Hello, I’m not sure which thread I should post this feedback under, so I hope I get merged into the correct one, sorry…
I believe that I understand the intentions of the inactivity timer for dynamic events. It’s to punish people who are AFK and/or leave the area after only a very small amount of participation. While I agree that these are problems we face in GW2 open world, I don’t think that this was the right solution.
This inactivity system punishes some players who are legitimately attempting to play the game. Sometimes a player dies, and can’t make it back to the event in time before it finishes and they’re left with nothing, even if they were there for a significant portion of the event. Sometimes a player is following an event and participating, but sees something off to the side that they wish to go get on the way. Sometimes, a player might get a phone call in the middle of a long event, or some other brief real-life interruption, and lose participation credit because of it.
This creates negative feelings about events. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it stressful; but it really feels like using intimidation tactics to force players to stick to an event to its completion, always fearful of dying and other players not resurrecting them (I can attest to this, in addition to being openly harassed for dying!) With the inactivity timer looming over, it makes events feel like competing against an invisible clock that counts down a player’s usefulness, and they have to keep pushing to reset the clock.
Guild Wars 2 shouldn’t have things that make people feel rushed, or stressed, or intimidated, or undervalued. Instead, it should promote healthy player behaviours while deincentivizing (but not punishing) unhealthy ones. So I propose a different solution.
Instead of an inactivity timer, make the Silver and Gold tiers of participation rewards much harder to obtain. This will reward players for sticking with events for a significant part of their duration, while not punishing players who tried and failed to do so, because they still get Bronze as a consolation prize for minimum participation, i.e. killing or assisting a kill on at least one monster.
The immediate counter-argument to this is “Wouldn’t that just reward/require high DPS builds?” Well, not quite. At the moment, Gold is so easy to get you could do it in your underwear with a level 0 weapon and no traits. I’m sure that, even with a very heavy buff, players could do it in any gear or no gear at all, just base stats, which is why we have base Power in the first place. Yes, this may inadvertently still reward some “leechers” who tag and run to the next one, but it would make their playstyle much more difficult, and it doesn’t punish those who are actively attempting the event and are perhaps less skilled or otherwise. And besides, even the current inactivity timer still allows some players to tag and run.
The goal I want to push here is that positive reinforcement should be the name of the game, not punishment.