Adding more stuff to do in BfN

This is mostly about some community challenges and events but also a post to get ideas flowing for more stuff to do in general. 

The idea of community challenges and events goes back to GW1 but was far more prevalent in GW2 with the town hall and the progress-o-meter, as well as the linked community chests and gnomiverse that gave use some additional customizations and of course Torchwood and Hovergoat 9000. The weekly challenges we have in BfN have some echoes of the town hall mystery portal, so we have a nascent community system in place already but there is a lot more that could be done.

The challenge system is currently ok. It works and after XP got changed to be a new bulb at every 5k, I find that barring very specific ones, I can get the daily challenges done while just playing which is nice. Still, I'd like to see less specific challenges and more of them that reward you just for playing.

This post is both some ideas we’ve discussed in the past and hopefully a way to get more ideas from the community and the dev team.

Give us community challenges like in GW2: Most of these rewarded us just for playing and doing the things we normally do and let us feel like we were helping the whole community get stuff. Some of them I made sure to focus on bot matches (like taunts, being taunted isn't a huge deal but I'm not a fan of the possibility that I just taunted someone's 8 year old) or at the flag of power, but you usually had no issue getting them done in regular TT matches. These may well be planned for once the current issues are wrangled into place first, GW2 didn't launch with them after all, but good to mention regardless. 

Adjust the character challenges: In general the actual challenges aren't that bad and I can get a lot of them done just grabbing a character and cruising around the free roam zones. The main issue is that when each week you have a large chunk of people all picking a particular class, the PvP matches can be a mess. What would help this is to just give us more general challenges instead of character specific ones, so we can work on any character(s) we want. Or, give us a mix of character challenges so we can vary things up; for example, instead of say choose a character this week and work on their 5 specific challenges, let us pick 5 things that are roughly equivalent to complete in time and complexity but are not all one character (ex: get 5k XP on any character(s), get 3k total healing, get 20 multi-vanquishes, etc.) that would be essentially beefed up dailies with open requirements, instead of getting all 5 on one character each week as it disrupts PvP ("I don't want to play plants! I need to work on my Electric Slide challenges!").

Daily Challenges: These feel kind of throw away to be honest. Some are close to the quests we had in GW2 but instead of coins or stars, we get a single prize bulb. Prize bulbs are currently pretty easy to get with even only modest play time, but these feel unsatisfying. I'm not really sure what to do with these as some are fine while others are not very engaging. Maybe more bulbs or give us more of them each day?

Giddy Park is boring: I love the backyard battleground in GW2. It felt alive as AI spawned and attacked you and each other. It was too small and the focus was on the 2 bases and the park more than anywhere else, but it's still amazing. Giddy Park just isn't as good as it stands. The idea of an open social hub isn't a problem per se (I've set mine to private), but even when it's full of players it just falls flat in its current state. The mini-events added do help, but they're not enough. Honestly, it would be better to keep it private (with bots as an option), and let us customize it to a huge degree; give us items we can earn from the free roam zones and from the reward-o-tron, let us invite friends and have a brawl with AIs of all kinds on both sides, have more mini-games to play, add some quests that we can do both in the park and in the free roam zones, and so on.

Free Roam Zones: No part of BfN is as exciting and yet underutilized as these. I love them but they sputtered out after the initial excitement and exploration. They remind so much of the Gnomiverse in GW2; a great new place to explore and play, but then you eventually are done with it and have no reason to go back unless just for sight-seeing. Have events where you go back to deal with new threats with special rewards (the hat quest in November was fun but limited, more like that but with more stuff would be great), have the currency be more worthwhile than it is now, maybe have special PvP versions where teams can work to help or hinder the NPCs on their side. These zones have so much potential!

I'm sure there's more to add but this is already a long post. So here are my basic ideas to add stuff to do and make the game world feel more alive. Feel free to add and comment!