Next game idea: PvE activities

GW1 was heavily PvP focused with only Ops for PvE. GW2 added private matches, Infinity Time, the Gnome challenges, Ops added for Zombies, the flag of power, and various quests to give us a lot more PvE options, while still having PvP as a big part of the game. BfN added the free roam zones and later private matches as well, while again, having PvP based content.

PvP in the next game would largely be as always; Turf Takeover, Team Vanquish, Vanquish Confirmed, Gnome Bomb, Suburbination, hopefully some Soil Survivors and Capture the Taco, the return of Mixed Mode, and maybe some other special events like the town portal in GW2 and the weekly challenge events in BfN.

I want to focus a bit on the PvE ideas for the next game in this post. Some of which may or may not be in at launch but could added later like the Trials of Gnomus was added to GW2. There will be some overlap with PvP, but the main focus here is PvE.

Free Roam Regions. One of my favorite things about BfN are the free roam regions. I want to use the idea again for the next game but also as I’ve said before, make it so we will want to go there again and again and not just 100% them and largely abandon them afterwards. I’m loathe to add a grind like in Warframe to the game, but some ideas to make them more compelling for repeated visits; more diverse opponents to fight (they’re largely fixed in BfN), boss hunts, seasonal event tie-ins, added unlockable items over time to the zones, daily/weekly quests (see later in this post) and I’m sure the team and community can come up with other ideas as well.

Messing about in the neighborhood. Just like the Backyard Battleground, AI will be spawning all over the place in your personal neighborhood and you can battle there at any time. You can even alter the AI that spawn by placing buildings and decorations. Want mummy Gargantuars to spawn? Unlock the giant sarcophagi and place it somewhere! Want gnomes to spawn that attack all your plants and zombies simultaneously? Grab that giant Gnomolith and watch them port in from the Gnomiverse! Like the free roam zones of BfN, I also want to make the Gnomiverse have reasons to return to instead of just get the trials done, unlock the 2 characters and then no reason to go back barring admiring how it looks. Maybe tie in the Gnomspiracy below, have special events there, or special titles and so on.

Gnomes. Gnomes will be a big part of the game but players may not even see them at first. As you find out more from various means, they will become more of a threat in the free roam zones and may appear in the public battlefield as well. Deep under your neighborhood lies a portal to the Gnomiverse as well, similar to GW2, but there’s more there to do, and perhaps more to learn. (see next paragraph).

Gnomspiracy. What are the gnomes up to? Can we ever really know? Clues will be hidden in the free roam zones, under your personal neighborhood, and even on the moon up above your neighborhood. Figuring this out could be a long term event, with some clues only appearing after you’ve solved others to keep it as a long term goal for players to investigate. Rewards would be customizations, special buildings for your backyard, and titles (“Gnomes Things’ example). Maybe more than one that could take a long time to solve and are ever present in the game so you can look into this on your own time frame. I don’t want to tie the seasonal stuff in as if someone misses an important clue during a holiday, it would take a year for them to have the opportunity again. While I want this idea to be a long haul one, I don’t want the long haul to be nothing for a year while you wait!

The moon. When you’re in your personal neighborhood you can see the moon up there, tempting and taunting you. You’ll need a way to get there (long time quest objective). When you do, you’ll find…things there, things you’ll likely want to investigate, and not just the gnomes. As an actual area, the moon could be small and tied to your personal neighborhood, or it could in fact be a free roam region that is only accessed via the quest line. What is that gnomolith on the moon’s surface doing there? Why did Crazy Dave leave a taco on the moon? Is that Major Sweetie’s beret in that crater? We’ll have to find out!

The sewers and below. In GW2 the sewers are pretty cool and lots of things to find down there, especially if you acquire the golden gnomes and follow the skeletal fish quest line and beyond. I’d like some similar ideas here, without copying things of course. What lurks deep down below the sewer? How do you open that immense gnome door? Why is one of Crazy Dave’s pots down here? Beyond just messing about in the backyard, there could be so many cool and fun things to do down here. Some could be unlocked via quests or finding items like the golden gnomes in GW2, and many other possibilities exist.

Quests and challenges. One reason I have almost 2800 hours in GW2 is that I do a lot of quests. Every 46 hours we get 15 new quests (5 plant, 5 zombie, and 5 multiplayer). Some are basic (complete a garden Ops on Lunar Landing on at least normal difficulty), some are quite fun (Get at least an A+ rating on the crazy target range as a Foot Soldier), some are annoying for one reason or another (block damage 10 times with a Citron shield), but you get stars and coins for them so even max rank I tend to do most/all of them to this day.

We also have the story quests like a personal favorite: Grumpy Stumpy. Most of which we can repeat, although some are gone for good (I miss you, Hot Rod Chicken) in GW2, and BfN has the free roam region story lines and side objectives as well as the challenges for prize bulbs.

I’d like to make the quest and challenge system less grindy. As someone who has played MMOs and other grind heavy games, I never felt GW2 was grindy, even when others did. The heaviest grind I felt in the 3 current shooters is getting to grandmaster in BfN. I’m hoping my idea of no level cap doesn’t end up feeling grindy (see my XP idea), as my intention was to make XP always be desirable instead of creating a treadmill, which is also why the rewards are all cosmetic and coins, and you can get coins for playing any game mode, so leveling up is mostly for bragging rights and not meant to be the be all and end all, while also working on the quarterly prize maps with that earned XP.

To achieve this goal, I’d like to have quests be all tied to overarching stuff like the Gnomspiracy, free roam region story lines, special quests for seasons and possibly unlocking the depths of your neighborhood sewers, and other possibilities of both long term and short term activities. As for challenges, or other stuff you can do daily or weekly to gain extra XP, coins, or some other currency, I’m a bit on the fence here. Never been a fan of needing to login to keep up with the Joneses, or grind away like daily quests in many MMOs, and I don’t want to see entire teams playing one character in a match to get these done.

Keyed Challenges. An idea for this would be to have a few different NPCs in your personal neighborhood for each side. Every day/week you would visit them and select a number of challenges from any of the NPCs, but could focus on certain aspects of the game. For example, you may be able to finish, say 4 challenges per day, but would have the option of choosing from several, and these would be from various types, based on the NPC you speak too. The number of challenges you can have each day/week would need to be determined, but the core idea is for you to be able to login, check the NPCs, grab some challenges, and just play your way while earning extra coins, XP, and possibly other currency and rewards.

The NPCs would be focused on particular activities:

• Davebot 3250/Zomboss pre-recorded challenge machine: Free roam zone challenges for plants/Zombies. Stuff like; defeat a certain number of a particular AI in a particular free roam zone (ex: defeat 50 Ra zombies in Zgypt, defeat 100 weeds of any type in any free roam region), win 2 skirmishes in any free roam zones, defend an important objective in any free roam zone, and so on.
• Sit Ron the zombie hunter/Bob the bounty zombie: Public battlefield, multiplayer match, and private match challenges for plants/zombies. Stuff like; defeat x player/AI heroes, participate in x matches, summon x spawnables, capture x points, win x matches, and so on.
• Captain Green/Doctor Intern: Ops challenges for plants/zombies. Stuff like: finish 10 waves, finish 5 perfect waves, complete ops on particular maps, defeat 3 bosses, and so on.
• L.E.A.F. special messenger/Top Zombie speaker thing: May or may not be available until gnomes show up for the player. These 2 are the plant/zombie NPCs to talk to if you want to deal with the gnomes and get some bonuses. Stuff like; defeat x gnomes, defeat 2 giga gnomes, destroy a gnome floaty, and so on.

The idea is to have the ability to have many options but only do a few at a time and can ignore the ones you don’t want to do; kind of like the quest board in GW2 but choosing which to do every cycle.

Quest/challenge cycle. I want to avoid forcing people to login every day, although I do that in GW2 to maintain my multiplier even though I don’t need it anymore, and not sure if the new game would have a multiplier or not. Daily challenge limits could work but that does make some people forced to login every day and not everyone has the time open for that. Weekly could work, with greater caps then. If it was daily for example, you’d select 4 total from the available quests, but weekly would be more like 16 (not 28 as that’s excessive, even if the math makes sense). Between the 4 quest givers per side you may have 40 or more quests available at any one time, and can mix and match the types, but won’t have to do all of them, in fact you wouldn’t be able to, and won’t be forced to play either side or finish quests you really don’t want to do. They’d change daily/weekly as well, and you’d keep any unfinished ones until you did finish them, or choose to drop them, as you can drop any of them at any time.

These of course would be optional but the bonuses would be worth your time, even without the XP and coin multiplier we had in GW2. Extra coins and XP shall always be wanted her, and titles, stickers, and other rewards would be available too (ex: 'Quest Lover'-finish 100 daily (or weekly) quests).