Monthly Content Festivals?

There is a lot of fun content in the game that maybe doesn't get the attention it deserves, with players chasing after the primary meta content, the stuff that is most rewarding. At the same time, there is a lot of benefit to focusing player attention, to getting maps packed with people during these metas, so if everyone is spread too thin, the events will seem too underwhelming. I think there's an interesting solution to this:

Have a monthly/fortnightly "event festival" rotation, that encourages players to focus on a specific event over that period of time.

I'm not talking like the Christmas or New Years festivals with all the decorations, this shouldn't add too much extra work to the developer schedule, mostly for rewards and UI implementation, but it would basically be a thing where the developers pick out a series of meta events, world bosses, etc. around the world that maybe some people ignore, and they make them the new flavor of the month.

Over that period, there would be some sort of temporary bonus reward structure, maybe a collection, or a reward track, or achievement chain, something that would reward players completing it numerous times over the course of the festival period. Then, when the period is over, a new one is picked, and people can start tying this out. This would add variety to the player experience, and maybe expose them to elements of the game that they hadn't played in a while, or maybe never played at all. It would ideally come with the UI support of a mail to players, maybe some sidebar highlight for it, instructions on what they would need to do to participate in that event and where to go, maybe assign an NPC to always be around to point players in the right direction.

As for rewards, it wouldn't have to be anything overly fancy, maybe some collection where each time you complete it you progress an achievement chain or collect a token, and once you've done it around 10-20 times it would unlock something of interest, like a tonic, or a simple skin, maybe something already in the game but highly random or annoying to get, something that would amuse players to have.

I think overall this could be very beneficial, and a relatively low resource way to give players more to do rather than just grinding away at the same meta for months and months.

Personally I love that this game gives you the freedom to play the content you enjoy rather than throwing a different carrot on a stick at you all the time. Devaluing longterm goals ("somthing already in the game but highly random or annoying to get") by making them easily accessible but only at a specific time removes a lot of that freedom by putting an artificial sense of pressure to play a specific part of the content on a lot of players.

Why not just let people play what they want? There are a good many people that already feel driven to do this kind of content or that, there's no need to increase that (imaginary) pressure just to have a different set of events overrun each month. Daily JPs are bad enough ;) .

@Rasimir.6239 said:Personally I love that this game gives you the freedom to play the content you enjoy rather than throwing a different carrot on a stick at you all the time.

In general, I agree, but these would be relatively short term activities, you could do them while leaving plenty of time to go about your business, I don't think it would overly burden anyone.

Why not just let people play what they want?

Well, there are two points to this, 1. to bring some attention to events that people may not be aware of. If they don't like them, they can be done with them soon enough and move on, but maybe they'll enjoy it? And 2. To focus player density on this single task, so that players can see what it's like when fully occupied. This can be good for events that might not ever reach critical mass under the current paradigms. I think both of these are nice benefits to the game.

This used to be the case. Every month, heck sometimes every week or two, there was a new event, holiday or festival. And then the demand for expansions hit the old forums . . . and ANet listen. Now almost all resources go toward Living World and the expansions. We do get some achievement updates, which are great, but most of the events prior are now copy and paste jobs. Again, with some minor achievement updates if we're lucky.

That's just how things are now.

@Ardenwolfe.8590 said:This used to be the case. Every month, heck sometimes every week or two, there was a new event, holiday or festival. And then the demand for expansions hit the old forums . . . and ANet listen. Now almost all resources go toward Living World and the expansions. We do get some achievement updates, which are great, but most of the events prior are now copy and paste jobs. Again, with some minor achievement updates if we're lucky.

That's just how things are now.

Well, I get why they aren't doing like a new Dragon Bash or Festival of the Four Winds every month or two anymore, and I actually agree with that decision. This is more a suggestion of a low-effort concept, aside from rewards it shouldn't take much work at all to set up, and once set up it should take even less work to populate month to month. As for the rewards, that takes as much time as they care to spend on it, I don't know what they would need for that.

@"Rasimir.6239" said:Personally I love that this game gives you the freedom to play the content you enjoy rather than throwing a different carrot on a stick at you all the time. Devaluing longterm goals ("somthing already in the game but highly random or annoying to get") by making them easily accessible but only at a specific time removes a lot of that freedom by putting an artificial sense of pressure to play a specific part of the content on a lot of players.

Why not just let people play what they want? There are a good many people that already feel driven to do this kind of content or that, there's no need to increase that (imaginary) pressure just to have a different set of events overrun each month. Daily JPs are bad enough ;) .

Totally agree. I quit the MMO I played before also for the incredible amount of dailies and events, that forced you to spend your time like the publishers wanted. I like the idea to come back home and decide day by day what to do.

If some new event must be added, I would only put some "map of the week", with minor mini-events on a different map every week (like the Awakened invasion, that gives you a nice loot, but not SO good that you feel compelled to camp the map). This, to help new players that need some achievement on that map and lost the train (mainly in the HoT maps, where you may need more people for some achievement).

@Ardenwolfe.8590 said:This used to be the case. Every month, heck sometimes every week or two, there was a new event, holiday or festival.Not really. There were updates as frequently as twice a month, but most of them weren't festivals. The game only started out with Wintersday & Halloween. We had the Queen's Jubilee once. We had Dragon's Bash once. We had the Zephyrite festival twice. It wasn't until 2015 that we had Lunar New Year.

A lot of veterans forget why ANet stopped delivering content every two weeks and it wasn't that some people on the forums asked for expansions. It was that ANet was exhausted trying to keep up with that frequency of new content releases. It was hard to maintain the quality, keep the non-new content working, and keep releasing temporary content. They have just now reached a point where they have their routine down, so that when the inevitable issues arrive along with the new content, they're able to quickly resolve things and still continue producing the next new things.

It's just barely possible that they'll be able to speed things up (although recent evidence suggests not).

So if people want more recurring or festival-style content, we'd have to give up something else. Would we prefer 2-3 story releases per year instead of 4-6? Would we be willing to give up any changes/improvements to the other holidays? No side stories? ANet could decide to change the mix of things they work on, but they aren't going to be able to deliver the sort of thing the OP requests without making compromises.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Ardenwolfe.8590 said:This used to be the case. Every month, heck sometimes every week or two, there was a new event, holiday or festival.Not really. There were updates as frequently as twice a month, but most of them weren't festivals. The game only started out with Wintersday & Halloween. We had the Queen's Jubilee once. We had Dragon's Bash once. We had the Zephyrite festival twice. It wasn't until 2015 that we had Lunar New Year.

Again though, did you read the text of my proposal? I don't think this would involve a ton of work, hopefully just a little coding to adjust existing mechanisms to launch a system like this, and then a few total paragraphs of text each update to clue players in on where to go and what to do, then whatever they decide to do for rewards. I'm certainly not proposing they start doing Queens Jubilees every month or anything like that.

There were originally monthly events but people felt it was to much of a grind so was replaced by the dailies rewards including the daily login reward. Do understand the interest to almost have a guide who reminds you of areas that been around a while but that you forgotten about. Big problem is that everyone has different interests and few actual like feeling they been driven one way of the other. Maybe look at how the dailies are handled and give a suggestion or two of what is missed or how could be done differently to better achieve what you are suggesting.

@"Ellegon Mcleod.5931" said:There were originally monthly events but people felt it was to much of a grind so was replaced by the dailies rewards including the daily login reward. Do understand the interest to almost have a guide who reminds you of areas that been around a while but that you forgotten about. Big problem is that everyone has different interests and few actual like feeling they been driven one way of the other. Maybe look at how the dailies are handled and give a suggestion or two of what is missed or how could be done differently to better achieve what you are suggesting.

Well, that's why I suggest spreading this out over a month, if you don't want to do it that day, no pressure. That's one issue I have with the dailies, sometimes a daily will pop up and I'll think "I really want to do that one!" but it happens on a day when I don't have the time, or there are already plenty of other things to do. I also think it would engage the community better, because it would give everyone time to discuss together the area in question, rather than something that's over before people know it.

I'm not suggesting this as something that people are meant to farm all day every day, I think the special reward balance should be based around doing it around half the days that it's available, and only a relatively short amount of time each day, like one repetition of a 15-60 minute event cycle, at most.

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"Ellegon Mcleod.5931" said:There were originally monthly events but people felt it was to much of a grind so was replaced by the dailies rewards including the daily login reward. Do understand the interest to almost have a guide who reminds you of areas that been around a while but that you forgotten about. Big problem is that everyone has different interests and few actual like feeling they been driven one way of the other. Maybe look at how the dailies are handled and give a suggestion or two of what is missed or how could be done differently to better achieve what you are suggesting.

@"Ellegon Mcleod.5931" said:There were originally monthly events but people felt it was to much of a grind so was replaced by the dailies rewards including the daily login reward. Do understand the interest to almost have a guide who reminds you of areas that been around a while but that you forgotten about. Big problem is that everyone has different interests and few actual like feeling they been driven one way of the other. Maybe look at how the dailies are handled and give a suggestion or two of what is missed or how could be done differently to better achieve what you are suggesting.

I was just mentioning that this had already been done as can see in this link and why it was replaced. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Monthly

@"Ellegon Mcleod.5931" said:I was just mentioning that this had already been done as can see in this link and why it was replaced. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Monthly

Yeah, but what I'm saying is that what I'm suggesting has nothing whatsoever to do with that.

Also, it was replaced for no discernable reasons, most people liked monthlies well enough. I certainly preferred monthlies to the current dailies system. Less pressure.

I would like to see this as well. I think people are envisioning this as a bit more extravagance than would be necessary. The only point for me, at least, would be to concentrate users are particular "dead" areas that have content requiring much more players that are typically active in a particular area. The centaur area in Lake Doric, for example, requires a much larger group that is usually available, and relying on a commander to happen to be online while you are looking doing that exact same content is unrealistic. Without coordination with a guild, it seems that this content is for all purposes inaccessible to newer users. Doing something as simple as slightly increasing drop rates would attract enough players to older content, allowing other new players to complete it and get the associated achievements as well.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

Not really. There were updates as frequently as twice a month, but most of them weren't festivals. The game only started out with Wintersday & Halloween. We had the Queen's Jubilee once. We had Dragon's Bash once. We had the Zephyrite festival twice. It wasn't until 2015 that we had Lunar New Year.

I remember how Living Story events overlapped with holiday, festival, and similar events more than a few times for a reason.

Source: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Special_event & https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Release

Because it happened.

Again, it's been done, but resources are being focused on expansions more with Living World filler in-between.