Guild Wars 2

It won’t make zerg go completely away, but it’ll lessen it. And I think people talking to each other about events would be great

I think the scaling of dynamic events needs to handle both very low and very high numbers of players better.
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For high numbers the system needs to spread people out more effectively, firstly by providing enough events simultaneously that players can’t all group up in one place, and also introducing other ways to split them up.

Perhaps if the zone is getting busy, players could be asked to get into the parties they’d like to play as (so as to not split people up if they’re just running around with their friends, and not partied yet). Then once they’re partied all the players in the zone could be divided up into 2 or 3 groups, with each group getting reports and map notifications for a subset of the active events. Go to an event that isn’t being reported to you (or your party), and you get no rewards.

With that system even the big dragon events could be run more often, with half the players being able to take part in each one. Hopping between groups to do the major events more than once could be controlled by flagging a character that did one dragon, so that they could only take part in the one after next.
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For very low numbers the reporting of events really needs to be map wide, with the number of active events reduced to match. At times I’ve had 3 events locally, but there haven’t been enough people around for it to be worth trying any of them. The system in those conditions needs to make it easier for the few people in the zone to group up on just one event at a time.

Err…Well try not to forget that the game just came out, with a huge surge of players. You wait in a year’s time and I bet you it will even out.

Not that I want it to though. I like the events as they are, and have enjoyed the events with a mass of players in particular. Some are more challenging than others obviously, not to worry, if I want to suffer I’ll go do a dungeon, and after finishing AC one time, I’m in no rush!

Also, they’re not ‘that’ dynamic enough to really justify them being more insular in their discovery. Situations change but in the end there are a set amount per zone. Moreover, a lot of them are duplicates. How many times can an NPC tell you to escort a Dolyak? What’s the difference if it alerts you really?

If I have one criticism, it’s that some events repeat far far too quickly.

The interesting thing about people is that when the learn the “hot spots” they already know where to go. So the people adamant on farming will be there farming. Removing the notification only hinders the people who don’t know any better yet.

Removing the notifications is a bad idea. Not all areas in all servers are crowded. Some areas actually have very few people in them. Places like Harathi Hinterlands and Fields of Ruin just aren’t that populated. As this game matures, these areas will become even less crowded. Keep the notifications.

Cameirus.8407:

ropestar.7645:

So let’s buff exp for events? Or crafting? Or the literally 10 other ways you can gain exp in this game? Why must playing events constantly be the only option?

its not the only option, but its the major PVE content in the game…..its why people want to play this game for PVE, and you want to reduce their ability to take part? I really cant understand how you think thats a good idea….

come play GW2..where its a right PITA to find any of our signature dynamic content…..

not exactly the strategy I’d go for if I was a dev.

Well said.

While I like the idea of the OP since personally I really enjoy the interaction of the NPCs with the story of the event chain, I think there need to be more events going on in many areas of the game before it could happen. I often find myself running back to areas where I know events frequently run, just so that I can find 5 to do for my daily chest. If they’re going to be less noticable, we definitely need more of them.

The problem is not the event system. The problem is there are too many players in a area. This will die down over time. The game already does reduce the event notification. I am usually running around trying to find a event.

It only lengthens it’s call if the event does not have attention and is about to fail. That is what the red ping is.

ropestar.7645:

What could replace these notifications:
- NPCs in the immediate area could run around shouting about whatever is happening, and in some cases run up to players nearby (this already happens with some event triggers and it’s a really great feature that should be used more). This better immerses the player in the world by forcing them to pay attention to their surroundings, rather than their quest notifications and maps. Also, because it’s not broadcasted (just the IMMEDIATE area of the event), less people will show up.
- Once you enter the immediate area of the event, you get your event notification in the upper right-hand corner describing what’s going on, your objectives, etc.

YES YES YES! I just absolutely love this idea and it would surely make NPCs a lot more important. I really enjoyed it when NPCs would run around asking for your help about certain situations and you could decide whether to help them (spark dynamic) or ignore. Immersion, to me, is the #1 thing that draws people in, and this game needs more of that.

Please make this a reality, NPCs are supposed to be your friends, not tedious annoyances.

To add: Once you talk to the NPC, this should prompt the traditional notifications so they’re not entirely removed (only people who talk to NPCs get the notifications) and so it would help in finding the location of the event.

I support the idea for “normal” events, but I think that the major boss events such as Jormag’s Champion, Shadow Behemoth, The Shatterer etc. should keep their huge broadcast range. These simply require a lot of firepower. Lately I’ve found myself fighting Tequatl with like 4 or 5 more people too much times. It would take 10 minutes to actually muster enough people for the event.

Starscream.6498:

I support the idea for “normal” events, but I think that the major boss events such as Jormag’s Champion, Shadow Behemoth, The Shatterer etc. should keep their huge broadcast range. These simply require a lot of firepower. Lately I’ve found myself fighting Tequatl with like 4 or 5 more people too much times. It would take 10 minutes to actually muster enough people for the event.

good point, for the huge bosses that drop chests, these should retain its original notification system.

This is not a good idea right now, as this is being overdone due to millions of people leveling. When a great deal less people are in a given zone, the way it currently is will work better.

I agree and disagree with the points provided by the OP, while “zerging” an event is certainly not fun (and by zerging, I mean literally so many people that it is hard to see the mob you are trying to kill).

Zerging has no downsides to events that do not involve single target focus though, as long as the event generates enough targets or objective nodes (collection events) to count (ie. distribute attention between targets/objectives) for all the people there.

To say that event notifications should universally be removed is an overkill though, like I just pointed out there are events where the downsides of zerging do not manifest. Most downsides of zerging seem to manifest in events where there are relatively few targets to kill or where the amount of NPC’s per player does not scale properly.

As far as I know there are several anti zerg measures that actually depend on event notifications and their easily distinguishable nature. For example the event notification radius (ie. how far you need to be for an event to pop up for you, without talking to a crier) depends on the number of people participating. To elaborate, if there is an event with little to no participation running, the notification shows up to players further away from it, same works in reverse.

In addition to above if the game sees a massive congestion of players (aka. zerg) it might show events further away to the people in this massive group in an attempt to break it into smaller groups.

Also last but not least the game silently encourages users to go into areas players haven’t been in a while by applying bonus experience to otherwise worthless individual mob kills (based on the monsters ‘lifespan’, I have seen upwards 500 bonus xp per kill in places).

If any of the information here is not current anyone can feel free to correct me, it is based on dev posts at GW2G, as well as on the forums from the beta weekends, as well as personal observations. (I don’t know the exact specifcs of the notification system in place right now but these are things that were described by devs prior to release).

Just saying, you can use the notifications in reverse way, to draw player attention to different places from where they are currently at, not only draw players together but also to subtly draw them apart.

So while current notification system may not be perfect, the lack of it is certainly not a solution either, because as said in this topic events are the core content model for the game… the filler, in the most positive sense of the word, between personal story instances, dungeons, and massive world meta events.

This is an awful idea, that may have sounded good to the OP when they base their view on what it it like to be in one of the popular multi meta-event zones. If you level in zones with few other players, like I have, you can play for quite some time and rarely come across a DE that fires or goes very far, so it is important to get those notifications when wonder of wonders, enough people stumble into the same spot and a DE chain starts to fire.

The problem with huge zerg meta-events is the risk-reward ration is out of kilter. There is zero risk in a huge zerg, so the rewards should be adjusted downwards when the zerg size is past ridiculous. Likewise when DE risks are high, i.e. completing them with a minimum of participants, then the rewards should be more generous.

As long as there are a handful of showpiece meta-events and the rest of the DE’s are run of the mill kill x waves of mobs, people will flock to the show, especially if they are rewarded generously. Something also needs to be done to reward players who provide support in DE’s. At the moment they are penalized and not rewarded. The game tracks everything, so it should be simple to count rezzing towards event participation.

I agree with Furyan, instead of trying to hide the events from people, it sounds more like a scaling issue. Just improve the way in which events scale when more people are participating!

ropestar.7645:

I think these features should be removed, and the primary reason is because the zerging of events are unfun.

You just forgot to mention that whole PvE is boring, unfun and is mainly created with zerging in mind. Tried to kill any world boss? What exactly do you need to do in order so besides to stand in place and pop 1, 2, 3, 4 or whatever your skills are? (exception with fire elemental in Asura’s place, that bad mojo throws small elementals at you as well as some deadly AoE – maybe this is why people call it hardest boss in the game, because it actualy requires them to MOVE?) It would look like this no matter how many players you had because they’re not even targeting anyone. How about smaller event bosses? All you do is throw all your stuff at them and they die. What is playing smarter? Throw a heal? Make an evade? Some enemies are designed this way so you can’t pick them alone or with group of 2 or 3 people. This is why it’s called group event.

Besides personaly I find it funny to be alone on the map (atleast it looks like this) and then event popup and people come out of nowhere and I’m then like this -> O.O

I don’t imagine that Arenanet would want to remove the event notification system. But, one thing they might do is to remove the notifications earlier, particularly if the event is already well subscribed:- It’s annoying to run to an event and find it in its very last stage or being heavily zerged. So basically events should only be announced if they 1) have a substantial time left to run and 2) are not currently being zerged (surely possible for Arenanet to calculate that).

In addition to that they might add new events that can overlap in area and timing with current ones and that are triggered by the size of the population tackling the first event. For instance, if people are zerging kraits attacking from the sea, then an event could be triggered that makes undead attack from behind as well. The advantage of this approach is that with low populations either event might happen on its own, but when the zerg exceeds a certain threshold both events would occur simultaneously – so no content would be wasted.