Guild Wars 2

I’m interested in discussing ideas to help this game get better at making a living, breathing fantasy world like the devs really want it to be.

There’s a great post here about making night activities for city NPCs reflect real day/night cycles. It also talks about tweaking lighting to make night have a better appearance and effects for players.

Some things that would make this world stand out as living and breathing are:
- Making the neutral wild animals more skittish. Make them run away from foes, and scatter in a radius away from any player or other NPC.
- Make wild animals and aggressive NPCs do more than walk around a spawn spot. I love seeing cats/tigers stretch like a real cat would, but other than that they don’t seem to act or behave in any way that might make you think it has an existence beyond being a combat target. I occasionally see NPCs attack animals or each other, which is fantastic, but there’s much more to do here.
- Ensure most, if not all ally npcs are willing to revive their fallen npc comrades. It feels a bit silly to have a group of npcs stand around their fallen leader, not doing anything or without dialogue explaining why they don’t care. This seems to be an AI issue rather than a plot point. Stop fallen allies being the stinky dead elephant in the room that everyone knows about but no-one is saying or doing anything about!
- Make each profession have a great presence in the world. What’s it like being a Necromancer in Tyria? Do the Elementalists get together for any reason? Do Guardians have a guildhall or citadel where they further their cause? What are these professionals doing when they’re not on the frontline or when there’s no wars to fight? When no fighting skills are needed what makes them be their “profession” and in what ways do other Tyrians need them?

i like your idea and i would like to lose myself in such a detailed world, so i approve your suggestion

- Make spiders actually climb freely on walls and ceilings. Make knockback effects knock them onto the ground. (haven’t seen an MMO play their spiders on walls and ceilings. It’d be truly creepy to play in cave like that!)

Wow I like what I’m reading. I know Anet has a lot on their plate, but I hope they are paying attention to this.

Khojax.6108:

Wow I like what I’m reading. I know Anet has a lot on their plate, but I hope they are paying attention to this.

Sorry to say it but their not, there’s been alot of great idea’s for them to bring to GW 2 that people have posted and 99% of them dont get acknowledged by ANet it’s just how it is.

I don’t see how it would be possible at this point for GW2 to live up to it’s claim of a “living, breathing world.”

Consider a game like Sacred, the in-town NPC’s (minimally) had day-time jobs/tasks and stopped at dusk, packed up – and went to their home at night. The townsfolk who were out-n-about during the evening brandished torches. It actually got dark.

In GuildWars 2:

• There are NO homes in most of the Racial-Cities.
• There are no lairs for beasts (animals) or mobs (intelligent races).
  —> Killable mobs spawn out of thin air.
  Instead of say from a habitable lair – and then walk to their look-out post.
• The only children that exist are neutral beasts/NPC’s that are required for Quests.
• You cannot open doors.
• Thieves can’t pick locks. on anything. Chests require you to buy ($) keys.
• The Actual NPC’s don’t have ‘day-time’ jobs or any purpose beyond:
  —> Giving players quests: although most are more like quest-token repositories.
  —> Selling an unlimited supply of “stuff”.
  —> Tell you things. But always the same things.
  —> Stand/Sit around and do nothing: take up space.
  —> Walk from point A to point B, or within a certain range.
  Possibly as fodder for some aggressive Mob.
• You can’t tell the difference between day or night.
• You never get hungry, thirsty or tired. You heal almost instantly.
• You have no impact on the world. At ALL.
  —> Anything you do is reset in minutes.
  —> If you drop something. It ceases to exist.
  —> If you sell something to a so-called Merchant: It ceases to exist.
  —> Corpses from your killing sprees disappear into thin air, quickly.

GW2 is pretty much the opposite of “living and breathing”. Nothing changes. You can have no lasting effect on the world. Other players can have no effect on you – aside from giving you an assisted resurrection, or an extremely brief “buff”. Day is the same as night. Cold is the same as warm. Your player never dies, ages, or requires anything that a living being might.

Aside from internal-code changes/bug fixes, the main world is pretty much exactly like it was when GW2 opened for business 4 months ago.

Not to say that GW2 isn’t a fun GAME, but I certainly don’t see any impetus of the dev’s to do any of the above. They can’t even agree that the respawn rate is too fast in many cases – in low-trafficked areas … instead of fixing that – they want to give high-levels a reason to go back to those areas. So you can get more stuff.

The thing that has irked me since I first played the beta was that MOST shopkeepers/merchants are just some NPC standing around somewhere – and you only know they are a shopkeeper/merchant – because the map says they are.
There are almost no actual shops. There is nothing in the stores for sale. There is nothing on the walls. In most cases no building, donkey, cart, table or anything of the sort exists at all. Just some random dude standing there —- except the map says she is a merchant, therefore I can buy something here.

Ironically enough, the one place I saw what looks like an actual merchant was in the Human town, there’s an apple cart and a girl selling apples.

You can’t buy any. She’s not a merchant. She just looks like one.

I see some evidence of attempts at this in the game.

There are guys in LA, hammering away at the floor. I believe this is to emulate ongoing repairs or building of infrastructure.
Hammering away at the floor though?

As for shops, there are some. For the most, yeah, you are right, there are just some dude.

Small, minute details, could make the game appear and “feel” so much better. Small, easy to apply details, if you ask me. The code is there, just move the NPC to an appropriated spot.

Crafting… I can’t see why a character can’t appear busy at a crafting table while crafting, as apposed to stretching or looking around bored. Small thing, makes a big difference.

Then, to add to this, there is praise to be had as well. Some small things truly to appreciated, things I think Anet did very well. One specific event that comes to mind, is on Bloodtide Coast, where the pirate captain, his patsy and his mule go to retrieve their treasure. At some point the captain discover that his patsy loaded ale on the mule, and order the ale to be dumped.
Later, on a completely unrelated (so it seems) event, you join and Priory treasure hunter and her 2 norn escorts on a treasure hunting expedition, coming across Bjorn Brew, a though to be forgotten brew that the norn’s, of course, relish and promptly consume.

That was cool.

Why is there not more of that though? The creative know-how that went into the game, is actually only hampered by the failure to include the “small things”

Granted, there are restriction to consider, restriction that a little bit of creativity can easily overcome.

Good suggestions. I hope we see some of it implemented.

I would like to see events happening for a certain period of time and then “disappear” for a longer time. In the mean time, its place will be occupied by another events.

Expl. In Queensdale, in Eda’s Orchard the spiders and Queen Spider event will happen as normal for 3 days than "it is supposed we got rid of the spiders, right? " and another events can come in and take the place for another 3 days:
- bandits attacking the farm,
- grubs infesting the aria,
- watering the trees because of the drought
- taking the weeds out from the ground.
etc.

For the Heart Quest happening the that orchard, the spiders will be replaced in the heart completion with the grubs. bandits, etc.