Guild Wars 2

I read this

Erasculio.2914:

I think the game became worse.

I think GW2 was released as something with a lot of flaws, but also with a lot of potential.

Take Dynamic Events, for example. Sure, many are – boring, telling no story, with no impact in the world. But some are amazing, showing how they could be used to make a truly dynamic world rich with small stories happening all around the players.

But then ArenaNet learned that players don’t care that much about dynamic events, unless they can be used to farm (even if farming requires people to exploit the event). So instead of improving the DE design, and making more of the story-based events, ArenaNet has focused on the opposite: using shallow events with no impact on the world, borrowing mechanics from other places, and repeating the resulting DEs all over the map.

Just take a look at the invasions. The Aetherblade event is just a copy of the “drive away the Aetherblades” events we had to unlock the baloons, which is probably why minions count in a per-kill basis, while pirates are under a per-event basis. The invasions are the same event repeated in multiple maps, just like the Instigator events in Southsun were the same event repeated twice in the same map.

Imagine if the game were like that at release. Instead of the Claw of Jormag, the Shatterer and Tequatl, we would have the same generic dragon minion spawning in three places in the world, using the exact same mechanics in all the 3 places.

This is not an improvement. This is ArenaNet wasting all the potential DEs had, while using events as an easy way to make players farm.

The same could be said about all other aspects of the game. In exchange for minor features (what did the wallet really add to the game? Other than freeing some inventory slots, it’s not really that much of an improvement), we got things that are either making the game worse (champion boxes) or wasting its potential.

Once upon a time, ArenaNet boasted that they would take a hard stance against exploiters. Then they lost a lot of players, and now they are afraid to ban the exploiters, fearing they would lose more players than they can afford to throw away.

I agree, but sadly messages like yours are being ignored by ArenaNet. You have written this very orderly and logically consistent, thank you for putting it so clear and expressing what I had in mind.

I’d like to add that for me GW2 was supposed to be a neverending, ever evolving world, which threw challenges at you and asked you to act, or else the consequences for the world would be grave. Instead of using dynamic events throughout the world that would change the world, based on if they were succeeded or failed by the players, they simply threw them in as a world-filler, always the same things being required of you and no real challenge involved.

Instead they started with “Living story”, a term so abused in this case, that it’s hard to tell what it even means anymore. The story doesn’t seem to do anything at all, it doesn’t matter what the player does… the story goes on without change even if nobody fought the a) Molten Alliance b) Aetherblades c) Holographics d) More Aetherblades e) Pointkitten sses in QJ f) Scarlet…

The example I like to use for what it should have been is the currently existing Centaur Event chain in Kessex Hills. At a certain moment the centaurs start to build a bridge, the players destroy the bridge and so on. The problem is, the event isn’t hard at all. Downleveled aswell as on-level players can succeed without difficulty.

But instead, what if the event was really hard and required you to rally players all over the world, because if you didn’t… the centaurs might become a real threat and change the world forever. They raid the villages in kessex hills, destroying structures (that’s right, destroyed permanently). This could set a whole of missions in motion. Players needing to recruit NPC soldiers to help them in the battle against centaurs, big battles that mean something. If the centaurs get through they permanently change the world, eventually possibly threatening trade routes (cutting off black lion trading?) and permanently killing npcs, buildings, mobs… maybe invading the capital of Kryta, Divinity’s Reach itself? Also, skill should be a major part of this, not the mindless zerging we see now. Depending on your ability to face of enemies alone (that’s right, the reward scales with the difficulty), you earn ‘allegiance points’ and can climb into a world system, becoming a noble with your own estate, or a thief that works for a local thief guild.

Of course this is a dynamic event… but one on a HUGE scale. This is what Guild Wars 2 needed… not the silly Living Stories we get right now.

The whole focus of the game needs to be orientated away from GOLD and toward FUN.
Gold makes Arenanet happy… but it doesn’t make the players happy, because everything is about it. Instead, drop “gold” and “money” as a whole, currencies shouldn’t play a major role in any game, cause they are associated with “jobs” and “chores” and people play a game to relax, not to stress out over chores they have to do.

Dynamic events will provide this, because you don’t have to work, you just play, succeeding in missions and seeing a world develop before your eyes, possibly getting to know characters in it very well, seeing them change and grow, and seeing your own story grow all the way. This is what makes a world living, and what keeps it living, for players. There’s no need to grind and farm… the story just takes it way, and you can do things to influence your role in it.

Rewards in this should be possible weapons from killing a specific one-time enemy, or getting a weapon from an npc who died on the battlefield, getting a new quiver from the cache of some rich player after you broke into his estate etc?

I know what you think… villains? Yup, I think players should be allowed to pick their role completely themselves, so if you want to go about stealing from other players, and risking penance / punishment for it, it’s your life, it’s your story. No problem for casuals either, you don’t feel like logging in for a week? Come back after, the world has developed a little, but it will go on

ArenaNet has such a promising playerbase and I think it’s time they start listening to it, considering their ideas and seeing how successful they can be if they adapt to the player’s wishes. After all… the player knows what sucks and what doesn’t.

When compared to it’s peers, GW2 is very successful. They must be doing something right.

I very much agree with you.

Outside the living story you have an enemy faction for each of the races.

Humans – Centaurs
Charr – Flamelegion
Asura – Inquest
Sylvari – Nightmare Court
Norn – Sons of Svanir

There is also the Quaggans and Krait. You also have the Tengu, Kodan and Ascalonian Ghosts.

There are DE’s throughout the game involving all these races which can fall within separate stories. Eg. All the DE’s between the humans and centaur is all one big story.

With that in mind, this is how I think it should’ve been.

You have the maps filled with POI’s, Vistas, hearts, etc. As per normal. Hearts are one time “quests” which is basically you helping someone out. So no different.

DE’s is where the difference is. These separate stories should be getting worked on by a team. So each story has it’s own dedicated team. Each team could even be broken down into sub teams, one for each map since stories span across multiple maps.

The idea is that DE’s, instead of being repeatable and triggering ever 10min, would simply spawn once completed by the devs working on that story. So they would have to have a system to put the events in on the fly.

They would design the events to allow for more than one outcome depending on player choices and/or success or failure. Once the event is over, the changes are made and don’t revert back. A lasting impact. The devs then take that outcome and work off of it to develop the next event. These events don’t have to be any bigger than the DE’s that currently exist and, if possible, they could cause multiple events in the same map or different maps to trigger at once. All part of the same over all story.

So aside from multiple events within the same story, you can also have events of the different stories triggering at once. So you could have an event between the humans and centaur triggering at the same time as an event triggering between the charr and flamelegion.

The events would trigger as soon as finished and the separate teams wouldn’t coordinate release times. This is so that there is a certain level of randomness on when these events happen, how many, how often, which locations, etc. and they should pretty much occur without warning.

The player then calls them out in map chat, guild chat (and over TS/Vent) and players rally to do them.

With all these events telling a story and having them occur on low level maps and high level maps alike, and the change to the map itself over time as a result, this would make each play through more of unique experience each and every time. It would make leveling alts much more enjoyable.

Pair this with npc’s actually having at least a daily routine and you will have a world that would indeed feel much more alive.

DarcShriek.5829:

When compared to it’s peers, GW2 is very successful. They must be doing something right.

Putting on my “unfair critic” hat:

No they don’t need to be doing something right, they only need to catch all the people bored with WoW and subscription-service MMOs who still want something to play which looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and gives loot like a duck.