The title basically says it all. As a Guild Wars 2 player I tend to play the majority of the game solo. Admittedly that isn’t always the case due to people running around also doing their own thing, but when im not running around doing DE’s, hearts, or anything else with other players im doing my best to do content on my own. Most of the time I can get by pretty well, I like to think im a pretty good player but that’s neither here nor there. My problem specifically has to do when you are trying to do a specific objective and get hung up by repeatedly quick spawns of enemies. One example I want to bring into question is doing the skill point in the Plains of Ashford near the foefire. This skill point has a large group of enemies, many veterans as well, that do a good job of keeping a player away. I managed to get close enough twice within the large tower to killing all the enemies, but the spawn rate is what inevitably killed me.
Now I understand the argument that the game is meant to be played with others, but sometimes that just doesn’t happen or can happen for whatever reason. In my case I chose to try to do it on my own, and in the end had to resort to a group that was going in that direction. The problem is that I, and others, run into this frustrating road block far to frequently. Guild Wars 2 content may be made for groups, but it should also be viable for the solo player, and in many instances it is. It’s for that reason that I don’t think it’d be that hard for the company who made the awesome concept of dynamic events to devise a dynamic spawn system.
Admittedly i am not a programmer, but I would like to think that devising such a system wouldn’t be all that hard. At most it would entail checking the vicinity, trajectory, and amount of players in a single ‘sector’ and determining if the spawn rate should be changed based on the factors relative to the player(s) in the area. While also taking into account current spawns. Anyways I haven’t put that much though into it but I think something like this would greatly improve the game for the solo experience. And for tougher areas for a solo player you could even control spawn rates to keep difficulty controlled. Hell you could probably even control spawn rates based on how skillful a player is playing. Anyways just my nuts and bolts on the subject. And I want to leave a parting thought. If the game company that can forego the status quo of MMOs and make something as enjoyable and ground-breaking as GW2, then maybe its time they also do something about the most fundamental aspect of MMOs, spawning of enemies.
TL;DR; Spawn rates are infuriating in solo and only cause frustration for the player. A dynamic spawn system based around number of users in an area would be an amazing solution. Keep up the great work Anet!
