the first 40 level zones.
I prefer the hard level thing though, it was really good in GW, particularly before they nerfed the difficulty down a lot after a while.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
You can use a teleport to friend to get to any of the new maps. Once there just snag the waypoints and you are set.
I have done all of the personal story, all except the last instance of the HoT story, most all of LWS2, and ALL of LWS3 solo. I do not consider myself a great player, so there is little reason others couldn't do the same.
Bob
Totally agree with this. Never been so disappointed in an expansion and never, ever hated content in GW2 or any MMO as much as I dislike the Heart of Thorns content. They may have satisfied the very vocal group they listen to, but they sure turned me off to the game.
Exactly same here ... they lost me with HOT. Tried hard for some time but for now it looks HOT ended for me Gw2. I might return some time with my lower level alts, but I do not feel to play something that I will be unable to continue. Main attraction for me is always new expansion. As I will never push myself throuth HOT, expansion is pure example of overly complicated areas to move around, without players constantly around too hard, .... total trial of patience as you said.