Guild Wars 2

I apologise if this has been addressed already. While playing Guild Wars 2 with a friend, my friend came up with a suggestion that he thinks will be able to improve how events work drastically.

He came up with the idea while we were taking down The Shatterer. Groups of people were staying in one location and constantly being buffed to such a point that they became nearly invincible to the effect of the dragon. Even when he does the whole flying up into the air and crashing back down again they received no damage at all and kept attacking the dragon while barely moving. While the events ArenaNet have implemented might be called “Dynamic Events”, the players taking part in them aren’t and I think at the moment this is one of the biggest weaknesses in PvE. Even during the pre-event, rather than helping to progress the event the vast majority of players stayed by where the dragon lands, assuming someone else would complete the pre-events for them. This meant that despite doing little to help the story out of the zone they still comfortably earned a gold reward and received little to no consequence as they took no damage, were able to stay in exactly the same place and got the good stuff anyway. While I appreciate this isn’t a problem with every big event like this (Tequatl the Sunless being a good example) it really does take you out of the game when the rest of Guild Wars 2 is so incredibly immersive.

The suggestion my friend had was to implement some sort of AI system where the dragon would be able to detect where the largest concentration of players were and attack them there, rather than The Shatterer simply facing the cannons where nothing was happening. As the damage would be more targeted at these larger groups of players it might force them to scatter around more and make the event more interesting. Another suggestion could be that the dragon could shed some of its crystalline body and have powerful AoE effects as the dragon essentially comes apart the further it is to being destroyed.

The Shatterer and other huge events like these were constantly hyped up in trailers and promotional related material before release and unfortunately many of these events are currently being seen as an easy way to get some good gear rather than the challenge they should be.

I agree that the world bosses should really be more dynamic, but some corrections:

Bootinator.6753:

Groups of people were staying in one location and constantly being buffed to such a point that they became nearly invincible to the effect of the dragon. Even when he does the whole flying up into the air and crashing back down again they received no damage at all and kept attacking the dragon while barely moving.

This has nothing to do with players being buffed. The Shatterer simply doesn’t attack where players stand.

Bootinator.6753:

Even during the pre-event, rather than helping to progress the event the vast majority of players stayed by where the dragon lands, assuming someone else would complete the pre-events for them. This meant that despite doing little to help the story out of the zone they still comfortably earned a gold reward and received little to no consequence as they took no damage, were able to stay in exactly the same place and got the good stuff anyway.

In the case of the Shatterer, one of the pre-events (collecting items) in fact takes much longer the more players participate, and the other is an escort mission simply doesn’t spawn enough enemies to occupy the whole world boss zerg. Combined with the lackluster rewards from events, yeah, it just doesn’t make sense for everyone to do them.

Bootinator.6753:

unfortunately many of these events are currently being seen as an easy way to get some good gear rather than the challenge they should be.

This might be a little nitpicky, but “get some good gear” implies people are actually using the gear they get. On the contrary, most of the guaranteed rares from world bosses are sold, salvaged, or tossed in the mystic toilet. Exotics and precursors, on the other hand, are hardly guaranteed or easy.

The thing is, though, that ANet added the guaranteed rares to these events so that players would do them instead of farming whatever events spawned the most enemies, and it’s working, so I don’t think anyone can really complain about the motives people have for being there. They’ve been told to go there for precisely those reasons.

All that said, yes. I would love to see more reactive world bosses, who you have to actually hit instead of just attacking the ground for fifteen seconds after the Claw of Jormag flies away.

There was a discussion thread about the world bosses a while ago where the devs had this to say:

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’ll be going through most of these in 2013 and looking at making them more fun and exciting encounters that better scale to support the huge armies of people who mob them.

And of course, we’re also looking into ways to make it so you can see more of those huge mobs of people as well.

Edited to add: This is a great place to throw out your ideas of what you’d like to see any of them do encounter wise to make them more exciting.

You can see a lot of ideas in there and add your own.

It’s unfortunate that the world bosses turned out this way, considering dynamic events had potential to be the most playable content in the game.