Idea for Roguelike Single Player PVE Mode

[TheDetective.8172]

If you aren't familiar with the term Roguelike, think games where you spawn, collect powerups, fight through different rooms, defeat bosses, die, lose all your items, and start over! Hades, Slay the Spire, Binding of Isaac, Risk of Rain, etc. are some examples. My idea is to leverage the lore of fractals OR even the Super Adventure Box Virtual Reality technology to create some sort of Roguelike gamemode in Guild Wars 2 where the player fights enemies, collects powerups, and defeats bosses (perhaps with some glitches/instabilities that make them stronger).

##How would it work?##

Imagine entering this new roguelike fractal (or Virtual Reality) mode and you spawn in a random instance. Before you appear three cards, each having different buffs with some being specific to the class (and even the elite spec) you're playing. Some could be a general increase to your stats while others may be super new and random like summoning an army of Skritt to fight alongside you once per zone when you use your Special Action Key. Some random ideas I have include a card that make you summon twice as many minions as a Necromancer, reduces the time between swapping Attunements on Elementalist, adds another bar to your Adrenaline for Warrior, increasing the total amount of energy you can hold as a Revenant, allowing you to summon an additional clone on Mesmer, allowing both of your pets out at once on Ranger (one is active and you can command them while the other just does its passive attacks, but swapping pets keeps both on the field but lets you choose which one's skill to use), and more! These class-specific cards would only appear when you are playing that class. Many more cards would exist that allow you to build a multitude of different ways. Maybe some cards increase the damage you do with a specific condition, so you can home in on poison or burning.

From there, you fight through some trash mobs for 2 rooms before coming across a boss room.

Now the boss room could be any instanced fight in the game that exists in the story. So maybe you're fighting the ice brood construct with Braham and frozen Rox, or fighting Bloodstone charged Caudecus, or Horrik and Mai Trin, or even some dungeon bosses! All designed to be killed solo. It would be such a cool callback to replay a fight from when you were level 30, something you've forgotten about, only now it's a REAL challenge! Once you defeat them, you gain a reward (currency) and another set of cards to choose from. You also gain a reroll dice that lets you reroll the cards once per dice.

You then move on to the next room, with the goal of beating all the rooms available. Some rooms may be more trash mobs, some could be puzzles to solve, maybe some are BEETLE RACES, some could be in the WvW battlegrounds and you have to capture a point while avoiding death, some could be a 1v1 against a bot in a PvP battle, others may be jumping puzzles! After each room, you get to pick which one of three rooms to go to next, kinda like you're choosing your path on a map. Don't like JPs? Then don't pick them, or alternatively pick the card that summons a mesmer to portal you through the JP. Don't wanna PvP a bot? Then choose a different path. Don't like puzzles? Skip them or pick the card that summons an Asura to solve a puzzle for you. But the important thing to note here is that you get to choose your path from some options. Eventually, you may get 3 choices you don't like and you have to choose the one you hate the least, but most of the time you're choosing the one you want the most! The faster you clear each room, perhaps the better the rewards. Keep going while fighting a boss every 3rd room. Once you pass, say, 9 rooms (easy mode) or up to 18 rooms (hard mode) you must challenge the FINAL BOSS who has instabilities that make them more challenging.

As a raider myself, I would love being able to solo Conjured Amalgamate somehow or Giganticus Lupicus for you dungeon lovers. WvW lovers could head down the paths where it spawns them in a Keep and they have to take down the Keep Lord while their army defends them from the enemy. Take too long and enemy units may start pushing through.

Now imagine each month or two a new theme! Maybe Krait are the themed enemy, or perhaps Joko's minions seem to be the common enemy and boss, or Grinth's followers and you're fighting mostly Necromancers and spirits. There could be a buff tied to each theme as well such as this month Kits, Summons, and Minions deal increased damage. Now you have a reason to play Engineer, Necromancer, and Elementalist more! Then next month maybe the buff is that your movement skills (teleports, skills that move your characters forward, backward, sideways, etc) now unleash a giant AoE of damage when used. Now you can do a funky build of just movement skills instead of worrying about doing "optimal" damage with a "real" build because, guess what, in this game mode, all movement skills IS a real build!

These "cards" I mentioned could also allow you to gain a new sigil or relic effect for the duration of your run. If the theme for a month is Krait enemies, then a Krait Slaying Sigil effect would be great for you to have.

I could keep going, but I think you see the point! I think something like this would be really fun and the roguelike cards that strengthen your characters could make any class and specialization viable. I'd definitely take one that gives my Ele two health bars, lol. Having a theme of enemies also makes it more thematic and having buffs that apply could make builds that never existed before suddenly viable in this gamemode.

Maybe easy mode also gives you a baseline of stats, so your currently equipped gear doesn't matter. But medium and hard mode take the stats of the gear you enter in with. This would help promote this mode being accessible to anyone!

 

I'd love to hear some ideas for cards, themes, and buffs from y'all, and if you think this would fit best as a "fractal" thing or a Super Adventure Box VR thing (like that one instance in LS3 where Taimi has you fight something in VR). I'm not saying the enemies or environment LOOK virtual, but rather that could be the lore reason behind this game mode.

Edited May 26 by TheDetective.8172
Adding more

[Linken.6345]

The cant even support what they got already so how would they be able to support another mode?

I dont really see 1 fractal a year as supporting fractals.

Strikes seems to be like we got it before since we got 4 with a proper expansion that was 2-4 years depending on the living seasons.

Not that that seem like alot when you count in the abysmal story they seemed to have shiped every 3 months if forums is anything to go by.

[KindredPhoenyx.8976]

Sorry but after my experience with WoW's budget BR and Mists of Pandaria remix, and the disaster that has been, I don't want to see any new modes in this game for a developer that already struggles for budget as it is. It won't be implemented well, neither will most of these other "I want x modes in GW2" that can't support it. I'd rather do what Anet can do best with the resources they have and give quality content we're more or less familiar with than trying to break the mould with expectations as if they're triple A when they're anything but.

Edited May 26 by KindredPhoenyx.8976

[Danikat.8537]

This sounds a lot like the original design for Fractals where you got 3 random Fractals and then a random boss Fractal, before going back to the Mistlock Observatory to repair, drop off items etc. and if you did another set of 4 the difficulty went up, with the idea being you could keep pushing as far as your group had the time and ability to manage.

They changed it because it wasn't very popular and a lot of groups would keep 'rerolling' until they got the Fractal they wanted, and I think rarely even did all the ones in a set back to back.