Hello everyone.
I have spent some more time in Orr lately and, as in much of the other content, there were some things that bothered me. Its the events there and the requirements to start them.
As most of you I believe that players should be able to make a difference in the world. Our actions or failures should determine the course of a specific area at least a little. From the ingame perspective, we all fight towards the same goal – overthrowing the dragons corruption and freeing Orr (and getting sweet loot, XP, Karma and money while we are at it
). In the beta there was a part of a questionaire after each DE which asked “Impact on the world” – I mostly left that blank or unanswered, because I had no real idea what it meant (or what the impact actually was)
.
My issue now is, that players only can change the outcome of big events by participating in it, not by really starting their own chains. I would like to take the Altar of Betrayal as an example. We need to gather reinforcements from all 3 invasions of Orr, gather at the pact rally point and then march onwards. On paper, that sounds perfectly fine – the problem is, that NPCs are weak idiots. They march onwards and without us, they would get slaughtered within the first 500 meters of the pact rally point.
Why is that? I believe it is to enforce the necessity of player participation. Without us, this endeavour is doomed to fail. Even though the pact is technologically advanced, have trained agents, soldiers and scholars, they can’t compete with Zhaitans supremancy without us, the players.
I do agree with that assesment, however I think it is somewhat poorly executed because the difference in respective strength between friendly NSCs and Players is just too great. It raises the question: why do we need the pact to rally forces to march on the Altar anyway? Most of them are propably going to die while we have the means, the power and the will to destroy Zhaitans minions and see it through (or fail, because the champion risen abomination tears through us with its 25 stacks of frenzy ).
Wouldn’t it be more accurate if you could, for example, speak to an NPC and tell him “Hey, we are going to attack the Altar of Betrayal, even without your help. It is important we interrupt the flow towards the statues of Balthazaar in Orr.” Then he could pop an event zone that tells players to rally and gives the “Quest shield” to the player initiating the event and now you have to fight your way to the altar, kill the risen priest and stop his ritual. As we all know, the support through NPCs is not important. They run in, eat a fireball to the face or a warbanner and die. They accomplish nothing – why are they there in the first place? As flavoured cannon fodder? It gives some sense of drama, but it is so ineffective it bothers me quite a bit
There could even be activities in the game that let your character learn different means to accomplish what, as of now, only NPCs can do. Imagine, if you could be the scholar that has read up on Orr to know about Malchor and his demise and the Altar of Dwayna. Why can’t you construct the machine that disables the powerflow in the Spark of Ilya or in any other seal? In WvWvW you can construct siege weapons, upgrade locations, start attacks or call your allies to defend your keeps. That is what makes WvWvW so great in my opinion.
Would it be possible to let players, at least in the great warzones (Cursed Shore, Straits of Devastation, Malchors’ Leap), start Event chains completly on their own, maybe with a more challenging difficulty and let them learn the means now only employed by NPCs? I for example would love to count myself amongst the scholars of Orr, knowing how to dispell seals and such devices.
The problem of Event farming might come up, but once a chain has run to its end, the event stops. Resetting it would require several steps and could be enhanced, for example, with something like the firestorm the risen priest of Balthazaar creates. In a time window of mb 10-15 minutes after the risen regain control of the altar, a firestorm appears and damages players and npcs alike in the area. While it would be possible to attack again short after, doing that while fire rains down on you would be considerably harder.
Would such an idea be worth considering?
Kind Regards from Germany