Guild Wars 2

Implement this kind of thing in premium PvE content first (e.g. dungeons), instead of trying to apply it to the HUNDREDS of dynamic events in the game. Because if you’re going to try something new, you do it on the small scale until you know it works. Then you break it on the large scale.

..agreed with OP. but at least they need to buff the hell out of their HP so they don’t die from the aoe before you can get one attack in.

Raging Bull.5048:

Make mobs so that they have at least a gram of gray matter with which they can conclude that AoE = bad! So they… Move out of it?! Sounds crazy enough to work, right?

From what I’ve seen, there are some mobs that absolutely move out of wells, marks, etc. Enough to stop what they’re doing, or no longer try to melee attack me. But, it’s not at ALL consistent.

Again, I completely agree with the Original Post, a certain difficulty is lacking especially in earlier dynamic events. It would be a lot more fun if there were more types of professions from the enemies too, not just ranger or melee. If they could mix in some enemies that used spells like a player warrior did like the invulnerable one it would REALLY spice things up. Then you’d always have to be on your toes if they cast a certain spell because you’d know when to flee/switch targets/change weapon/kite. Right now it feels a bit mashy, I’m playing as a warrior and I feel in the dynamic events everyone just pummels the fudge out of a boss with little consequence. There’s no real ‘no pain no gain’ in the game right now.

/support

It would be wonderful if the live team added a few, creative events instead of a lot of unimaginative ones.

its obvious anet haven’t tested any level 30+ content. they just add more trash mobs to get incinerated into the AOE which are DE’s

More complex, layered, deeper encounters/mob mechanics. We need to be forced to figure out what’s going on, how to counter it, develop an intelligent strategy for it and THEN I’ll actually have some satisfaction from completing DEs/Dungeons.

At the moment it’s: approach mobs, spam stuff until they stop moving. “Hooray”. Not.

I think this idea would go hand in hand with the stacking difficulty on success idea for when DE are left in the maximum success state. Have the different tiers of mobs not only scale to the amount of players, but also let them scale at the same rate when a small or medium group of players repeatedly keep an event from failing. Then it also solves the problem of events never going past it’s second or third failure state.

I think that would put dynamic events in a good place.

Suppish.8723:

bump

the entire game is awesome when it’s just you and four buddies in a party. but once you run into a zerg. fun = zero cuz the game doesn’t scale itself properly for everyone on the map to be at the same event

THIS Many of the events along with the mini dungeons in caves are a blast with small parties of 2-4. Single champion/ large boss events though are still fun, but can often be trivialised by circle strafing with a ranged weapon – bosses need to spawn minions more often or have other mechanisms. Also ranged AOE damage from spellcasters is a bit too effective ATM compared to melee and the risk is so much lower – along with fact that the visual spell effects (esp fire) make it impossible for melee players to see what is going on.

Love the idea in the original post. Hope the devs read it and take it to heart.

I am 100% behind this thread, and hope that the devs see some real and up to date value in it.

I am not sure how difficult/easy this would be to implement, but it sure sounds cool.

I agree. There seems to be a `sweet spot’ with Dynamic Events at the moment. Not enough players could be extremely tough, but too many and it becomes `try to get a hit before the entire wave evaporates’. If there were more of a change that challenged players to mix tactics (therefore, splitting the players up) would be far more interesting and hopefully scale better

Elric of Grans.7684:

I am not sure how difficult/easy this would be to implement, but it sure sounds cool.

It should not be too difficult to implement. The difficulty should be balancing it as more variables are added.
The game already checks player numbers and reacts to them by 1) increasing spawn size and 2) by tiggering further events only if enough people are present (apparently)
So they already have that count(players), if count>X → spawn kittens script running.
From a programming point of view it should be justa few lines (or a few more lines) of code to add to the existing script.
Now what the additions should be to make it challenging but still fun, that would be something that needs quite a bit of testing time.
Personally I’d prefer a too tough fight to keep me occupied than AoE-spam while dyein my armour.

melkathi.5203:

Elric of Grans.7684:

I am not sure how difficult/easy this would be to implement, but it sure sounds cool.

It should not be too difficult to implement. The difficulty should be balancing it as more variables are added.

Not sure about that – if it was easy they’d probably have done it already. One gritty problem you are going to run into is: Does the area have enough space to hold not only all the players but the extra mobs? If not a redesign of many battle grounds would probably be required. My gut feeling is that scaling up to large player groups is difficult and coping with huge zergs in a fluid way may not even be feasible for many of the events – there are only so many people you can crowd into one room at the same time.

Really awesome idea!

Bringing more mobs in the events won’t help that much to increase the challenge.
The problem is that most mobs just don’t use attacks that hurt many players, instead a single player. If you have 50 players and just mobs with single target attacks, there will be 30-40 players till the end of the event that didn’t take any damage, because they never had the aggro.
Mobs need more multi target attacks, against melee, again ranged… And they have to hurt much more. And these attacks have to hurt to some degree. A stomp that is knocking back players within range, but just making 1-5% damage isn’t anothe to really force the players to react to it, they just stay knocked down for 1-2 seconds, running back to the mob and start spamming skills again.

roqoco.4053:

Not sure about that – if it was easy they’d probably have done it already. One gritty problem you are going to run into is: Does the area have enough space to hold not only all the players but the extra mobs? If not a redesign of many battle grounds would probably be required. My gut feeling is that scaling up to large player groups is difficult and coping with huge zergs in a fluid way may not even be feasible for many of the events – there are only so many people you can crowd into one room at the same time.

I think hard and easy both are beaten by “Do we have the time and funds?”
the more complex an event the more time it requires to make. As they were aiming for thousands of events, they had to cut on complexity on all of them.

I agree, some locations deffinitly limit what can be done. Some of those Queensdale camps only have narrow access routes so centaurs attacking will always run through a narrow passage.
Other events though give a lot of options:
Centaurs attacking cities could storm all gates at once instead of doing one gate per wave. And they could have, as the OP suggested some mini bosses in the spawns – those do not take up more space.
Enemies attacking caravans don’t all need to spawn in one spot and when they do they don’t all need to rush forward.
Take the caravans in queensdale: Centaurs spawn in one point and rush down the hill at the players. Taking the OP’s suggestion, you could have rows of centaur riflemen or archers spawn and spread out along the ridge while the melee rush forward.
Some escorts already have road blocks, those could be expanded on. Add a couple of bandit snipers (think Caudacus Manor) behind the barriers and the odd spike trap on the path and woosh everything has suddenly become deadlier

@melkathi – yes some good ideas.

One thing that occurred to me on this theme is that given a large enough area they might have neighbouring events that overlap in their effect:

If the number of players was small only one of the events might trigger at any particular time. But, if the number of players was larger two or more events would be triggered at the same time, extending the combined event into a larger area; and if anyone of those events failed the players would fail – so any zerg would need to spread out in order to win. i.e. this is scaling by stacking events over an area rather than stacking mobs in a single event in a constricted area.

One advantage of this type of approach is that even when player numbers are lower you can still use the same events, but just not trigger them all together, so that devs wouldn’t need to spend time developing something of limited utility if player numbers start to decline over an area in the future.

great post and I completely agree.

Yes a very good idea. Especially having the enemy drop aoes on the zerg and players then having to actively dodge them. This together with a system that ramps up the dificulty of events if they haven’t failed for a long time would really make this game awesome.

roqoco.4053:

@melkathi – yes some good ideas.

One thing that occurred to me on this theme is that given a large enough area they might have neighbouring events that overlap in their effect:

If the number of players was small only one of the events might trigger at any particular time. But, if the number of players was larger two or more events would be triggered at the same time, extending the combined event into a larger area; and if anyone of those events failed the players would fail – so any zerg would need to spread out in order to win. i.e. this is scaling by stacking events over an area rather than stacking mobs in a single event in a constricted area.

One advantage of this type of approach is that even when player numbers are lower you can still use the same events, but just not trigger them all together, so that devs wouldn’t need to spend time developing something of limited utility if player numbers start to decline over an area in the future.

That is a very good idea!
It would have the added bonus effect of giving peopel a chance to see more events more regularly instead of running into teh same one everytime they enter the zone.

This is a great idea OP. It would really spice of the DEs. Did you also put this in the Suggestion Forum? If not, please do so Arenanet has two chances to see it.

1mil% agree with OP! With the point of the game being on cooperation, we need our cooperation challenged! Make us think and react!

I will only agree with making mobs dodge AE abilities if that coding is first applied to pets and AI teammates.

This. Forcing the players to spread out and fight at multiple fronts would go a long way towards providing more satisfying difficulty and resolving the current issue of monsters dying to AOE before some players can even target them.

I have to agree. As it stands at a certain point an event just turns into a massive meatgrinder for XP and loot. Admittedly that has its own charms, but it takes away from the feel to a large extent.

I agree. People keep saying ’ just increase the HP’ but all that does is make you beat on a meat shield for a couple seconds more, you’re not at risk of dying and you don’t need to change tactics, just increasing HP is by far the laziest direction you could possibly go.

I agree with the OP and Xezz. As an elementalist, I have the luxury of being able to sit back and cause destruction on a widespread scale. Increasing the number of mobs is only a minor threat to me, as a few will occasionally focus on me when I use AOEs or other multi-target attacks. However, these enemies are usually easily defeated. An adaptable tactics system based upon the event group is a phenomenal idea.

Also, Daboris brings up a valid point regarding zergs and event timers. At what point does this stop becoming enjoyable and turn into a farming run for the endlessly dedicated? Heaven forbid you mess with these people’s rotation, despite it being an entirely public event.

Just saying I agree with the OP

AGREED AGREED AGREED!
This is exactly the problem with DE. Really DE should not require us to fail for progression.
Going off what the OP said; I’ve noticed people who range or use magic are usually quite safe so if your fighting a giant the giant should summon smaller giant that go after those rangers and magic users so they have to think stratgically too.
Also lets say (like in many cases 50+ people join in) have an ‘elite’ skill set unlocked for the boss that really requires those 50+ pleople to actually be there and that its actually possible for them to lose.
Idk say a giant skill set let it move say twice as fast with long range attacks.

That sounds amazing, and a lot more fun than it currently stands. All for this!

That’s all nice and dandy untill you realize they would have to do that for the hundreds and hundreds of events currently in the game and it would have to be balanced.

Revolution.6301:

AGREED AGREED AGREED!
Going off what the OP said; I’ve noticed people who range or use magic are usually quite safe so if your fighting a giant the giant should summon smaller giant that go after those rangers and magic users so they have to think stratgically too.
Also lets say (like in many cases 50+ people join in) have an ‘elite’ skill set unlocked for the boss that really requires those 50+ pleople to actually be there and that its actually possible for them to lose.

Actually both these types of scaling already do occur – but clearly not that obviously. In some cases the spawned minions (or coughed up drake food to give an example of minion scaling) simply aren’t damaging enough to cause much trouble. I expect that Arenanet are already well familiar with most of the ideas outlined here – I’m hoping that we will soon see a blog post (hint hint) on what they are doing WRT DE scaling and what the issues are.

I was just about to open up a thread about this as well.

As most others, I can only 100% agree. Right now:

• The event either just has more waves of enemies, but each wave is defeated instantly because its still way too weak.
• The event sends more enemies at once, but since they all come in as a tight group, they are AoEd to death instantly
• For bosses, the stats get raised. This kind of works, but since they are so many players, if you die in the process you get resurrected instantly, so its pretty much just a question of time.

This isn’t really working. As you described, the structure of the event needs to change. Bosses need to spawn additional mobs, mobs need to be smart, attacking from multiple sides or ranged/melee and be fanned out so they can’t be AoEd so simple.

Its one of the bigger issues I see with the game currently (although everybody here says that about his/her particular misliking ;-)), as it makes events pretty useless and boring as soon as you have a lot of players there.

Since reply isnt working:
“That’s all nice and dandy untill you realize they would have to do that for the hundreds and hundreds of events currently in the game and it would have to be balanced.”

yep, that’s their job, so I don’t see the issue.
Yes, it is a lot of work. But it would make events much much more useful and increase player fun, so it should be worth the effort.
Additionally, you would not need to do every single event manually. The amount of additional mobs a boss spawns or making enemies stronger in events where they come in waves can be done mathematically, the same way they send in MORE enemies now.

I’d love it if they did this. Right now most events are just too easy. And they just get easier the more people show up.

Agreed fully with OP here too, another bonus effect would be that classes with very limited constant AOE abilities (think thieves and mesmers ex.) would actually have a chance to contribute too before everything is just AOE’ed to death.

I like a lot of the suggestions here. I experienced one tough event in Bloodtide Coast which was to stop pirates from stealing treasure. It seemed like they came from every direction at once instead of in predictable waves and it made things a lot harder.

This is a great suggestion. +1
Also, I hope ANet has the time to add all this in.

signed

love the idea and would love to see this in game !!!

+1

Excellent point. This should be stickied.

I haven’t become bored with the game yet, as I’m less than halfway done, but I’ve definitely noticed that the challenge level is not up to snuff. Especially after playing elite dungeons in GW1.

I am surprised that some of the basic features of mobs from GW1 aren’t seen in GW2. In GW1, mobs wouldn’t sit in AoE. They would also drop their own AoE and easily wipe a party who wasn’t paying attention. It made the game way more interesting and gave you a reason to play well and tweak your build. Thus far I haven’t really had to pay much attention to how well my traits and skills synergize. No, GW1 was not solaoble (not counting heroes as “solo”), but that has largely been addressed by making each class more survivable with self-heals. It shouldn’t be addressed by making the enemies unbelievably dumb. Group events definitely need more strategy and complexity.

Of course it will take time. Personally, I’d rather them have taken a little more time in development and released a game with more complete features, but that’s not what happened. IMO it would be worth the wait to see some of these changes implemented.

As to the comments of “it’s impossible/unrealistic,” nothing great that has EVER been achieved was “realistic.” As someone else has pointed out, if Anet wants to produce a top tier MMO and compete with WoW, as they did with GW1, they’re going to have to achieve the “unrealistic.”

I 100% support this, having dynamic events be… DYNAMIC would be amazing. this would make me less angry when more people show up. This would make it so you are excited when more people show up because there is more to do.

They would need to increase the rewards if it add in other little events into the large event to make it more rewarding to have more people and to do the mini objectives

Indeed. It is very frustrating to try to participate in a crowded dynamic event when all the enemies drop the moment they spawn.

I dont’ want to spam but the OP idea is just so good that this should be sticked. So I bump, hoping any dev is around!

would be nice if a dev could actually respond to this
to allow us to know if this is even possibile or not

Why is it that the devs usually respond to some low-priority, casual, not-that-important threads but successfully avoid threads that point to burning issues?

We are not asking for you to answer all our prayers right this moment, but just let us know you are with us on this one. Show your presence and interest in the important sections of the forums.

Don’t comment on bacon, for God’s sake.

100% agree OP. Especially for Orr, the zone is supposed to be completely event driven, but its such a massive spell effect fest due to the reasons you just described so eloquently. – I wish they would absolutely make it challenging again.

Nice idea in the OP; I support this thread as well.

Agree. I’ve been advocating for similar scaling based on server performance at events to add more challenge to the “end game” and give servers/guilds a sense of achievement worth gloating over. My suggestion was just on when to scale, yours offers a good way of how the scaling should be done to increase difficulty.

Definitely have to agree with OP.