Guild Wars 2

Lately it seems to me that event design has more moved in the direction of telling bigger stories about the war (currently against Mordremoth). The Silverwastes is a nice map with a cool theme – basically a single big meta event chain, but imo it lacks a bit of the smaller event chains which tell interesting side stories.

Drytop also suffers from this problem, even though there are some smaller chuncks of this there: the mine-event, the sparring master.

When I look back at the base game there were some of these smaller stories hidden in the world. It felt so rewarding to find them. I remember that hole in the ground (Kessex Hills), you explored the underground area and suddenly a small girl appears and needs your help.

Or the story with the giant which needed help to get to his fallen comrades.

Stories where characters have their own problems, besides the world-problem that is the Elder Dragon. Stories that need to be found and aren’t always there waiting for you. Dynamic Events.

Is someone else with me?

I was lucky to participate in the beta events – Verdant Brink is an awesome map with nice big-group events… but I missed those smaller hidden stories. (…which may have been locked from the beta).

I, too, like the small stuff. Especially stories relating to individual races divine beings.

I think the issue is that they released the game with a giant bunch of Dragons to fight. So we’re always immediately going for the next big bad guy – no time to settle into a calm world that has thhe little stories suddenly interupted by the next bad guy just ‘oh better get to the next one on the list.’

I’m sure they’ll try to incorporate smaller stories here and there but because we know there is a giant monster so they have to balance little things with the players thinking ‘this is irrelevant we know a Dragon is sitting over there waiting to destroy the world.’

I think it’s also about the big drop in quantity. Less events means less stories to tell.

Queensdale (if I count correctly) has 71 events and 17 heart activities.
Silverwastes has 43… but a lot of these are the same

take a look at the events yourself
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Queensdale
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Silverwastes

It’s like Anet doesn’t want to “distract” the players from the big metaevent-chain, so they deliberately leave out smaller, more interesting, events.

Coulter.2315:

I’m sure they’ll try to incorporate smaller stories here and there but because we know there is a giant monster so they have to balance little things with the players thinking ‘this is irrelevant we know a Dragon is sitting over there waiting to destroy the world.’

well, the base game had Zhaitan as well, nonetheless almost all maps had smaller interesting stories to tell.

I really hope Silverwastes was just an experiment in creating a WvW-like experience for PvE players and no indication of how the new HoT-maps will look like. From what we’ve seen from Verdant Brink so far…

it is absolutely beautiful
it is absolutely fun to explore
it is absolutely challenging and fun to fight the enemies
but
it lacks the unique small events which made Queensdale so much fun (from what we were allowed to see)

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Coulter.2315:

I’m sure they’ll try to incorporate smaller stories here and there but because we know there is a giant monster so they have to balance little things with the players thinking ‘this is irrelevant we know a Dragon is sitting over there waiting to destroy the world.’

well, the base game had Zhaitan as well, nonetheless almost all maps had smaller interesting stories to tell.

I really hope Silverwastes was just an experiment in creating a WvW-like experience for PvE players and no indication of how the new HoT-maps will look like. From what we’ve seen from Verdant Brink so far…

it is absolutely beautiful
it is absolutely fun to explore
it is absolutely challenging and fun to fight the enemies
but
it lacks the unique small events which made Queensdale so much fun (from what we were allowed to see)

But thats when you’re establishing your character, we’re all at max level now and those characters have been through a lot.

You need to look at it from the players journey, we’re all happy to do little things to learn about the world we’re playing in and establish ourselves at the start – it gets more tricky to balance that stuff in when we’ve then killed an elder dragon and been fighting the minions of the next.

Don’t get me wrong I love the small stories and they add character and depth to the world – I’m just explaining why its harder to get that stuff in with pre-established bosses sitting there. Can you imagine one of the LS releases being swapped out for a ‘smell the roses’ week (making it a month between plot developments).

Hopefully with the expansion they will have time to add these small things though – especially when they are adding new cultures.

Well the dynamic events were never great at telling stories. A lot of reasons I guess: they repeat, most tend to be very short, they don’t convey a lot of lore or history of the world.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Is someone else with me?

Definitely. Once upon a time, ArenaNet said:

ArenaNet

The more persistent events we can provide in a specific area, the less often each of the events in that area needs to occur, which in turn adds to the sense of an ever-evolving open world.

And then they went and designed the Silverwastes, which not only is basically two events occurring over and over in the same place – it’s also the same two events occurring over and over in four different places at the same time.

I wonder what happened that made ArenaNet change from trying to make events that are fun to trying to make events that people just grind over and over.

Maybe they are confusing popularity with how much a given area is placed, and by making the Silverwastes the most profitable area in the game, they think it’s being played a lot because people enjoy it, as opposed to because it gives more profit than anywhere else.

I will have a great laugh if ArenaNet makes HoT similar to the Silverwastes but less profitable, and then wonder why everyone and their mother is still playing only in the Silverwastes six months frow now. You can’t have multiple areas as the most profitable place where to farm.

Meanwhile, all the great and fun events – like the story arc about the boy who tried to fool the Grawl and save his family while his father was hurt – will remain exclusive to the core game.