Guild Wars 2

Dynamic Events are pretty awesome conceptually, but the implementation of them seems to have been a little short-sighted- based on the assumption that there would always be players around to do them when there simply aren’t. Consequently, lots of maps have events that stay perpetually failed and that are virtually impossible to do solo, and even when they are completed they re-trigger way too quickly, causing people to just avoid them because there’s no real feeling of reward or catharsis. This creates an odd lack of verisimilitude and is just kind of silly and off-putting in general.

IMO, there are a few main things that would make the system work significantly better and I wouldn’t imagine would be too difficult to implement:

1. Events should trigger dynamically based on a region’s population. Events should pretty much never trigger when there are no players around to complete them (which tends to result in perpetually failed events and perpetually contested waypoints), with increasing chances to trigger the more players enter the region. This shouldn’t be too hard technically, just determine a base chance within a finite period of time for an event to trigger, then modify the chance based on the players currently in the area. This may already be done to some extent, but the result isn’t terribly obvious in game so, if so, it needs to be tweaked more.

2. The strength of NPCs should be slightly increased. They are typically all but pointless because they do little damage and go down hilariously fast. They shouldn’t be able to complete an event by themselves, but they should be able to serve as a significant source of aid particularly to smaller groups of players or solo players.

3. Rewards for an event should scale based on how long it has been since the event last triggered. This would encourage players to move around the map and do different things rather than farming one particular area doing event chains. It should also help improve the population in Orr since there are three zones adjacent zones all having numerous events to do.

Thoughts?

Yes but it might already happen in places. Yes. Yes but this would favor early morning players and work against prime time players.

Fixing events that players never do isn’t a high priority though. There are enough problems to be solved in the events that players are doing.

What you are seeing here is another clash between the developers intent and the nature of MMO players.

Arena.net envisioned players in every zone regardless of level, and many of their LS updates continue with that vision (note that a lot of the story has taken place in lower level zones).

But frankly, we come across the player-side problem, and this is entirely a player-side problem; MMO players who have been conditioned for years to grind as quick as possible to max level and highest level zones, because THAT is where the game REALLY begins.

And even with Arena.net’s repeated emphasis that this game does not follow that particular ideal; players refuse to break that conditioning, only going to where the LS takes them, all the while continuing to complain about the lack of “endgame content.” Meanwhile, all these other zones are sparsely populated because they aren’t supposed to be important. You’ve leveled past it after all.

I agree that the reward should scale depending on population. If I solo a champ, I should get the reward for such.

Likewise if a zerg kills a champ, they should be rewarded as such.

I don’t think this would hurt anyone but zerg players. Infact, it would work to spread the players out, which would be nice for people who play other zones.

Your first suggestion is somewhat already implemented in-game. There are many, many DEs seldom seen, as they only trigger when the area’s population is high enough. Though, population doesn’t affect persistent DEs, and maybe…as you suggest…it should for some.

I think we will see some changes coming in the next year or two. =)

Hedgehog in the fog.1053:

I agree that the reward should scale depending on population. If I solo a champ, I should get the reward for such.

Likewise if a zerg kills a champ, they should be rewarded as such.

I don’t think this would hurt anyone but zerg players. Infact, it would work to spread the players out, which would be nice for people who play other zones.

The problem with this idea is you will start to see people trying to “claim” certain champs/places saying things like " move on noob this is my mob get your own!"

This is what Anet does not want.

Now maybe if we could only get one champ box per champ per day each or something now that could work to move people around……