Guild Wars 2

I was running on a T6 Dry Top map tonight, and had a UI improvement idea that could significantly improve any similar types of content in the future, anything that requires splitting zergs into multiple groups, but each of them being responsible for the overall success. The idea is that there would be a UI option, similar to the LFG tool and perhaps one of the panels in it, called “Event Claiming.”

The way it would work is, for any map in which there is a complex, zerg-splitting meta event, such as DT, Sparkfly, Bloodtide, Malachor’s Leap, etc., there would be a listing of all the possible events or major roles that count towards the meta, all the events that need someone to be taking care of them. Next to each list would be two check boxes. The first person to check off one of the check boxes then has his name appear in it’s place, until ideally each event has two names next to it (two for redundancy, the first one would be considered event lead unless he became unavailable).

When the event is up, the tracker would show its name in yellow. If it succeeded, the name changes to green, if it failed, the name changes to red until the next cycle of the event. This way you could tell at a glance which player has claimed responsibility for the event, and how well he’s doing at it. if he needs more people, he can ask for them, if people want to join him, they know where to find him. An organized group can handle a lot of this stuff via chat, especially if they use teamspeak, but this would be a way to make it much simpler for casuals to organize themselves into a useful group, and even well organized DT maps are sometimes missing entire events because they just don’t notice that they aren’t getting done.

This could be used not only for discrete events, but also for roles within an event, like in Tequatl a turret defense commander could have a slot, there would be one or more zerg commander slots, etc. Individual players could right-click to join teams with these players if there’s room, join squads if there’s more than four people wanting to join up, and maybe the assigned commanders could even click a toggle to indicate whether they need more or would prefer less people at their location.

In ideal use, a player could show up mid-event, have no idea what’s going on, look at the list, see that maybe an event is red and would need more people the next round. He could see where the commander for that event is on the map and go there, or easily join his party. He might see a toggle that says the event needs more people, or that the event he’s at might be overloaded, so he should go to something else if he can.

Of course leaving the map would remove your check, and I believe it would be best if only tagged-up Commanders could be in the primary slot of this system, as that would make them visible on the maps at all times and make it harder for them to hide in the corner or something trollish. Since all of this would be logged, if a commander takes responsibility for an objective and is then clearly not bothering with it at all, it would be an easy case to moderate.

While some tools in order to organize commander groups and such, I personally believe it would make the game even more auto-organised than it already is.

Tying tags to specific events and tasks leaves less room for player exploration, player freedom and such, and tells the players more precisely how they SHOULD do it, rather than giving them a problem and trying to solve it. This is why most of such encounters don’t have precise handholds for such events.

I personally believe it’s more needed to give commanders certain icons, tasks or otherwise. The problem that is now arising with everyone having a commander icon is that no one is actually a commander anymore, and the huge blob of commanders on any given map is generally where you should go. Extra tools or restrictions gives the players a better organising tool over the whole game rather than programming specific tools for specific events, into specific roles. This is something the players have to do themselves, not the game. In my opinion anyway.

While some tools in order to organize commander groups and such, I personally believe it would make the game even more auto-organised than it already is.

As well it should be. Exploration is all fine and good, so long as it works. If all you can do is “do it right” or “fail,” then the less “exploration” the better. When the success or failure of the entire map depends on everyone having their act together, then the easier that is to achieve, the better. If you have a problem with that, then the problem would be in the content design, not in UI tools designed to make that content design function better.

Except there are obvious tiers in dry top. It’s not a “fail”, it’s a “less expensive stuff”.
Other events or encounters still get beaten, and I never saw any problems there.

If you automate it like you said the game spirals even more down into “we play the game together but why should we talk, organise or anything”because the game would already be doing that. It would be a very anti social functionality as well as handholding people because they fail at communicating awareness and other things. I don’t think everything needs to be spoonfed, so that common sense isn’t needed anymore and you just have to blindly follow the zerg (which already happens enough)

Except there are obvious tiers in dry top. It’s not a “fail”, it’s a “less expensive stuff”.
Other events or encounters still get beaten, and I never saw any problems there.

If you’re putting effort into Dry Top, and T6 does not occur, then that is a fail, however you wish to view it, however they intend it to be viewed, it is a fail. The run we were having on Friday night, we did get a T6 run, but the one before that was a T5, and it was T5 not because we weren’t kicking kitten, because we were, it was because one event chain on the opposite side of the map just wasn’t getting done at all, and nobody noticed. On our end of the map we were hitting 18 different events per clear phase, and nailing all of them in record times, even having a little time to stand around after some of them before the next set started, we were doing them about as good as could possibly be expected, and yet we didn’t meet our goal of hitting T6 because we weren’t aware that an entirely different event was not getting done.

So long as that is something that can happen, I think it would be a very good idea for ANet to make it perfectly clear to everyone which events are and are not getting done.

If you automate it like you said the game spirals even more down into “we play the game together but why should we talk, organise or anything”because the game would already be doing that.

Ideally, year. Talking should be social, it shouldn’t be necessary for tactical most of the time. You would still likely have some tactical talk, like if something is going wrong there would be discussion as to why that’s happening, but you could at least tell that it is going wrong.

I don’t think everything needs to be spoonfed, so that common sense isn’t needed anymore and you just have to blindly follow the zerg (which already happens enough)

The number of T6 maps that occur on NA over the past month is clear evidence that you are wrong.