Guild Wars 2

Honestly, I thought MMO games would be much further along by this time than they are. I can’t do PvE anymore, it’s just the same boring song and dance routine as always, just with better graphics. I want to see more variety in GW2 dynamic events. Once you do the event or boss a few times you pretty much know what the mobs will be, where the mobs are going to come from, where they will stand and what happens when you don’t stop them. It’s BORING. Is it really so hard to just have random stuff happen in the world ? Why can’t a dragon just pop up in Queensdale out of nowhere and kill everything around, then leave a bunch on minions to wreck havok ?

The world is so big and there are many, many events and champions that just stand out there untouched. There doesn’t need to be 10000 simple events around the world to make things interesting when you can change up 1000 events and make them MUCH more random than they currently are. I want to be surprised when I fight a boss or do an event. I don’t want a fight to go A then B then C then D then A, B, C etc etc. I just want a lot more variety within the same events than there is now.

Sure, it will be more work for the devs, but hey, I’m willing to throw some money their way each month for an INTERESTING game. WvW was the real reason I played GW2 because I wanted more than what the game AI could provide but WvW has become just another song and dance itself. Sorry if you have a different opinion, but this is mine and I’m sticking with it.

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I think that’s part of what the living stories attempt to do, such as with Scarlet. The routine events, however, are there because this isn’t a single player game. So the events reset routinely so that every player has the chance to experience them. This should give most new players who are exploring a map for the very first time the sense that they are in a living world, even if it really is on a treadmill. Of course, players who replay these maps will see the same events again and again. If it were a single player game, then completing 1 event could then mean that event never pops again unless you replay the entire game.

I can’t think of a single game old or new that doesn’t get routine after playing or replaying it for a while, unless it’s solely player vs. player; although I could argue that even then there is some routine-ness. Take Call of Duty: Play through it one time and you would only experience each mission/event once assuming you hadn’t restarted a mission of course.

Even Battlefield 1942 which I played in many PvP battles back in the day became somewhat routine after awhile. Even something like Candy Crush gets routine after awhile even when the candies appear randomly. Do you play the same level over and over again and never feel it’s routine?

Back to GW2: If all events were to pop at random times on random maps, then theoretically a player could go through the entire game without experiencing any event. (i.e. you’re in queensdale when an event pops up in mount maelstrom, but you wouldn’t know about that because you aren’t there) Some might suggest that all events then have a pop up notification as to when an event appears. Could be done, but how frustrating would it be to constantly be notified about every little event that pops up, and how many events would you miss if you were already in an event? With hundreds or thousands of events it would drive you crazy. Now if you’re talking just the dragon and big boss events, then I could see those being made to randomly pop in other maps and with different objectives needing to be completed and different tactics being used. But that all takes some significant planning, programming, and testing to make happen.

Unfortunately, the NPCs don’t really think for themselves so Tequatl isn’t just going to decide to attack Rata Sum on his own…someone has to program the NPCs to spawn here, attack this, react this way to what players are doing, etc. The only way right now that I see to make all events truly random both in spawn times, spawn locations, and tactics is PvP events. Essentially, WvW, as you stated. Where’s the blue team going to hit next, and when? What tactics will they use? Sure, in the current WvW you can predict where they will hit, but honestly without ‘cheating/spying’ you won’t know for certain until they do.

That being said, if WvW were expanded into many more maps, I could see that achieving at least some of what you’re asking for. Existing PVE maps could in fact be used, with some modifications such as adding keeps and forts and objectives. Personally, I think that would be something that should be explored by the developers. If separate servers were used to host these modified ‘PVE’ maps purely for WvW battles, then teams could storm the gates of Divinity, for instance, and battle for control of the city. And as a thought, maybe players could then be picked at random to play the role of a dragon. (i.e. you’re out exploring the map when you get prompted to become a dragon or not). How cool would that be?

Then for let’s say 30 minutes you are transformed into a dragon with a whole new set of skills and you can attack any opposing team or their fortifications until either you are defeated or the time limit is up. That would be much easier to program because then the devs would just have to design and create the models the same as they do with players’ characters, but all the ‘intelligence’ behind how that model is used is now up to the living, breathing, thinking player controlling it.

Until AI programming becomes much, much better, I’m afraid no NPC will ever really match what a human being is capable of. I’m not trying to downplay or cause an argument over what you’re requesting, but rather agreeing with you in a sense that in order to get the feeling of a more dynamic world, WvW would need to be expanded into more maps so that players face players in more areas/situations. I wouldn’t want to take away from the PvE’rs experience so that’s why I would suggest WvW still be kept apart.

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