Guild Wars 2

Many players have complained about Teq. The problems range from it being too difficult to massive queues.

But most players a missing the biggest problem, that Teq is a badly designed world event. I will explain why.

What exactly is a world event? That means the whole world is involved. World events are not dungeons, where it is “a few adventurers vs a few mobs”. It is not dynamatic events, which happens every 30 minutes and then repeat itself.

World Events are wars. They are history changing. They last a maximum of 1 week. The results will forever be written in history books.

Humans lost to centaurs in this battle? Well then they forever lost to centaurs in this particular battle. That’s history. That’s what happened. History will never be the same after this.

So what do I mean? First, watch this video from Rome Total War II.

I want to make it clear that this is one example. This is not the only way to do World Events. But these are some fruits for thought.

What I got from this:

1) An huge army of allied NPCs and enemies NPCs were already fighting. That’s the main battle.
2) Players lead a small team to help. Their first task was to kill the enemy sieges from behind.
3) At the main battle, Players engage the right flank of the enemy (only a small, specific portion).
4) Cutscenes explaining the current situation. (from a respected commander, who oversees the whole battle.)
5) Cutscenes explaining the next mission objective. (from a respected commander, who oversees the whole battle.)
6) World Events should be done on an alternative server/map.

Why is this important?

1) In major world events, the players cannot be the only ones fighting. The players are adventurers. They are not part of the army. That’s why it is important for ally NPCs to fight in world events.
2) The 70 players involved in world events are considered one squad. Their size is tiny compared to the army of 1,000s of NPCs. So the players are better fit in spec-ops. In this case, going behind the enemy front and kill their siege weapons.
3) The players are asked to engage only a small, specific section of the enemy force. The NPCs will deal with the rest.
4) Cutscenes explaining the dire situation makes the world event more epic.
5) Cutscenes are a great way to show the players what they need to do next.
6) I think Anet wants to avoid interfering with new players. That’s why they are very hesitant to make major changes to existing pve maps. If that’s the case, why not make brand new alternative map altogether.

For example let’s say there is a battle inside Lion’s Arch. Why not make new maps for this city? Lion’s Arch in the alternative map can have NOTHING to do with the Lion’s Arch in the real world. In the alternative map the city can be HUGE. It can be a mega city.

The main point is the make the game play great and atmosphere epic. That’s all the players care about tbh.

Example of city size: (e.g. During Cantha’s sea invasion against Lion’s Arch)

The players winning to losing the battle of Lion’s Arch will have an affect on that story. But new players won’t be affected? Why? Because it is set in an alternative Lion’s Arch that doesn’t even look like the Lion’s Arch on the world map.

Let’s say the players lose. Then by history, Lion’s Arch is indeed destroyed. That is what happened because the players failed. But back in the real world, Lion’s Arch remains the same, because the timeline hasn’t happen yet there.

So there we have it. Everyone is happy. Lion’s Arch is destroyed as per story. But everyone can still access Lion’s Arch as if nothing happened.