Guild Wars 2

When The Silverwastes first came out, this was pretty nice. People consistently working together to achieve a greater goal, without the PVP element of WvW. A few more maps like this would be wonderful. Awesome, we got four more. In hindsight, maybe it was a little overkill, though. Two maps would have been fine, with two more being more exploratory like the rest of Tyria.

As a primarily solo player, I like the casual group settings of these community events, where I can roll in, help to my abilities and if we don’t make it, we try again some other time. However, when all you have available are community events (sans arguments that a lot can be achieved soloable, if you know how to play,) you kind of get discouraged when you find yourself alone, or without dedicated help, trying to accomplish these events.

But we do what we have to do, right? Onward we go.

Here’s what I would like to see, again, as a solo player: I want to visit the dungeons and the raids, without necessarily getting the full rewards from them, if for nothing but exploration and story progression. I want to be a part of a persistent world, where if there isn’t another human player available, there are NPC’s to take up the mantle and continue the event.

So, I’m not really advocating creating a party of heroes, such as GW1, but have NPC’s in the game, moving the events along, with or without players about. For example, the fight for Auric Basin and the final run on the city. If you, and several other players, are the only ones active on the map for events, the events continue to progress, but with NPC’s instead. It doesn’t remain, as it does now, in a perpetual failure state until enough players huddle together to make it succeed. You come in, and in a manner of speaking, end up helping those NPC’s take back the city. Even if it ends up just being you.

And I would be all for decreased rewards for such a thing. Perhaps if a certain percentage of real players vs non-players is not reached, full rewards are not provided.

I wonder if this could help alleviate the megaserver concerns, if we’re not relying on logging into an active map with intentions on completing the events. A lot of ‘endgame’ seems to end up being achievement hunting, which is often limited by player involvement. Obviously this is doable and I have done it repeatedly, but I know I would have had more enjoyment if I wasn’t logging out repeatedly in frustration due to lack of map activity.

If the NPC’s were pushing progression, then all maps could be like HoT and Silverwastes. We could even see additional content being reintroduced back into the old world, like we saw in Season 1’s LS, but in a more, persistent manner. There are so many possibilities out there, on those maps, that we would be more than happy to revisit them, rather than doing so only during the several minutes we spend hitting them up for dailies or for legendary farming.

Interesting ideas. I wouldn’t say no this (or something similar) at all. However I am sure naysayers will come along and say something along the lines of “but we are the heroes! How can I feel heroic or like the hero when NPC’s are doing my job?”

Good luck with the thread!

At game launch, I created six other characters, like I had in GW1 just because I was excited in creating heroes eventually and being able to equip, outfit and customize each one. GW2 with all this gating has essentially killed multiple characters as having to repeat LS2 and other stuff for each character is exhausting and a buzzkill and takes forever. I currently am having to choose probably three main characters to play moving forward but Anet lost a ton of money from me in equipment, armor and gem store purchases for all 7 characters that I was planning and willing to spend on. I also like OP do not like to play with others for dungeons and fractals and though I have fun occasionally in WvW as a support player in the zerg, I have only played two dungeons and zero fractals but I will have to get into these soon for the mastery points and heros would be cool and I was hoping to get these by now so I could do this content my way and enjoy it, who cares about the rewards?? I come home from work and just want to immerse myself in another world, I am not a professional gamer, I like to farm and play different characters and playstyles and try out different stuff and don’t want to waste others time or be yelled at for trying and failing a playstyle. I like LS for that REASON BECAUSE IT IS SOLO. I can take my time and fail or experiment like in GW1. I joined GW1 late when heros were already there and I never played that entire game with anyone just NPC’s and heroes and it was awesome though sometimes a little hard. We should have a choice but it seems if I ever do get to HOT, nobody will be there as silverwastes which I just started playing is deserted much of my playing time so it is hard to get to those top achievement battles because the design is flawed and again Anet is losing tons of money on players like me who now are not buying stuff for alts because there is NO need.

The idea of filling in NPCs when there aren’t enough players always seemed a bit too sketchy for much of the game, but for open-world PvE I think it makes perfect sense. The fact is, there are a lot of meta-events right now and not always enough players to succeed without some help.

What needs to be avoided, though, is any situation where having more players join in makes success less likely.

A fairly simple approach would be to allow players to spawn personal story characters to make up the minimum number of participants for an event, restricted to the event bounds and progressively despawning as real players appear. They’d follow the player who spawned them and could be set to stand their ground by interact prompt.

It would still be nearly impossible to succeed a Dragon’s Stand map using these, but it might reduce the minimum number of real players to something like 15 instead of 40-50.

First, it doesn’t take that many people to succeed at any of the metas. Heck, sometimes it’s easier. Second, one can complete a lot of dungeon paths alone (CoE is the biggest headache, because it has mechanics that require multiple people.)

Most importantly, though: adding heroes just accelerates the the transition of an MMO from being group-oriented to being mostly individuals who cross paths. That would end the sort of GW2 we have today. Perhaps it would be more popular, but I can’t imagine ANet wanting to defeat its own goals and also spend all the energy it would take to add heroes (balancing rewards differently, creating the AI, enabling the swapping of gear/builds, and accounting for the impact on the economy).

tl;dr heroes are great for a certain type of game; this isn’t one of those games (at least, not this decade).

Your idea definitely sounds like it could make GW2 feel more like a living world, just like how dynamic events will sometimes occur and advance without player input.

I love the idea especially the added thought of “As live players join the NPC’s start to disappear” this would make it fun for everyone not just a few that get in at the right time. Set a specific number of live players and when that is obtained the NPC’s are gone.