Guild Wars 2

I have to give a big thank you to ANet for making releases with little introductions to new mechanics.
We have had Jumping Puzzles since release. Later, we started in Labyrinthine Cliffs last year, using the Aspect Crystals, and kept playing with them for Aspect Arena and Sanctum Sprint. With Dynamic Group Events being important to gameplay as well, we get bosses like the Marionette and Triple Trouble events that require a lot of coordination for success.
Then we get an area like Dry Top. The region uses everything we learned and applies it for us to take on. While some are just marveling at the views, others are in chat and on chat clients casually setting up an entire map to deal with the events and get better rewards.
Folks are using aspects to fly and race around with ease and little thought of possibly loosing their footing. We’ve got a handle on it by now.

As much as I like the story and the art, the immersion through a sly introduction in new content makes the game continually interesting to me.

I love everything about this release.. this region.. it’s really such an awesome place and I really love the mechanics

Personally I think co-ordination of the dynamic events and the need to time and plan for the whole phase detracts from the open world experience. Dynamic events which occur on a timer and encourage players to “learn the map” and trigger things en mass is such a huge departure from one of the great things about dynamic events – they are dynamic!

It loses the feel of exploring the world and performing random acts of heroism and replaces it with timetables and planning.

Shiren.9532:

Personally I think co-ordination of the dynamic events and the need to time and plan for the whole phase detracts from the open world experience. Dynamic events which occur on a timer and encourage players to “learn the map” and trigger things en mass is such a huge departure from one of the great things about dynamic events – they are dynamic!

It loses the feel of exploring the world and performing random acts of heroism and replaces it with timetables and planning.

Add to that, what is the plan for post-season 2 world? Will we only be seeing a few dedicated guild runs occasionally making T4/5/6/7/8/9 (whatever final tier will be)? Is there plans to reduce the requirements of the tiers? I doubt that, as season 3 and beyond funnel players into the next hot area, leaving a zone that can not be truly experience by the majority of players.

Shiren.9532:

Personally I think co-ordination of the dynamic events and the need to time and plan for the whole phase detracts from the open world experience. Dynamic events which occur on a timer and encourage players to “learn the map” and trigger things en mass is such a huge departure from one of the great things about dynamic events – they are dynamic!

It loses the feel of exploring the world and performing random acts of heroism and replaces it with timetables and planning.

While looking around Dry Top, I find myself asking “Wait, will I hurt other players by doing this event?” That’s a question we should NEVER have to ask ourselves. I won’t be surprised if it starts to turn Dry Top as toxic as Queensdale occasionally used to be during the champ train days.

EgonVenkman.1907:

Add to that, what is the plan for post-season 2 world? Will we only be seeing a few dedicated guild runs occasionally making T4/5/6/7/8/9 (whatever final tier will be)? Is there plans to reduce the requirements of the tiers? I doubt that, as season 3 and beyond funnel players into the next hot area, leaving a zone that can not be truly experience by the majority of players.

I’m hoping that they shift it to a personal meter rather than a zone-wide one. That way, one person can run around and take on every event they can, and get the rewards they’ve earned, and another person can be casually strolling around and not make things harder for the first person.

Have to agree with every, I’m not a fan of the race against the clock while using a third-party chart to see where I need to be while organizing an entire map for rewards most people don’t even want.

I agree with the OP about learning new stuff, that’s fun. But I don’t see the giant or the tiers ever being completed once the LS moves on. Honestly I don’t see the tiers being completed now when everyone knows how to do them, and the giant is rarely completed.

Palador.2170:

Shiren.9532:

Personally I think co-ordination of the dynamic events and the need to time and plan for the whole phase detracts from the open world experience. Dynamic events which occur on a timer and encourage players to “learn the map” and trigger things en mass is such a huge departure from one of the great things about dynamic events – they are dynamic!

It loses the feel of exploring the world and performing random acts of heroism and replaces it with timetables and planning.

While looking around Dry Top, I find myself asking “Wait, will I hurt other players by doing this event?” That’s a question we should NEVER have to ask ourselves. I won’t be surprised if it starts to turn Dry Top as toxic as Queensdale occasionally used to be during the champ train days.

Why would completing an event in Dry Top hurt another player? At the very worst, you’re ‘taking’ the miniscule geode reward for yourself and contributing to the next tier of rewards. Every event that gets completed is beneficial to the entire map, and the faster it gets completed the better. You have no reason whatsoever to feel guilty about doing an event. If you do, that’s not really a fault of the map.

Palador.2170:

Shiren.9532:

Personally I think co-ordination of the dynamic events and the need to time and plan for the whole phase detracts from the open world experience. Dynamic events which occur on a timer and encourage players to “learn the map” and trigger things en mass is such a huge departure from one of the great things about dynamic events – they are dynamic!

It loses the feel of exploring the world and performing random acts of heroism and replaces it with timetables and planning.

While looking around Dry Top, I find myself asking “Wait, will I hurt other players by doing this event?” That’s a question we should NEVER have to ask ourselves. I won’t be surprised if it starts to turn Dry Top as toxic as Queensdale occasionally used to be during the champ train days.

That’s the beauty of it, you can’t do anything but help other players by taking on events as every event contributes to favor, and there are, since the new section of the map was revealed, more events present than are required to reach T5.

At worst you’ll make someone complain that they missed a few geodes, but that’s no more important than someone complaining they missed karma as you can get more geodes from chest hunting than you’ll get from doing events in the first place.

I think the best way to handle this is to simply reduce the tier requirement as time moves on. No matter which zone, they will always become less popular over time as people go back to dungeon running or other parts of the game. Right now it still works, but I suppose we can only wait and see. Maybe there will be T5 organized groups even a year from now that you can taxi to.

Stormleaf.1769:

Palador.2170:

While looking around Dry Top, I find myself asking “Wait, will I hurt other players by doing this event?” That’s a question we should NEVER have to ask ourselves. I won’t be surprised if it starts to turn Dry Top as toxic as Queensdale occasionally used to be during the champ train days.

Why would completing an event in Dry Top hurt another player? At the very worst, you’re ‘taking’ the miniscule geode reward for yourself and contributing to the next tier of rewards. Every event that gets completed is beneficial to the entire map, and the faster it gets completed the better. You have no reason whatsoever to feel guilty about doing an event. If you do, that’s not really a fault of the map.

And if I get in over my head and fail the event?

Then it fails a minute or two after it would have had you never been there.

PopeUrban.2578:

That’s the beauty of it, you can’t do anything but help other players by taking on events as every event contributes to favor…

I disagree. There is some potential for a new/inexperienced player happening into an organized zone and contributing to the loss of the bonus favor available from several events. The two tendril events are the best example of this, where killing the main tendril first results in the failure of the bonus. Yes, this objective is indicated in the event description, but not all players are equally attentive.

Luckily there’s some leniency, and missing out on a bonus once or twice still puts the map in range of T5. However, earned favor and losses all add up, and that event could have been what tipped the meta. There is some risk, even if very slight.

Bluefox.9580:

Then it fails a minute or two after it would have had you never been there.

There’s at least one event that you trigger, something about a centaur shaman wanting to cleanse an area. I saw them standing there, and that’s when I had my “Is it a good idea to try this?” moment. And when someone else started it a few minutes later, I saw it had a timer of sorts on it and could be failed.

There’s also the chance that jumping in to an event will scale it up enough that it becomes harder. Will one person make that difference? Most likely not, but maybe.

The real problem is that there’s no good way for a casual or new player to KNOW if they’re going to cause problems or not. A lot of them may not care, but some do. That it’s possible is bad for those players, and bad for the ones trying for the best rewards.

I actually wondering if anet is following this curve for boss battles.

The bomb engineer boss which requires the player to use lighting aspect to jump between platforms feel a bit different. I guess Anet are testing and bouncing ideas around.

Palador.2170:

Stormleaf.1769:

Palador.2170:

While looking around Dry Top, I find myself asking “Wait, will I hurt other players by doing this event?” That’s a question we should NEVER have to ask ourselves. I won’t be surprised if it starts to turn Dry Top as toxic as Queensdale occasionally used to be during the champ train days.

Why would completing an event in Dry Top hurt another player? At the very worst, you’re ‘taking’ the miniscule geode reward for yourself and contributing to the next tier of rewards. Every event that gets completed is beneficial to the entire map, and the faster it gets completed the better. You have no reason whatsoever to feel guilty about doing an event. If you do, that’s not really a fault of the map.

And if I get in over my head and fail the event?

I can see an event marked ‘Group Event’ failing by someone trying to solo it, but I don’t hold this against the player. I say good for them for trying to challenge themselves! Some ‘Group Events’ can be soloed by an experienced player, and many of them are more fun to solo if they possibly can be (legendary giant…yeah, a solo of that will never happen).

Unfortunately for some unsuspecting players, there are several events that are not labeled as being a ‘Group Event’ that are far more difficult than they should be for a single player to complete. These events do not seem to scale properly if only one person is taking part in it to where it can’t possibly be successfully completed without a group, which means it should have been labeled as a ‘Group Event’ but was not for some reason.

I do not see this as being the fault of a lone player for initiating an event and trying to take it on solo, but the fault of someone involved in the design of that event for not having it scale properly based on there being few participating players in the area, or for not marking it properly as being a ‘Group Event’ when it has the difficulty of a group event.

Also on the topic of events failing, I’ve not really looked into or noticed any other event in Dry Top that can be griefed, but there is one event that a single player can grief others and intentionally cause the event to fail (depending on the participant-griefer ratio and maybe the spawn time of the event items). I’m not sure the designer of this event took the potential for griefing into account when it was designed, which is odd considering they are usually really good about designing them to prevent it from being an issue.

Elestian.6134:

PopeUrban.2578:

That’s the beauty of it, you can’t do anything but help other players by taking on events as every event contributes to favor…

I disagree. There is some potential for a new/inexperienced player happening into an organized zone and contributing to the loss of the bonus favor available from several events. The two tendril events are the best example of this, where killing the main tendril first results in the failure of the bonus. Yes, this objective is indicated in the event description, but not all players are equally attentive.

Luckily there’s some leniency, and missing out on a bonus once or twice still puts the map in range of T5. However, earned favor and losses all add up, and that event could have been what tipped the meta. There is some risk, even if very slight.

Fair point there, but I think they’ve done a decent job designing the favor requirements in a manner that one person deciding to start an event can’t just tank the whole thing. If you don’t make, say, T5, it’s not going to be because one guy missed a bonus, it’s going to be because the whole map missed a lot of events.

If fact, as these events spread out I hope we see a much larger spread of small/soloable events that aggregate in to good progress rather than just a small number of zerg/group events that you virtually have to train between.

In this manner the events would work like they were originally intended, where players see something going on nearby, and help out with it, and the whole map working together separately has the same shot as the map that zerg up and runs a train.

I’ve reached the conclusion that the players of this game are going to ball up and zerg rush, whether it is the most effective means of success or not. They don’t care.

Shiren.9532:

Dynamic events which occur on a timer and encourage players to “learn the map” and trigger things en mass is such a huge departure from one of the great things about dynamic events – they are dynamic!

Big +1 to this!

As much as I love and appreciate the many improvements ANet has brought to the game (such as mega-servers, more interesting enemy mechanics, fun boss fights, improved character development and story telling, lots of convenience features, etc.) I always find it a little bit sad to see that they must have lost all their trust in what I still deem as the most intriguing innovation that they could have brought to the genre. What is left of that original concept of dynamic events is little more than just timed invasions or public quests as they have already been done before.

Also, I like that there are always players around to join an event, but I don’t think that it had been necessary to basically implement farming trains directly into the game by giving boss events a public time schedule, or by announcing champions map-wide. It takes a lot of fun from events when you are no longer able to tackle bosses in small groups of, say, 5 random players who happened to randomly tumble upon that event, since within seconds dozens of players will port in to make essentially every boss fight a big 80v1. The mega bosses (minus Teq and Tripple-Wurm) are currently essentially unplayable since they are just zerged down in mere seconds by way to many players.

Well, I don’t want to sound too negative (since I still basically like the way how the game improves with each update), but there are also some developments that I am not particularly fond of.

~MRA

Elestian.6134:

Yes, this objective is indicated in the event description, but not all players are equally attentive.

That’s not the game’s fault, is it? It’s the player’s fault entirely. Most of the time, when there is actually some organization going on, the players doing tendrils will yell in map/say chat to stop and do it properly. You can apply this to every other event. If you’re that bad at paying attention why are you even playing.

Miliko.5480:

That’s not the game’s fault, is it? It’s the player’s fault entirely.

Absolutely, which is why it’s unfortunate that this can harm the tier progression shared by everyone. I’ve watched players with cleave and large cone AoE inadvertently whittle down and prematurely kill the main tendril, seemingly without meaning to and in spite of my warnings.

Again, the risk is only slight, and it happens so rarely that it’s not a huge problem. Just more of a nitpick.