Guild Wars 2

…is the feeling I get when dynamic events happen.

I wanted to jot down a few thoughts regarding dynamic events. I would like to hear yours as well.

1) Nothing I do matters

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve killed that blasted queen wasp. She just respawns, and respawns, and….argh.

I must have really misunderstood when I read about dynamic events having an effect on the world. From what I can tell, dynamic events are just canned events that repeat indefinitely and whether it’s a success or failure doesn’t really matter.

2) Mob Packing

I’m sure you’ve noticed that the more players participating in a battle, the more likely it is that you’ll be looking at nothing more than a blinding, seizure inducing, mish-mash of particle effects.

Part of the problem is that mobs don’t space themselves out at all, thus forcing players to bunch up. This makes dynamic events very difficult to take seriously when all I’m doing is button mashing in the hope I’m doing something productive enough to earn me a gold medal.

3) Too much information

My girlfriend made a good point. When dynamic events happen, why do we suddenly gain the power of a crystal ball? She feels dynamic events should have two circles.

- The first is an area of attention where you are alerted to an event, (the game really should make a more effective use of sound and echos) but you have no idea what’s happening.

- Second, a line of sight circle where, once in range you gain a better understanding of what’s happening.

This would make dynamic events much more interesting and emotional. It would also encourage players to get involved because its much more fun to be curious, and to gather more information, than to be spoon fed guests that you can read and choose to get involved or not.

4) Keeping it fresh

So many of the dynamic events are based on the same core concepts. Escort, defend, gather, kill everything.

To be fair, there are the odd event has something different, but for the most part they’re the same. What I would like to see are events that don’t always resort to combat.

For example, let’s say that a troll enters a village and startles a huge herd of cows. Now, everyone in the area hears the roars, and the mooing and run to check it out. A farmer is yelling and flailing about, “My cows, please stop my cows!”

So the players now need choose to stop the cows, kill the troll, orput out the fires it’s starting. Those that choose the cows, are required to work together to form a line in front of them, and keep that line moving to herd them back into the gate.

Or what about an event where players need to line up on a mountain top and jump, cheer, and make noise so it creates an avalanche which slams a camp of centaurs.

Using the game dynamics to encourage players to have to work together and coordinate would be a nice change from the “run in, kill all, run out” mentality.

I agree, if anyone has watched Anet’s Manifesto, I was expecting DE’s to shape the world, if I failed a DE something would happen. The worst thing that can happen as of now is that I don’t get to use a vendor which probably sells something that I can find anywhere, or I can’t use a waypoint……big whoop. Every event I do is the exact same, centaurs attack an outpost and fail terribly, 30 minutes later they do the exact same thing, it’s no different than if you were playing WoW, got a character to 80 then made a new one to do the exact same quests over and over.

When Anet stated that they had killed the traditional quest hub I was excited, but all they really did was get rid of the talking to the quest giver part and instead just forced some words on our screens that say go kill X centaurs. Nothing changed.

I made a thread about how maybe bandits attacking an outpost could learn somehow from their mistakes, so they throw themselves at the base and all die, let’s say they learn from that mistake and instead dig a tunnel under it and place explosives, it all still boils down to kill X bandits, but it also means that the world is changing, the AI has a chance to think and try different strategies.

Is this game bad? No. It is probably one of the only MMO’s to come out that has kept me interested in it past the launch month. It just needs a lot of work for it to be the alive world that we want.

Of course you don’t, insignificant human. (joking, please don’t be mad!)

There many dynamic events out there where your contribution changes the world (and it’s soooo beautiful!). There are even ones where specific actions change the outcome of what’s next. Unfortunately, most of these require one or two events in a chain to FAIL, which they very rarely do.

There are still some of them that have pretty effects when they succeed, but they are rare. Hopefully when devs address the issue of dynamic events always succeeding your problem will be gone as well.

About your other points, you’re right. I don’t mind it much, I knew this was going to be a MMO and MMOs are bad at this. If ANet could do something about it it would be cool, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

I think it is only in the beginning starter areas that events repeat often and does not feel very dynamic they keep it like that for a reason I do not know, but the higher level the area the more dynamic and world changing things will get, but imo I think it would be good if the starter areas are made just as dynamic as the level 70+ and 80 zones.

yes, unfortunately, dynamic events are nothing more than quests in disguise.

But the system can become something more….a.net has to do something fast, because they only have peoples attention for a little longer. If it doesnt get more interesting i know im out…

Cawesome.1580:

if I failed a DE something would happen.

this is exactly what the problem is. we’re winning every event, so we’re not seeing the world change. get it? Jon said theyre looking into it.

frOst.2198:

yes, unfortunately, dynamic events are nothing more than quests in disguise.

But the system can become something more….a.net has to do something fast, because they only have peoples attention for a little longer. If it doesnt get more interesting i know im out…

oh please, don’t be silly with the doom and gloom. they may have your attention for a short while, but there’s enough content for most people to keep them happy for at least a few months. ANet has got nothing but time. they released the most polished and “complete” MMO ever made, they already got their money back (and then some), and they can take as long as they need to enhance our experience.

i feel content dropping $60 just for WvW. that on its own was worth the money. if you bought the game just for DE’s , then you may be disappointed until they ramp up the difficulty and fix bugs.

what we got is just the bare bones start. DE’s are gonna be perfected, expanded upon, and ultimately huge down the road.

i don’t know the name of it, but you should try the event chain in Hunter’s Gorge, east of Ebonhawk in the Fields of Ruin. it was an eye-opening experience for me, lol. i think that kind of stuff is what the DE system was made for.
i stumbled upon it yesterday and it was a lot of fun, more so than many other events i played before.

Just to see what would happen, it would be pretty cool if everyone didn’t do any DEs for a full day and simply let the world burn for an afternoon. I’d like to see how bad things would get. Then maybe we’d be able to see just how much difference we make.

As it is, players are simply too good at successfully completing DEs. I’ve only seen a handful of DEs fail, and those have been in the 1-10 and 10-20 zones. Bandits poisoning the water supply in Queensdale comes to mind.

So, yes. It would be cool if we could see just how bad things could get.

sonicwhip.9052:

I think it is only in the beginning starter areas that events repeat often and does not feel very dynamic they keep it like that for a reason I do not know, but the higher level the area the more dynamic and world changing things will get, but imo I think it would be good if the starter areas are made just as dynamic as the level 70+ and 80 zones.

The 70-80 zones are the same. Nothing changes.

I’d have thought that when a DE ‘changes’ the world, it would be something akin to Rift, where if you didn’t kill the invaders, they would set up outposts which then sent out more invaders to try and eventually take over the whole map.

I’d like to see something where a city gets burnt down and then the invaders or who/whatever move on to the next one. Then the next DE would be gather mats to go and rebuild the destroyed city.

The more this goes on, the darker and more wartorn the scenery gets until the whole map is nyerked!

They need to throw DE’s in that will kick ourkitten our characters arn’t gods, we’re mortals who can only do so much, it would be nice to see some events that may just be barely possible or events that just might not even be possible to do because of overwhelming numbers. Events where even if we win it left an entire town shattered and broken. For example, are any of you entirely convinced that the humans are at war with the centaurs? Other than a few DE’s here and there what makes it a war?

dynamic =/= persistent.

Events, to a greater or lesser degree, do impact the world, but not permenantly, otherwise hte player after you woudl have nothing to do…… so yes events repeat, and travel up and down failure/sucess chains (though not so much down right now!).

In starting areas events tend to be smaller scale, probably as you move on quickly, so if you stick aroudn they repeat quite often, but thats just to be expected.

I personally do not think I matter in Dynamic Events..I care less for them personally..Being only able to use one hand when trying to play GW2 is difficulty enough but when I come upon a dynamic event it is over before I can get there..I would rather be able to fight by myself in an DE and lose than get a free ride because someone else had beaten me to the punch. DE’s should of been left to each own player instead of trying to get more creative in “BOSS” fights.. People who come upon a DE and miss out on the fight making DE events seem like a waste of time..