Guild Wars 2

I completely agree with this thread. There are too many times I wish people would stop defending something just to see what happens. I think when we retake something that has been taken over, we get a real sense of purpose and achievement in the world. If it’s just continuously defending something, it almost make me wonder why they have guard NPCs. It’s much nicer to have an avenger feel and running in to save the day, rather than just making sure a place is safe.

The great thing with event chaining is that it allows for us players to fail an event without “losing face”. Once a fight is lost, there is always the chance to regroup and counterattack.

Actually, the only other game I remember that allowed players to fail and live with the consequences is Wing Commander 1 (yes, this one is for the grampas out there). In WC1, there were always two follow-up missions: a loosing scenario and a winning scenario. Only if the player lost a certain number of mission the campaign was lost entirely. But there was always a chance to make up for lost missions and eventually win the campaign, and the game even told a coherent and unique story along that way.

It’s a little sad that ANet won’t allow us to loose events a little bit more often to keep the event chains fresh and … well, let’s say, “dynamic”.

~MRA

Is there any chance to expect at least 1/4 – 1/3 of the PvE events in the world are getting more interesting/challenging?
I’ve talked to quite a lot of guild members that are exhausted because of the lack of any challenge out in the open world and I actually feel the same.
Yeah, sometimes it’s nice to just “fly” through the events after a hard day of work, but sooner or later that isn’t satisfying anymore. There was one BWE where it felt quite good, since it feels just diluted…
I don’t ask for a Dark Souls of MMOs (even if that could be awesome to some degree – other topic), but at least in all the zones 30+ there should 1/4 – 1/3 of all events in a zone be hard, not just for players in that level-range or below, even lvl 80s should have a hard, challenging and interesting time there.
You wanted the hole world of Tyria to be end game (not just from a loot perspective I think!?)… Your dynamic event system and the possibility of failing events, which results in a different path those event chains evolve instead of just starting again, players still getting loot and reward for failing events. Players could learn their class instead of just spamming the buttons because it works…

You have so many things in place that would make a game possible with challenging and interesting content, whitout players missing out loot/rewards and without having to do the same “quest” over and over again like usually if you fail something…
Do you use it? Not at all, sadly!

I’ve waited for this game since announcement, I’ve been on GamesCom twice primary because of that game and was seeing a game that I could enjoy for years to come… But if all the challenge in PvE is just dungeons and a really little amount of events, than I don’t see me playing that in years. All my hope is that you use the potential eventually, learn how you can use it and with all the new (and updated?) events that hopefully come into the world all over the place in a regular base, you hopefully show that events can be challenging and more interesting and actually more world changing than what we currently got!

I really hope you are aware of all this, I really hope!

Thanks for this potentially great game, it’s good already, but it could be definitely better. Not just because of what we are discussing here, that is just one of many topics where you can invest to most likely get more out of your (and our?) game…

So I’ve almost made it to the end zones (level 76), and I’ve discovered that my initial complaint of events being too easily defeated is just a tiny problem, all those cool event chains I came across in the early zones have completely vanished. Nearly every single event is a completely disconnected experience.

In Straits of Devastation there’s supposedly a war going on, yet nothing in the zone actually shows this. Despite the fact that the “front line” had moved quite a bit inland absolutely nothing changed, risen were still rooted in place behind us doing absolutely nothing of consequence except making players cast swiftness on theirselves. There were events, but for this war they make absolutely no sense. Why is there a random giant walking around in a circle and why does he have an event? Why is there a downed chopper in the zone; where did it come from, where does it go if we win the event? Why are there choppers being attacked by AA? After we beat the event they did not do anything, I’m fairly certain the ones that survived just vanished.

There’s no possible way for a single player to do anything in the zone, so naturally everybody in the zone will join up with the huge group running around (or leave if they can’t get through the sea of risen) completing these events that repop minutes later.

The events themselves make no sense, we are in a war zone, yet attacks consist of escorts to the destination where a final boss that is either very easy or absolutely impossible will spawn. There’s no lead up to these events, they just happen, this occurs in most events in previous zones as well.

I’ve only been able to take part of the Balthazar event, so let’s take that as an example. As far as I could tell it was stuck at the end point, where we continually were attacking the temple and getting stompped on by a boss that instantly kills you if he targets you. This should be the final event in a long chain, not an event that restarts every 20 minutes.

There should be events getting supplies to attack the temple, getting NPCs to the rally point, getting siege weapons into place. There should be events to recon the enemy forces, find weaknesses in their defenses. There could be events where you have to take out enemy emplacements, commanders, supplies. Each event would contribute to the difficulty of the final event; the more events we win the easier the final event will be. We could have a huge army behind us, siege weapons to hit the monsters from afar, reduce their difficulty with the loss of their commanders. If we fail too many events then they decide attacking the target will just be too difficult and they have to reorganize and consider a different target.

Once we take over the tower the enemy starts doing the same thing, with each event getting more and more difficult until there’s pretty much no way to stop the oncoming horde of risen. The front line moves back and forth, but the power of the undead keeps pushing us back.

The thing is, there are some tiny glimmers of this in the zone, they don’t appear to actually have any effect on anything other than winning or losing the event, but they are there.

There are currently a metric ton of escort/protection (of NPCs) events, and invariably they end up playing the same as classical “waves” events. You AoE mobs to death. They are by far the easiest event type that currently exist in the game.
A good way to differentiate those events from the waves type – in high-end areas – and to make them more exhilarating in general would be to let the failure condition be the death of the NPC once or a set amount of times (preferably once).
This way players would require to expend their attention and resources not only on high damage numbers, but also on defensive abilities, crowd control, using the terrain, etc. to keep the NPC alive.
I’m not sure why Anet is, apparently, so adverse to let the players experience failure in DEs. Unlike GW1, where letting Togo and his pals die meant your last half hour went to waste, you still get rewards, and possibly a whole new branch of an event chain. It’s really not a “failure” at all.

Another problem is the context in events. It’s like the difference between Doom and Call of Duty. In both games you’re running through long tunnels mowing down everything that gets in your way. What’s interesting is that you have less to do in COD than Doom; in Doom you have to find key cards and solve puzzles in addition to killing enemies with guns or big guns, in COD you follow a linear path and shoot enemies with guns or big guns. Despite this I’ve found COD to be more interesting than Doom since I know what I’m doing and why (though the story makes less sense than Doom).

Many events in GW2 usually have no context, just a flimsy story from an NPC that does not hold up under scrutiny. One I’m reminded of is a swamp where some inquest are trying to poison a swamp. I have no clue why they are trying to poison the swamp since nobody is around to tell me they are evil, but they have red names so they are evil. If the event fails you have to go collect kelp from a nearby lake to cure a bunch of hylek, once that event is completed that’s the end of it. There’s no conclusion or explanation, the inquest are still in the swamp, the hylek don’t seem to care they are there even though they just poisoned the swamp. They don’t attack the inquest, they don’t march over to their base to tell them to stop poisoning the swamp, it’s like they completely forgot it happened.

Escort quest could be interesting if there was any context around them. As a bonus the context of the quest would actually provide ideas for the event creator to make the event better. Like the pack doylak events that lead you to another town, they have little context in the world other than monsters attacking it that just happen to be the same subject of the zone. So in human lands it’s Centaur attacking, in Norn lands it’s Sons of Sanvir attacking. You can’t fail these events, and nothing is effected by the pack doylak making it or staying dead for hours on the road other than a merchant that has items nobody would want to buy. From a story perspective these events serve no purpose. The player will find the town without the event, nothing bad happens if the event fails and nothing good happens if it finishes. Nobody says, “we should probably do something to stop these raids on our pack doylak’s.”

Some may say that the doylak’s are needed to guide players, but if this were true you would see this at the very start of the game; none of the newbie zones have these events until you have already figured out you need to run around the world on your own.

When making an event the question should be asked, “does this event serve any purpose other than to exist?” If the answer is no, create a reason for the event to exist. Create supporting events to help the event exist. If I’m escorting a pack doylak why can’t I take the fight to the enemy once I’m done? Are we just going to let the centaur harass our supply lines?

ANet really needs to get their kitten together…

Events should require players to actually come together and think about how they will achieve victory rather then camp the spawn point. Give each Event 4+ other things that have to be done during the event in order to win.

Tequatl the sunless, tier 2 dragon, played as staff elementalist in full water spec, stand under belly, target, hit ‘1’ key. Heal self slowly killing boss. God bless autoattack. Hardest part is pressin ‘q’ to run back after he fears you for no damage.

Thankfully after taking less damage than i could heal and getting boss down in health a valiant warrior appeared and tanked for me. I duly nodded in his general direction and my ranged autohealing kept him up too without me pressing a button.

The thing that im missing is the branching and the reasoning to the events, i will use the caravan escort as an example, what if when the event fail and the caravan dosn’t reach its destination, the garrison NPC merchants will have a lot less to sell, after a while people will start to starve and later die due to the lack of food, enemies will see that this area is weaker and start to attack it. if this will happen two new event should pop one to guard the garrison and the other to go to a nearby town and find a physician that can heal them.
This chain can let the player feel involved in what happened and the caravan escort will mean more then free zerg, and that traveling merchant mean a lot to this garrison.