Guild Wars 2

“If anyone loves Dynamic Events raise your hand?”

“…I see we all agree.”

To whom this concerns:
Whenever I make a post I always wonder whether I’m going to be talking to sensible people or the…comma…who just need to troll. This discussion is for those who can have sensibility and respect others as they would themselves, not attack at others to avoid addressing their own problems.

Dynamic Events (the First Time):
Absolutely amazing! People seem to appear of thin air to help and no one has a reason to throw a fit because someone -did- help. Thank you ArenaNet for encouraging humanity in others.
Better, you can’t be sure you will run into the same DE each time you do find one. This creates an reliable foundation for the game’s reliability and thus, marketing ability. Now, that’s all very well and good. Very good. But there is a problem… in older games a town or ‘camp’ (Area where NPCs could be farmed for exp) constituted the places where a player would gather. In Guild Wars 1 it was also true that one went to a town to find people. In Guild Wars 2 the Dynamic Events are a place of congregation AND towns are a place of congregation. Now, you’re probably asking, “What’s the problem?”
The answer is, “What’s the point?” Yes, it’s great we’re all playing together again. The thing is our efforts only ‘change’ a situation of an area. Have or have-not. It does not CHANGE the area or truly impact the player more than once per need of that town or what exp/money retrieving it might provide. If a town is lost to NPCs then I have to go to another town or retake it. Do this enough times and it is just another repetitious experience. In other words, it’s BORING.

I propose Strategic Zones with Strategic Dynamic Events. Imagine if Sparkfly Fen or Bloodtide were entire zones that could be conquered by NPCs.
: : Doing this achieves two things
- The Zones/Regions of the world are so ‘busy’ there is no Frontier in Guild Wars 2. There are too many people for that feeling to exist as things stand. We can’t rely on the static environment to provide that. Between towns and dynamic events there isn’t far to walk before you are going to find someone. Having entire zones being conquered by various NPC forces re-establishes that these are Frontier Regions, not Suburbs of the ‘united offensive’ (the Players).
- Providing Zones that can be completely conquered by NPCS means that players have a deeper and connected sense that the world in which they are involved is changing and CAN be threatened. This is not happening as things stand. Yes, players are experiencing the loss or gain of a locale but there is no sense that it’s loss goes on to impact anything beyond. In other words, it can be ignored. Providing the potential to loose entire zones or retake them creates a sense of reality and necessity.

Other Benefits:
Creating Strategic Regions or Strategic Events (Events that can consume regions) means that players sense the world of Tyria can change. Not just a town. A town’s loss or reconquest is nothing but a mechanism: good for a short term entertainment. In the long term, people will become bored.
Adding Strategic Regions gives the possibility for the world to shift unexpectedly. A region entirely safe today could be enemy territory tomorrow or a war zone with power shifting before their very eyes. Economically, this is like adding expansions to your game without having to do anything more than tell a line of code, “Spawn NPCs town-A attackers, if town-B conquered begin assault of town-B” and so on. If not stopped this little event could lead to the full region being conquered. Evening adding more ‘troops’ to each additional town conquered.
Example: If NPCs conquer a town then things function as-is (9/19/12). If held for X minutes the town spawns more NPCs who “fortify” that town creating 1 Patrol and 1 Raiding Party. The Raiding Party then selects another town and assaults there. This could be handled as literal march or a random spawn near the next town in a table. The cycle then repeats allowing the NPCs to potentially conquer a zone, fight with other NPCs doing the same (but of a different faction), or (most importantly) Players.
— this mechanic could be allowed to influence bordering zones. If Risen were to conquer all of Bloodtide then perhaps Sparkfly Fen, Kessex Hills, and Caledon Forest begin to see Risen in areas typically devoid of them. In other words, you are hinting to changes in the wider world as a result of local problems.

Just not sure how this kind of thing would actually go down in practice. Maybe, it would generate complaints “can’t get waypoint X to complete the area” etc. Essentially what you asking for is a sort of WvW where one of the worlds consists of intelligent AI. But, many players just want to continue their inexorable progress to level cap in order that they can farm high level areas for mats & karma and probably wouldn’t care less, except they’d moan when the area was taken over by hostile NPCs inhibiting their progress or ability to get some item or achievement.

Not to mention you’d need them to be seriously difficult or almost wholly combat un-related to prevent people form just zerging the events to death in a few minutes.

This is pretty much what I imagined the Straits of Devastation were supposed to feel like. And in a way it does. It’s only implemented half-heartily.

It’s like ANet knew they wanted to create the sense of a perpetual PvE war, but were afraid to fully commit due to the ramifications (content access and movement restrictions).

I believe these fear were unwarranted. I too would like to see something encompassing a PvE war, at least in one (very large) zone. It would work quite well I imagine, as GW2 already has many of the mechanics in place (Siege weapons, Dynamic Events).

I guess such a zone could then be considered “PvE” endgame and pushing the PvE forces all the way back could unlock a final, “awesome” event boss.

That said, all of this would require progression in both DE mechanics, mob dynamics and encounter design. Maybe it’s better if ANet holds off a little longer on such a zone until they’ve gathered a little more experience.

I agree on all accounts.
Roqoco points out the immediate issue with it: People leveling are going to complain.
- the solution I would think of it leaving this sort of zone to the level 70-80 content. Right now people are focused on maxing their crafting, 100% a zone, or leveling other characters. Once that rush is over people are going to want something to do with max level characters. This answers that.

Implementation requires addressing all three posts here. Partly with my comment just above but also respecting Painking’s point: People would Zerg this for exp or money under the current mechanic.
- That’s a very good point. I think the difficulty would be easily solved by giving NPCs benefits from their additional conquests. Nothing need change with the current mechanics at first but once the NPCs gain a second town they start getting more troops and adding behaving more dynamically.

Dee Jay’s also bring up another thing to keep in mind: Everything I’ve mentioned is already in the game in some manner.
- the issue would be developing a more intertwined system of Dynamic Events. It would have to endgame content that affects the server. Maybe something would read:
- “Your forces hold the Straights of Devastation. Your realm gains 5% extra damage from spells.”
- “Your forces hold Bloodtide. Players regenerate Health if you hold X% of towns in a region (this would vary by region).”
- “Your forces are loosing Sparkfly Fen. People are reporting more Risen/Kraite further inland than they have been seen before,” etc.

Overall I think Dee Jay’s right about needing to wait awhile. ArenaNet needs more time with what they have and probably are pretty taxed as-is.