PvE portal idea:

Question

As a complement to my multiplayer portal post, I wanted to bring up the PvE modes for the next game. For public matches below, anyone can join. You can also choose to have it be invite only or friends only just your backyard battleground in GW2, and the next game’s version of it, while of course you can always directly invite someone if there’s room and the server rules allow it. I will be assuming here that we have the following options for PvE:

Garden and Graveyard Ops
Free roam regions
Boss hunts

Gardens and Graveyard Ops: These would be split up into plants and zombies like in GW2. With a strong anti-cheat I would hope they could avoid needing EA to host them and let us host again as well. If so, our options would be slightly increased over GW2’s but not all that different. You’d be able to play solo Ops with bots, host a private or open match, pick a specific map or random, and join matches in progress, just like GW2, but you could select either side at any Ops terminal and not have to only play the side you’re currently on. There would also be a random option for which side you want to play, and would be sent into a match based on your total settings as follows for clarity:

Side: Plants, Zombies, Random
Map: <Choose from list> or Random
Host/Join/Solo
If hosting-set to; Public, Fiends only, Invite only

These would default to classic GW/GW2 10 round matches with evacuations. If there’s enough demand for it, there could be 5 round matches like BfN, but that would bring back the dilution issue and one thing I did like about BfN’s ops system is that since everyone shared the same pool, it’s actually fairly easy to get Ops going there.

Of course, EA could still host these, even with options for solo Ops and change host game to start a new one as one issue I find, especially in GW, is that sometimes when you join a game or try to, you can’t connect or the connection is terrible and you get booted or just leave because the lag is atrocious. I’d be open to either us hosting or EA using their server shards to do it, as long as we get GW2 style options back.

Ops is a mode I don’t play all the time, but I know some absolutely love the mode, and I recall how upset several people were over the Ops in BfN being what they are. We never did get the blue star upgrades that could have made BfN Ops so much more interesting, but the general consensus is that Ops were better in GW and GW2, and I definitely concur with that.

Free Roam Regions: These would be started from your personal neighborhood and also perhaps from the bases in the public battlefield. Unlike in BfN, you’d get a similar matchmaking system to Ops in GW2, which is something a lot of people wanted for Infinity Time as well as BfN free roam zones. And it would be as follows:

Side: Plants, Zombies, Random
Region: Choose a specific region or a random one from those you have access to
Host/Join/Solo
If hosting select Public, Friends only, or Invite only

Access to the regions will depend on the business model (f2p, paid DLC, or what have you), so you’d be unable to jump into free roam region you’ve not played yet. Like Ops, this allows you to just play alone although you wouldn’t have the bots available to Ops players, it would be just you. This system means that you can just jump into any zone you have access to, while also allowing you to only play with those on your friends list if you prefer.

I really enjoy BfN’s free roam zones so giving people more options for playing it just makes it more accessible for folks, but still allows you to go it alone or keep it to friends/invites only if you prefer.

Boss Hunts: Boss hunts would be regular events but you have to unlock them via completing story quests in the free roam regions to do so, and as they would give great rewards, they would likely have some kind of expendable item to access them as well, like a special key or something like that. Option: Since some players will want the difficulty and rewards of boss hunts, but may not be into the longer free roam PvE experiences, they could be allowed to join in boss hunts as long as someone in their group or the group they join has a key item, they could possibly craft such a key item or purchase it from Rux, which of course would mean that all players would have such access. The terminal would look similar to the above, with of course some options requiring you to have access and possibly the key item:

Join/Host/solo: You would need a key item to host it or go solo
If hosting select public, friends only, or invite only
Specific Boss/Random: This would be from those you have access too only

Most bosses would be specific to one side or the other, but some, like various gnome bosses, could be universal and when selecting a specific boss, it would have something like; Brothers Gnomus-Zombies and Brothers Gnomus-Plants, for example. If you went random boss and got a universal one, it would also randomly pick a side. If you go solo, you could summon AI to help much like Ops.

Of course, you can always go into all 3 modes with a premade team of friends, up to 4 just like the shooter groups now. I think many people will do it that way, but lots of folks have been asking for options for these activities since Infinity Time in GW2, so I wanted to add the capability to do so without it being too complicated or a headache for the devs to deal with.

As they’re separate and a mix of PvE and PvP, I’ll cover the Gnomiverse, Public Battlefield, and Personal Neighborhoods in a 3rd related post.

stukapooka · Answer

@Iron_Guard8 Being able to choose sides in ops is something Bfn horrendously removed which made personal quests for specific characters a slog.

Solo play in general needs to let us choose which side we want to play on while we're deciding as gw2 was by which team you were entering the portal as and Bfn was just rng.

Another feature to add back is that matches start the moment you join in solo play. Gw2 was perfect at this and then for some reason Bfn removed this and joining too early forces you to wait and too late means you've lost valuable time.

Keeping boss hunts and free roam areas locked until they've been beaten encourages people to play through them Atleast once before they jump into hunts sounds like a great system.

Adding a bot backfill system isn't bad here because hunts almost always require four man teams for victory and ops can replace people who leave midgame this way.

iron_guard8 · Answer

@TheSprinter85&nbsp;I recall people asking to make their free roam group open so people could just jump in and join, especially for the harder content if they didn't make a premade group, so wanted to add that to a new game.Infinity Time wasn't bad but it did get repetitive and while it doesn't matter once you're at max rank, it didn't give XP so I know many people did it to get the party characters and once done never went back, or they'd just buy those infinity packs that went on sale later. I wouldn't mind a mode like that, and would also like an endless Ops survival mode option, but like you say, we don't want to spread things too thin, even with crossplay and a game that hits the 8-10 million player mark like GW and GW2, too many options could be a problem, even if I do like having many options. I'd like to have enough options to keep things interesting without so many that no one can get games going. Part of why GW is my least played of 3, despite it being excellent, is that it's just PvP and Ops, and I like having more PvE stuff to do as well as good multiplayer PvP.

thesprinter85 · Answer

From what you have posted, you have basically expanded on the possibilities of PvE content that we have in the current shooters and I dig that!

Regarding the free-roam regions, if you had the option to make it Public, I am guessing that anyone would be able to visit your free-roam regions at any time. The only issue that I can personally see with this is that either:

Random players are rarely going to join your free-roam regions.
If random players are joining your free-roam regions, the player base could be split further.

So for the free-roam regions, I would personally remove the option to make it Public for those reasons I mentioned above, but keep the Friends Only and Invite Only options. Having the Public options for Garden and Graveyard Ops does not seem to be a problem to me. I agree with all of the Garden and Graveyard Ops ideas you posted!

I am in 2 different minds with the Boss Hunt. Back in GW2 when I used to play it (well, I still play it to this day actually), I looked forward to the hype of these events as well as playing the Boss Hunts themselves, and if they only appear from time to time, more players are generally going to play them when they arrive and it would give me time to prepare for the next Boss Hunt (buying Pots and Bots, upgrading and unlocking characters, for instance). On the other hand though, making them permanent would most likely be more effective in the long run, as this is what is causing all the GW2 "no more Boss Hunt" issues, which would never happen if they were permanent. Honestly EA, in a future shooter, make Boss Hunts permanent, or make them appear from time to time, I will take either! Still want GW2 Boss Hunts back, but if not possible, I at a minimum want them to appear in a future shooter!

I would suggest adding Infinity Time as I enjoyed the modes, and to bring Party Characters back alongside, even if character variants did not make a return in a future shooter, as they could basically be stock variants, except with small buffs and Party Time meters which will make the character more powerful for a short time. This could be made to have a Public option where anyone could join, although maybe up to 4 players at once or there could be too much chaos! Can you imagine like 8 players in a single game? Who knows, you might get disconnected a lot due to lag?

Fun Fact: If you were to pick a random map in GW2, the game would almost always give us Time Park just because it is so nice! 🙂

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