Guild Wars 2

Hey All,

I haven’t played GW2 in a while and was wondering if there have been any changes/improvements made on dynamic events.

While I think GW2 did a great job on getting rid of ‘kill 10 rats’ type quests and replacing them with dynamic events. I still feel like fell a little short. While there is some change it feels like the players impact on the world is minimal. I think probably my favorite quest line in GW2 was the centaur quest line when you kill the king. However even that has no real effect on the game world.

I saw a really cool game in development that has a ‘node’ system which is perhaps what I really wanted for GW2 in the first place.

The quests you complete allow NPCs to build up their outpost to a small town and then a city and then to a metropolis. You can also build your own house in the npc city, so if you don’t put in the effort to defend the city you could also lose your house. The bigger the town gets the more epic events happen (like dragons attacking the town) and if your guild wants to keep that town you worked so hard building up, you need to defend it. Player actions or lack thereof have a real impact on the game world.

I haven’t played Guild Wars 2 in a couple years, so perhaps zones like this could already be in place and I don’t know about it.

But I was just curious to see if they had more in depth DEs / content planned like the above video. The game in the video is made by a small indy studio so its questionable if their game even comes out. However I feel content like this would be pretty easy for the folks over at arenanet to make.

Thanks!

Caveat: I have not watched the video.

I think the closest things to what you describe are the meta chain events in the newer maps. GW2 is designed around the player not losing progress, so rather than have to defend something, you get a two hour cycle that starts with low “good guy” resources that then get built up through coordinated map-wide action, culminating in a boss fight (or 5 simultaneous boss fights in Verdant Brink). The more the resources have been prepped, the more the end fight is helped.

But then the 2 hour window closes and it starts all over again.

Just because it doesn’t say “kill 10 rats”, hearts still have you killing 10 rats. It’s just disguised.

Fiddlestyx.9714:

Just because it doesn’t say “kill 10 rats”, hearts still have you killing 10 rats. It’s just disguised.

Not quite true. Events scale. It’s not a fixed number of rats. Obviously there are going to be killing quests in ANY MMO. Not having a fixed number is the difference.

In most MMOs if you kill ten rats, there are still 40 rats still here. In Guild Wars 2, you drive off the enemy. It makes a huge difference…to me anyway.

There have been dynamic events where player actions shaped the world. The election of Ellen Kiel vs Evon Gnashblade was one such.

My guess is that ANET is struggling with internal politics and resources. I don’t see big things like this coming again for a while.

Vayne.8563:

Fiddlestyx.9714:

Just because it doesn’t say “kill 10 rats”, hearts still have you killing 10 rats. It’s just disguised.

Not quite true. Events scale. It’s not a fixed number of rats. Obviously there are going to be killing quests in ANY MMO. Not having a fixed number is the difference.

In most MMOs if you kill ten rats, there are still 40 rats still here. In Guild Wars 2, you drive off the enemy. It makes a huge difference…to me anyway.

I think this is the idea. Events aren’t supposed to totally revolutionise PvE gameplay, just to avoid some of the weirder elements of MMOs – when you kill a boss it’s dead, it doesn’t immediately respawn for the next person to kill (and the next person will have been fighting alongside you, not waiting in a queue for their turn). When you’re told to save 10 people it’s because there are 10 in total, not because 10 is enough and the rest can sort themselves out. If you’re told centaurs are attacking a town they are literally attacking it and killing all the people right now – not standing nearby waiting for you to come and find them.

The system the OP wants is there, just in a limited way. There are numerous locations around the game world which might be full of enemies (even a boss) or might be a friendly outpost with unique items you can buy, merchants and repair stations and other facilities.

But they’re trying to balance it with keeping the game functional and accessible to new and casual players. You’re never going to see Queensdale completely taken over and destroyed and players fighting to take it back and rebuild, because then a new player who starts while that’s happening will be dropped straight into a very dangerous map with essential NPCs and locations locked behind complicated event chains – something that might be totally unknown to them. It’s highly likely to be overwhelming and put them off playing.

But they can and will do that on high level maps. All of the HoT maps for example have big meta-event chains which totally change the status of the map. It’s actually impossible to do map completion until the meta event chain has been successfully completed because key areas are under enemy control and impossible to enter.

The other problem is most changes can’t be permanent. You can save a town and help the NPCs build it up, but sooner or later it is going to be destroyed again, because otherwise no one else would get to play that map. This is frustrating for individual players but overall I think it’s better than the alternative. Really big changes will have to be kept to single-player games.

Danikat.8537:

Vayne.8563:

Fiddlestyx.9714:

Just because it doesn’t say “kill 10 rats”, hearts still have you killing 10 rats. It’s just disguised.

Not quite true. Events scale. It’s not a fixed number of rats. Obviously there are going to be killing quests in ANY MMO. Not having a fixed number is the difference.

In most MMOs if you kill ten rats, there are still 40 rats still here. In Guild Wars 2, you drive off the enemy. It makes a huge difference…to me anyway.

I think this is the idea. Events aren’t supposed to totally revolutionise PvE gameplay, just to avoid some of the weirder elements of MMOs – when you kill a boss it’s dead, it doesn’t immediately respawn for the next person to kill (and the next person will have been fighting alongside you, not waiting in a queue for their turn). When you’re told to save 10 people it’s because there are 10 in total, not because 10 is enough and the rest can sort themselves out. If you’re told centaurs are attacking a town they are literally attacking it and killing all the people right now – not standing nearby waiting for you to come and find them.

The system the OP wants is there, just in a limited way. There are numerous locations around the game world which might be full of enemies (even a boss) or might be a friendly outpost with unique items you can buy, merchants and repair stations and other facilities.

But they’re trying to balance it with keeping the game functional and accessible to new and casual players. You’re never going to see Queensdale completely taken over and destroyed and players fighting to take it back and rebuild, because then a new player who starts while that’s happening will be dropped straight into a very dangerous map with essential NPCs and locations locked behind complicated event chains – something that might be totally unknown to them. It’s highly likely to be overwhelming and put them off playing.

But they can and will do that on high level maps. All of the HoT maps for example have big meta-event chains which totally change the status of the map. It’s actually impossible to do map completion until the meta event chain has been successfully completed because key areas are under enemy control and impossible to enter.

The other problem is most changes can’t be permanent. You can save a town and help the NPCs build it up, but sooner or later it is going to be destroyed again, because otherwise no one else would get to play that map. This is frustrating for individual players but overall I think it’s better than the alternative. Really big changes will have to be kept to single-player games.

I just re-downloaded and bought HoT to try it out some of the higher end meta events Thanks for the info.

One thing I would disagree on is your last paragraph. Say you help NPCs build a town into a large city. That does not mean the map is ‘finished’ You could still add events based on that city being large. For example.
-The ‘enemy’ really wants that city back so they launch a full scale siege
-There is another large city X miles away, help establish trade routs
-Help protect trade caravans
-Now that the city is large and protected people have become less focused on survival and more on leisure / fun. Some bandit gangs have formed, get rid of them, if you dont certain portions of the city will start to become dangerous.
-player housing inside the city
-one off quests for various NPCs around the city. If you do enough quests for a specific NPC you become best friends and they will move in with you. Once a day you can have them go off and mine X node for you. [insert more things they do here]

Of course some of these ideas may be bad. I’m sure Anet content creators can come up with better ideas. But the point I am getting to is you don’t have to have the town ‘disappear’ and start over every 2 hours. Just keep adding more and more DEs that branch off each other. That way if that one dude who wants to make an impact on the world spends all day farming X for the town, certain DEs go away and new ones come thanks to his action.