All of the below assumes you want the game to be accessible and fun to a large audience. It assumes you want more players not less. I’m assuming your strategic direction desires (for example) housing options comparable in scale to FFXIV where people are spending significant money on housing cosmetics. It assumes you want people watching your streamers and on YouTube and going “I want to play that”.
To get the most people into your cash shop you need the most people possible playing your game and not a niche audience. If you want a niche hardcore audience that does anything to get ahead and only cares about optimizing their consumption loop then these changes likely aren’t relevant to your strategy.
I have ‘Realm Reborn’ level opinions on the game. I have a vision that would require months if not a year+ to achieve. I realize that may not be productive. So I’m going to focus on some balance changes that could quickly be implemented.
You can’t fix the entire game in one sweep, but I believe these changes would improve engagement and bring folks (certainly me) back to your game. It would be some of the good will you need to give you the 6 months plus you likely need to revamp certain core engines. (Also give you time to get out of the holiday season)
It also aligns to your recent developer blogs that mention you WANT players doing a variety of content.
One last important note before we begin. My strategy proudly declares that doing CONTENT to raise watermark is always better than running around avoiding mobs and opening chests in a big loop.
Outpost Rush
Too long, Too big, Too Complex.
This should be the ‘15 minute’ option. I should be able to do this between bathing my kids and putting them down to bed. OPR needs to feel more explosive and engaging as your very first queued PvP event. You even have examples like Alterac Valley from WoW to guide you on design and what players engage with. This feels like a pretty big miss so far.
Easy change updates
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15 minute timer after which highest team wins.
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Add queue NPC’s to every settlement and outpost to get people into OPR.
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Reduced HP for summoned creatures
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Capturing an outpost should award immediate points. This will reduce the willingness of a team to just give up an objective until the other team leaves. (back door play becomes more explosive)
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Baroness should be once per game, and provide either the final nail in the coffin or a last chance for the behind team. Instead of freezing the score (longer games) it should give points to the team that gets her as well as a buff. (A bad feedback loop exists when your score is frozen 990-260, and the only impact is making the game longer for everyone involved)
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Roads give +15% speed after 5 seconds and +30% speed after 10 seconds that drop if you use an ability or take damage. Exact numbers subject to testing. I use this method to shrink the map since you just implemented it globally. I think the map needs a rework, but this is a band aid.
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Fort Defender Buff - Huge buff to stats and speed localized around each teams fort (starting point) to prevent fort camping. The fort doesn’t give any strategic advantage and it should never be a viable objective to camp.
Corrupted Rifts
They just feel like a time gate to other content. The chests don’t seem to be working to provide any viable loot right now so the only use is to make Expedition keys.
The content is not fun or tuned well to any size groups. The time engagement for small groups is terrible if they can even approach the large portals. Portals feel designed for large group zergs, which isn’t fun either because you’re just fighting for a tag. Once I’ve seen one version of a portal I’ve seen them all.
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Tune the summoning ‘defeat all enemies’ event for small and large portals to be more in line time wise with other portals. Maybe knock out a couple filler rounds. These are the portals I skip.
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Reduce potion weight making it feel less painful to carry around stacks of corruption potions during travel. A .1 weight instead of .5 to all potions would be a great start in encouraging folks to carry more varied potions. You could also reduce stack size for certain potions if you are thinking ‘no one needs more than 10 of these in an outing’. It’s a psychological trap to expect players to bring anything other than ‘none’ or ‘full stack’.
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Normalize shard rewards. Every small chest should give at least 1 sliver. Level 65 greater chests should always give at least 1 Shard.
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Add coveted ‘stockpile’ reward buckets to chests. Super rarely to small chests and at the same rate as a stockpile to large chests.
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Add certain coveted other items to chest rewards (could be region specific). Such as maybe putting the non-existent smith accumulation gear on them.
Expeditions
These (Genesis and Lazarus) are in a bad spot. These should be your premier content and folks are either terrified to engage/waste keys or are getting scammed out of them by other players who have the content on farm. I candidly have numerous keys and haven’t done Genesis or Lazarus yet. (To give you an idea of how silly that is I have over 600 real hours and have maxed all trade/refining/harvesting to 200)
Logistically today a fresh 60 should never step foot in these. Failure, a bad disconnect, or just having to leave early will mean a wasted key. Loot follows watermark logic and thus will not realistically give meaningful loot until watermark is raised. What is worse the displayed rewards are Jewelry and Weapons, which are the hardest watermark to raise.
I have a lot of ideas here that would take huge revamps. But since you are busy squashing bugs and exploits I’m not sure you have that kind of time.
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Even more greatly reduce orb costs. You want as many people as possible running this content now. They already have a time gate (3 day / 7 day) so it’s not like people will be making/hoarding 50 of them. Reduce the coin cost to 0 for the faction item, and fix faction grind (see below). Further reduce component costs of making these tuning orbs. You want people to be doing this content and fast. Any world where people are selling their keys you have FAILED.
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FIX the expedition trade skill items to be searched in AH. I thought this was coming in 1.1?
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FIX the one quest line for a Genesis key that sometimes breaks and strands people unable to advance the quest line.
Arena
You wipe and your shot is gone. Again, when the quests give you the single key it doesn’t encourage risk taking. I’m talking as a risk adverse individual here; this makes me not want to engage in the content. I jumped into the Siren Arena as a fresh 60 as one of the first to engage with this content. I failed my first attempt and no one else had keys yet. So we were just done. I felt TERRIBLE. Two days later I went in and got a clear and got a 529 useless rapier. It didn’t feel much better. And it colored my willingness to use any keys going forward for ANY content.
It’s also not clear to me as a player if these are meaningfully raising watermark or giving me a chance at meaningful gear. Truly enjoyed actually doing the content; the fights were and had somewhat unique mechanics. You should try to get more people in these.
I can’t think of a great way to fix the problems quickly. Being able to re-spawn and try the arena again seems non-trivial to implement.
- Orb cost reduction or adding orbs to faction vendors for now could be a good start. Faction quests could encourage participation.
Faction Quests
Hot take; your most recent changes were really bad. The PvP quests feel even worse if that’s possible.
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Change faction quest refresh to be 1 day. Make all quests for meaningful content. Make all quests the same for all players.
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Greatly increase faction, money, and xp rewards. Greatly reduce faction costs for low level items. (These need to be attractive for low level characters)
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PvE quests for 60’s should include Arena’s and Corrupted Portals.
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PvP quests should include Outpost Rush
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Faction quests should provide chest rewards that can increase watermark.
Town Board
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Shift the fort PvP onto the town board.
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Modify ‘provide x’ requests to be quests to gather local materials/resources. For example, gather 10 cinnamon in First Light. Players have to actively gather to complete.
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Improve existing quests and have them provide level appropriate chests.
General World / World PvP
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Revert content tuning from last patch. It isn’t working.
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Revert PvP luck for PvE content. You’ve failed at creating a meaningful PvP loop. Do not encourage world PvP outside of maybe localized fort content until you can fix the feedback loops. You are just encouraging SM/Myrk/Forecastle Zergs. Because if you aren’t a zerg you’re just opening yourself up to being smashed by the other factions PvP zerg. This is not the way to encourage small group play in these zones. (I’m on the fence on gathering luck so I left that alone for now) NOTE: This also is a win more mechanic. The strongest factions that are only gaining more advantages with this implementation.
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I’m not sure a fast way to improve world PvP. There seems no benefit to participate right now. I could win 5 fights, and one loss will cost more more than I gained in all those wins. But a start would be having a 5 second window that you can’t respawn after being downed. This would give time to ensure you can get that PvP kill and lower confusion. You could also award the ‘kill’ to the person who downed the individuals as opposed to the one that final hit.
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Update Ebonscale castle to be a 63 area. Tune difficulty to match Forecastle. The area needs to drop 600 GS. Fix furniture drop buckets to include the new items and encourage participation.
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Move resource nodes out of high level PvE areas (e.g., Myrk). It’s a bad feedback loop. This feels even worse if your group has a tag along in full gathering gear that’s ONLY going for chests and resource nodes. You’re encouraged to take the nodes even if you aren’t in gathering gear creating a tragedy of commons. PvE areas should encourage collaboration.
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Add resource nodes around forts to see if a positive feedback loop can be created encouraging group play and harvesting around forts.
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Consider shifting more useful chest loot buckets onto bosses/mini-bosses/stronger mobs around elite chests to encourage players to engage in content and not just solo chest run.
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Add crafting UI to show impact of various buffs to crafting process. A casual craftsman should quickly be able to see what is missing from being able to craft max gear score.
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When applying a ‘mod’ do not completely reset Azoth applied. If I start at 60 Azoth and apply a Mod that should become 45 Azoth. Twice I’ve made 590 items that were green, because I accidentally applied the mod last. (Read: Poke Yoke)
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Remove or lower cost to use material converters. No one wants to spend a ton of faction only to see it’s 300 gold to convert a bunch of Sandpaper when they’re cheaper on the trade house.
Epic Weapon Quests
I wanted to save the best for last. Great JOB!!! Weapon quests are brilliant in theory, and pretty good in practice.
Doing these quests I frequently end up helping lower leveled characters who are often solo players just trying to engage in elite content. This is a GREAT FEEDBACK LOOP. Everyone involved likes these engagements.
You should expand on the mechanics to help low level players. And on the quests that encourage players to explore areas. I have longer term ideas (e.g. full ‘pages’ create books that can be placed in homes.), but here are some ways you can incorporate these sytems today.
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As noted in bullets above adding quests to town boards and various faction boards that are good enough to encourage max level participation is a good thing. It doesn’t matter if a level 30 gets a little extra money or a chest. They’re already getting outsized income from quests to begin with.
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Encourage max levels to craft and use low level tuning orbs to do that content with lower leveled players. Once the initial rush is over your low level players should feel they have opportunities to meet and integrate with max level players and develop a sense of community. (As an aside FFXIV does this very well)
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Add valuable resources to various elite areas. Encourage players to play within these areas. (Some are already like this; the Starmetal resources in south Cutlass are a great example. I’ve helped people down there a few times while harvesting) Note this doesn’t conflict with the removal request for max level areas above. You want max level characters in weaker gear for elite low level content versus in max level content.
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Disable the gated walls for the monsters like the Well Guardian. Add loot to his table to encourage people to help with the main quest lines. I’m not sure why these few artificial barriers exist.
In conclusion I think you could make real change today to stop the bleed. The holiday season is not the time to be bleeding players; especially this year in the MMO Scene with Endwalker coming in just a couple weeks.
If anyone actually reads this I hope you find it helpful in mapping out some real changes that could improve player engagement. I’d be happy to talk more if you ever want to reach out.