Guild Wars 2

We have a small dynamic events chain in Wayfarer Foothills that tells a story: a Norn arrives at his home hurt from a fight against the nearby Grawls (who, as mentioned in another event, have been turned by Jormag). He crashes on the bed, while his wife takes care of him. His son, meanwhile, figures out that the Grawl will follow his father and attack his home, so he goes collect armor scraps to make soldier snow men and so trick the Grawl into thinking that there’s an army protecting the kid’s house. The Grawl almost fall for it, but a shaman realizes the truth and uses Jormag’s power to animate the statues into hostile ice elementals. After we take care of them, the Grawls flee, the kid’s father awakens, and congratulates his son for being bledded both by Raven and by Wolf.

There’s another event in the same map about a Norn bothered by the Grawl attacks. This is a small chain with multiple steps and a short story: the Norn decides to build a statue of himself, knowing that the Grawl would begin worshipping it and thus worshipp the Norn, leaving them alone. We have first to help the Norn in finding a good place for his statue, then help him collect enough ice (by killing ice elementals), and then protect him as he builds his statue. As a result, the Grawl cave gains a new Norn statue and the Grawl in the area become friendly, even making a new merchant available.

In Queensdale, we have an event about bandits trying to poison Shaemoor’s water supply. If the event succeeds, things remains the same. If the event fails, though, the villagers all the way back to the exit from Divinity’s Reach will begin looking sick, they will complain about the water being poisoned, and the pumping station itself will be filled with new ooze enemies that we have to kill in order to purify the water.

Those are a few examples of, IMO, the best of what Dynamic Events may offer: they tell a small story, they have some impact on the world, they have consequences if they fail, and they are unique.

I think ArenaNet regrets having those events. I think they regret the entire Dynamic Events system.

Making the good, interesting and fun events is difficult. They have to create a story that can be told within the confines of what an event can offer, they need voice actors for the characters (since all the dialogue for events is voiced), they need to think of fun gameplay elements to match the story, they need to think of how would the event scale if more players joined, they need to think how the world would change if the event succeeds, how the world would change if the event fails, how players could fix whatever happened, and a nice closure to the story told through the event.

Meanwhile, do players care about those things at all? We know a lot of players would do the Dynamic Events in Orr, despite how most of those are very bland (minimal impact on the world, they never tell a story, and so on; the only exceptions are the Temple meta events and the attack on Arah). We know players actually flocked to Orr mostly because they wanted to farm, not because of the quality of the events there.

What else do we know? We know this:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We are listening. Not only to what you’re saying but also to what you’re not. The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative.

We know ArenaNet has tools to see how many players are playing a given piece of content. We also know that the Living Story has introduced very few unique Dynamic Events:

• The second Southsun update had basically “kill this guy” events (the Instigator ones, that were repeated twice within the same area), with no backstory (who were those guys? What happened to them?), no fail condition, and no impact on the world. The “capture the camps” events were sligthly better, but the Karka Queen event is just a fight against a big Karka Champion.

• Bash the Dragon had no events.

• The Aetherblade update had no events.

• The Zephyr Sanctum had just the “kill random veteran” events.

• Cutthroat Politics had no events.

• The Queen’s update has basically the “protect dignataries until they reach the baloons” events, that are repeated through most of the world, and the fights against legendary enemies in the Pavillion, that can hardly be called events at all.

So, ArenaNet has told us that it appears players aren’t that interested in dynamic events, and ArenaNet has not been that interested in giving us events in the last updates either. What else do we know?

People used to farm the dynamic events in Orr a lot. ArenaNet has mentioned how a lot of people used to farm Fractals.The Southsun second update was basically a farming update, considering the huge Magic Find there, and there were a lot of people farming there. We know a lot of people used to farm CoF1. Now, the Crown Pavillion is pretty much the opposite of the open world – a closed space with static enemies that respawn quickly, with a few bosses here and there. Yet there are zergs farming there the entire day, powered by more Magic Find buffs.

That’s what we know.

Now, I’ll guess. I think ArenaNet has the numbers to realize that the great majority of players don’t care about fun or interesting Dynamic Events. I think ArenaNet has realized that the great majority of players wants to farm. And I think ArenaNet has realized that there is no point in all the work required for building interesting and fun Dynamic Events, when it’s much easier to just build more farming grounds, which are more popular than the events anyway.

In fact, I think this is one of the reason why ArenaNet has given up on expansions. People would expect that an expansion would bring us more areas like the ones we had at release – with Vistas, PoIs, and with lots and lots of events. But ArenaNet knows building those would basically a waste of time, so why bother with expansions?

I think ArenaNet’s main mistake was in making Guild Wars 2 a MMORPG. The players they got are MMORPG players – who want to farm, not to have fun. All that talk about having interesting and unique dynamic events that would change the world? ArenaNet has likely given up by now. That’s not what their players want, so why bother?

I hate to agree with you and so even though I have been saying the same thing, I WONT agre ewith you.

Seriously though, Dynamic events have failed because nobody seems to care about them or it could be that the 2 week living story is making players to only focus on completing their achievement checklist.

Personally, I am a little disappointed with the manner in the implementation of DE. I believe that the Living story could be used as a vehicle for their Dynamic event system. Using as an example Queendale, kessex and Gandara, why not make the theme of those maps a LS story about humans vs Centaur and not just have a little notification box that says “centaur have been beaten” or “centuar general is out”, make it more like the toturial where there is a sense of urgency and not passive like right now.

Why not redo the dragons so players can feel their affects on the whole map. Make DE that actually affects the whole map and gives players a compelling reason to fight.

My point being move the LS out of Lion arch and DR and into the world proper.

Since MMORPG players only seem to care about loot, why incorporate the precursors and new legendaries into DE system and get players out in the world doing events. If you are legendary, you most be legendary enough to experience it all and when I mean all I mean EVERYTHING, every single DE, everything make it torture for loot hunters make the whole game endgame by requiring every aspect of it be completed with as much grind as possible to minimize the amount of lemmings that have it. less lodestones more events make it so that theoretically it will take you a very long time to get the new legendaries like in FFXI.

Finally, when orr was revealed I thought it was meant to be a PvE version of WvW, make it happen. For godsakes at least make events where players can actually lose and not just wave after wave of mobs.

Part of that odd dev reply is that I cant imagine any significant number of players knew about 40 extra DE’s in the core world. I certainly didn’t. Considering how many players don’t see every event in every zone, they probably assumed these were there from launch.

Sticking fun and interesting events in with nothing around them wont work for them either – they need to be supplementing new content. They’re kinda doing that now, but with much, much shorter DE’s.

I can’t say I’ve seen anything that suggests they are giving up on them. I vaguely remember them saying new zones are likely to lose hearts in favour of DE’s as they tell the story of the zone better. There’s a lot of threads asking for zones with POI’s, events etc, so the demand is def there for them, can’t say how much though.

I guess it is tricky for them. There’s doubt a fully story based, event filled MMO could hold its own hence why the zerg battles and farming are in there – to cater for the other side. I don’t think they’ve given up though on events. I think they are still experimenting with how they deliver content due to fractured community who can’t agree what they want either.

I don’t think they’ve given up on events at all so much as neglected to give them more incentive.

What they need to do is move Living Story out into the game world instead of keeping them in cities, kind of like the aetherblade invasions. Gets more people out and about triggering events.

It’s what ’Id do, anyway.

Good event: Escort that Druid Tree Spirit back to its husk and clear out the Hylek camping it. …Several Herb nodes spawn around it for harvesting.
Worthless Event: Everything else near it.

Good event: Escort Pact to Temple of Balthazar as of August 6th.
BAD Event: Escort Pact to Temple of Balthazar as of August 7th.

Good event: “Ogre wars” right outside Ebonhawke.
Crappy event: Wasp Soldier & Wasp Queen just north of that.

Crappy Events in general: Spawns multiple Champions that drop nothing but yet more RNG boxes with a 1-in-25 chance of actually having anything GOOD in them. RNG Grindwars needs to Die. Every single Skin, every single Rune & Core (from tons of little slivers & shards coming from EVERY single Champion coffer that drops) & Sigil … yes even PRECURSORS and their scav-hunt that’s taking way too long to be made …. all need to be CRAFTABLE and their component regularly coming from interesting Events that can’t just be “Zerged through”, but at the same time do not unfairly punish a zerg doing them by having Escort NPC’s in it that can’t be Rezzed and then cause it to fail when they get AOE’d by Champions.

I’m not a super experienced programmer, but I guarantee with one other person helping, they could change all of that around in 2 weeks and get it working right. And then if they had a public test server (and granted participants AP points for helping), they could have the entire thing 99.5% thoroughly tested by over 100,000 players in less than a month.

That’s what a real solution would look like to bringing DE’s back to where they belong.
There’s no shortage of great suggestions to fixing them… just a shortage of willingness on Anet’s part to actually use any of the great suggestions that are literally piled up around them.

Forcing people into crafting, arguably one of the most tedious things to do in a game, results in the same exact problem: pushing the player base into something with little to no fun factor just to accomplish what they want.

Randulf.7614:

Part of that odd dev reply is that I cant imagine any significant number of players knew about 40 extra DE’s in the core world. I certainly didn’t. Considering how many players don’t see every event in every zone, they probably assumed these were there from launch.

Sticking fun and interesting events in with nothing around them wont work for them either – they need to be supplementing new content. They’re kinda doing that now, but with much, much shorter DE’s.

I can’t say I’ve seen anything that suggests they are giving up on them. I vaguely remember them saying new zones are likely to lose hearts in favour of DE’s as they tell the story of the zone better. There’s a lot of threads asking for zones with POI’s, events etc, so the demand is def there for them, can’t say how much though.

I guess it is tricky for them. There’s doubt a fully story based, event filled MMO could hold its own hence why the zerg battles and farming are in there – to cater for the other side. I don’t think they’ve given up though on events. I think they are still experimenting with how they deliver content due to fractured community who can’t agree what they want either.

I think it’s this more than anything. I wasn’t playing too much around when they implemented the new events, but I did try to keep an eye on the Living Story updates and the updates pages in general, and I don’t really recall them being mentioned in big bold letters. It may be that I overlooked them, that’s entirely viable, however if I know one thing, it’s that at times, ArenaNet really trips over guiding players to anything of interest.

The problem with dynamic events is that they seem to think players will relaxingly tromp about the world, doing renown hearts, gathering supplies for crafting, fighting some enemies, and then run into the events. What ends up actually happening is that people zip from renown heart to renown heart, smashing through enemies, then maybe going after Vistas and map exploration, but more likely than not, just trying to smash through the next area. The dynamic events, with their cyclical and time-based nature are not easily apparent to the players, and so they’ve most likely ignored them unintentionally or done them incidentally.

The game itself doesn’t do a good job at all explaining them to the players or helping them keep a track of them. If the players want to figure out what more there is to do in an area after clearing most of it out, or at least the renown hearts, they have to go to the wiki.

I think ArenaNet doesn’t regret dynamic events, I think they regret thinking players play to play and not to complete certain goals, and in the process, not helping players make discovery and participation in the events another sort of goal.

Gmr Leon.1846:

I think ArenaNet doesn’t regret dynamic events, I think they regret thinking players play to play and not to complete certain goals, and in the process, not helping players make discovery and participation in the events another sort of goal.

That’s basically how I play this game as I’m not part of the grindy MMOer audience. Major reason I like Guild Wars 2, really.

I’m so busy playing the new content that I don’t have as much time now to wander around the country looking for new DEs. Some of the big chains are quite fun. Of course, everyone does the Frozen Max chain. I think more chains would be played if the rewards were bigger. What’s the point of doing many of the DE’s they seem to just distract you from whatever it is you’re trying to do. Too few DE’s have interesting stories.

The centaurs are an example of what could be used to strengthen the DEs. Imagine if when the centaurs took ascalon settlement, then the centaur events everywhere because a little tougher. Imagine a large hoard of centaurs knocking on the gates of DR, if they weren’t cleared out. That would be epic. I can see how this would be hard for new players, but there may be a way to mitigate the difficulties for new players.

Maybe they should have not put in hearts past the starter zones, or just a very few in the next level and then none from then on.This would have encouraged people more to look for events to level rather than going from heart to heart.

The hearts, I think, are actually detrimental to the game as they promote a check list mentality. Of course the vistas, wps, and POIs do also, but the hearts make many people think they are the heart of the game instead of the events.

They do seem to have given up on them. And I can’t really blame them as people don’t even do the ones that are already present.

Sadly, I have to agree with you.

I sort of enjoy both aspects – zergfarming (e.g. the current CP) and the kind of quality DEs you mention. I really do like to do both, but I probably spend more time just wandering and nosing about, so more and better DEs are a higher priority for me personally than more CP-like stuff. The CP-like stuff is more like an enjoyable break, to me.

I guess when it comes to an economic decision of how the devs are going to spend their resources, if they know that they get more bang for the buck from satisfying the majority of the playerbase who just want to farm, I fear very much that they’ll just give up on the quality DE thing, and I won’t be able to enjoy much of that other, quality side, as the game matures.

In a way, that quote from the dev AnthonyOrdon.3926 is actually quite frightening to me (I mean, frightening in the context of worrying what happens to a videogame ).

Actually, to be honest, I don’t think they’re going to give up on the quality DE thing altogether, I think we’ll still get a few now and then, but it will be a trickle, and not the main emphasis.

Overall, what’s the lesson? The stupidity of the masses is one of the main reasons why we can’t have nice things

Astral Projections.7320:

Maybe they should have not put in hearts past the starter zones, or just a very few in the next level and then none from then on.This would have encouraged people more to look for events to level rather than going from heart to heart.

The hearts, I think, are actually detrimental to the game as they promote a check list mentality. Of course the vistas, wps, and POIs do also, but the hearts make many people think they are the heart of the game instead of the events.

They do seem to have given up on them. And I can’t really blame them as people don’t even do the ones that are already present.

I’m starting to sincerely believe that this is the result of a major design fault with the UI. What players can’t easily monitor, they won’t try to do. All of what you mention are things that players can aim for. Dynamic events tend to be more of, “I ain’t got time for that!” as they go for whatever else they’re going for. The only ones I really have seen many keep an eye on are the major/meta events.

This is different in more populated areas, mind you, but from what I recall, even when some of the earlier areas were populated, players were doing this. Ignore the in-betweens, shoot for the meta events. This isn’t exclusive to MMOs either; the majority of players will mainly shoot through what’s presented to them, with a smaller group rolling through the sidequests. Some in the majority might do those too, but it’s most likely incidental.

My thoughts on this, GW2 player with far too many alts.

It is simple to me, why do people do not events out in the world for fun?
First people like rewards, I do not see a reason why people can not have both. Personally I have started doing Arah recently only because of the rewards. I am now starting to find it fun, when it does not take too long. Is this because I never gave it a chance or of the rewards? I feel the same thing has happened with Dynamic events.
They give you very little reward for a experience that takes a while in some cases.

If I can do a dungeon in lets say 30 minutes and I get 1 gold reward for that, I know you get tokens and the 26 silver + drops but lets keep it simple; and i can keep doing that for say 2 hours at peek time: then why would I do Dynamic events in say the Shiverpeeks for 2 silver per event, instead? Even if I find them fun.

So for me the problem is rewards, but there are other issues. I like events, they have great stories and I have learn t more about the game and came to care more about the world because of them; as when I was leveling one of my many alts I just decided to listen to the dialog and I have loved the little stories ever since: however look at what champion rewards are doing now. For a long time I did not kill champs, why bother? They gave you nothing and took time away from me. Now, the possibility of a nice reward, with the new silver I get per champ, is enough for me to insist I kill all the champs I see lol. I mean it, it made a huge difference. This of course is only one issue, the other being lack of impact.

A lot of events have fail mechanics, some do not, however not all of those with fail events properly fail: for example if the undead take Haven in Gandara fields, the first fort when you come from Kessexs Hils, then it fills with undead; this is fine but anyone can come along and completely change it back by killing a hand full of enemies. Assume it is empty and the undead have it though. Then the undead simply stop! They take it and decide they have had enough, LA is close by as are the centaurs and a few other places. Why not take them?. This is the problem, even when events fail it does not matter.

Another problem is similar to the fail event, where winning ends up being boring. You kill all the centaurs and push them out of the Human areas, then you stop? In Gandara there are those two, or maybe one split by a river, centaur camps. Once you have killed the champ leader and pushed back the invasion, all you do is do a event to kill some rock dogs? Why not have some bigger events that impact the world?

Anyway those are my main reasons for events not being played too often. I feel if they look at them, then maybe we can move away from level 80 content. Oh another thing, while I know I can get level appropriate drops when out in the world, I fight less and so I get less then in a dungeon or WvW. All these things are related. Rewards, impact and fun.

Also I do feel like I made my characters to play dungeons and WvW and such, so why play where I leveled? I need that incentive. Even if it is in Achievements, and I do not mean the daily. You can do that in WvW or most places.

I dont think Arenanet regret Dynamic Events. They’re an awesome way to deliver content. They’re an awesome way to keep old areas relevant and they’re an awesome way to make a world feel alive.

That being said I do agree with Gmr Leon, players probably didnt get the desired reaction to them in most cases. When I was doing some of my videos on dynamic events which had me repeating the same event a few times to get all the shots I needed I kept noticing people joining in for an Event and running off. That meant they not only lost the npc interaction with each other but also all parts of the chain. I think its not really a UI or notification issue though because there were times where I specifically advised people in local to stick around as the event would chain but it still had no effect people would just run off. It was funny to see things like people doing part 1 running off and then joining again on part 3 or 4.

The Dynamic event system is amazing but isnt really perfect. It requires a few things for players to get the full experience. Sometimes you dont get to start from the beginning of a chain. That means you have to go hunt down the start and wait for it to respawn. not many players have that kind of patience. like Gmr Leon said, you have to play for the play. If a player wants to farm as many rewards as possible, no matter how great the attention to detail is in some events such a player is not going to stick around watching an NPC taking a few steps, calling a pigeon, watch the pigeon fly in and land in front of the NPC, the NPC kneeling down and tie a message to the pigeon, The pigeon flying a way, a 2 minute wait, a caravan walks in view, called by the NPC using the messenger pigeon, A whole conversation a few minutes long about some artifacts that need to be transported safely to an expert between 4 different NPCs. This is just a cutscene in between 2 events in the same 4 event Chain.
A lot of people are interested in the action and they just dont have the patience to live these stories. Whats a bit disappointing is these same players will then complain events are all the same and have no context. Of course if you do the escort event itself without watching this cutscene the resulting escort mission will not be that different then any other escort mission but its not the action that matters its the story and context. An escort is an escort, play a space sim, a navy sim or a fantasy RPG and an escort mission will always boil down to you defending something walking from a to b.

Anyhow I think it would be a big pity if not enough players are interested in DE for Arenanet to push more in that direction. They really have something great here, something I personally would love to see expanded.

DOW Mageski.2097:

My thoughts on this, GW2 player with far too many alts.

It is simple to me, why do people do not events out in the world for fun?
First people like rewards, I do not see a reason why people can not have both. Personally I have started doing Arah recently only because of the rewards. I am now starting to find it fun, when it does not take too long. Is this because I never gave it a chance or of the rewards? I feel the same thing has happened with Dynamic events.
They give you very little reward for a experience that takes a while in some cases.

snip…

What you’re saying makes perfect sense… Unfortunately I dont think you can ever fix it.

Even if Dungeons didnt give better rewards then DE. Even if Champions didnt get good drops. Even if DE where the most profitable thing you could do in the game the problem will not go away. If you’re reward oriented you’re reward oriented. If you stick around to watch the NPC interact in between chains and complete all of the events in a chain you’re going to spend about 1/2 of your time watching NPC interact instead of doing events. That means reward oriented people will just run of the moment they get the reward, skip all the story and look for more events that way they can get double the reward.

Like I said in my previous post, people running off the moment they get the reward is common. I saw this even at launch (cause right now this could be explained by people having already done the event for the story and are doing it now for the reward I guess). Its human nature to try to be the most efficient possible. DE chains are just amazing in terms of story but they do negatively effect efficiency.

I said it in previous threads, the biggest issue that prevents people from enjoying this game more is being primarily reward driven. The moment you make the game about the reward rather then make the reward something nice you get for playing the game
you’ll not be able to enjoy this game imho.

Galen Grey.4709:

A lot of people are interested in the action and they just dont have the patience to live these stories. Whats a bit disappointing is these same players will then complain events are all the same and have no context. Of course if you do the escort event itself without watching this cutscene the resulting escort mission will not be that different then any other escort mission but its not the action that matters its the story and context. An escort is an escort, play a space sim, a navy sim or a fantasy RPG and an escort mission will always boil down to you defending something walking from a to b.

Anyhow I think it would be a big pity if not enough players are interested in DE for Arenanet to push more in that direction. They really have something great here, something I personally would love to see expanded.

That’s just the thing. So many events can be run into midway through that they are reduced to their base mechanics that then makes them easier to ignore than to be intrigued by. The current display method only compounds this problem by giving prompt directions without much context.

That’s why I tend to think some UI tweaking that helps log the event context could aid in interesting players a little more. However, that won’t draw in all players, that much is certain, but it might still help.

I love dynamic events and I am very surprised that Anet seems to feel that we as players don’t care about them. One of the things they mentioned was the Skritt burglar. When that first popped up for me I was like wow, cool. Then what? I had no idea what it connected to or how to find out more about it.

I don’t believe they regret doing it, I believe they regret not finishing it. The dynamic event system is clearly one of the most unfinished parts of the game.

How is it unfinished? You don’t refer to something as dynamic if it proceeds linearly along a predetermined path. Dynamism has a certain connotation of explosiveness, proceeding with power from a point out in multiple directions. The events you named all proceed along a predetermined path where winning leads to the end of the event and losing proceeds to a pause followed by the event repeating.

A real dynamic event would proceed along one of several potential paths determined by how it was completed or failed. There are a few that follow this true dynamic event formula, but the vast majority do not.

I was just going to post my concerns about this after seeing the latest update.I’m also concerned that the latest game updates are introducing content that is fairly meaningless storyline wise, and just a vehicle of getting mobs of players to kill mobs of creatures for loot. These events don’t affect the world in any meaningful sense, and in some cases don’t even try to make sense.

Now we have Scarlet, a cartoon villain that goes around from zone to zone attacking them for no purpose, but to get players to kills lots of mobs and champions for loot. She isn’t claiming objectives; she isn’t putting any one in danger, let alone the zone as it continues to operate as normal during her invasion as if nothing is going on. The portal places are random and without thought out design. They have basically traded the beauty of dynamic events for Rift.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We are listening. Not only to what you’re saying but also to what you’re not. The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative.

As someone who enjoys the dynamic events, that’s unfortunate to read.

As someone who explores a lot, has eight characters and does every DE he comes across, I still haven’t seen the Skritt burglar or the “evil” guild events they mentioned in that update. If they want players to react, they should add some events that are noticeable, such as new meta events for areas without any.

Generally, however, I think that non-interactive stories are enjoyable once. For repeatable gameplay, people go into areas with good encounters and rewards. DEs have crappy rewards. 1,5 silver is pretty much nothing at lvl 80. If events are supposed to be the backbone of GW2’s PvE, completing them should be encouraged mechanically.

Personally, I’d like to see some static quest givers thrown in here and there or a special reward if you go through a dungeon of the day (specific to paths including story.) It would help fill up dungeons again.

Great topic. I don’t think they do regret them, but they certainly are not doing anything to help them. These zergs for the invasions just skip over these DEs and they pull people out fo zones like Orr and Southsun. Not helping matters. However fun these zergs are, they are not helping old world content.

Unfortunately, I think the OP is right. I remember rolling my first character in BWE and then again at pre-launch. It was amazing fun to run around with groups of players, completing DE chains, gathering loot, gaining XP, all the while being a pivotal piece of an NPC’s story. I helped farms in Queensdale, fended off Inquest in Metrica, and swatted bugs in Caledon.

Now however, nobody cares. And it’s sad. It’s sad and lonely because everyone is “forced” to congregate in whatever spot the biweekly LS updates direct us. New content every 2 weeks is a lark. It’s not new content in the traditional MMORPG sense. It’s new mini-games and hide-n-seek and solo instances. Nobody is out playing DEs because we feel obligated to be in the Pavillion, or Southsun, or Labrynthine Cliffs. Because if we skip the LS we potentially miss out on new gear and achievements and minis. Nevermind that I bought this game because I thought it was an MMORPG. It’s become Fusion Frenzy. Let’s get together and play some mini-games and see who’s the best.

I’d rather monthly updates like we had. Or heck, every 2 months if that’s what it takes for substantive MMORPG content. More dungeons, more DEs, transform Tyria, raise a dragon. If you want people to stop farming COF1 you need incentive. And that is fun new content worth playing.

Yeah, I was disappointed with the Living Story beginning with Flame & Frost, how the Living Story events didn’t effect the world AT ALL. Flame Legion would pop out right outside of Butcher’s Block and – nope! – Meatober fest just goes on unphased.

The latest events are worse in this regard. A massive invasion begins on a map, and the dynamic events just plod on per usual. The NPCs don’t react to these horrible steam creatures at all, or – strangely – attack me but act as if there isn’t A GIANT MECHANICAL TENTACLE MONSTER HOVERING OVER YOUR HEAD, YOU STUPID CENTAUR.

Ahem.

I think people would take more notice of the Dynamic Events if they, you know, ever changed. After months of seeing the same events, though, they become easy to ignore.

I do like the DE idea.

I just don’t go to most of the zones to play. There are only a few I’m going to go into and those tend to be level 80. Lower level zones don’t have the reward for my time when I’m 80, as well as not having the crafting nodes I need because once you’ve past needing iron, why bother and lower level zones do not have a chance at a T6 mat drop.

If I do go into a lower level zone, I’m looking to do a boss or dragon for the extra chest.

Unless there is a reward for me to go into a zone, I’m not going there. The PvE isn’t very fun to fight but that is the most rewarding(more than WvW) so I do the PvE to earn my gold and a few mats that I plan to use for a legendary.

DarcShriek.5829:

The centaurs are an example of what could be used to strengthen the DEs. Imagine if when the centaurs took ascalon settlement, then the centaur events everywhere because a little tougher. Imagine a large hoard of centaurs knocking on the gates of DR, if they weren’t cleared out. That would be epic. I can see how this would be hard for new players, but there may be a way to mitigate the difficulties for new players.

- This is a great idea for single player / instanced game. The developers can’t really predict how the large masses of players will behave. What you think is meaningful (e.g. how much detail and attention you put into creating dynamic event) may not be meaningful to the player who just sees hundreds of similar events all over the map.

Interpretation of your centaur event in single player game:
“Hm… I haven’t contained the centaur threat effectively, they are getting stronger.”
“Now I cleared this event and centaurs are no longer threatening.”
“My actions are making meaninful difference to the world I’m in.”

Interpretation of your centaur event in MMO:
“This server is so dead. Strong centaurs are everywhere because of no players.”
“I just cleared the centaur event 15 minutes ago, how come they’re back already?”
“What I experience in game doesn’t depend on my actions. I’m not going to bother with this uphill battle.”

Players not paying attention to them is Anet’s own kitten fault.

Events are recycled content, it’s literally the same exact thing every time and there is nothing interesting about playing it, as much as I’d want it to be.

It’s literally just, mob wave spawns, kill mob wave, repeat x5. Done. That’s 95% of the events in the entire game.

On top of that, it’s not even close to rewarding unless you’re doing lvl 80 stuff that spawns a ton of mobs and you’re with a zerg so you have tons of loot pinata’s to tag.

That was their biggest mistake, if something isn’t fun AND it’s not rewarding why would anyone ever touch it? You need ATLEAST one of those for something to work in a game.

They could’ve spruced up their events to make them more interesting, give them multiple objectives that with enough people even require teamwork, like Heart events basically have.

Take your bandit water poisoning event, instead of the occasional poisoner bandit walking up to poison a water supply, have those but make them take a long time to poison and also take a long time to be killed so it requires interupts and knockbacks to prolong him til he dies.

Then have the bandit camp below have bandits that are supplying the poison and you need some people to go there to stop them or you’ll be overrun with bandit poisoners. Then at 50% completion have a bandit boss spawn that people have to deal with while also dealing with the 2 other objectives.

Just an example, I also once posted an example of a dredge event that had support mobs, siege, bosses and regular groups of mobs assaulting a town that required the teamwork of a group of people to do along time ago before I quit the game.

And if that’s not going to happen your next bet would be to up the rewards so BEATING events are more rewarding. Ideally you’d want both though, for them to be fun/interesting AND rewarding. For events especially, the majority of rewards need to be tied to the victory, and not mob drops, IMO. It’s the other way around right now.

I can only imagine, having a group of level 80’s that feel like doing events in Queensdale for fun and being fairly well rewarded for it, and you don’t have to hardcore farm a zerg event in Orr or Living World events for money. Would be a nice.

Perfect example BTW, this Clockwork event, do you think it’s really that fun? Maybe the first 2 invasions you do, after that it’s just spamming aoe’s on mobs that spawn out of thin air and dropping OODLES of loot. The rewards make it satisfying despite the fact that it’s not that interesting or fun. If it wasn’t rewarding people wouldn’t do it at all after the first few times or after doing what they need for the kitten story unlocks.

Erasculio.2914:

So, ArenaNet has told us that it appears players aren’t that interested in dynamic events, and ArenaNet has not been that interested in giving us events in the last updates either. What else do we know?

People used to farm the dynamic events in Orr a lot. ArenaNet has mentioned how a lot of people used to farm Fractals.The Southsun second update was basically a farming update, considering the huge Magic Find there, and there were a lot of people farming there. We know a lot of people used to farm CoF1. Now, the Crown Pavillion is pretty much the opposite of the open world – a closed space with static enemies that respawn quickly, with a few bosses here and there. Yet there are zergs farming there the entire day, powered by more Magic Find buffs.

That’s what we know.

Now, I’ll guess. I think ArenaNet has the numbers to realize that the great majority of players don’t care about fun or interesting Dynamic Events. I think ArenaNet has realized that the great majority of players wants to farm. And I think ArenaNet has realized that there is no point in all the work required for building interesting and fun Dynamic Events, when it’s much easier to just build more farming grounds, which are more popular than the events anyway.

In fact, I think this is one of the reason why ArenaNet has given up on expansions. People would expect that an expansion would bring us more areas like the ones we had at release – with Vistas, PoIs, and with lots and lots of events. But ArenaNet knows building those would basically a waste of time, so why bother with expansions?

I think ArenaNet’s main mistake was in making Guild Wars 2 a MMORPG. The players they got are MMORPG players – who want to farm, not to have fun. All that talk about having interesting and unique dynamic events that would change the world? ArenaNet has likely given up by now. That’s not what their players want, so why bother?

People DO care about interesting/fun events, thing is, THERE HARDLY IS ANY. And on top of that they aren’t that rewarding in comparison.

All the rewards come from mob drops.

You need one or the other, and ideally both, rewards and fun.

Anet has been doing great at supplying rewards for the most part, now they just need to make the unrewarding things rewarding and make events fun.

But seriously, move rewards away from mob drops and put them in event victory.

If 90% of the reward came from succeeding an event there would be way more teamwork and even supportive builds/players would be viable then instead of everyone in zerker gear spamming aoe’s struggling to get their loot in mindless zerg play.

People dont care about most of them, since they dont rly impact the world much. I mean if centaurs take one outpost for example, all there is to it is that you will get contested WP, wow that hurts, next step is counter attack to clear them out, and like that in circles all day.

If they could make DE’s more progressive like centaurs for example after capturing one outpost, reinforce it and go for capturing another one, and so till/if some1 stop them. If they take whole map, that would put some work for players.

DEs just need more consequences and progression, atm they are just too boring.

Thre are many ways to promote DEs.

They could start just destroying the corpse loot for any event spawned mob and moving the expected reward to the DE completion reward. That would solve one of the biggest flaws (a lot of people will disagree with this) of the game, wich is zerg farming.

Developers made an interesting move with the loot system. Having individualized loot, other players were meant to be more a bless than an annoyance while playing open world content, which sounds great.
The (probably unexpected) result consisted on players zerging some specific events, specially those on high level areas with good scaling (the ones that spawned lot of mobs when a lot of people were present).

Right now, the system is throwing insane amount of crafting materials through invasion zerg events. It could take more work but, wouldn’t be possible to have daily rewards (consisting on fixed materials and accordingly scaled to player level, difficulty and completion time) linked to every event around the world, while disabling any loot from the mobs spawned on it?
This would make the playerbase to spread around the world, completing the events they find more fun. No more zerging on some concrete content, but a few people here and there making all the world feel alive.
It’s just about correctly adjusting rewards so there’s no inherent benefit on zerging and every piece of content is equally interesting as long as the DE itself is fun.

Velimirius.7018:

DEs just need more consequences and progression, atm they are just too boring.

And yet the latest DEs added for Scarlet’s invasion completely lack consequences are routine and boring, but are receiving rave reviews from most players. MMOs with gear goals will always drive most players to the most efficient means of obtaining those goals. I have gear goals, and still do this boring routine content as a consequence, not because I like it or want it, but because it is the most efficient means of achieving those goals. I am part of the problem, despite my conflicting desire not to be.

What I’d prefer to be doing is exploring new zones, encountering new stories through dynamic events, and aiding a suitably sized group of other players (no more than 25, rough estimate) in similar tasks.

ArenaNet expected too much from players. They had a built in audience that would have ate the game up as designed. A very dedicated fanbase. But that fanbase was probably not large enough to sustain GW2.

So they drew in the general MMO crowd. And honestly, we are dealing with types of players and behavior that we never really had to in GW. If UW were in GW2 now, as it was in GW, the only people that would touch it would be veterans. The forums would explode with complaints about how it takes too long, the rewards are random and not good enough, its too kittenly specific builds and classes can farm it, Dhuum isn’t “real difficulty”, Dryders are OP, and many many more. Yet, that was a brilliant piece of content that GW players enjoyed for over half a decade and would still enjoy.

Unfortunately Anet needs more than just their fans and the content we know and love from them as a studio isn’t well received by the influx of players that want hard content that doesn’t require effort, want progression that doesn’t require time, want rewards that do not require investment. So we go from 40+ events that add depth and activity to world, to being thrown into an instance and told to just kill all the things.

I can understand what Anet has done to GW2 and why. But what GW2 did to Anet sort of makes me sad.

AcidicVision.5498:

ArenaNet expected too much from players. They had a built in audience that would have ate the game up as designed. A very dedicated fanbase. But that fanbase was probably not large enough to sustain GW2.

So they drew in the general MMO crowd. And honestly, we are dealing with types of players and behavior that we never really had to in GW. If UW were in GW2 now, as it was in GW, the only people that would touch it would be veterans. The forums would explode with complaints about how it takes too long, the rewards are random and not good enough, its too kittenly specific builds and classes can farm it, Dhuum isn’t “real difficulty”, Dryders are OP, and many many more. Yet, that was a brilliant piece of content that GW players enjoyed for over half a decade and would still enjoy.

Unfortunately Anet needs more than just their fans and the content we know and love from them as a studio isn’t well received by the influx of players that want hard content that doesn’t require effort, want progression that doesn’t require time, want rewards that do not require investment. So we go from 40+ events that add depth and activity to world, to being thrown into an instance and told to just kill all the things.

I can understand what Anet has done to GW2 and why. But what GW2 did to Anet sort of makes me sad.

An interesting take. I particularly like the section I put in bold, as it seems to capture the je ne sais quoi of many GW2 forum posts.

I believe that it’s debatable just how many players would prefer what kind of content. Yes, a lot of players are flocking to the invasions now, but the content is new. How many will do them near the end of the two week period? Players flocked to the Pavilion at first, but on FC the zergs were quite a bit smaller at the end than at the beginning, even though the loot was through the roof. My guild may be an anomaly, but yesterday they opened a couple of temples and did Orr exploration rather than spamming invasions.

I think the main issue why the stuff outside of the temp LS stuff hasn’t received much popularity is mostly a lack of advertising. The Modus Sceleris NPC guild is a really cool idea, and the fact that there are other named guilds outside of what players create makes the world feel more alive. In fact, if they snuck in little extra events that expanded the guild’s story, I’m sure the dedicated group of lore hounds would be keeping an eye out for them. The big advantage to the whole event system, as the OP pointed out, is that they make the world feel more alive. The big disadvantage is that all that liveliness is the gameplay equivalent of background music (or worse, noise).

It’s kinda like having a going to a festival where there are a whole bunch of stages playing music: You show up for specific bands (or honestly sometimes specific songs) and miss out on all the rest. Some people really like the opportunity to experience all this new stuff, but most people will stick around for the thing they know they like (get the most out of, that is), but the majority of people will stick the big stages where the most popular (i.e. rewarding) stuff is. Even if a hot new band everybody likes shows up at one of the smaller stages, it’s not going to be noticed without some serious getting the word out. And if people aren’t even there for the music in the first place (just in an area to do achievements or on their way to a dungeon), it quickly just becomes background noise. Especially if all those stages are crammed too close together (like when LS events start crowding into a zone). With all the advertising and fuss that goes into them, LS events are definitely major headliners.

The traditional quest system is closer to a music library. You generally can’t do too many of them at once, so you kinda pick and choose the order you want to do them in. They patiently wait for you to play them, and when a new song gets added to the list, odds are you will at least give it a one time listen.

So as much as I like having background music, odds are I won’t notice a new track if it was quietly slipped into the usual set, at least not right away.

I think it’s worth noting that all those little story arcs that the OP pointed out were also all in the starting areas. Most events are more or less one offs, especially in the midrange areas. The larger arcs feel more impactful on the world, but the one offs that you just stumble into rarely tell more of a story than an equivalent exclamation point and some text would. When the one offs cycle through so quickly, it pretty much loses all impact from an “effecting the world” perspective.

I don’t think they should regret it, just be more realistic about it. It does the random occurrences like Scarlet’s invasions well. It gives an interesting way for players to interact with the NPCs that inhabit the world. But it’s still just background stuff. It doesn’t really replace the traditional quest system in terms of giving players a sense of completion or a goal to work towards. Judging by the increasing prominence of instanced missions in the living story, I think they’ve got a better handle on the strengths and weaknesses of the system.

I like the idea of a Dynamic Event at launch however…. I knew it was doomed why? Simply becouse the story is disjoined and the rewards are not there.

Gmr Leon.1846:

I think ArenaNet doesn’t regret dynamic events, I think they regret thinking players play to play and not to complete certain goals, and in the process, not helping players make discovery and participation in the events another sort of goal.

I think a Dev said something along those lines somewhere.

Astral Projections.7320:

Maybe they should have not put in hearts past the starter zones, or just a very few in the next level and then none from then on.This would have encouraged people more to look for events to level rather than going from heart to heart.

The hearts, I think, are actually detrimental to the game as they promote a check list mentality. Of course the vistas, wps, and POIs do also, but the hearts make many people think they are the heart of the game instead of the events.

They do seem to have given up on them. And I can’t really blame them as people don’t even do the ones that are already present.

There is also a lot of truth to that. See my idea regarding scouts to add doing dynamic events to the “CheckList”

Some ideas:
—- Pepole Farmed Dynamic events for Karma at the start. Now they have too much of it. Increase karma demand and I think you will increase the number of pepole completing Dynamic Events.
—- The scouts are a great idea for improving the story to the area. Why not make them required for map completion.
—- Enhance the functionality of the scouts to tell you what event is going on in his scout range and the parts of the story before the current event cycle.
—- Make events soloable. A lot of them in the higher areas I find are not or extreamly hard to solo.

Anet boasted about their DEs before launch. I really, truly thought their consistent content updates would be new DEs replacing old ones as the face of Tyria changed. For instance…

- After a while, an oft-attacked camp would either become a fortified outpost or simply cease to be.
- Destroying centaur camps would drive them off, creating a human outpost with some grass growing to replace the hoof-trampled mud.
- The crystal scar running down Ascalon could grow as the tainted emotionlessly push through Charr lines.
- The Risen tear through a krait tower, corrupting them, and a new DE involves destroying Risen krait rather than freeing captured quaggan.
- The Nightmare Court, taking advantage of focus on Zhaitan, spread through parts of Maguuma, overrunning even Inquest bases. New DE involves actually helping the Inquest (still a legit asuran college) reclaim their tech from Nightmare Court.

This is what I expected. For Tyria to actually evolve and for new DEs to replace old ones as the effects of our and NPC efforts were felt. Alas, it isn’t so.

medohgeuh.4650:

Forcing people into crafting, arguably one of the most tedious things to do in a game, results in the same exact problem: pushing the player base into something with little to no fun factor just to accomplish what they want.

It’s not nearly as tedious as RNG farming is though.
Try again.

Just because it isn’t as tedious, doesn’t make it not so.

Dynamic events are interesting. The first time.

There is all of one thing that really means anything in the game (thats even debatable), and it requires gobs and gobs of $ or farming, and Anet is pretty much anti-farming (which is problematic when its one of the few aspects in the game with meaningful reward and replay value). Therefore, theres only one meaningful question to ask after you’ve seen the content once, and thats “Is this a good source of gold?”. If the answer is no, then its not worth doing again, because theres no benefit to people for the time spent doing it.

Additionally, the focus on “DO THIS CONTENT IN THESE TWO WEEK CHUNKS” “living” story nonsense is not exactly helping any. I’m going to do limited content (which in many MMO’s is the best way to make money) or I’m going to do the other best ways to make money. I’m not going to trapse around and do events that Anet has never managed to properly reward (I cant really name a quest reward or reward chest in GW1 or 2 that is correctly balanced for the difficulty) when it doesnt reward me or affect the world outside of possibly un-contesting a waypoint for a random length of time (as short as a couple seconds).

Even Casual McSuperCasual (Who I am not, never have been and never will be) has goals in games, and in this game, it ends up being the same kitten thing as everyone else.

Also when the dynamic event is “Kill stuff here for 6 minutes, and then we go ‘yaaaaaay you won’”, is that really noteworthy, or is it the worst way to spend 6 minutes if you arent also getting good drops + heart completion? Heres a guy with a bomb running uphill in the same path every few seconds after it dies as it did the last time. what fun and interactive that event must be. Oh wait, no, its the exact opposite of that.

Barraind.7324:

There is all of one thing that really means anything in the game (thats even debatable), and it requires gobs and gobs of $ or farming, and

Are you referring to Legendaries? Because I’m starting to think that they’re the single worst thing in this game. Because of their existance, and the (supposedly) vast differences between them and exotics, acquiring one has perpetuated endless farming and doign whatever is most profitable rather than what’s fun.

They should have just made the Crystalline Sword again and made it so incredibly rare that you’d be lucky to even see one, let alone own one and call it Legendary.

I very much doubt Anet regrets Dynamic Events. The best ones, like the story chains you mentioned, are perhaps under-appreciated by most players, but they didn’t make this game so that everyone would be equally engaged by everything. Some people (like me) love those chains to death. I very much doubt I would still be playing this game if it weren’t as rich and interesting and full of fascinating details as it is.

They don’t need to catch everyone with everything, just as many people as possible with something. For some players (maybe a lot of players), that something may be farming. For others, it’s intricate little stories in out-of-the-way places.

Seras.5702:

Are you referring to Legendaries?

Pretty much.

Theres frustratingly little to set people apart. Dyes might, if you couldnt spend a couple silver and have everything but the swooshy metallic looks (and at night or indoors, everything looks a muted shade of dark anyway). Armor sets do in theory, but in practice do not, normal weapon skins get lost in PARTICLE EFFECTS (dear gods, why wont setting those to lowest keep them from being everywhere on allt hings at all times) and even class mechanics (have fun with that offhand as a guardian, lol!).

You’re left with distince items with particle effects or … exactly jackall to do otherwise. The game does a good job at hiding the entire lack of meaningful end-game content while you’re leveling and exploring, which is great.

The problem is, you get to the endgame and go “well kitten, I am out of things to do except farm for the ONLY thing that makes me stand out”.

Actually, I lie, you can also farm for a blue dorrito above your head too.

As to the fun part of that, I havent had any “fun” with a lot of the new events or with re-visiting a lot of the old content. They exist to be done and shower you with gobs of loot (most of which turns into a silver) and points towards sparkly boxes with ugly skins that glow.

Seras.5702:

Anet boasted about their DEs before launch. I really, truly thought their consistent content updates would be new DEs replacing old ones as the face of Tyria changed. For instance…

- After a while, an oft-attacked camp would either become a fortified outpost or simply cease to be.
- Destroying centaur camps would drive them off, creating a human outpost with some grass growing to replace the hoof-trampled mud.
- The crystal scar running down Ascalon could grow as the tainted emotionlessly push through Charr lines.
- The Risen tear through a krait tower, corrupting them, and a new DE involves destroying Risen krait rather than freeing captured quaggan.
- The Nightmare Court, taking advantage of focus on Zhaitan, spread through parts of Maguuma, overrunning even Inquest bases. New DE involves actually helping the Inquest (still a legit asuran college) reclaim their tech from Nightmare Court.

This is what I expected. For Tyria to actually evolve and for new DEs to replace old ones as the effects of our and NPC efforts were felt. Alas, it isn’t so.

This is basically what Everquest Next will be doing, essentially dragging out a DE to week/months with a macro goal post that involves numerous micro quests. I think it’s a great idea and one that Anet needs to look into.

Velimirius.7018:

People dont care about most of them, since they dont rly impact the world much. I mean if centaurs take one outpost for example, all there is to it is that you will get contested WP, wow that hurts, next step is counter attack to clear them out, and like that in circles all day.

If they could make DE’s more progressive like centaurs for example after capturing one outpost, reinforce it and go for capturing another one, and so till/if some1 stop them. If they take whole map, that would put some work for players.

DEs just need more consequences and progression, atm they are just too boring.

Wouldn’t it just be awesome if one day you’d log into lions arch to notice that the Centaurs of Gendarran Fields were sieging it from the north? :P
But unfortunately gw2 is a theme park mmo. Influencing the “everyday gaming” is not allowed in this template.

SirMoogie.9263:

I was just going to post my concerns about this after seeing the latest update.I’m also concerned that the latest game updates are introducing content that is fairly meaningless storyline wise, and just a vehicle of getting mobs of players to kill mobs of creatures for loot. These events don’t affect the world in any meaningful sense, and in some cases don’t even try to make sense.

Now we have Scarlet, a cartoon villain that goes around from zone to zone attacking them for no purpose, but to get players to kills lots of mobs and champions for loot. She isn’t claiming objectives; she isn’t putting any one in danger, let alone the zone as it continues to operate as normal during her invasion as if nothing is going on. The portal places are random and without thought out design. They have basically traded the beauty of dynamic events for Rift.

What I was expecting from the DE system was a functional skeleton at launch, which we got, followed by a gradual layering of more and more events until the entire game world is saturated with potential DE spawn points. Then instead of only having that one event that spawns in that one spot we’d have multiple random events that COULD spawn with a lockout on the other possible events until the one that is up is completed.

There are examples of this and overlapping events in game. Yet the level 80 zones are thin. Really thin. A good example of this is the Northeast corner of Frostgorge. That area has a whopping five events (not counting claw) spaced miles away from each other that affect nothing but WP availability. But I can come up with at least four more events that could be based out of the Path of Starry Skies camp alone. This is at least partly why level 80s are bored with DEs. There is a horrific lack of DE variety for a year after launch, and that lack is worst in the high-level zones; where most people at max level are looking for stuff to do.

Seras.5702:

This is what I expected. For Tyria to actually evolve and for new DEs to replace old ones as the effects of our and NPC efforts were felt. Alas, it isn’t so.

And I think they said they would do this at one point, but somewhere along the line it seems they got the idea the players don’t want this. It could be the case that they don’t, or that the way things were incentivized led players into activities that suggested they don’t want this. Either way, I hope they realize that their DEs were what made Guild Wars 2 unique.

It’s unfortunate their free weekend is during this living story update and that new players are going to come in thinking all GW2 offers is rifts. This may away some old Rift players into joining, but anyone who paid attention to Guild Wars 2 manifesto, or current videos about the dynamic event system, will be confused on why most players are chasing rifts and ignoring the other events in the area.

WatchTheShow.7203:

Now we have Scarlet, a cartoon villain that goes around from zone to zone attacking them for no purpose, but to get players to kills lots of mobs and champions for loot. She isn’t claiming objectives; she isn’t putting any one in danger, let alone the zone as it continues to operate as normal during her invasion as if nothing is going on. The portal places are random and without thought out design. They have basically traded the beauty of dynamic events for Rift.

Oh I know. It doesn’t make her attacks any less meaningless that she is psychotic, in fact it raises more questions than answers. See my post here for why I think this dynamic event is substandard compared to what we had at release:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/speech/Are-we-trading-Dynamic-Events-for-Rifts/first#post2673307