Why is everything a Clock-Race in GW2?
Taking away the sandstorm timer would ruin the entire concept of the zone. Because you have X amount of time to get to Tier 5. If it was a random timer there’s no skill or organization aspect to it. If it’s an unlimited time, then you’ll always get to zone five.
The zone was designed like an open world raid. You have to do just about every event with bonus to get to Tier 5. That makes it a challenge. That’s the whole point of the zone.
Taking away the timer in this instance would destroy the entire integrity of the zone.
How would that work in regards to attaining the Tiers? Some maps have 5 hours to get to Tier 5 and some have 20 minutes? You might have to wait 5 hours to do an event, you might have a 20 minute window? If it’s a short window, oh! too bad! not enough time for that event to spawn…or…all the events spawn at the exact same time?
I understand how spontaneity would be fun, but I don’t think that could work with the way the Tier system is set up. I suppose they could do away with Tiers and everything that is associated with them….I guess they would have to design a whole new event and reward system, and that would take a few months. Sigh, back to waiting.
But this is the kind of challenge some people were asking for. Something for guilds to do together. The zone is fun for me because of that challenge specifically. If it was just another zone with just some more dynamic events, I’d be through with it already. Trying to get to tier 5 is what keeps me there.
You guys are missing my point, why put a sandstorm as an event in the first place? Why wasn’t it made to be a weather feature of the area, that occurred randomly and surprised you, rather than oh, the sandstorm’s gonna hit in 5 minutes, just like it does every hour of the day!
But i’m not talking just about sandstorm, it’s everything. Everything is becoming a clock race in gw2. It’s totally breaking my immersion in the game. The randomness of anything is gone it seems.
I don’t know. The only part I really like about the Sandstorm (since I can’t see anything when it’s blowing) is hunting for the Buried Chests. If it was not associated with an event, I’m not sure how much time I would spend in the area when it was active.
I mean, it’s cool the first time or two, but….being blind isn’t much fun after the novelty wears off….for me, anyway.
You guys are missing my point, why put a sandstorm as an event in the first place? Why wasn’t it made to be a weather feature of the area, that occurred randomly and surprised you, rather than oh, the sandstorm’s gonna hit in 5 minutes, just like it does every hour of the day!
But i’m not talking just about sandstorm, it’s everything. Everything is becoming a clock race in gw2. It’s totally breaking my immersion in the game. The randomness of anything is gone it seems.
It’s a game. Lots of things in games don’t make sense. Why can I rez everyone except characters who die dramatically in the PS? Why do I heal super fast as soon as I leave combat. If you’re waiting for stuff in games to make logical sense. then I don’t know what to tell you.
It’s not the same sandstorm. The wind picks up periodically and it blows uncovering chests.
Have you ever done a dungeon in the game? When you go into the dungeon again, why does it have the same creatures and bosses you’ve already killed. Just think of it like a dungeon. Every periodically it’s like starting the dungeon again, giving you a chance to reach tier 5.
You guys are missing my point, why put a sandstorm as an event in the first place? Why wasn’t it made to be a weather feature of the area, that occurred randomly and surprised you, rather than oh, the sandstorm’s gonna hit in 5 minutes, just like it does every hour of the day!
But i’m not talking just about sandstorm, it’s everything. Everything is becoming a clock race in gw2. It’s totally breaking my immersion in the game. The randomness of anything is gone it seems.
It’s a game. Lots of things in games don’t make sense. Why can I rez everyone except characters who die dramatically in the PS? Why do I heal super fast as soon as I leave combat. If you’re waiting for stuff in games to make logical sense. then I don’t know what to tell you.
It’s not the same sandstorm. The wind picks up periodically and it blows uncovering chests.
Have you ever done a dungeon in the game? When you go into the dungeon again, why does it have the same creatures and bosses you’ve already killed. Just think of it like a dungeon. Every periodically it’s like starting the dungeon again, giving you a chance to reach tier 5.
I get what you’re saying, i guess i was hoping for something more and when it wasn’t what i thought it would be, it left me disappointed, that’s all.
You guys are missing my point, why put a sandstorm as an event in the first place? Why wasn’t it made to be a weather feature of the area, that occurred randomly and surprised you, rather than oh, the sandstorm’s gonna hit in 5 minutes, just like it does every hour of the day!
But i’m not talking just about sandstorm, it’s everything. Everything is becoming a clock race in gw2. It’s totally breaking my immersion in the game. The randomness of anything is gone it seems.
It’s a game. Lots of things in games don’t make sense. Why can I rez everyone except characters who die dramatically in the PS? Why do I heal super fast as soon as I leave combat. If you’re waiting for stuff in games to make logical sense. then I don’t know what to tell you.
It’s not the same sandstorm. The wind picks up periodically and it blows uncovering chests.
Have you ever done a dungeon in the game? When you go into the dungeon again, why does it have the same creatures and bosses you’ve already killed. Just think of it like a dungeon. Every periodically it’s like starting the dungeon again, giving you a chance to reach tier 5.
I get what you’re saying, i guess i was hoping for something more and when it wasn’t what i thought it would be, it left me disappointed, that’s all.
It’s quite challenging and exciting to be part of getting Tier 5. I do understand your problem with it, but I think that where it is is pretty kitten ed entertaining.
You have to remember a lot of people only can play for an hour or two a night, so they have to find a way to allow people to experience stuff.
I think the general answer to this question is so people with busy REAL lives can attempt to schedule their game time and have some possible chance to actually play the content they want to. On the other hand, how does the existence f these timers ACTUALLY adversely effect general game play?
If it’s simply an issue of something “not making sense”, or “ruining your immersion”, that might just be something you need to learn to get over.
Fate is just the weight of circumstances
That’s the way that lady luck dances
You guys are missing my point, why put a sandstorm as an event in the first place? Why wasn’t it made to be a weather feature of the area, that occurred randomly and surprised you, rather than oh, the sandstorm’s gonna hit in 5 minutes, just like it does every hour of the day!
But i’m not talking just about sandstorm, it’s everything. Everything is becoming a clock race in gw2. It’s totally breaking my immersion in the game. The randomness of anything is gone it seems.
I’ll give example for game mechanic and for lore.
Game mechanic:
You need timed intervals so players can make schedules, and make strategies to reach their goals, keep depending of RNG to do the events would be bad.
Lore:
Some weather events in the world do happens in a timed interval, in the region of Amazon everyday around 4:00 PM rains and it last for about 20~30 minutes, and the time window of difference along the year is insignificant, it is even used as time reference for the local people, they actually say “OK, we’ll meet after the rain”, so a timed sandstorm isn’t really an immersion breaker if you loose a bit the game mechanic part.
(and the other 8 elite specs maxed too)
Timers are being used either to: create extrinsic challenge in events by adding a time factor; or to allow players to know when to go to X to do Y so they don’t need to wait around for (potentially) a long time.
I do agree with the OP that sandstorms appearing like clockwork is kinda jarring to immersion. If ANet had at least added some in-game explanation like:
“The Zephyrites had a great magical hour glass, and every half hour, after the wind crystal sand has run through, it would whirl upwards again into the upper half for another hour. But now the glass is broken, and the crystal sand has mixed with the sand of the desert, creating a deadly storm that you can set your clock after.”
Immersion breaking my butt.
You know what breaks immersion? A 2 foot tall Faren in a tiny red speedo.
Didn’t we learn that hidden timers and random intervals are incredibly boring from all those world events? I thought we were over this.
Unpredictable events hinder organization and coordination. Random world events may be more immersive when you are exploring the world, but in the long run they inhibit the formation and growth of a community.
Putting major world events on a predictable schedule has done wonders for the game; instead of a new zone with people wandering around on their own, there’s usually some amount of organization taking place – at least a pin running between events farming. Even that is huge for pulling people into the game and getting them to stick with it.
Unpredictable events hinder organization and coordination. Random world events may be more immersive when you are exploring the world, but in the long run they inhibit the formation and growth of a community.
Putting major world events on a predictable schedule has done wonders for the game; instead of a new zone with people wandering around on their own, there’s usually some amount of organization taking place – at least a pin running between events farming. Even that is huge for pulling people into the game and getting them to stick with it.
I think I’ve already stated that I understand and do agree that some things have to be on timers, certainly any events of note etc, but for some reason having the dust storm being timed just put me off. To me, dust storm shouldn’t have been part of the event at all, but w/ever.
In a game, not everything should be timed, this is not real world. I mean are we playing a fantasy game or not? There should be some balance here, some unexpected stuff or else everything becomes a clock-race, just like in real life. When i play i game, i like to get lost in it, but i’m finding myself (despite myself) rushing against the clock just like everyone else making me feel like I’m participating in some kind of a real life race rather than playing a game.
The game didn’t start out this way. I’ve been playing since BWE1 and I love this game, but it’s turning into a clock race, where everything is on a timer, including a friggin sand storm!
Sandstorm was something i was really looking forward to in LS2, but by turning it into a timed event, it’s taken a shine off it for me. A sandstorm should occur randomly, not at some predetermined time, as it is now and when it comes on, everyone mindlessly race to find those chests like there’s no tomorrow.
This goes for just about everything in the game, the timed aspect jumps, the timed bosses u have to kill within certain time, the timed events in general and it just goes on.
I can understand some things have to be timed but a sandstorm! Seriously, take the clock away!
pretty much.
So much for a living dynamic world, its all timer based and boss rotations now a days.
The whole, on a schedule thing even relates to weapon sets, as those are limited time (dont try to mention weapon ticket scraps unless you want a slap! :P)…
Game is more grindy than any other I can think of. And thats totally not what it was supposed to be.
Unpredictable events hinder organization and coordination.
Just the opposite, they encourage communication and cooperation. If something happens randomly and needs tons of folks to succeed, people will shout for help and direct people to the event. If everything’s on a timer, no one needs to communicate anything. When’s the last time anyone popped into LA to announce a world boss event before the mega server meld?
I’ve seen enough server rallies in FF14 to whoop Odin to know this isn’t a bad way to do content as long as it’s not over too soon and needs enough folks that people are forced to recruit help.
Timer is just one boring thing in a chalice of boringness.
The same mechanics are used over and over and over in every part of the game and new living content.For example:When you fight a boss near a cliff or bridge or something high be sure that boss will use something to knock you down and so on invulnerabilities at certain points etc etc.Boring.But if they keep adding content like these that means they statistics are good and ppl plays the contents so they keep it up like this.
The only part what I like is to roleplay my thief but it can be more versatile with some class specific mission but this won’t happen anytime soon.
I don’t mind the sandstorm establishing tempo for a zone, but I would like it if future iterations of the idea would have longer cycles.
Say, for example, we go into a new zone and it has a map-wide event. It should be on a two-hour cycle with a half-hour “sandstorm” period, so that there can be interdependencies in the events in the 1 1/2 hour period before the storm. Though I haven’t done all the events, the only interdependencies in Dry Top seem to be 2-stage ones.
The game didn’t start out this way. I’ve been playing since BWE1 and I love this game, but it’s turning into a clock race, where everything is on a timer, including a friggin sand storm!
Sandstorm was something i was really looking forward to in LS2, but by turning it into a timed event, it’s taken a shine off it for me. A sandstorm should occur randomly, not at some predetermined time, as it is now and when it comes on, everyone mindlessly race to find those chests like there’s no tomorrow.
This goes for just about everything in the game, the timed aspect jumps, the timed bosses u have to kill within certain time, the timed events in general and it just goes on.
I can understand some things have to be timed but a sandstorm! Seriously, take the clock away!pretty much.
So much for a living dynamic world, its all timer based and boss rotations now a days.
The whole, on a schedule thing even relates to weapon sets, as those are limited time (dont try to mention weapon ticket scraps unless you want a slap! :P)…
Game is more grindy than any other I can think of. And thats totally not what it was supposed to be.
The schedule of the boss thing isn’t in game though, it’s out of game. If you want to be immersed, don’t look at the schedule. That’s on you.
It’s like the wiki. It’s always there, but I don’t use it to find out where I need to go.
OP, I understand what you are trying to say, but I think you were expecting the wrong things from the sandstorm event in Dry Top. It was not designed to be a dynamic/random weather system; it was designed as a cyclical mechanic of the zone, to stimulate participation in map events.
It would be neat if the open world had an unpredictable weather system, with varying degrees of precipitation, wind, etc., but Dry Top was not an attempt to address this desire. The fact that you wanted sandstorms, and the fact that Dry Top has a sandstorm-themed event cycle, is a coincidence. I think it works really well, as long as you take it for what it is.
I do agree somewhat about the timed nature of the aspect powers, though. After the magnificently-designed Labyrinthine Cliffs, it feels a little cheap to have those abilities kept on a leash. It reminds me of how in the old Mario games, if you got a special power, you could keep it forever, as long as you didn’t get hit or change into something else. But then in Super Mario 64, the special powers were always on a short timer, which guaranteed you could only use them in specific places. I understand Dry Top isn’t intended to be another Labyrinthine Cliffs, but I have to wonder if the time limitation on the aspect abilities is needed.
It’s also really jarring to be fighting an enemy while the zone transitions into a different phase, and have the monster disappear right before your eyes. Really?? That’s actually pretty sloppy.
(edited by Fyrebrand.4859)