Guild Wars 2

WAIT, SAY WHAT?!

Yes, world-events need to be randomized and here is why: they have become a bloated, time-filler, bot-like run on (nearly?) every server. I will admit, I have run the gambit with the “reset zerg” but that only helped me to realize how ridiculous the situation has become. World-events are a joke now, a series of events to feed the rare, exotic, and ascended-hungry masses. They are not what they should be, events that spawn powerful bosses that have the potential to wreak devastation across the land if they aren’t stopped. The days were better before gw2stuff and the like when lions arch was filled with people calling out world events as they spawned. Spontaneity is what kept world-events interesting and, yes, it was good that not everybody in the world could make it there in time.

tl:dr fire shaman -> sb -> dwayna -> etc. is NOT good and completely ruins the nature of the world-events. Randomize the timers and kill the world-event map zergs.

Post-script: I know obtaining rares would become a little more of an issue but that is a problem with the open world loot not the world-events.

Sounds like a personal problem, I hope you can get used to timed events.

Don’t watch the timers if they bother you. Roam the world and hope you run into one

Champs could spawn in random places too.

They are going to still be pathetic jokes even if timers are randomized.

They also don’t wreak devastation if they are not completed. I’ve seen them before they were done on a regular basis and they just stay around their little corner they are in.

This change doesn’t need to happen.

They are already randomized.
Even if they removed the API for checking events it would just go back to how gw2stuff and other sites used to be with players reporting when things are kill.

There is always going to be a cap on the maximum respawn time. The reasons should be fairly obvious.

The fights are weak but that has nothing to do with timers. It is certainly not the timers’ fault that most of the bosses are just giant bags of HP.

Yes to randomizing timers and champ locations. Bring back the ‘dynamic’ factor.

Personally, I found the pre-API days of having to wait to play to be quite a boring experience. Being able to do a day’s worth of events in a hour, when compared to back then, offers a lot more free time.

If they were going to make it totally random, they had better also remove the incentive to do multiple ones.

I agree. Even before the API, I felt that things ran too much like clockwork.
I felt that all events needed longer and more random downtime between them. The bigger the event the longer the downtime.

I try to ignore the clockwork nature of them, but when I run across the same event 3 times in the space of 30mins it kind of ruins the experience for me.

That’s my opinion, and likely an unpopular one.

The current meta events have been in place for a while, i don’t think messing with the current meta bosses timers is a good idea.

Although, i think adding some all new rare instance bosses could be a good & new permanent content to add. Maybe a boss hunter achievement with new bosses that spawn randomly & occasionally each week, making them rare to find. I’d totally support new bosses being added, doing the same ones everyday is getting stale.

Alukah.2063:

Sounds like a personal problem, I hope you can get used to timed events.

This… and you realize you could just play without the timers and not try to ruin everyone else’s day who only has an hour or 2 max a day to get on and needs to optimize their routine.

Magnus Steelgrave.6580:

Alukah.2063:

Sounds like a personal problem, I hope you can get used to timed events.

This… and you realize you could just play without the timers and not try to ruin everyone else’s day who only has an hour or 2 max a day to get on and needs to optimize their routine.

Agreed, the old timers (without the API) got spammed at times to mess with the players and throw them off, the new timers like gw2stuff are very much a convenience for players who have limited play time but want to do world events. I like the fact that it’s not part of the game UI so the people who don’t want to use them and roll the dice as to when a event pops are free to do so.

But it’s nice to have access to the timers for those of us that find them useful, I use the gw2stuff to not only see what is up but what is in window or getting close to opening the window for the event it allows me to maximize my time in the most efficient manner and plan which area I go to next. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve told players asking about events like the Maw where the event is time wise because I keep the timer open on a separate screen and can at a glance see what is happening and most are thankful for the info so they don’t waste their time just standing around waiting for a event when they could be doing something else more productive.

You think the servers are dead now? If this actually was put in place all you would have is players camping at meta spawns all day waiting.

By having it the way it currently is it allows players who have limited time to log on be able to see what few world bosses they have a shot at taking down in their “hour” they had time for that day.

Bottom line, play how you want. Don’t expect a big part of the game to change just to cater to personal preference. The world timers are a 3rd party program. Just simply ignore them if you don’t want it.

Gatharin.2674:

WAIT, SAY WHAT?!

Yes, world-events need to be randomized and here is why: they have become a bloated, time-filler, bot-like run on (nearly?) every server. I will admit, I have run the gambit with the “reset zerg” but that only helped me to realize how ridiculous the situation has become. World-events are a joke now, a series of events to feed the rare, exotic, and ascended-hungry masses. They are not what they should be, events that spawn powerful bosses that have the potential to wreak devastation across the land if they aren’t stopped. The days were better before gw2stuff and the like when lions arch was filled with people calling out world events as they spawned. Spontaneity is what kept world-events interesting and, yes, it was good that not everybody in the world could make it there in time.

tl:dr fire shaman -> sb -> dwayna -> etc. is NOT good and completely ruins the nature of the world-events. Randomize the timers and kill the world-event map zergs.

Post-script: I know obtaining rares would become a little more of an issue but that is a problem with the open world loot not the world-events.

You didnt think this through did you?

Doing a change like this would basically kill off the chance of people running big fights or big events anymore, because less people will know where to go and help out.

I don’t think it’s that- we need ANET to increase the difficulty of many of these world bosses to not be a simple Zerg fest auto-attack.

The loot now dropping if many people turn up is so small it’s almost not worth doing many world events unless the Zerg size is smaller. Diminishing returns as increased numbers of players turn up as there are not enough additional foes that can be killed.

(E,g. Shatterer with a party of 15-20 will get more loot overall than a Zerg of 80).

A lot of those world events have “pre-events” and when nobody goes to do them, the main event doesn’t happen. I remember the bad old days for the Behemoth event. That guy basically never spawned because the timer on Sister Brenda was wrong.

The funny thing now of course, is that many people still don’t understand to keep an eye on the monastery brew shipment events, even though the Behemoth window is wide open and counting down.

So go ahead and randomize it. We’ll go back to the bad old days of never seeing some of these bosses.

Gatharin.2674:

tl:dr fire shaman -> sb -> dwayna -> etc. is NOT good and completely ruins the nature of the world-events. Randomize the timers and kill the world-event map zergs.

I understand your point of view, and I agree that the timer based farming zergs do really spoil the fun in many zones. Although I wouldn’t argue that a randomized timer would necessarily be the best solution to fix this.

Instead, I would advise Anet to regain their trust in the one feature that made Guild Wars 2 truly original in the first place: the dynamic event system. Events should not be “random” in the sense that they happen on a randomized timer. They should be “dynamic” in the sense that their state depends on a complex system of interdependencies that are not obvious to the first time player. From my understanding, this was the initial design goal anyways.

Unfortunately, shortly after launch, the many bugs, glitches, and problems of the implementation became evident. Many events were stuck for no apparent reason, and hundreds of thousands of players made bugs appear that no QA or beta testing in the world could have found. The situation was quite dire for some months until the worst problems had been fixed, but there are even today still examples of events in the game that do not work as intended. (Seriously, has anyone ever seen the save the merchants event chain running from start to end, ever?)

I fear the launch experience has led Anet to loose their trust in their dynamic event system. After all, the experience has proven why nobody in the industry has done such a system before: Because old-school checklist questing and timer based, scripted events are way more easy to implement and way less error prone. Hence, they switched more and more to traditional timer based spawn mechanics (see Scarlet’s invasions, or Tequatl) and disregarded the dynamic of the event system for the most part. And once the farming-minded people recognized this, the farming zergs went on a 24/7 rampage cycle, and we have the problem we see nowadays.

I still hope that Anet will not abandon the dynamic event system. I really hope they will one day revisit the system and fix it. After all, they even fixed player culling what essentially nobody deemed to be possible! I understand that it is more likely that they will keep doing the easier-yet-not-as-awesome way to please the crowd, but I am still hoping for a better (i.e., dynamic) world.

~MRA

I think there is already enough RNG in the game, the amount of hours played to get the chance of a precursor drop or a legendary in the mystic forge comes down to just individual luck (or account number luck if you believe in it) randomize all the world events and players will be faced with luck once again playing a role in being in the right place at the right time, some of the lessor events will never spawn because no one does the pre and as we have seen before when events go for a length of time without spawning or completion sometimes they break and require Anet to fix the problem. Tyria is a large world and it would appear that the world events are working as Anet planned if not why would they release a API for folks like gw2stuff to use?

After seeing some of the comments about the OP, I guess I should clarify what I mean by randomize. I believe, in the most basic sense, that you should not know that at exactly X:XXpm the shadow behemoth will spawn on server Y. That just pulls you right out of the game. Suddenly the time and the reward of the event are more important than the fact that the battle itself is going on. It becomes just another thing that needs to be done.

As stated above, there obviously has to be time limits on respawn times. As such, spawn windows I have no problem with (though some could stand to be longer). If reporting would be an issue, maybe have something akin to the current system employed for the scarlet invasions (message pops up telling you “Queensdale is in trouble!” for example). In this way, only players who are playing at the time know the event is occurring. This would help alleviate the concern of players lying about the events or having to stand watch for hours waiting for them to pop. This would also alleviate the concern about there not being enough people to complete the events, as they tend to draw a lot of attention when they spawn.

A valid counter argument might be that off-peak times would have problems gathering enough people. However, if you make the events pop maybe four times a day each, the odds are high that many of the people on the server haven’t done that event yet and will still garner a lot of attention.

As a side note, I’m a casual player who plays maybe a few hours a week and not everyday. I’m not trying to reward the people who play longer (though I’m not sure why that is a problem?). I’m trying to figure out a way to inject the meaning back into world-events beside making them harder (which may be a viable solution as well).

Junkpile.7439:

Champs could spawn in random places too.

I actually suggested last year that mobs should have a stacking Magic Find buff that stacks higher, the longer they’re alive.

That would mean that regular mobs that constantly respawn don’t drop much good loot. But go out of you way to find well-hidden and exotic mobs that haven’t been killed in a while and you may well find something worth while.

Gatharin.2674:

After seeing some of the comments about the OP, I guess I should clarify what I mean by randomize. I believe, in the most basic sense, that you should not know that at exactly X:XXpm the shadow behemoth will spawn on server Y.

The only world boss that has a hard timer like that is Tequatl. All the others have windows.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

A lot of those world events have “pre-events” and when nobody goes to do them, the main event doesn’t happen. I remember the bad old days for the Behemoth event. That guy basically never spawned because the timer on Sister Brenda was wrong.

The funny thing now of course, is that many people still don’t understand to keep an eye on the monastery brew shipment events, even though the Behemoth window is wide open and counting down.

So go ahead and randomize it. We’ll go back to the bad old days of never seeing some of these bosses.

There was more to it than that.
There was also a bug with the brew shipment event on some servers. That bug prevents the behemoth pre events from starting. There was also a bug with the rotting oakheart with the same impact. It didn’t matter if anyone knew about them because there wasn’t anything a player could do about those bugs.

Being in the spawn window doesn’t really matter either. You are still waiting for the behemoth event to switch from Warmup to Preparation state. That is when gw2stuff would indicate the monastery needs assistance. Keeping it clear only speeds things up a tiny bit.

Even Tequalt have window last time i did it. Anyway, i think the World Boss are fine as they are now. They did a lot of work to improve them (like the Maw and the Wurm that use to live only for 0.5 second and dying so fast that you had to be in a radius of 5 meter around the spawning point to actually participate in the kill, and there is plenty of room left for improvement.

But right now, its awesome to follow a World Boss Zerg, since most of the time (at least in CD) we do the event from the start of the pre to the end when its possible.

The Dragonite grind is already enough to kill the game for many players. It is not the ‘spawns within a certain window’ nature of the world bosses that make them a boring farm. It is the zerg encouraging mechanics of the encounters, and the way that Arena.Net is heavyhandedly shoving players at them to get Dragonite Ore.

I wouldn’t be interested in this at all.

Which means you are in luck, and it will probably happen.

Celtus.8456:

Yes to randomizing timers and champ locations. Bring back the ‘dynamic’ factor.

Yeah! Bring back the days where people used to just stand afk at the dragon locations for hours to get the thing killed! Wait… On the other hand, no thanks.

MRA.4758:

Unfortunately, shortly after launch, the many bugs, glitches, and problems of the implementation became evident. Many events were stuck for no apparent reason, and hundreds of thousands of players made bugs appear that no QA or beta testing in the world could have found. The situation was quite dire for some months until the worst problems had been fixed, but there are even today still examples of events in the game that do not work as intended. (Seriously, has anyone ever seen the save the merchants event chain running from start to end, ever?)

I’ve managed to do the last part of that chain exactly once but not from start to end. That chain has actually gotten worse since launch. At least it used progress beyond the ‘stop the pirates from kidnapping merchants’ event to the ‘save the merchants event’. Now it seems to stall at the ‘stop the kidnapping event’.

I fear the launch experience has led Anet to loose their trust in their dynamic event system. After all, the experience has proven why nobody in the industry has done such a system before: Because old-school checklist questing and timer based, scripted events are way more easy to implement and way less error prone. Hence, they switched more and more to traditional timer based spawn mechanics (see Scarlet’s invasions, or Tequatl) and disregarded the dynamic of the event system for the most part. And once the farming-minded people recognized this, the farming zergs went on a 24/7 rampage cycle, and we have the problem we see nowadays.

The event chain you mentioned isn’t really any more dynamic than others. The start is still on a timer.

These are the ones that I would consider to be more dynamic. The 6(?) events that are triggered based on the personal story, the one in Mount Maelstrom that requires killing 4 vets and throwing their hearts into a volcano which summons a champion. The event that requires the Energy Crystal in Metrica and the steam ogre which requires the charged key. The events that require the Dwarven keys in Dredgehaunt Cliffs and the one that requires the crank in Lornar’s Pass. The last two and the Energy Crystal are based on random drops so I am not really sure if that is a good thing or not but I guess that does make the events random.

Gatharin.2674:

After seeing some of the comments about the OP, I guess I should clarify what I mean by randomize. I believe, in the most basic sense, that you should not know that at exactly X:XXpm the shadow behemoth will spawn on server Y. That just pulls you right out of the game. Suddenly the time and the reward of the event are more important than the fact that the battle itself is going on. It becomes just another thing that needs to be done.

You seem to be misunderstanding something. The exact spawn time is not known. That is why there is a spawn window. The window is just max respawn time minus minimum cooldown time. The only time you could say the spawn time is known would be if it has already overshot the maximum respawn time.

I do understand that there are already spawn windows. Randomizing in the context of which I speak is more along the lines of extending the spawn windows to be MUCH larger/longer. Obviously, the world events cannot be completely random because that would introduce the chance of the event never spawning at all. Basically, I’m calling for randomization within much longer time allowances. This would essentially make trying to predict the events useless and produce the same after-effects as total randomization without its negative aspects.

Gatharin.2674:

I do understand that there are already spawn windows. Randomizing in the context of which I speak is more along the lines of extending the spawn windows to be MUCH larger/longer. Obviously, the world events cannot be completely random because that would introduce the chance of the event never spawning at all. Basically, I’m calling for randomization within much longer time allowances. This would essentially make trying to predict the events useless and produce the same after-effects as total randomization without its negative aspects.

No it won’t.

Nothing needs changed. People don’t want to wait that long for someting to spawn. Maw and Claw are bad enough.

Gatharin.2674:

I do understand that there are already spawn windows. Randomizing in the context of which I speak is more along the lines of extending the spawn windows to be MUCH larger/longer. Obviously, the world events cannot be completely random because that would introduce the chance of the event never spawning at all. Basically, I’m calling for randomization within much longer time allowances. This would essentially make trying to predict the events useless and produce the same after-effects as total randomization without its negative aspects.

If you feel like waiting for hours on end for a dragon to spawn, go ahead. Some of us have jobs, schools and other things going on than standing in Lions Arch waiting all day for Maw to spawn. Just like mentioned above, if you don’t like how it works, don’t look at timers. We like it as majority, so don’t screw with our game.

I think that the mentality of “feeling like you have to wait hours on end for the event” is part of the problem. These events are not meant to be commonplace engagements and should not be treated as such. Pretty sure a majority of us have jobs, school, etc. However, I do not feel that we should all feel entitled to be able to see all of the world-events everyday, in the span of 3 hours. Again, I feel like that has only helped to degrade their meaning and their purpose.

I’m only attempting to generate discussion and I do realize this is prefaced by the imo tag.

Gatharin.2674:

I do understand that there are already spawn windows. Randomizing in the context of which I speak is more along the lines of extending the spawn windows to be MUCH larger/longer. Obviously, the world events cannot be completely random because that would introduce the chance of the event never spawning at all. Basically, I’m calling for randomization within much longer time allowances. This would essentially make trying to predict the events useless and produce the same after-effects as total randomization without its negative aspects.

Wow. You don’t understand that all World Bosses, except for Tequatl, have spawn windows? The reason why people know when they pop is because 3rd party websites use APIs to tell exactly where in the event chain the current event is.

If you truly don’t like to do World Bosses because other people are around, tell them to stop looking at the websites that give out the information. Increasing the spawn timer does nothing, because people will still flock to the events once they’re up.

tl;dr – No one predicts when the World Boss shows up. We know EXACTLY when they show up, regardless of the random spawn timer window.

Gatharin.2674:

I think that the mentality of “feeling like you have to wait hours on end for the event” is part of the problem. These events are not meant to be commonplace engagements and should not be treated as such. Pretty sure a majority of us have jobs, school, etc. However, I do not feel that we should all feel entitled to be able to see all of the world-events everyday, in the span of 3 hours. Again, I feel like that has only helped to degrade their meaning and their purpose.

I’m only attempting to generate discussion and I do realize this is prefaced by the imo tag.

This would be all fine and dandy except for one part. Dragonite Ore. Being the only way (aside from long hours in WvW) of getting the said material is what sparked this World Meta Trains. It’s not the problem of having world bosses all spawn in the same window. The problem is the lack of alternative ways of getting that material. And this being only way to get it. If they would make events completely random where you’d be lucky to get 2 events in a span of 4 hours, some people wouldn’t be able to complete any ascended weapons or armor for months to come. And it still gives you very little, considering you need 500 for each weapon and 1500 for an armor set.

Absolutely not. Instead they should have a longer cooldown and anet should work on an underflow system.

Plus better rewards

Thaddeus.4891:

Even Tequalt have window last time i did it.

That was changed a while back, Tequatl spawns exactly every 2 hours now.

What I would like to see is doing away with timers all together and have them only start if you start them. WHY! Well simple, I think a world boss or event should be done on your time, not on a timer…..I don’t get on the game when I know a boss is spawning, I get on when I have time to play, and that means doing things with my friends, something anet needs to give us the ability to do in alot more areas of the game as well.

Also the link to my original suggestion about this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Do-Away-with-World-Boss-Timers/first#post2872301

Gummy.4278:

What I would like to see is doing away with timers all together and have them only start if you start them. WHY! Well simple, I think a world boss or event should be done on your time, not on a timer…..I don’t get on the game when I know a boss is spawning, I get on when I have time to play, and that means doing things with my friends, something anet needs to give us the ability to do in alot more areas of the game as well.

Also the link to my original suggestion about this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Do-Away-with-World-Boss-Timers/first#post2872301

While there are timers, bosses don’t start unless you complete the meta events. Even then, if you don’t have enough friends or guildies to help you, you wouldn’t be able to 1) complete the meta in time or 2) can’t kill the boss in time.

You should be thankful these events cycle on a timer. Otherwise, you’d have to get lucky to come across enough people on the map willing to do the event with you when you log on.

Gatharin.2674:

After seeing some of the comments about the OP, I guess I should clarify what I mean by randomize. I believe, in the most basic sense, that you should not know that at exactly X:XXpm the shadow behemoth will spawn on server Y. That just pulls you right out of the game. Suddenly the time and the reward of the event are more important than the fact that the battle itself is going on. It becomes just another thing that needs to be done.

You seem to be misunderstanding something. The exact spawn time is not known. That is why there is a spawn window. The window is just max respawn time minus minimum cooldown time. The only time you could say the spawn time is known would be if it has already overshot the maximum respawn time.[/quote]

This. The people who know when things happen use a program who looks at the game’s data to tell people when certain events or pres are up. Your proposed change would do nothing to solve the problem you see. I personally don’t have a problem with it.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Wow. You don’t understand that all World Bosses, except for Tequatl, have spawn windows? The reason why people know when they pop is because 3rd party websites use APIs to tell exactly where in the event chain the current event is.

If you truly don’t like to do World Bosses because other people are around, tell them to stop looking at the websites that give out the information. Increasing the spawn timer does nothing, because people will still flock to the events once they’re up.

tl;dr – No one predicts when the World Boss shows up. We know EXACTLY when they show up, regardless of the random spawn timer window.

I don’t have a problem with the api telling you where events are at the moment. Imo, that is not the problem. The problem is that the events start far too frequently and, therefore, are too predictable. For example, you can predict that the shadow behemoth will spawn within a thirty minute time frame after two and a half hours. This is what I have a problem with. I think it would be better if the window was more along the lines of the jormag window for every event (maybe with a shorter cooldown to compensate). It is the planning of event -> next event -> next event that is problematic.

Gatharin.2674:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Wow. You don’t understand that all World Bosses, except for Tequatl, have spawn windows? The reason why people know when they pop is because 3rd party websites use APIs to tell exactly where in the event chain the current event is.

If you truly don’t like to do World Bosses because other people are around, tell them to stop looking at the websites that give out the information. Increasing the spawn timer does nothing, because people will still flock to the events once they’re up.

tl;dr – No one predicts when the World Boss shows up. We know EXACTLY when they show up, regardless of the random spawn timer window.

I don’t have a problem with the api telling you where events are at the moment. Imo, that is not the problem. The problem is that the events start far too frequently and, therefore, are too predictable. For example, you can predict that the shadow behemoth will spawn within a thirty minute time frame after two and a half hours. This is what I have a problem with. I think it would be better if the window was more along the lines of the jormag window for every event (maybe with a shorter cooldown to compensate). It is the planning of event -> next event -> next event that is problematic.

All events are not predictable. All events are known by means of websites reading APIs. Everything you’ve stated doesn’t matter, since all it takes is for us to go to the 3rd party websites, and look at when the window is up.

1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, or 4 hour cooldowns on the event timers? All it takes is a minute to visit a website, and look at the spawn timer window. Then we’ll know exactly when we need to go to a map. I’m still not sure what you’re trying to suggest, unless you want Anet to no longer support APIs that tell us when events are up.

“These events are not meant to be commonplace engagements and should not be treated as such” – Says who? Not meant to be rude, but you might have a wrong perception of world bosses, they are meant to be whatever both the developers and the players in general want them to be, and from what I read your vision of a world boss does not fit Anet’s or players’ in general. This doesn’t mean it should be changed to fit your ideals.

“As a side note, I’m a casual player who plays maybe a few hours a week and not everyday.” – As a casual I don’t think you should feel entitled to even suggest such changes that impact mostly non-casual players in a negative way. You see it as a problem when you barely take part in that content.

Anet likes it like this. They want to make the world feel like a mechanized soulless factory where the zerg rules all. The world isn’t dynamic and was never intended to be.

I’ve been preaching about randomizing event location and times for what seems like forever.The devs don’t want it, and the zombies wouldn’t know what to do with themselves.

Good luck though. As box sales continue to drop, and new player retention keeps dropping, maybe they will figure out the event system is broken eventually.

Alukah.2063:

Sounds like a personal problem, I hope you can get used to timed events.

+1 So true!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alukah.2063:

Sounds like a personal problem, I hope you can get used to timed events.

Karizee.8076:

Don’t watch the timers if they bother you. Roam the world and hope you run into one

I stopped reading this thread after these two posts because that pretty much solves the OP’s problem… and yes, it is a personal problem as stated in the above qouted post.

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Nothing needs changed. People don’t want to wait that long for someting to spawn. Maw and Claw are bad enough.

There seems to be a conflict of interest here. If I understand correctly, the OP (and I dare to say myself, too) seems to argue from the perspective of someone who understands the game as tool for to seeking an adventure. He doesn’t want to know in advance what is happening, he rather wants to learn what the world will throw at him while playing. You, on the other hand, seem to argue of from the perceptive of someone who (please excuse the blunt exaggeration; no offense intended, its just for the sake of making my point) wants to manage a work schedule, most likely since you are working towards some goal.

And I am not sure whether these to interests can be satisfies at the same time. Take the Tequatl event as an example. The way this boss event placed into the world is actually the total opposite of immersion, or the idea of dynamic events. There is almost no “cause and effect”, no “cascading out in a chain of events”, no true dynamic. Just one Tequatl event on a simple, completely predictable, timed loop, over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, I love the new Tequatls fight itself, it’s actually pretty great. But it is completely disconnected from the world (or the map) it takes place in. “It doesn’t care that I am there.” Having either fishheads or no fishheads isn’t exactly my understanding of making a difference. And this ruins the illusion of immersion, for the sake of making the event farmable. You never ponder “Hmmm … I wonder what’s currently going on the Splintered Coast”, since you pretty much already know.

I am not saying that one approach of enjoying the content is better than the other. But I would argue not having a “schedulable” world was the one great feature that GW2 aimed for in the beginning, and it was certainly the one aspect that made me excited for the game. (Well, that, and throwing fireballs from my hand at giant boss monsters while running and dodging around.) Having boss events happen dynamically was, from my understanding, a part of that original design. On the other hand, there are already enough games out there that do this time table & checklist approach to MMO gaming, so the world really didn’t need another one of those. And thus, from a design standpoint, it is kind of sad that GW2 is here just doing what everybody else is already doing.

~MRA

If the argument that we (the players) aren’t meant to see every meta event on a timed window whenever we see fit, then there’s only one solution if it becomes more randomized = increased rewards.

I don’t see it happening. If you randomize even more but keep the same chance of crap drops after such hard work then what’s the point in chasing down a meta event?

And by hard work I mean the hard work it would be to even come across the world boss in the first place if this scenario took place.

Let’s end this discussion with the following 2-step solution for those who don’t want to know spawn times:

1) If you don’t want to know when a World Boss spawns, do not visit an API using website that tells you so. In addition to this, don’t ask in Map Chat if the boss is up. That way, if you come across the World Boss event, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

2) Turn off your in game clock. That way you won’t know the time, and thus can’t calculate how long until the next spawn window.

MRA.4758:

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Nothing needs changed. People don’t want to wait that long for someting to spawn. Maw and Claw are bad enough.

There seems to be a conflict of interest here. If I understand correctly, the OP (and I dare to say myself, too) seems to argue from the perspective of someone who understands the game as tool for to seeking an adventure. He doesn’t want to know in advance what is happening, he rather wants to learn what the world will throw at him while playing. You, on the other hand, seem to argue of from the perceptive of someone who (please excuse the blunt exaggeration; no offense intended, its just for the sake of making my point) wants to manage a work schedule, most likely since you are working towards some goal.

And I am not sure whether these to interests can be satisfies at the same time. Take the Tequatl event as an example. The way this boss event placed into the world is actually the total opposite of immersion, or the idea of dynamic events. There is almost no “cause and effect”, no “cascading out in a chain of events”, no true dynamic. Just one Tequatl event on a simple, completely predictable, timed loop, over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, I love the new Tequatls fight itself, it’s actually pretty great. But it is completely disconnected from the world (or the map) it takes place in. “It doesn’t care that I am there.” Having either fishheads or no fishheads isn’t exactly my understanding of making a difference. And this ruins the illusion of immersion, for the sake of making the event farmable. You never ponder “Hmmm … I wonder what’s currently going on the Splintered Coast”, since you pretty much already know.

I am not saying that one approach of enjoying the content is better than the other. But I would argue not having a “schedulable” world was the one great feature that GW2 aimed for in the beginning, and it was certainly the one aspect that made me excited for the game. (Well, that, and throwing fireballs from my hand at giant boss monsters while running and dodging around.) Having boss events happen dynamically was, from my understanding, a part of that original design. On the other hand, there are already enough games out there that do this time table & checklist approach to MMO gaming, so the world really didn’t need another one of those. And thus, from a design standpoint, it is kind of sad that GW2 is here just doing what everybody else is already doing.

~MRA

If the OP want’s to immerse themselves, they only need not visit a website that uses the API. There is no need to change the game for that. I had no idea that there were as many bosses as there were until I first looked at a website with a set of timers before we had API.

I don’t get immersed in video games. They are entertaining in their own way to me but I don’t do the immersion. If I want immersion, I’ll read a book or get out the dice and play some DnD, that way I can use my imagination and that is far more immersing to me. Video games are way to restrictive for me to immerse myself in them.

If I did bosses, I want the loot that comes with them. I have other goals to accomplish and the bosses are a means to that end. I also don’t like the PvE in this game and would rather knock them out quickly so that I can get on with what I would rather do in the game. If I had other avenues for the loot that I want that came as quickly as it does with the world bosses, I wouldn’t care if it got changed because I wouldn’t have to do PvE to get the stuff I want in what I consider a reasonable amount of time.

MRA.4758:

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Nothing needs changed. People don’t want to wait that long for someting to spawn. Maw and Claw are bad enough.

There seems to be a conflict of interest here. If I understand correctly, the OP (and I dare to say myself, too) seems to argue from the perspective of someone who understands the game as tool for to seeking an adventure. He doesn’t want to know in advance what is happening, he rather wants to learn what the world will throw at him while playing. You, on the other hand, seem to argue of from the perceptive of someone who (please excuse the blunt exaggeration; no offense intended, its just for the sake of making my point) wants to manage a work schedule, most likely since you are working towards some goal.

And I am not sure whether these to interests can be satisfies at the same time. Take the Tequatl event as an example. The way this boss event placed into the world is actually the total opposite of immersion, or the idea of dynamic events. There is almost no “cause and effect”, no “cascading out in a chain of events”, no true dynamic. Just one Tequatl event on a simple, completely predictable, timed loop, over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, I love the new Tequatls fight itself, it’s actually pretty great. But it is completely disconnected from the world (or the map) it takes place in. “It doesn’t care that I am there.” Having either fishheads or no fishheads isn’t exactly my understanding of making a difference. And this ruins the illusion of immersion, for the sake of making the event farmable. You never ponder “Hmmm … I wonder what’s currently going on the Splintered Coast”, since you pretty much already know.

I am not saying that one approach of enjoying the content is better than the other. But I would argue not having a “schedulable” world was the one great feature that GW2 aimed for in the beginning, and it was certainly the one aspect that made me excited for the game. (Well, that, and throwing fireballs from my hand at giant boss monsters while running and dodging around.) Having boss events happen dynamically was, from my understanding, a part of that original design. On the other hand, there are already enough games out there that do this time table & checklist approach to MMO gaming, so the world really didn’t need another one of those. And thus, from a design standpoint, it is kind of sad that GW2 is here just doing what everybody else is already doing.

~MRA

This is exactly it; thank you MRA. Video games in their core nature are an escape into an alternate reality. I think that anything (in this case, frequent specified-time world-events) that cause a disconnect from that purpose are self-defeating to the game by nature. Thus, I suggested a change to steer the course truer to that goal, unpopular though that may be.

And I totally agree CreativeAnarchy, the open world loot is a major issue that needs to be addressed. As it is, I can see why people are so opposed to a change such as this because of the impact that it would have on the reasonable acquisition of rares, exotics, and materials. But it was my hope to disentangle the two issues and focus on just one of those at a time (while realizing that both would have to be addressed simultaneously in a prospective patch).