Guild Wars 2

The concept of Dynamic Events is pretty cool. Repeatable content that changes based on what conditions are met.

However, there’s one big issue that I have with DEs. With the possible exception of Arah (I haven’t been there yet), most given world states have only ONE progression option.

Lets take a simple example: Centaurs are attacking the bridge in Kessex Hills. You change the world state to “We have repelled the Centaurs”. The ONLY progression option from that point onwards is “Centaurs attack the bridge”. As such, if you repeatedly repel the Centaurs at the bridge, NOTHING ELSE HAPPENS ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE CHAIN. All you’re going to get is Centaurs attacking the bridge over and over and over and over and ove…zzzzzzzzz. Certainly, a different event can be firing off somewhere else, but in the immediate vicinity there will rarely be any other event that you can quickly pounce on.

And this also means that events don’t really, well, “Cascade”. Even if you do get the fail state, the next event is to attack the next town. Which you can still camp at with no fear of finding centaurs smashing down any other doors. Event iteration is as linear as a LinkedList: even if you want option 3, you MUST run past option 1 and option 2 just to get there. And if you never get past option 1? Well then tough luck buster.

Therefore, Anet needs to at least implement it such that event chains, well, AREN’T chains. Without forcing them to just write more events, they could instead allow for multiple events to count as “start” options, which in turn can set off other events. For example, instead of always attacking the bridge as the start event, Centaurs could alternate between the bridge and a nearby town, or possibly both at the same time in order to attempt to force a fail state. From there, it would then activate adjacent events and badda bing badda boom we have the promised cascading. I’m certain that if events are coded as “nodes”, you could just list two options as start choices, and then add extra branch options for any given event. Those options could be chosen at random (y’know, to be Dynamic?) and that would simultaneously provide additional events and a better chance of creating fail states, without just making monsters crap on people.