Guild Wars 2

First of all, this is not intended to be a whining/rant/whatever blahblah post. I love the game with all its flaws and problems, and I have a lot of fun playing it daily. I just have a question I like to hear other players (or maybe a devs?) opinion.

The only thing that troubles me when playing PvE is that I can sometimes explore for 30 minutes or more and never encounter a single dynamic event, especially in level 30+ areas. I never had the slightest doubt that dynamic events are far more entertaining than traditional checklist questing. However, for DEs to be fully immersive, you need the constant feeling that “somethings going on”. And this is a feeling I am missing from time to time.

So, why is that so? I have seen that many event chains have been stuck due to bugs, which of course has an impact on the number of perceived events. I also have the feeling that the event rotation pauses have been prolonged significantly since the betas. There are numerous events that I have seen or played multiple times in the betas, yet I have never seen them since release. And yes, I have taken my time in lower level areas. Also, I have yet to experience an event chain to move back-and-forth. Usually, I just see them at the “good end” of the chain, with the enemies never facing a chance of pushing the chain back unless there is absolutely no player around (aka never).

I also did a little bit of counting and checked how many events are actually listed in the official wiki . Of course, the wiki is still missing a lot of information, but I have some confidence in the wiki crowd that they do have listed a high percentage of everything by now. According to the wiki, there are currently 788 events in the game. What is also interesting is that while the starting zones list a fair number of events (50-60), higher level zones seem to have way fewer events (20-30). For the promised 1500+ events every of the 25 zones would need to have as many events as the starter zones. I attached a screenshot of my count.

So I am asking myself how many dynamic events actually made it into the game? Did ANet have to cut a number of events in order to meet the release date, or are they maybe postponed to be added as free content updates later this year? Are we players still missing (for whatever reason) events that are actually in the game? Or are 1500+ events in the world, but they are simply not enough to fill the huge area of the 25 maps? Or am I the only one feeling this way?

~MRA

I somewhat doubted that there are really 1500 events in the game when I was asking this question some months ago. Now, with release of the public event API, I have been proven wrong: According to this API call there are currently 1636 events in the game. So ANet has been true to their announcement. Kudos for that.

~MRA

I have found an incredible lack of events as well.

You have to remember that not all events are just “happening” instantly.

Some require talking to NPCs as well. If no one talks to certain NPCs, then those events will never start. And not all event NPCs have circles over their head. Some have hidden dialogue that will lead to an event if you have a conversation with them.

Most players are just running around the map without checking NPCs, and expecting events to just be “happening” already for them to jump into. They don’t take the time to look around for how to start events or progress them. They just expect them to start on their own. You gotta take the time to do those things, or otherwise events won’t start and it will seem pretty dead.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

You have to remember that not all events are just “happening” instantly.

Some require talking to NPCs as well. If no one talks to certain NPCs, then those events will never start. And not all event NPCs have circles over their head. Some have hidden dialogue that will lead to an event if you have a conversation with them.

I agree, there are many subtleties in the world of GW2 that can easily be missed. In fact, whenever I find one of those, I enjoy the game the most. And I really try to be not that kind of player that is just running for the exit of a zone on the fastest possible route.

However, can these obvious/hidden player triggered events really make up for the (subjective) feeling that the world isn’t as dynamic as it could be with the existing game mechanic? For me, the idea that the world does not idly wait for a hero to come along, but has dynamic of itself, has always been the strongest part of the concept of GW2.

~MRA

I notice the lack of events when doing Dailies. 5 needed per day and it can take hours to even get through that. I can think of about 18 events off the top of my head (including “failure” events that only happen if an event is failed) for Queensdale and yet any given day I’ll see maybe 4 of them take place, wandering across the whole map for hours.

I think maybe a larger range for event notifications would help a lot, like how if a huge monster shows up we know from across the map. Maybe minor events should show up from halfway across the map?

The question is, how many are working properly?

WeLoveKanjimari.6725:

I notice the lack of events when doing Dailies. 5 needed per day and it can take hours to even get through that. I can think of about 18 events off the top of my head (including “failure” events that only happen if an event is failed) for Queensdale and yet any given day I’ll see maybe 4 of them take place, wandering across the whole map for hours.

I think maybe a larger range for event notifications would help a lot, like how if a huge monster shows up we know from across the map. Maybe minor events should show up from halfway across the map?

And the event zerging will be right back… Please, no!

I don’t want to have an event in the right corner every single second! Sometimes that’s great, but in general I like it more if I stumble into those instead of being led to them…

And finally you can find yourself with a few in events, having at least a little challenge from time to time without the zerg, because finding challenging (and interesting) events isn’t quite easy anyway…

Even if there were – what’s the use if they all suck?

I think there’s also a lot of events that are very hard to find, which makes me think there are many out there that most players have not seen.

For example, the other day I was running around in Shaemoor village (human starting area). I ran into the graveyard and found a priest of Grenth that was talking about a sensing a spirit at night or something along those lines. So I came back to the graveyard at night time, and randomly found an NPC “Lady in White”. After talking to her, it kicked off an event that I have never seen before (there were no icons or anything that would indicate she was part of an event). She asked me to escort her home. When we reached the edge of the graveyard, she freaked out and turned into a ghost/mini boss.

It was a pretty cool experience. Makes me wonder how many other events can be found off the beaten trail.

i can’t actually explore with the ammount of events, i mean my karma is going through the roof i can almost get a tier one weapon and im level 15 hehe. i love them and i’ve done some twice just because i thought i’d give others a helping hand.

1500 dynamic events

25 working in any given week.

Yes some of them are still bugged, but most of them seem to be fine. In the higher level areas I’ve always got at least a couple events going on around me, and since the most recent update I’ve only seen one of them that was bugged. I don’t know if all 1500 are in the game already but the devs have said that they plan to quietly add events in over time to already existing areas to keep things interesting.

I can’t decide if it is a lack of events in certain areas or that there are so many bugged events in certain zones it seems like the area is lacking.

It made me wonder if anyone is putting together a location map of all the events for the Wiki, because I would be very interested to see the number of events broken down into areas.

Like for example I’ve been doing the Ascalonian leveling path and found the Northeast Quardrant of both Field of Ruins & Iron Marches to be pretty lacking in events. Other parts of the zone were fine but it just seemed like there wasn’t much in those 2 areas.

I thought as you guys did after I got to 80. Then I started working on 100% map completion and yes, they are out there. It is ridiculous the amount of map you have no idea that you didn’t see until you try to see it all.

Then again, I fill like Columbus must have, when everyone felt the world was flat. Get out there and look. You just might answer your own questions.

I think a lot of events don’t get seen right now because the chains are stuck halfway through, too. For example, the Ettins you’re supposed to herd into the pen in Timberline Falls were stuck, unmovable, about 20 yards from the pen. They remained that way every time I happened past them for 3 days. I’m sure something interesting happened once they were herded in, probably 2-3 DEs in a chain, but there was no way to find out.

Stuff like that is everywhere, missing NPCs, bosses stuck in walls, bugged events, etc. Until Anet can get all these things straightened out, I suspect there are a great many events that are rarely, if ever seen.

Thedenofsin.7340:

1500 dynamic events

25 working in any given week.

Hahaha this.

I can name about ten per zone (and at least two bugged per zone), but when I did completion of Timberline and some of the other later game areas there were so many stalled or bugged events I couldn’t actually tell you how many chained off them. Some zones I went through on my main were really interesting with events going off left, right and centre… going through them again with my reroll and they were all bugged or couldn’t trigger and I did entire maps without a single event.

i agree we need more info on how these events r getting bugged so the devs can sweep them and fix them.. atm iot seem they must not be getting the right information as they r only resetting them which just delays the issue

I like events; I hate hearts. Though it feels as though I’m always forced to grind through hearts.

I would agree that this empty feeling is a product of minimal notifications on the map. There are zones that notify you of events from quite far away, and sometimes you will see about 4-5 invasions going on. This makes the game feel like an RTS that the player can jump right into. I’d have to say that being notified of events over a huge range makes the game feel like a dynamic RTS that the player can jump right into, and I much prefer those zones that show events from very far away.

I usually talk/listen to all (and I really mean ALL) NPC of every area I’m in, read all books, inscriptions, and to whatever to gather all informations available…. and have found so many events that at times I thought “omg, another one… I will never end o,O”

MRA.4758:

I somewhat doubted that there are really 1500 events in the game when I was asking this question some months ago. Now, with release of the public event API, I have been proven wrong: According to this API call there are currently 1636 events in the game. So ANet has been true to their announcement. Kudos for that.

~MRA

The real problem is how events are triggered. I believe the roadblock event for the bridge just outside of Divinity’s Reach requires a certain number of people to pass through for it to activate. Others are on timers like the bandits raiding a ranch. What bothers me is that very few seem triggered by players.

I think one of the main problems is that there are too few events. Let me explain. There are quite a lot events in the game but they start in certain intervalls. In the time one event isn’t up, most of the time the area seems dead. No other event happens there at that time. They could make the intervalls shorter, but this would only be bad because it wouldn’t feel natural any more.

There need to be more events which happen while others aren’t up in order to make a zone feel truly alive. Anet planned this once (300 events in a zone where at release there were 100) but it seems the living story has a priority on “the list”.

On the other hand… we have to be fair: The living story brings (according to Mr. Hrouda) quite a few new events to zones – he explained how there will be more permanent stuff on Southsun Cove after the Living Story. So this could be the way Anet plans to implement those more events. Which I would welcome. Sadly Diessa Plateau and Wayfarer Foothills haven’t changed a bit after Flame and Frost. This was the chance to do this and it didn’t happen. Personally I think they learned something from that.

I’ve very recently launched my website with real-time event maps (using ArenaNet’s Events API) to make it easier to figure out where events are happening, check it out:
http://www.gw2state.com

I think the question of event frequency and density is really interesting and I’m hoping to add more statistics soon to help figure out exactly what’s happening. At this point I’ve got a few preliminary conclusions based on the data:

1) Event density is VERY variable from zone to zone; e.g. compare Metrica Province to Sparkfly Fen. Also notice that several of the most common events in Sparkfly are group events that nobody wants to do.
2) A large number of events seem “blocked” by a few events that people don’t want to do. For example, one difficult group event can block other events from starting in the zone, or the start of an event chain is hidden somewhere nobody goes.
3) Some zones respawn their events very quickly, while others seem to have more events on a longer timer and may therefore not seem to have many events at primetime.

Check out the website and let me know what you think – there’s plenty of interesting data to mine in there, and hopefully it will help you find lots of fun events! I know I had a blast doing lots of events in Caledon Forest today and I gained 9 levels in just a few hours

Events such as the Queensdale troll have to be explicitly triggered by a player or it just won’t happen. A lot of events are part of a chain, which is why it’s called “dynamic” because chains can go both ways.

The big clue is to surf event chains: once you complete an event, stay around for a minute. More often than not, a new one will start. They can really take you around a zone in a big trek, sometimes completing multiple hearts in the process.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I think one of the main problems is that there are too few events. Let me explain. …

For the most part I totally agree with your point of view, but I would put it a little differently: The number of events seems just fine, but they are spread out over far too many zones. If GW2 would have started with, say only 2/3 (or even 1/2) of its current number of maps, but these maps would have been fully loaded with events, then the game would have been a completely different experience. Further (fully loaded) zones could have ideally been released as living content every so-and-so many months, and I would have even gladly paid, say, 600 gems per zone to obtain a pass to visit them.

Also, I am still a little disappointed that the event chaining is way to simple. Most chains seem to be a simple cycle of two or three states. Very few events do not follow that formula, with the meta event chains being the main exception (yet only to a small degree). However, what I am desperately missing, is “event branching”, where events chain in an uncertain and unexpected way, and “event interaction”, where events do tweak and adapt conditioned on the state of other events. And, more than everything else, “event failure” other than being pushed back one step in a linear chain, that would lead to new an interesting failure tracks of the chain instead. This is what would made the world truly lively.

I still believe that, as a concept, dynamic events are way superior to the old-fashioned checklist questing, and also to the invasions/public events from other games. However, many events are admittedly not at all different from a static Rift invasion. I fear that ANet might have come to the conclusion that event design, especially designing complicated events, does just cost to much time and leads to to many technical problems (there are events that I have never seen in a non-stalled state since release!), so they do not want to go further that road. After all, the majority of this “locusts swarm of MMO players” consumes any content without asking to much questions or looking for subtle event interconnections, as long as they get their precious loot. It’s a shame, but I have the feeling that innovation on that end will not be appreciated, and might turn out to be not profitable enough to justify the development cost. Makes Quaggan sad.

~MRA

Uttar.2341:

I’ve very recently launched my website with real-time event maps (using ArenaNet’s Events API) to make it easier to figure out where events are happening, check it out:
http://www.gw2state.com

I think the question of event frequency and density is really interesting and I’m hoping to add more statistics soon to help figure out exactly what’s happening. At this point I’ve got a few preliminary conclusions based on the data:

1) Event density is VERY variable from zone to zone; e.g. compare Metrica Province to Sparkfly Fen. Also notice that several of the most common events in Sparkfly are group events that nobody wants to do.
2) A large number of events seem “blocked” by a few events that people don’t want to do. For example, one difficult group event can block other events from starting in the zone, or the start of an event chain is hidden somewhere nobody goes.
3) Some zones respawn their events very quickly, while others seem to have more events on a longer timer and may therefore not seem to have many events at primetime.

Check out the website and let me know what you think – there’s plenty of interesting data to mine in there, and hopefully it will help you find lots of fun events! I know I had a blast doing lots of events in Caledon Forest today and I gained 9 levels in just a few hours

Oh, very nice. I was wanting something like this. Thanks for the link.

MRA.4758:

but I have the feeling that innovation on that end will not be appreciated, and might turn out to be not profitable enough to justify the development cost. Makes Quaggan sad.

Let’s hope there’s still enough intelligent (and paying) life out there :P

So many zones feel so barren of events while others are non stop and awesome and even unique. Maybe if they could come up with filler events a more constant flow would be achieved? Just more frequent and simple, easy-to-replicate events to run in between more unique, chained events, maybe?

Yes, I can confirm there’s a metric ton of events on every map. I have made it my goal to see as many as possible as I 100% each map, however that REQUIRES that you spend about 2-3 days per map WAITING on some of the events to trigger. And well… most players would never do that.

To put it simply, certain events only trigger if a previous event succeeds or fails. There’s different outcome events in each case.( A different event if it succeeds. And a different event if it fails.)

It’s insanely difficult seeing all the events since if there’s other players around, and you’re trying to fail an event on purpose, they will likely mess it up for you by completing it instead -_-

I think the problem is that some events require a certain number of players to be present. This explains why we see many events happening in low level maps and significantly fewer events in mid-level zones.

I thought I read somewhere that ANet planned to review the events and their trigger mechanism to even things out a bit, but I can’t remember where that was now. Possibly in some bug report thread.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

I thought I read somewhere that ANet planned to review the events and their trigger mechanism to even things out a bit, but I can’t remember where that was now. Possibly in some bug report thread.

Anet seems to have many plans, but so far they appear to have enough just coming up with a new event each month.