A post over at Word of Shadow gave me an idea for a way to make scenarios less monotonous and avoid getting the same scenario again, and again, and again. People complain that scenarios are grind fests; you get in, you grab the item, and start farming the opposition or of course the reverse happens. In a game so totally focused around an RvR campaign the scenarios seem rather out of place; you teleport into this unknown battleground and fight for a keep before teleporting out and doing it all again. We don't know where this battleground is, what it is there for, and why we are capturing it, well maybe we do...we're capturing it so we can get more renown and xp. Going from the epic struggle of the zones to a seemingly increasingly linear scenario experience is something that probably should be addressed.
This linear experience is partly created from doing the same scenario over and over again and partly because the battle has no real context. My idea is to firstly create a scenario cycle; where you just join the scenario queue, and you have no idea which one is going to pop. You get in and complete that scenario before the cycle begins and you move directly onto another scenario. You can leave the group whenever you like which allows other people to join. In this way you would get rid of the boredom of repeating the same old scenario time after time.
The second thing I would do is tie each scenario into a part of the actual game. I would make Tor Anroc an actual place in the game where people can go, with this you could fit in a story of how important this area is to both factions and give a reason why they are fighting. After the Tor Anroc scenario is over you can move on to another part of the map where you can continue the struggle. This other scenario would be carefully linked to a seperate place in the game which in turn would be linked to the Tor Anroc place ingame. This connection would tie scenarios in closer to the actual game and prevent it from being a linear grind experience. To take it a further step the scenarios could be programmed to have some effect on the same place ingame. Say if Order wins Tor Anroc 500 times in one day then the place ingame becomes a special Order warcamp for one day which gives access to unique instances/quests/gear. Alternately Destruction could win 500 times and the same would happen for them.
If these two ideas worked then scenarios would become a whole lot less linear and grindy, but knowing players, most would still just do it for the renown and experience. Many have said that doing scenarios is the fastest way to level, so as a final measure nerf the experience and renown gaisn in scenarios (not too much though) and increase them for open RvR. In this way I believe the game could become more balanced and interesting.
This linear experience is partly created from doing the same scenario over and over again and partly because the battle has no real context. My idea is to firstly create a scenario cycle; where you just join the scenario queue, and you have no idea which one is going to pop. You get in and complete that scenario before the cycle begins and you move directly onto another scenario. You can leave the group whenever you like which allows other people to join. In this way you would get rid of the boredom of repeating the same old scenario time after time.
The second thing I would do is tie each scenario into a part of the actual game. I would make Tor Anroc an actual place in the game where people can go, with this you could fit in a story of how important this area is to both factions and give a reason why they are fighting. After the Tor Anroc scenario is over you can move on to another part of the map where you can continue the struggle. This other scenario would be carefully linked to a seperate place in the game which in turn would be linked to the Tor Anroc place ingame. This connection would tie scenarios in closer to the actual game and prevent it from being a linear grind experience. To take it a further step the scenarios could be programmed to have some effect on the same place ingame. Say if Order wins Tor Anroc 500 times in one day then the place ingame becomes a special Order warcamp for one day which gives access to unique instances/quests/gear. Alternately Destruction could win 500 times and the same would happen for them.
If these two ideas worked then scenarios would become a whole lot less linear and grindy, but knowing players, most would still just do it for the renown and experience. Many have said that doing scenarios is the fastest way to level, so as a final measure nerf the experience and renown gaisn in scenarios (not too much though) and increase them for open RvR. In this way I believe the game could become more balanced and interesting.
4 Comments:
"The second thing I would do is tie each scenario into a part of the actual game. I would make Tor Anroc an actual place in the game where people can go, with this you could fit in a story of how important this area is to both factions and give a reason why they are fighting"
Actually there are entries to the scenarios in the world (not just the button at the minimap). At least for Gates of Ekrund and for Nordenwatch I stumbled over them. Because it's much easier for someone to just press the minimap button not many find those sometime hidden entries. Anyway they don't provide much more than a more complicated way to enter the queue.
The "ahh"-experience at finding these entries is quiet short in terms of duration. ;)
Yes I saw the nordenwatch entry as well. A giant red war symbol floating in mid air. They had the same type of thing in WoW where you would run into an invisible barrier to queue for a battleground; not very immersive. Part of the way to make the game more fluid I think is to make the connection between scenarios and the open game very close and logical, with some sort of reasoning, not just an invisible barrier blocking a certain area which you queue to enter. :D
I found ekrund also. I think I know where the orc one and the elf one entrances are too. Ekrund is in the T1 rvr lake though.
All good ideas here, I too would love to see some kind of real world consequences/context from the scenarios.
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