This week's article of The Scrying Pool asks how limited is limited time content.

I like the idea of recurring limited time only content. It makes that content special while at the same time allowing players a second opportunity to play the content if they missed it or if they just plain loved it. On the other hand, having Crab Toss be in the game all the time would make it lose that special something and quickly make it just another thing in the game.

Keg Brawl is like this. Whenever I go to Keg Brawl it is almost empty, with just a single instance of the game (as far as I can tell) with people farming the titles by exchanging steals. Granted, I have never gone by when the Keg Brawl daily is available to check, but if it is only populated on certain days why not have it available only on those days to make it special?

This is how I think limited time content could benefit certain areas of the game. We have already seen how adding limited time content to areas like Southsun Cove can make the otherwise dead island a bustling player locale. What if we expanded this limited time renewal not only to the living story but to activities within the game?

Maybe, instead of adding either permanent or limited time content all the time, a rotation of available content was implemented. The weekend events in GW1 was a good example of how showcasing a certain activity (like Alliance Battles) would make them more popular for that weekend. This could be implemented in GW2 as well, except instead of giving boosts to current content it would provide availability when it is otherwise not in the game.

So instead of Keg Brawl always being in the game and Crab Toss being thrown out completely they would be part of a weekend activity rotation. Once there are more activities to fill out a rotation, maybe every weekend for five weeks is a different activity complete with a couple of daily achievements for that activity. Then, after five weeks, the rotation would start over again.

This rotation could also be expanded to include other things outside of activities. Did you really enjoy the Molten Alliance dungeon or just want another shot at that backpack? Maybe one of those five is a special event return. If more and more activities are added to the game the rotation could just become six, seven, eight, etc. weeks long.

Maybe there are so many activities that having an activity every weekend isn’t enough. Instead of having a 10-week long rotation for example, there would be a five week rotation that has two activities each week. This could just be two activities within a given weekend, but I would shoot for two three day periods every week. Instead of the Friday, Saturday, Sunday weekend availability there would be one activity available Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and another on Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

With this it makes things feel special in their limited appearance while also giving activities that would otherwise be limited and gone another chance in the spotlight. It also gives a sense of more content available in the game. Activities like Keg Brawl needs people to play and focusing the community to a single weekend can make that happen.

Matt "Mattsta" Adams is currently enjoying the Dragon Bash and can't wait for the story elements coming out next week.

I am curious how many players look at achievements as the content. After the Dragon Bash I saw a lot of comments along the lines of having to grind piñatas, holograms and Dragon Ball. You don't have to grind any of that content. In fact you don't need to do any of those achievements. I see the achievements as roadmarkers showing me all of these cool things that are in the game, a sentiment I touched on with making achievements for seeing all the events in an event line back in The Scrying Pool: Shards of Lore. With that I wanted those achievements to signify that I had seen the entire story through that line, not something to force me to do all of those events.

I'm curious what would happen if event achievements were instead zero point participation achievements like Bash 1 Piñata, Played 1 match of Dragon Ball, etc. Now they are the road markers I see and they are not the "grind" other players see. It loses it's sense of achievement, but if it only had a negative connotation to begin with I don't know that the change would be bad.

As always, if you have a question for me you would like to see answered here, comment below or tweet it to @MattstaNinja.