Guild Wars 2

Edit: Oh dear, it’s too long. I’ll cut this into first and second post and hopefully it won’t be trouble.

First off, I apologize in advance since I’m sure dragons are one of the most heavily present topics in this forum, and my browser seems to be gagging on my attempts to search for the word. However, I’m not just going to talk about difficulty and rewards (though I’ll probably go over them), but hopefully a subject that hasn’t been gone over so much.

One of the most loudly advertised selling points of Guild Wars 2 was its dynamic events that would change the game world as they were done, or not done. While people can argue elsewhere on how successful that approach was, it seems odd to me that dragons (and by extension most “world boss” encounters), one of the biggest events available, have no impact at all. Its presence is felt, certainly, but it changes nothing beyond itself. It appears from nowhere, is beaten senseless by an angry mob, and then everything is back to normal.

I feel these encounters have a lot of room for improvement through this approach. The lieutenants, after all, should be the strongest enforcer of an elder dragon’s will outside the dragons themselves. Their presence should matter beyond a treasure chest. So, here are my suggestions on how this can be changed.

*First, it should be possible to -fail- the events. The ability to influence the world is limited when there’s only one inevitable outcome. This would be tied into the lingering effects. For example, say Tequatl the Sunless is there to kill Pact defenders and further spread the undead corruption. Up in the top right window where you see his health and the megalaser info, you would have a total corruption percentage, increased by bloated creepers exploding and patches of corruption created by his breath. Instead of shooting mindlessly at the dragon, players would need to act more strategically, focusing on creepers (to kill them before they explode) and destroying bone walls so that they no longer obstruct the Hylek turrets (which would be able to disperse the corruption patches). If the land is corrupted, the event is failed and the dragon retreats, its job done.

*Second, the impact itself. Because of both the scale of the event and the much longer periods before it repeats, this would need to be much bigger than the local impact of most events, more akin to temple events and the devastating statues they empower across Orr. Using the above example, the southern region of Sparkfly Fen where Tequatl appears would become highly hazardous, and this strengthened corruption echoes much further. On that map and others where risen appear (but not Orr, as that’s more about Zhaitan’s personal influence), they would receive a modest stat boost and be more dangerous, especially in large numbers such as the events where they siege outposts. It would send a clear message to players across the server; there was a battle with the dragon’s servants, and we lost.

*Next is the spawning itself. This is one of the ways in which I feel the temple events represent this idea better, as aside from respawn timers there are also pre-events that must be done beforehand, and can also be failed. The more clockwork-style of dragon events results in huge crowds that easily wipe it out and are difficult to scale against in a balanced way. Instead, its re-appearance could be tied to its lingering influence. Additionally, it could be tied to another of Anet’s more recent efforts in the game; getting players to return to older maps and keep them populated. For example, after Tequatl corrupts the land, a powerful risen enemy spawns on those other maps with risen in them that have been boosted, and is the source of the buff. It would wander around instead of patrolling in one spot (sort of like those new guild marks). Once killed, the boost to risen on that map disappears. After all these powerful undead around the world have been killed, the chance to bring Tequatl back appears. At this point you would get something like the “temple raid” events where you help a group of NPC’s attempt to cleanse the corruption, and ultimately get another chance at killing the dragon. The raid can fail, but like the temples has a much smaller wait before being attempted again, to make sure you have a substantial enough group to fight the dragon and gamble on either victory or a re-application of corruption. This would allow lower-level players to help influence the world at large by fighting the stronger risen, encourage higher-level players to return to maps and hunt for them, and make it harder to exploit predictable dragons. Alternately, you could even further encourage that involvement by instead of tying the map buffs to a single enemy, tie it to several and have them summoned as extra bosses at the end of relevant events, so that players are running around the map doing events to clear away the local corruption.

I could ramble further but I’m sure this is getting too long. The dragons would generally need to be more difficult to make losing more plausible, and the reward would possibly have to be made more or less depending on how difficult/frequent the event became, but I think it would make their presence much more interesting and dynamic. Between the three dragons a similar impact would be able to reach almost every map across Tyria in some way.

I would love to see something like OP described. That was actually one of the things I thought GW2 was going to do…

I could have sworn while previewing this game they were talking about how events in GW2 would change the world depending on how the server and community respond to them. Something like if the undead appear but aren’t taken care of their corruption would spread to camps and such. But I have yet to see any kind of progression like that. Maybe I am just missing something.

text too long… and eating more brain cells than Anet’s so-called “Major Patch”

but this part is true

I could ramble further but I’m sure this is getting too long. The dragons would generally need to be more difficult to make losing more plausible, and the reward would possibly have to be made more or less depending on how difficult/frequent the event became, but I think it would make their presence much more interesting and dynamic. Between the three dragons a similar impact would be able to reach almost every map across Tyria in some way.