Guild Wars 2

One of the things promised in this game is a dynamic world. Well if dynamic you mean do event, wait for timer and do exact same event again…well yeah you got it. They blew up Lion’s Arch but the whole storyline is already plotted out to the very end. Why not have different possible outcomes and let the story play out. For now its zerg lag zerg lag.

raenen.5807:

One of the things promised in this game is a dynamic world. Well if dynamic you mean do event, wait for timer and do exact same event again…well yeah you got it. They blew up Lion’s Arch but the whole storyline is already plotted out to the very end. Why not have different possible outcomes and let the story play out. For now its zerg lag zerg lag.

Must be in agreement mode this morning. /agreed. I was quite disappointed with the LA event. It seems we have done this before and also just 30 min ago :p

We have some dynamic events in different vanilla areas, but they are difficult to create and branching stuff means more work.

GW2 went down from 81 mio in Q4 2012 to 23.1 mio in Q4 2013.

Ain’t nobody got time and money for dynamic events. Everyone gets the same dish, all events are success or failure only nowadays.

Yah, the question Ive been asking for a year and a half. Same events over and over. Theres a word for that: grind.

I thought my choices in the open world would impact the environment around me. Sadly, not true. The people of a town could care less if I were there 20 minutes ago and saved the town.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to impact the ebb and flow of events and circumstances in the little corner of the world that you are in.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

GW2 went down from 81 mio in Q4 2012 to 23.1 mio in Q4 2013.

what is a ‘mio’?

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

GW2 went down from 81 mio in Q4 2012 to 23.1 mio in Q4 2013.

what is a ‘mio’?

Mio. Million.

Can you imagine a game where you log in and centaurs are invading a city and you need to stop them. Undead are harrassing caravans bring food and a city is starving and if you stop them you dont just sit there for 5 minutes to stop them again.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

GW2 went down from 81 mio in Q4 2012 to 23.1 mio in Q4 2013.

Yeah, that could happen if you release a game in Q4 2012. There wont be so much people left to buy the game after one year.

but we elected Kiel!

I don’t think it’s that feasible with millions of players. In millions of servers.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

GW2 went down from 81 mio in Q4 2012 to 23.1 mio in Q4 2013.

You mean to say that a game sold less products 1 year after it was released than when it was released?!

Alert the presses!@!

The same reason why no company has ever done it, it is not easy or there isn’t an efficient way to do it. Finally, it would probably require too much scripting since AI isn’t at the point where it can do it.

The reality is this, I see gw 2 DE more as a stepping stone for future MMORPG to tackle. It is easy to criticize the inventor and praise the innovator. Just remember gw2 is not the last MMORPG that will be made, someone will come a long and outdo Anet vision for DE and we all win, unless you own NcSoft stock.

Your question isn’t a very good question since it depends on developers to answer and I don’t think any developer will answer since it serves no purpose.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

We have some dynamic events in different vanilla areas, but they are difficult to create and branching stuff means more work.

GW2 went down from 81 mio in Q4 2012 to 23.1 mio in Q4 2013.

Ain’t nobody got time and money for dynamic events. Everyone gets the same dish, all events are success or failure only nowadays.

Do you know why sales went down or are you just copy/pasting figures?

raenen.5807:

One of the things promised in this game is a dynamic world. Well if dynamic you mean do event, wait for timer and do exact same event again…well yeah you got it. They blew up Lion’s Arch but the whole storyline is already plotted out to the very end. Why not have different possible outcomes and let the story play out. For now its zerg lag zerg lag.

Because you are asking a lot from a 200-person company, which only a fraction are game designers.

You are asking Anet to design new content from scratch in two weeks in response to player choices.

That is unreasonable and impossible.

It takes 6 months to design the content we have now.

In my opinion one (relatively small) improvement would be random parameters. Instead of always having to escort 4 Dolyaks there could 5 or even 6 Dolyaks. Then sometimes they have permanent Swiftness, sometimes Crippled. Sometimes more enemies, sometimes less. Sometimes more veterans, sometimes more normals. And so on.

Then if they want to further expand it they could tie it to event success. More one event gets done, more harder it would become. Similarly, often failed/skipped events would get easier (and perhaps even more rewarding).

I’m actually quite happy with the way the “Dynamic Events” happen. I honestly was worried when the game was released thinking there are events I may not be able to participate because it happens only once…. I like the fact that I can log in and do an event…. What if I really liked that event? I can go back and do it again. If I have already done an event and I see it going again, I just don’t participate. Simple as that. shrug I must be in the minority here, but I love it lol.

Vol.7601:

raenen.5807:

One of the things promised in this game is a dynamic world. Well if dynamic you mean do event, wait for timer and do exact same event again…well yeah you got it. They blew up Lion’s Arch but the whole storyline is already plotted out to the very end. Why not have different possible outcomes and let the story play out. For now its zerg lag zerg lag.

Because you are asking a lot from a 200-person company, which only a fraction are game designers.

You are asking Anet to design new content from scratch in two weeks in response to player choices.

That is unreasonable and impossible.

It takes 6 months to design the content we have now.

I didn’t want a new world every 2 weeks just some variety in the one we have. Which is what they promised before launch. I am not going to go into the whole manifesto conversation again and I am not a programmer but there has to be a way to put some variety in the way events play out.

silvermember.8941:

The same reason why no company has ever done it, it is not easy or there isn’t an efficient way to do it. Finally, it would probably require too much scripting since AI isn’t at the point where it can do it.

The reality is this, I see gw 2 DE more as a stepping stone for future MMORPG to tackle. It is easy to criticize the inventor and praise the innovator. Just remember gw2 is not the last MMORPG that will be made, someone will come a long and outdo Anet vision for DE and we all win, unless you own NcSoft stock.

Your question isn’t a very good question since it depends on developers to answer and I don’t think any developer will answer since it serves no purpose.

It has been done. Even something as simple as the Luxon/Kurzick border in GW1 was dynamic. All of the player created factional bases/gcw in SWG was dynamic, as was the rise and fall of player cities. Control of territory in Eve is dynamic. Dynamic has been done. WvW here is dynamic. They haven’t successfully applied dynamics to what are, essentially, Kill 10 Rats repeatables.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

silvermember.8941:

The same reason why no company has ever done it, it is not easy or there isn’t an efficient way to do it. Finally, it would probably require too much scripting since AI isn’t at the point where it can do it.

The reality is this, I see gw 2 DE more as a stepping stone for future MMORPG to tackle. It is easy to criticize the inventor and praise the innovator. Just remember gw2 is not the last MMORPG that will be made, someone will come a long and outdo Anet vision for DE and we all win, unless you own NcSoft stock.

Your question isn’t a very good question since it depends on developers to answer and I don’t think any developer will answer since it serves no purpose.

It has been done. Even something as simple as the Luxon/Kurzick border in GW1 was dynamic. All of the player created factional bases/gcw in SWG was dynamic, as was the rise and fall of player cities. Control of territory in Eve is dynamic. Dynamic has been done. WvW here is dynamic. They haven’t successfully applied dynamics to what are, essentially, Kill 10 Rats repeatables.

Except the dynamic (KvsL) involved PLAYER and that dynamic fell apart the moment the players stopped partaking. Let’s not even bother considering the fact that a good percentage of player are truly against ANY FORM of PvP.

Let’s look at your WvW example. On certain servers WvW is not even functional because they are so few players. Everybody wants the easy win and so they go stack in T1. Now let’s look at T1. Most server do not even stand a chance against BG or JQ, they just streamrolled everybody. Yes, that is good dynamic content right?

The point being there is a lot of evidence that shows, making content that relies on players is a terrible idea. No MMORPG has been able to solved that problem, as of yet because it is extremely difficult without cutting player’s freedom and choice and that leads to another array of problem. Your WvW example shows a complete lack of understanding about the issue of what is going on.

All your suggestion completely undermines the Environment part of PvE. If you want player driven dynamic events go play PvP based game. I was talking about PvE. last I checked AI, scripting adn all those things were extremely expensive and you might not know this but cost is a factor on how and what to design.

BTW i like PvP, but this was about PvE.

silvermember.8941:

The point being there is a lot of evidence that shows, making content that relies on players is a terrible idea. No MMORPG has been able to solved that problem, as of yet because it is extremely difficult without cutting player’s freedom and choice and that leads to another array of problem. Your WvW example shows a complete lack of understanding about the issue of what is going on.

All the evidence points to is that it hasn’t been done right yet. If you look at a failed execution as proof that the concept is flawed, well… Let’s just say that I’m glad you’re not in charge of designing anything. That’s just not how it works.

There are ways to solve problems without throwing up your hands and saying, “well, it doesn’t work, obviously the idea is stupid.” 3 way PvP has been proven to work in Dark Ages of Camelot, for example. So why doesn’t it work here?

Tazgool.8904:

silvermember.8941:

The point being there is a lot of evidence that shows, making content that relies on players is a terrible idea. No MMORPG has been able to solved that problem, as of yet because it is extremely difficult without cutting player’s freedom and choice and that leads to another array of problem. Your WvW example shows a complete lack of understanding about the issue of what is going on.

All the evidence points to is that it hasn’t been done right yet. If you look at a failed execution as proof that the concept is flawed, well… Let’s just say that I’m glad you’re not in charge of designing anything. That’s just not how it works.

There are ways to solve problems without throwing up your hands and saying, “well, it doesn’t work, obviously the idea is stupid.” 3 way PvP has been proven to work in Dark Ages of Camelot, for example. So why doesn’t it work here?

I did not claim to be a designer. The only person here who is making that claim is YOU. You made the claim the moment you started claiming that their execution was flawed because that obviously mean you have a better solution. If it was as easy as you claim someone would have done it. It is just that simple.

I simply used facts to back up my claims unlike you that is blindly claiming you are somehow more knowledgeable than the 1000s of game developers that have worked on an MMORPG over the years.

Now Age of Camelot is a game of it time. From what I understand even it had issues as the results that I suspect you probably glossed over and from what I read it wasn’t as perfect as you claim. In any case, the market is a lot different than it was when DAoC, the players are a lot different (i am assuming you are talking about RvR). Don’t you find it strange that even the creator of DAoC could not replicate the game he himself made. Even still then that makes it PvP and I keep trying to remind you this topic is about PvE ( i think).

come up with facts to back up your claims. this isn’t politics.

My guess is they simply didn’t think of it, and so the game wasn’t designed to facilitate it. You can argue ‘oh it’s not possible because no game has ever done it before’ all you want…but if that’s the case why the hell did you say your game will be the first to do it and not do it? Do you really expect the entity that made that claim to NOT be held accountable when it falls? EQN also is claiming a more dynamic pve system-if they succeed what will be your excuse for GW2’s promised dynamic pve not being dynamic?

Having been burnt by GW2’s interpretation of ‘dynamic’ I’m rather skeptical yes, but at the very least in their press conference they gave an idea of how the system they’re building works-and it’s pretty awesome. Mobs with actual behavioural attributes? Transient colonization? Spontaneously kill a bunch of bears, nearby trolls will starve and relocate-possibly trying to raze a town? All these things are awesome and what I thought GW2’s dynamic system would be like. But the system isn’t designed that way so the best I think they could do is add more events…which really doesn’t solve the problem. If GW2 were to add such an event chain, you’d be killing bears until your fingers are numb but until some npc runs up to you and say ‘hey I want to kill these trolls’ to trigger something…yeah nothing would happen.

Unfortunately this is the way stories are told in MMOs.

I never really got the obsession with lore and plot in MMOs. MMOs are by nature, the worst games for telling a story because nothing can truly have consequence. The game is far too restricted in what it can do.

Living World is already pretty ambitious in this regard but still cannot overcome the problems that come with telling a story in an MMO.

@Imbune

Actually Mark Jacobs is trying to do just that. He can’t buy back the rights to DAoC (it still belongs to EA) but last year he started a kickstarter campaign to get his own WvW game underway. WAR wasn’t really his pet-project either as it had many other parties involved (Games Workshop, EA, Mythic) and completely different ambitions (kill WoW with PvP).

You should google “camelot unchained” when you have a moment and read up on it yourself. It’s not going to be a carbon copy of DAoC but share the same spirit.

Vol.7601:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

We have some dynamic events in different vanilla areas, but they are difficult to create and branching stuff means more work.

GW2 went down from 81 mio in Q4 2012 to 23.1 mio in Q4 2013.

Ain’t nobody got time and money for dynamic events. Everyone gets the same dish, all events are success or failure only nowadays.

Do you know why sales went down or are you just copy/pasting figures?

Look, that’s not rocket science here.

Got my numbers in euro, but here is a link for you:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-02-14-guild-wars-2-in-steep-decline-in-weak-q4-for-ncsoft

In Europe, GW2 made 10 million dollars in the last quater of 2013 which is 1/5 of the year before. This equals what? 222.222 players in a game with a subscribtion fee. In a year without any new competitor in the MMO market.
They might have sold their boxes, but people do not accept the gem store.

Like it or not, DEs were a big thing when they advertised the game (like in the Manifesto, may god have mercy with its soul) and now they have vanished and were replaced with I/O events.
That is why the world of Tyria feels like on rails, the LS is surely enforcing this. Too much trial and error.

Yeah i bought the game on the promise of DE an wvw both have been a serious let down.