Guild Wars 2

Dynamic Events are arguably one of Guild Wars 2’s best and most promising aspects. They are of variable degrees of quality, sure, but ArenaNet made some statements in which they seemed to understand the most common flaws of DEs; for example, Colin mentioned how the Dragon events cannot really fail, how they don’t really change the world, and how ArenaNet would eventually deal with those issues.

It is, then, mind boogling to see how Southsun is now filled with events with exactly those same issues. The instigator events cannot be failed, for example. The “protect the victim from an angry mob” event can fail, but nothing happens if it does (nothing happens if it succeeds either, for the records). All current events in Southsun are like that: they are meaningless, both because they have absolutely no impact on the world, and because they repeat over and over within the spaw of a few minutes.

An event that doesn’t change anything if it succeeds, cannot fail, and has a cycle of 3 minutes is not really a dynamic event – it’s just a farm. Considering how the GW2 community has a lot of farmers, addicts and grinders, I’m sure a lot of players must be happy with this kind of design. It’s a huge waste of one of Guild Wars 2’s best concepts, though.

There’s really no way to have an open world design with permanent changes after a dynamic event. Every event would be one-time and technically never come back regardless of success or failure. So the 4 players that completed the event would be the only people to ever see the event unfold. This may work in a totally instanced game like GW1, but not GW2.

ANet has done a good job with adapting by introducing Living Story phases to have some changes to the world based on an overarching event. It’s like dynamic events but on a larger scale. There’s still no fail conditions in this, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t have a Living Story that ends with us winning the battle, but losing the war which can lead to other stories.

kokocabana.8153:

There’s really no way to have an open world design with permanent changes after a dynamic event. Every event would be one-time and technically never come back regardless of success or failure. So the 4 players that completed the event would be the only people to ever see the event unfold.

There isn’t any need to have permanent changes, just changes. A perfect example: in the Charr starting area, there’s an event in which ghosts attack a Charr camp. Once the event is lost, the camp is completely destroyed – it’s not like some areas in which the buildings stay there and the NPCs stay dead, the camp is completely gone. It stays so for a while, with other events happening in the area, until a considerably later time when the Charr send some scouts to rebuild the camp. If this event suceeds, it then continues with the Charr using the recently built camp to stage attacks deeper on Charr territory, triggering other events. And this isn’t even a meta event.

The differences between this and most Southsun events are huge:

• The “main event” can fail. Plenty of events in Southsun cannot fail. ArenaNet itselkittennowledged that events that cannot fail can be an issue.

• Failing the event has an impact in the world. The camp, with all its NPCs, is gone. The story of the world changes – instead of seeing the dynamic events that rely on the camp being there, other things happen. In Southsun, an event being a success or a failure doesn’t change anything. ArenaNet has already mentioned how the idea behind events is that they would have some kind of impact in the world.

• The starting areas have a high density of events. As such, there’s a considerable time between an event happening, and it repeating itself. My example would have been significantly weaker if the charr scouts went to rebuild the camp a few minutes after it had been destroyed. Meanwhile, in Southsun the instigator events repeat in less than the time it takes for someone to walk accross the island. ArenaNet once said that the intention is to have areas with high event density, so the same event wouldn’t happen many times in a row.

Southsun goes against what even ArenaNet acknowledged as being good event design. The events in Southsun are perfect for farming – they happen in very short intervals, they have the same scenarios with no change in the world, and they are very simple. It’s not surprising to see the free 200% boost to Magic Find there.

I guess I’m just sad that, instead of exploring the full potential of dynamic events, ArenaNet went against their own vision and built “Farming 101”. I guess this is the kind of content the GW2 community wants, though.