Guild Wars 2

It seems the staple of most virtual role-playing games is to have the wilds filled to the brim with encounters of one form or another. While on paper this seems like a good idea, it can sometimes get to the point where you feel like you’re drowning in a sea of enemies.

If I had to provide some examples of what I’m referring to, I suppose at one end I’d give you a game like Final Fantasy, or any encounter-generating game, and on the other end I’d put an Elder Scrolls game. The kind of game where you have long wide patches of emptiness between any points of interest. These empty areas serve several functions, the most important being the breathing space needed to refresh yourself for the next chain of encounters.

Let me put forward a hypothetical situation: You’re playing on your own, you’ve come across an enemy camp with an event inside. You go inside, complete the event, and now it’s time to leave. Completely alone, you choose not to waste time fighting and opt to run and dodge through the respawned guards and patrols and make a bee line for the exit. You make it out with however many npc’s chasing you out. You hear them give the line letting you know that they’re giving up pursuit, and you can slow down and gather your bearings.

But what’s this? You got out of the fire, but back into the frying pan. You’re back into the endless grid of wild monsters that are now harassing you all the way back to your next friendly outpost. Why? Why must there be this net, this never ending sea of wild npcs between everything? To fill the game? I’d much more appreciate it if I didn’t have to duck and dodge and run to get to every single place in the game.

I’m not asking you to remove wild npcs, arenanet. I’m asking you to re-examine the map, and look at what places would do better with breathing space. That’s all. Even the random encounter games had breathing room, pokemon relegated it to tall grass, and I guess that’s essentially what I’ve come to suggest. There’s plenty of room in the world of Tyria to have wild spiders and raptors and what have you roaming about. But there’s also plenty of room to traverse the land without having to be punished for it.

I only really find this to be a problem for myself in the level 70-80 zones. It feels like every 5 steps you need to kill something. I really wish there were more open areas to run free and take in the wonderful artwork.

In general I have to agree, some of the maps are brimming with mobs (you can’t even open the hero page for 5 seconds without getting ambushed by something).

This is especially bad in areas with the risen, given how nasty they are.
I really like Frostgorge Sound, plenty of mobs, but also enough breathing room so if I just want to move about and grab some nodes I can play ninja and not have to fight for every step (except on my ranger, when my pet decides to agro everything we pass).

I’ve only had this problem in Orr. I mean come on, the undead are EVERYWHERE! It’s rare to even find a safe zone to AFK in while you take a bathroom break!

While the thought of changing the system is unrealistic, I would like mobs to be less thinly spread.

It doesn’t make any sense immersion-wise, and it makes traveling through zones fairly difficult.

I would rather see the occasional scout type mobs, and roaming patrol groups of 3 to 4, that are wiser to take on with a party, but can be solo’d.
The thinly spread net of single mobs that rarely move around is highly unrealistic when it comes to non-wild life.

DreamOfACure.4382:

While the thought of changing the system is unrealistic, I would like mobs to be less thinly spread.

It doesn’t make any sense immersion-wise, and it makes traveling through zones fairly difficult.

I would rather see the occasional scout type mobs, and roaming patrol groups of 3 to 4, that are wiser to take on with a party, but can be solo’d.
The thinly spread net of single mobs that rarely move around is highly unrealistic when it comes to non-wild life.

Yes, ideally wild npcs should be in areas, not all over the open. Pack animals stay together, and lone animals don’t. Funny how the grid is both yet neither.

Ideally, just relegate the wild npcs to areas.

Here’s another problem with this system. I was in Brisban Wildlands today leveling my Sylvari Thief, and I came across a patrolling mini-boss named Willem the Golemancer.

He was patrolling the area around his camp, and the event surrounding him was of course to stop him. So to do this, I needed to clear the area he was heading towards before he got there. It was messy. But what I noticed was he was walking through the hostile spiders and whatnot without aggroing them.

Maybe the fastest way to identify this problem for what it is is by coding the humanoid NPCs to aggro the same wild animals that would normally attack them just like us.

The respawn timer is too short. It’s so short that even in a TINY area that might only have 8 or 9 mobs and a handful of “objects” to erase/destroy, that by the time you take out 2 or 3 mobs (a few minutes tops) – the whole area has reset. Likewise all the surrounding zones have reset as well.

Even in those mini-area/zones you are unable to do a simple retreat due to respawns popping up at your back.

I’ve been away a while now, but I don’t recall the respawn timer being so brief during the first month or so of GW2’s initial launch.

It really is unfortunate, as this clearly takes away from the beauty of the game and any sense of immersion into the GW2 world — which is already hindered by non-aggro NPC’s that sit/stand around doing nothing, or spouting the same phrases day in and day out. The worst offenders in my mind are shopkeepers, craftsmen, etc that don’t even have a shop – they just stand there with a floaty icon above their head, or a notch on the map indicating they allow you to do “X” here.

You’re absolutely right. There is a very unforgiving pace in GW2, just as there was in GW1. ANet likes to cram as many mobs on the map as possible. That said, GW2 does it right most of the time by leaving the roads fairly clear of mobs. They’ve even taken the time to change spawn locations specifically to keep some overrun roads clear.

Some areas could use some safe corridors, even if you had to complete an even to have them available for some time. In some places enemies are evenly spread everywhere, not leaving any path at all to run when you are in a hurry.

Most if not all MMORPGs cram areas full of mobs because it allows for grinding. Taking that away would bring up the issue of the lack of mobs for players to attack if there is an overabundance of players in an area.

With that said, if Arenanet was willing to commit to making an entire system based around randomly generated encounters, then maybe that might resolve the issue.

I also think that for the most part the pacing of mobs matches Skyrim as much as possible without being Skyrim, sure I didn’t fight something every 20 seconds in Skyrim but they are two different games.

Also the fact that there’s so many neutral mobs in the game helps with creating not only more of a manageable situation if you say, pull 3 enemies and then there’s also 2 neutral mobs around, but makes a more believable world since not everything in a realistic world would be hostile and out to get you.

On the note of Orr. I kind of feel like Orr is a good example of why Blizzard in Wrath of the Lich King did not make Northrend entirely undead, Orr definitely gets the idea across that bad things happened to it, but that doesn’t necessarily create a fun experience or at least I felt fighting like 30 variations of Risen wasn’t the most fun thing in the world.

The problem is respawn times.

Something that would make it infinitely less irritating to move through zones would be a timer on the player that disallows being stunned/pulled/knocked down/poisoned/chilled… unless you are in direct combat. It would just keep the player from being stunlocked to death while simply running past.

Running past a group of risen only to be stunlocked into them with 1/5 hp, have to fight while never having wanted to even be in the area in the first place isn’t challenging, its annoying. I feel the underlying issue is that Anet puts lots of mobs all with control attacks scattered all closely together with large aggro range and no variety between them with no cooldown and with high hp veterans scattered into the mix (high hp doesn’t equal challenge, just longer time spent hitting buttons). Oh, also they are typically way faster than the player because why not give a mob all strengths and no clear weaknesses other than being burst damaged after you are annoyed enough? What do you want? Depth?

Really, running through zones shouldn’t be that annoying. I can’t think of any other game where it was. Nevermind, I just remembered random encounters.. Yeah, it feels like random pop up encounters. It doesn’t even amount to a challenge because I typically burst damage the mobs responsible out of pure rage for them impeding my progress then continue on my path. They amount to speed bumps, and noone likes speed bumps.

Agree with Sahfur completely. Worse for me, every fight disorients me and I have to look at the map if I’d forgotten to set a marker earlier. Opening the map and having a good look can take time, in which the mobs have re-spawned. good times…. NOT.

Quarterdime.2049:

Here’s another problem with this system. I was in Brisban Wildlands today leveling my Sylvari Thief, and I came across a patrolling mini-boss named Willem the Golemancer.

He was patrolling the area around his camp, and the event surrounding him was of course to stop him. So to do this, I needed to clear the area he was heading towards before he got there. It was messy. But what I noticed was he was walking through the hostile spiders and whatnot without aggroing them.

Maybe the fastest way to identify this problem for what it is is by coding the humanoid NPCs to aggro the same wild animals that would normally attack them just like us.

I don’t know about that particular mob but i do agree with this post. I know Anet do have mechanisms for NPCs to aggro wild animals, i occasionally see it happening. I would have assumed it was a standard thing but it seems it’s not.

I suppose though, having NPCs having to wade through the hordes of enemies the player has to could affect the difficulty of events you’ve mentioned, making it easier for the roaming mini-bosses of events to die.

NPCs are useless in fights but if they could distract the creatures more it would definitely be good.

So long as they revived with the same frequency as the creatures re-spawn, ha ha.

TBBH, Orr is the only place that really sucks for monsters. Esp, with all the contested areas. That place is really OP. Every area has their hot spots and cold spots, you just need to know where they are at. The high level areas are excessive mobs.

This is a game that begs you to play tourist, it is so pretty, so many things to look at. But, as has been noted, no time to do so in many cases.

Some places it is pretty impossible to even set up for a nice screenshot between respawns.

Some reknown heart NPCs actually need rezzing. And you will find yourself under attack while conversing with them, or taking time to see what they have for sale.

I think a prime example is Dredge Caves like in Frostgorge, some of them are amazing, so much stuff, structures, paths, begging to be looked at.. but if you pause to actually look, you hear “diigggy!!” and some annoying little creep insta knocks you off the ramp for a falling death.

Events supposed to scale to the number of players within its boundary.. it would be nice if maps/areas would do something similar.
The more active players are in a specific location, the more mobs spawn, and the faster they respawn..
As it was already pointed out, the worse for this is Orr.. you cannot take 3 steps without tripple-aggroing, and by the time you kill that last enemy, the first one is back already :/
A more intuitive system would certainly be welcomed!

This annoys me so much…
Was wandering in Kessex hills, enjoying the scenery (a lone tree in a grassy landscape, so lovely <3) and then I got my butt bitten by a bunch of wargs -_-
No wonder people use waypoints so much!

This pic says all lol
http://www.lolbrary.com/fullsize/92/fullsize-life-was-harder-for-men-back-in-the-day-10092.jpg

ManahAngelEyes.5069:

This pic says all lol
http://www.lolbrary.com/fullsize/92/fullsize-life-was-harder-for-men-back-in-the-day-10092.jpg

It certainly does!

The only place this really bugs me is in Orr. It’s near impossible to run through any of Orr.

Quarterdime.2049:

ManahAngelEyes.5069:

This pic says all lol
http://www.lolbrary.com/fullsize/92/fullsize-life-was-harder-for-men-back-in-the-day-10092.jpg

It certainly does!

Especially the one in the top left corner, it’s like he’s trying to rez someone and gets aggro’d bad (had this happen many times!) XD

Looks like GW2 is using a TICK for a given area/zone – and even though it may very well be 90s-120s like the Dev’s suggest it has no bearing on when the mob has died —- instead it’s a constant: so when a mob dies it is respawned when the next tick occurs – be that 1s or 120s.

The best idea’s I’ve seen in various threads discussing Respawn issues were:
1) Stop making corpses disappear almost immediately.
2) Allow looting of corpses until the whole zone (or section of said zone) resets.
3) Variable respawn rates, dependant on number of players fighting in said zone.

Variable respawn rates could be accomplished in a number of different ways:

• The respawn rate/timer could be as large as 30 to 60 minutes, which is reduced exponentially, logarithmically, or even a simple polynomial based on how many players are in a zone, and how long they stay in the zone.
  —- Thus, players that just run through a zone would have little impact on the respawn timer.

• Number of and density of mobs should be based from the standpoint of a single-player. The more players in a given zone, and the longer they are there and fighting. The more mobs that get called (instantiated/generated/created) for support.
  —- Thus if a zone was balanced to 10-20 mobs for a single player – it would likewise start at that many for larger numbers of players in a given zone, but those 10-20 mobs would call for assistance (and more mobs would spawn) as the number of players in the zone increases.

These general ideas/changes would allow the world to feel more persistent – mobs stay dead longer; zones stay empty longer —- while still algorithmically being able to support multiple players killing in a given zone (quicker, shorter respawn rates). Which would also lend weight to making players explore a little more and not camp out in a single zone to kill ad-nauseum.

Balderstrom.5809:

Looks like GW2 is using a TICK for a given area/zone – and even though it may very well be 90s-120s like the Dev’s suggest it has no bearing on when the mob has died —- instead it’s a constant: so when a mob dies it is respawned when the next tick occurs – be that 1s or 120s.

I didn’t even notice that but I think you might just be right.

I agree with the OP. Having to endlessly fight does NOT make a MMO exciting, it’s exasperating! Like trying to figure out how to get to that vista point but have to fight mob after mob after mob while trying to do so. Or trying to get a breather after a hard fight but get attacked everytime you stop. Etc. While most zones aint as bad as the mob density in RIFT, some zones (Orr) rival or even exceed that.

Now dark age of Camelot did it right. Aggressive mobs were located in quest areas, the rest of the map had very few, if any, aggressive mobs. Why one could actually travel and check out sites without getting swarmed! Whatta concept!

Orr seems to have a bug where it spawned multiple mobs pr point, and is being fixed.

This is what it should look like. http://i45.tinypic.com/wvagsp.jpg

This is what it shouldn’t. http://i49.tinypic.com/xf4v0x.jpg

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

…

I think a prime example is Dredge Caves like in Frostgorge, some of them are amazing, so much stuff, structures, paths, begging to be looked at.. but if you pause to actually look, you hear “diigggy!!” and some annoying little creep insta knocks you off the ramp for a falling death.

Yeah, that really annoys me worst is when you push mob off a cliff or ramp he/she/it wont fall but “sticks” to the edge. Really it should be the same for both sides. Its totally unfair players can fall to their death but not mobs.

I do so agree, with the Quarterdime. Specially during the early lvls when you are really, really squishy, being sent into a cave to complete a mission, completing it then having to fight your way back out of the cave is a recipe for certain death, just because of what seems like almost instant respawn times, dammint I hate dying so much!

Why does the game need to spawn enemies in places with no players around?

What if you make a game that spawns enemies just outside the players view. It could create more unique encounters and events. Although it would require less players on the map.