Guild Wars 2

Couldn’t you also just provide DE’s to players within owned keeps…which provide supply?

It seems like a much more refined idea.

You take a keep…
“Go get us supplies, "HERE""
You go “HERE”
You complete the objective and hope no one is going to stop you.
If they do, you PvP…which is the whole point of WvW

I haven’t played for a while…so I might be misinformed.

Can a single guild own multiple keeps?

Your idea makes sense, and is essentially how I thought the game was going to play out early on.

To expand on it….it would make sense to segregate small and large guilds by changing the reward on whatever keep is currently owned.

Small cap keeps can only be captured and occupied by small cap guilds.
Mid / Large work the same way.

Depending on the size, it would cost more to upgrade/maintain, but the reward would be increased. In addition, depending on ‘connected’ keeps, the reward would increase still. <- This means, the more keeps your realm occupies the more reward you get.

What this does is further magnify your idea of getting people to defend/conquer.

Large guilds would stay occupied with taking larger keeps. However, they would benefit most by leaving the keep and helping smaller guilds. However, by doing so, they leave their keep undefended.

Imagine for a second that A large guild owns a keep, everything’s quiet so they decide to help the smaller guild take a small keep. Half way through, their keep suddenly comes under attack, and they bail, leaving you to finish the last half by yourself, or go help.

The reality of it all is that WvW is simply horribly designed. It needs to be scrapped and remade from the ground up; offering proper incentives, abandoning the ridiculous idea of splitting the zone into 3 separate identical zones, spacing out keeps, eliminating the dolyak supply caravans and replacing them with player DE’s (i.e. go chop down wood in the PVP heavy forest).

It’s so depressing looking at this game. The game designers should quit now and be replaced by people with talent. <- harsh, but true. They don’t know what they’re doing….unless its some hidden agenda such as, “don’t worry about the game and try and squeeze as much money as we can from our fanbase.”

anzenketh.3759:

iFocus.3781:

And as for commanders not being visible on the map:
“/m(/t) where are the commanders?” – followed up by a map location ping.

Zergs and Blobs are as much part of this game as the players in it. That said I’m not a big fan of them, and tend to roam with a smaller group.

As for the map chat asking where the commanders are at. It is true that some may still follow and Zergs/Blobs will still exist. However they will not be created as easily as well as they will be reduced in numbers.

Frost with there being multiple commanders on the map they will most of the time likely try to take multiple objectives. Thus splitting up the zerg. Most objectives can be easily taken with 15-20 people.

Notice the title never said how to eliminate zergs in WvW. I know that is not possible.

notice that despite the word I chose to preface my suggestion, it was indeed a way to reduce zergs, not eliminate them.

iFocus.3781:

frOst.2198:

For instance. in order to bring down a gate, you must first capture and hold the “gate shield” which happens to be on the other side of the keep. Occupying this area would allow the gate to be damaged.

I would tune down the self love a bit and consider this:
1: Defenders would have to pay zero attention to the gate, focusing 100% on the area that enables damage.
2: Attackers might just completely ignore the way you want them to act, and blob the said area, then leaving two zombies there while moving on to the gate.

And as for commanders not being visible on the map:
“/m(/t) where are the commanders?” – followed up by a map location ping.

Zergs and Blobs are as much part of this game as the players in it. That said I’m not a big fan of them, and tend to roam with a smaller group.

beat you to it. sorry. (I just mentioned this above).

I mentioned too that it could be solved. I didn’t explain how, but here goes one idea off the top of my head:

The shield can actually be destroyed if enough damage goes through it. However, it can be repaired, not by supply, but through players ‘lifeforce’

Either by clicking on the gate, or some other object, the defending player will ‘repair’ the shield, and they will receive a debuff which bars them from doing it again for ‘x’ minutes.

The variable ‘x’ is a balancing factor based on the shields HP, the amount that is healed, and how many players the devs want to be defending at any given time.

Coopziana.1802:

frOst.2198:

Firstly, the argument that waypoints make them redundant is horribly flawed, or simply demonstrates straight up ignorance to the point of ridiculousness.

Tell me, how do waypoints give the player the ability to…

a) obtain a new collection
b) look cool riding on one of those new collections

If you can answer that, then your first statement is not longer idiotic.

Thats completely ignoring the fact that you are trying to state that people NEVER have to run anywhere in this game. I am getting sick of hearing such a stupid counter-argument to mounts.

The only valid point is that they would get too big and cover NPCs, which imo, is just as ridiculous as the points made above, as Charr’s and Norns can do the same thing, as could a mob of players.

Ok darling, get off your soap box, quit your hissy fit and perhaps read past the first line of the post!

It’s just my person feeling that I don’t want to see mounts around the world…

Try reading the suggestion instead of reading things you deem as a personal insult!

The suggestion is fine, but don’t start your suggestion bashing other peoples desire to have mounts with reasoning that is completely ignorant and unfounded. It doesn’t make you look ‘cool’ or as ‘one of the crowd.’ It immediately nullifies your opinion to half your audience (assuming for a minute half your audience wants mounts).

Also, in regards to your suggestion, as I implied, people like the idea of collecting mounts and being able to work hard to obtain and show off something that others don’t have yet.

While this could be done in your raceway; if it doesn’t offer enough of an incentive, then no one would use it, and thus, no one would be able to show off their mount.

^ The idea was how to split up zergs. There would inevitably be need for balance testing.

However…in the case of this example, 3 people at the gate wouldn’t really do much, and would easily be crushed by any amount of defense at the gate. Therefore, if 57 others were defending the ‘shield’ area; yes, the gate would stay vulnerable, but they would never deal damage to i.

30 – 30 makes more sense. However, I would assume it would be beneficial to flux that number about as the defending team organizes and mounts attacks on either area.

Again, the main objective is to break up the power of a zerg. This idea essentially splits a zerg in half, like you said. You could require even more objectives to cut it down further.

The problem though, is that this would give defending teams a HUGE advantage. I haven’t played in a while though, so I don’t know if that kind of advantage is necessary. It could be balanced though.

the way to eliminate zergs would be to require multiple groups to be in multiple areas to conquer objectives.

For instance. in order to bring down a gate, you must first capture and hold the “gate shield” which happens to be on the other side of the keep. Occupying this area would allow the gate to be damaged.

That wasn’t really hard…but then again, i’m a genius, and the devs are only normal.

the way to make it more epic is to remove 3/4ths of the keeps, and make the area twice as big.

Firstly, the argument that waypoints make them redundant is horribly flawed, or simply demonstrates straight up ignorance to the point of ridiculousness.

Tell me, how do waypoints give the player the ability to…

a) obtain a new collection
b) look cool riding on one of those new collections

If you can answer that, then your first statement is not longer idiotic.

Thats completely ignoring the fact that you are trying to state that people NEVER have to run anywhere in this game. I am getting sick of hearing such a stupid counter-argument to mounts.

The only valid point is that they would get too big and cover NPCs, which imo, is just as ridiculous as the points made above, as Charr’s and Norns can do the same thing, as could a mob of players.

Bumping for more visibility

RusShiro.9241:

wow, you have great ideas! here is the thing though, i have repeatedlly tried to get people to not kill maw, to wait and see what he summons. its never happened and never will, because the majority of players dont care. pass your thoughts on to the devs though.

The solution … if they did implement an “Event Tree” selection, as detailed above:

For the Maw Battle DE chain.

Instead of simply spawning the Maw battle, it would have a 20% chance of spawning a more challenging one instead of the current default battle.

This would mean that 1 in 5 times, without proper coordination, the battle would fail.

Either failure would activate the same ‘next step’ in the Chain.

Looking for feedback.

Example 4: The Dynamic Dynamic Event.

The whole of Stage 3 is actually a huge DE Chain. But this time, it’s really a dynamic event.

Chain Event 1: You battle the gatekeeper.
Succeed: You move forward to the Catacombs
Fail: You retreat back to Stage 2

Chain Event 1 -> Succeed -> The Catacombs
Object: Randomization portals take you in circles. At least 5 players must make it to the end, where they can active switches to help move everyone else into the next area.
Succeed: You move on
Fail: After 10 minutes, all the portals teleport you into lava. You fail, retreat back to Stage 1! <- a different event from the one above!

Chain Event 2 -> Succeed -> Moving on
Now you battle the elder dragons ‘projection’
Succeed: If you beat it, the Elder Dragon won’t have a special move in Chain Event 3.
Fail: He has a special move that hurts!

Chain Event 3 -> Succeed/Fail -> Elder Dragon
You battle him.
Succeed-> Take over the keep
Fail -> Retreat back to “Chain Event 2 Fail” <-- This DE gives you the chance to ‘recover’ and battle the dragon again, otherwise, you continue the same retreat DE mentioned above.

Succeeding! If you win, you hold the elder dragons keep. The world comes together, the keep changes a bit, and you gain access to either a dungeon, or something else fun. I would actually make it so you can ONLY craft legendary’s at this time, using single item components, not 250 of anything.

It stays like this for an hour or 2, or depending on the time/difficulty it takes to get here, maybe even 12 hours – day.

Then elder dragon remnants start attacking every 30 minutes. Everytime you repel them, a new wave of monsters comes, stronger than before. Eventually, you can’t win, and you retreat back to Stage 1, and the elder dragon comes back into power through some story arc.

And the cycle continues. You hang around, or you go off to find another DE that might be interesting. Either way, the whole experience would be brand new.

This is what I imagined GW2 to be. And this is what it COULD be.

Thank you for reading. I was writing for almost an hour…so please be sure to comment/make suggestions below!

Example 3: Combine it all into an end game

Orr stinks. It was so completely underwhelming I don’t know how the devs hyped it up with a straight face. No offense devs, you built an amazing game, but you need to admit you really dropped the ball on Orr.

So whats the solution? Create a tug a war, pass/fail system, truly dynamic system.

(See attachment for more clear visualization.)

The final area should be something you need to conquer. It should feel like a trial in itself…an always on DE that is in constant flux which is affected by players contributions. But how do you do it?

Well, with DE’s of course, and something I like to call, “stages” used in tandem with the event tree detailed above.

For this example, imagine 3 stages, all of which can be represented in a linear fashion from the ‘front’ of the zone, through the ‘middle’ to the ‘end.’ Each ‘Stage’ represents a hub for DE’s, which pass success of fail, and lead to either a retreat DE, an advance DE, or a ‘hold the fort’ DE.

Imagine you are in Stage 2, the middle. The ‘event tree’ for this Stage consists of 20 different possible DE chains that can appear. To keep things fresh, it chooses only 3 of them (this number can be based on active players in the zone). Players then have something to do…go out and complete the quests.

To make things fun, here’s an example of one of the ‘rarer’ quests that could appear from the event tree. An unmarked NPC appears as he runs into the encampment. He walks up to another NPC and has a casual conversation about a mysterious light he saw in the forest. An inquisitive player notices this, and talks to him. The NPC admits to having seen a mysterious light.

Through dialog choices, the choice comes up, “Sounds creepy, maybe you should tell a captain!” or “Sounds like nothing.” You choose the first choice and the quest begins. You follow him to the captain, who suggests he go back gathers a small group and go check it out.

Keep in mind, the battle for Stage 2 is still raging. Players have to make the decision to branch off and do this quest, or make contributions towards, ‘succeeding’ stage 2 so that they can move onto stage 3 (where the hardest monsters and rarest loot reside).

However, this quest is rare, so
possibility 1)EVERYONE heads to it. Leaving the other DE’s to fend for themselves.
- Everyone gets half way through the quest, the other DE’s fail, Stage 2 fails, and this DE fails immediately, and everyone is forces to retreat.

possibility 2)People learned the hard way that 1) doesn’t work, and split themselves accordingly to fend off all the waves, while exploring the mysterious light.

So they get to 2, and fight monsters off. Then it opens a door, where you enter, and are presented with a map similar to the clocktower jumping puzzle! Cool. Well, this time though, you have 20 minutes to get <a variable> amount of people to the top to ‘sacrifice’ blood.

If you succeed, pause Stage 2, and enter a huge Dragon attack. Kill it, and receive some nifty rewards, or possible legendary components that go to everyone who contributed (no need for random! since the even itself was random!).

So Stage 2 unpauses, you go back to fighting, and succeed! An advancement quest activated, which requires 3 DE’s to be completed simultaneously (you have 30 mins). Just so happens that there are 3 bosses guarding 3 switches, which need to be activated to lower the bridge into the enemies fortress!

Somehow you succeed, and enter stage 3. Where you encounter the end boss of the game, and battle him in a series of DE chains.

Onto the examples:

Example 1: Alignment of the Planets.

Ever have that day where everything just lined up perfectly. Well, GW2 has that functionality as well. Ever see those big orange circles? What if multiple quests could ‘clash’ with each other.

Imagine two orange circles are approaching each other. Okittenup is leading a caravan down the road, another group is chasing a bunch of bandits who stole a key from the town the caravan is headed. If these happened by themselves, each group would finish their task and nothing special would happen.

However, this time, the 2 DE’s clash, and a new story line appears. Suddenly an all out brawl appears on the caravan. The players attempt to kill the bandits, but in the chaos, the bandit leader takes a look under the tarp of the caravan and finds a mysterious jewel in a case. Just so happens the key he stole opens it. Just before the caravan leader can say, “STOP!” the bandit leader touches the stone and starts screaming in agony. He lights on fire and a demonic voice speaks, “A vessel! I will rule this land again!”

Enter the new DE chain. What you just read was an example of a clashing DE. While its scripted, the randomization comes from the idea that the ‘DEs’ must align and be at the right time and place.

We’ll continue with this example and illustrate another form of randomization.

Example 2: The ‘Event Tree’

So the bandit leader has been possessed by an evil terror from a mysterious stone. Enter a success / failure point. He begins collecting the souls of the dead bodies. You have to interrupt him. If you succeed, <see below>. If you fail, he turns into a big monster and you fight him, hopefully kill him, if not, the event ends/continues, whatever.

Assume you succeed though. Now, this is where the game selects a ‘random’ scene from the event tree. Perhaps there are 2 possible outcomes for succeeding, both with a different probability of occurrence.

1. 50% chance: After your party succeeds, he flees. This would open up a new DE Chain. “Talk to Frodo about where he might have gone to”
2. 50% chance: After your party succeeds, he dies. This opens up a brand new DE chain. “Talk to Bilbo about the stone in the village”

See how that works? Not only does this give the devs the ability to spread out content and make sure it’s not conquered, but it also allows them to “add” more intricate storylines to DEs that already exist (whenever they want!). This makes it so players can go anywhere and be in any quest with a chance to see something they haven’t.

Lets face it. This game did not live up to promises. I don’t know what went wrong or why, but it did. (Keep in mind, this post is in regards to PvE only.)

Lets look at the two core problems.

1. There is a HUGE grind
2. DE’s are stale, boring, un-interactive, repetitive, etc etc etc

I’ll explain in more detail.

1. There is a HUGE grind

For a game that wasn’t supposed to have a grind, GW2 sure has a lot of grind.

Because there is no item progression, all new content can be tackled immediately upon release. This makes it impossible for them to release content without adding arbitrary roadblocks, whether its lockouts or a huge list of item components required for a new skin.

This is an extremely BAD idea. The route they took led to extreme repetitiveness. Everything you have to do in this game is repetitive (and realistically, you only do 2 things: farm things for gold, or farm dungeons).

The cause of this stems mainly from their incredibly poor distribution of item components. For some reason, they picked 250 as a good round number for collection goals of rare components. UGH! How completely unnecessary. They had an incredibly intricate dynamic event system in place that to this day, sits unused to its full potential. By incorporating rare item components into DEs, you no longer need to entice the player into grinding to ensure they stick around. So whats wrong with DEs?

2. DE’s are stale, boring, un-interactive, repetitive, etc etc etc

DE’s are(were) awesome. The way they work, the way they are just on throughout the world, the way you can succeed and fail … surely the DE designers couldn’t mess that up!

Or could they.

DE’s, as stated above are stale, repetitive, and just plain dull. No need to go into it further, if you don’t agree with me, you won’t agree with anything else I’m saying. Click the ‘X’ in the upper right please.

Still here? Well then i’ll cut straight to the solution for fixing not just DE’s, but also the item grind, all while saving the entire game in the process: The key? Randomization!

Make DE’s more random. “How will that work” you say? Glad you asked, because I am going to present the exact way to do it below, and explain how it will save this game. Be aware, randomization means a lot of things in this case, not necessarily how they are constructed, or where they appear, but a little bit of it all.

First of all, let me outline the benefits that I will be discussing in my detailed example of ‘implementing a DE with randomization’.

Firstly: It opens up the world. If a DE’s location is random, players must travel all over to find it. Which leads us to…

Secondly: If a DE is hard to find or access, then you can give special rewards for completing it. No one would rely on it, or camp it, or whatever because they simply couldn’t count on it. Coming across it would be a matter of luck, like everything else in this genre. The rewards can be anything from achievements to special items/components.

Lastly: It allows the devs to mix things up a little. Rather than farming lodestones from the same elemental group for 50 hours, instead, you spend 50 hours ‘playing the game’ waiting to happen upon a unique random DE encounter. This also allows them to add content at a leisurely pace and be sure that not everyone will tackle it or even be aware it exists (I thought this was what was going to happen with DEs anyway? what happened?)

I made this up, because I like the idea, and I’m bored at work. No photoshop…its paint!

see attachment.

This kind of got off topic. Maybe i’ll just change the entire OP

(continued example from above post)

total possible ‘success’ contribution is
DE 1 – 50points
DE 2- 30points
DE 3- 70points ( having varying degress allows static functions and doesnt require homogenization of point distribution when creating quests making it easier to VARY them).

These points are added and subtracted throughout the Event chain. For instance, if you succeed, then fail, then fail, and are presented with a tough encounter, but push back, you could receive full points! Its all based on flavor.

Therefore total amount of ‘success’ contribution points for Stage 2 is (50+30+70) = 150. (this is hidden, of course)

They could add a “challenge” multiplier if they wanted, to make it more complicated. Or not, this is just an example. Either way, figure out the lowest amount of points necessary for a Success, 150*.8 = 120 points required.

I’m simply providing a way to do it. Not advocating that its the best way. But its possible, and not very difficult theoretically. Of course, I dont know their system, but it seems like a system like this could be built on top of what they already have, as it wouldn’t interfere with how DE’s function, only with the success and failure call backs, which undoubtedly already exist.

Vol.5241:

OK, that’s a well-thought out event chain.

But put on your dev hat and think about the limitations
-what happens when there are so few people on the map to do such an event chain? They won’t go anywhere and they’ll be stuck farming the same events over and over until there are enough people to complete it
-what happens to low population servers? Nothing will get completed
-what happens when you have a huge zerg? Event completion will be easy and completed soon. And what after if you complete the meta chain? Restart all over and farm faceroll the chain?
-Programming isn’t easy. If you start building a huge event chain with steps and substeps as well as prerequisites, nasty bugs are going to come about which will most likely stall the chain. Yes, “well then they should fix those bugs”. It’s more difficult than it seems and it could take months. There is less risk of content-prohibitive bugs with non-connected events. Go look at how bugged Warmaster Chan escort is and how many events it prevents fom happening (8 by my count, including opening Arah)

My Dev hat is ALWAYS on. I will gladly (and easily) solve all your problems.

1.what happens when there are so few people on the map to do such an event chain? They won’t go anywhere and they’ll be stuck farming the same events over and over until there are enough people to complete it
-what happens to low population servers? Nothing will get completed
-what happens when you have a huge zerg? Event completion will be easy and completed soon. And what after if you complete the meta chain? Restart all over and farm faceroll the chain?

— This shouldn’t be a problem if event scaling is working properly.

However, it would be possible to implement a ‘scaling’ solution for the amount of dynamic quests active. In my example, I had 3. Lets look below for a better example of how it would work out:

Firstly, I would pull the variable of active players from total ‘Zone participants.’ So, use however many people are in the zone, not how many people are near the quest.

10 players -> 1 active stage DE chain.
30 players -> 2 active stage DE chains
50-100 players -> 3
100 + -> 4

Assuming more people are added throughout the “Stage”, I would have a ‘buffer’ timer, based on randomization. If Stage 2 begins with only 10 players, and 1 active DE, then half way through it, 50 more people log on, 2 more quests would ‘appear’ at Stage 2. I personally don’t see it as a problem if they leave. If those 50 people log off, leaving 10 to complete 3 DE chains, that implies lack of dedication and thus, you should fail the stage.

2. Programming isn’t easy. If you start building a huge event chain with steps and substeps as well as prerequisites, nasty bugs are going to come about which will most likely stall the chain. Yes, “well then they should fix those bugs”. It’s more difficult than it seems and it could take months. There is less risk of content-prohibitive bugs with non-connected events.

— I completely agree. Programming isn’t easy. However, probably 1 week after launch when I saw bugs appear, I would have began working on a globally applied ‘reset’ function that resets/ends a quest if no important variable changes after 1 hour. I still can not fathom how something as simple as that did not make it into the core design of the DE system. Assuming that does happen, it would easily provide feedback and data as to what point in the quest the problem occurs as well.

Anyway, bugs are already a problem with DEs, it shouldn’t be a reason not to implement a better idea.

Regardless, the idea I presented does nothing different other than cluster 2 or more DEs under another. While I do not know if this is implemented right now, it SHOULD be.

I.E

Stage2 – Middle:

Variables:
- What DE’s fall under it.
- What DE’s were selected to be active
- Out of the active DE’s what is considered a success rate to move to stage 3 – End? else { activate DE ‘retreat’ to Stage 1 }

Vol.5241:

“It turned out that all their ideas were implemented rather poorly and showed me that a.net, excluding their incredible art department) simply wasn’t as talented as I was led to believe through their hype (They are still talented! just not enough to fulfill their promises)”

How so? It’s so easy to get BIS items and end-game stuff simply by playing – not to mention there are alternatives.

If you want to ‘farm’ yourself to get other items then that’s your choice because you want it faster than others.

But the difference between grinding and farming is that the former is required an the latter is desired. I think you’re mistaking people farming cof or orr events for grinding.

edit;edit

First off, their dungeons were and are terribly designed. The exclusion of the trinity was supposed to be something interesting. It turned out the devs simply removed it with no suitable strategical replacement. ie. Enemies should ‘turn’ Enemy actions should be more telegraphed (i still don’t know why this is so hard). Boss fights themselves could have been (and still can) be more interesting. Unfortunately, I think this is one of their weakest teams.

Another thing they failed to deliver was interesting end game dynamic events. There is no war, no struggle. Orr is the worst zone in the game. They had set up a great system of success and failures, however, they never go past a single instance. I don’t know if this is an engine limitation, or just the designers being short-sighted.

Orr should be a giant zone of tug and war, ending with a battle with a dragon, occupation of its hold that grants bonuses, and an increasingly difficult amount of monsters (which drop rarer and rarer loots), which will eventually push you back to the start.

Now, you asked for this, and my creative prowess is flowing, so I will deliver:

Imagine 3 Stages of a zone: Front, Middle, End.

You are always in a Stage. Imagine for now, we are in Middle. Now, chains of DEs pop up at the same time.

1. Someone tells you to “Fetch boulders for siege weapons”
2. Someone needs you to help set up an encampment closer to the End.
3. A mysterious light was spotted, investigate
4-infinity : The devs could add an infinite amount at their leisure to add to the depth of this end game encounter. The rarity % dictates what events have a better chance of spawning.

In summary, when creating an event, it would have the following details:

a. Event Trigger Rarity
- what is the chances for this event to be part of this Stage
b. Contribution % towards next stage
- Based on the success and failures of the players actions in the event chains, how much does this event affect the next Stages events. See below example for more info
c. What special items can be found (or bosses spawned).

Example:

The 3 events above happen to spawn for the Middle stage. You are now ready to choose which you want to contribute to. You decide the mysterious light is important.

Situation A: Everyone goes to the mysterious light
- Because everyone goes to the mysterious light because they think its ‘rare’ no one helps with the other 2, they fail, your Stage 2 encampment gets over run, and halfway through the mysterious light event, it fails, and you enter the Stage 2→Stage 1 retreat DE.

Situation B: Everyone splits up equally.

You head to the light. You find it, and it begins spawning waves of monsters. You and your team repel them. The light transforms into a door. You and your team enter it. A jumping puzzle! You read the wall, it explains, “We need the blood of <variable> heros” So, <variable> number of your group needs to reach the top and provide a sacrifice of your blood.

a. You Fail
- Ok, light goes away, you return to Orr, and you go help someone else

You kill it, and it drops a rare component for a rare item.

Assume then, that you then only completed half of the other events to the point of ‘success’ You still make it to Stage 3, but you have no boulders for your catapults. Yeah…well realistically, you only contributed 50% ‘strength’ level to stage 3. Which means, lets say, it sends only 10 NPC soldiers out every 30 seconds to help battle, rather than 20.

As you can see, this model is scalable (at whatever pace they want), and is randomized, offering a new experience every time you go there, and provides great incentives to actually participate.

Everything the current dev team failed to do.

So discussion went a different route, and spawned this response: So I’m just going to change the topic.

Here is an idea/suggestion for end game DE’s.

The idea is to create a unique and different experience for players every time they enter the area.

Also from a development angle, it allows them to add new content at a leisurely pace and add it directly to the end game without the need for a zone overhaul or new content.

Orr should be a giant zone of tug and war, ending with a battle with a dragon, occupation of its hold that grants bonuses, and an increasingly difficult amount of monsters (which drop rarer and rarer loots), which will eventually push you back to the start.

Now, you asked for this, and my creative prowess is flowing, so I will deliver:

Imagine 3 Stages of a zone: Front, Middle, End.

You are always in a Stage. Imagine for now, we are in Middle. Now, chains of DEs pop up at the same time.

1. Someone tells you to “Fetch boulders for siege weapons”
2. Someone needs you to help set up an encampment closer to the End.
3. A mysterious light was spotted, investigate
4-infinity : The devs could add an infinite amount at their leisure to add to the depth of this end game encounter. The rarity % dictates what events have a better chance of spawning.

In summary, when creating an event, it would have the following details:

a. Event Trigger Rarity
- what is the chances for this event to be part of this Stage
b. Contribution % towards next stage
- Based on the success and failures of the players actions in the event chains, how much does this event affect the next Stages events. See below example for more info
c. What special items can be found (or bosses spawned).

Example:

The 3 events above happen to spawn for the Middle stage. You are now ready to choose which you want to contribute to. You decide the mysterious light is important.

Situation A: Everyone goes to the mysterious light
- Because everyone goes to the mysterious light because they think its ‘rare’ no one helps with the other 2, they fail, your Stage 2 encampment gets over run, and halfway through the mysterious light event, it fails, and you enter the Stage 2->Stage 1 retreat DE.

Situation B: Everyone splits up equally.

You head to the light. You find it, and it begins spawning waves of monsters. You and your team repel them. The light transforms into a door. You and your team enter it. A jumping puzzle! You read the wall, it explains, “We need the blood of <variable> heros” So, <variable> number of your group needs to reach the top and provide a sacrifice of your blood.

a. You Fail
- Ok, light goes away, you return to Orr, and you go help someone else

b . You Pass
- You summon a giant monster which begins to attack your encampment. Its level is based on heroes in the ZONE, so everyone needs to come help.

You kill it, and it drops a rare component for a rare item.

Assume then, that you then only completed half of the other events to the point of ‘success’ You still make it to Stage 3, but you have no boulders for your catapults. Yeah…well realistically, you only contributed 50% ‘strength’ level to stage 3. Which means, lets say, it sends only 10 NPC soldiers out every 30 seconds to help battle, rather than 20.

As you can see, this model is scalable (at whatever pace they want), and is randomized, offering a new experience every time you go there, and provides great incentives to actually participate.

Everything the current dev team failed to do.

RiKShaw.8795:

We’ve seen it work with the Perpetual Testing Initiative from Valve. They made a portal test chamber creator, tools to rate and play and now all Valve needs to do is play some of the top maps and they know what kind of puzzles to make in Portal 3 (if they make one)

All my life I’ve been creating game ideas and one idea was an MMO where you made the dungeons. Ofc this was a while ago and I based my theoretical tool on Tony Hawk Skatepark maker. If the designer puts in a group of mobs, the difficulty rating of the dungeon goes up, if they put in just rooms of chests then the loot in those chests goes down, down to a level that is unacceptable and unpublishable. In order to put in a chest you’d have to spend points, point generated by adding opposition. Boss —-> Chest.

Have you ever played Never Winter Nights?

i assure you, simply because you like something does not mean that everyone else does. I’m sure I can scrounge up some facts that show millions of people lost in terms of active players since launch.

And I’m sure I can find facts that show how WoW gained millions of players since its launch, and retained them.

not only do they have to have branching DEs, they need to reward you by completing specific ones. AKA: A perfect complete (you do everything correctly, in the utmost timeliest of manner, with little to no deaths in the process), would yield a chest that grants all participating parties a unique component to a legendary weapon. However, it can only be opened if you have a specific key found earlier in the quest.

Now, put about 15+(or one in each zone) of these ‘chests’ throughout the game. Make the portion of said quest interweave with multiple DEs within the zone. Meaning, you could come across this quest while doing any DE in the zone by crossing DEs with other DEs. For instance the ‘random’ factor comes at any point in a DE chain. The NPC finds a “dragon egg” and stops everything hes doing….says, “meet me at this town in 5 minutes, I need to do some research.”

Game Solved

A.net —

Please have a player-driven DE creation contest. Where the winner will work with your team to generate a full blown DE.

Not to be too blunt, but you guys seem to be having some disturbances involving either what you feel constitutes as DE, or in the creative process in building a really good DE.

Either way, my suggestion does three very important things for you, which I will explain in more detail.

1. It brings un-interested players back into the game.

The prospect of creating a brand new DE, something that a specific player was expecting and looking forward to would fly through the interwebz. Everyone has their idea as to what a DE should have been, and from what I read in this forum, it is much different than your teams. Which brings us to 2.

2. It will give you guys a better idea as to what the player base expects from a DE.

Receiving and sifting through many ideas may spur some brand new thoughts through the minds of your DE designers. Also, seeing the interest involved, might very well change the value of importance you place on DEs. Perhaps you haven’t found a way to monetize DEs yet, and thus it isn’t as important to you. But there is a way, a great way, and maybe someone has thought of it outside your team.

3. It will show the playerbase that you care about improving your game.

The dev team, and comments made on the forum are so detached its depressing. Its great to hear from you guys, but in regards to DEs, its empty. Its like you gave up on the idea completely.

DE’s should have been the focus of your game. Instead, through laziness, or some other reason not disclosed to us, you decided dungeons were the way to go.

A Long-winded DE chain still doesnt exist. The promises made about Orr just turned into the biggest joke on the planet.

Give the power to the players. Create a new campaign that allows players to create their own DE chains. Whether its through the forum, or a new web app that makes submission easier.

I’d be very interested in reading it. Something for us to look forward to, something you come into work everyday and look at so you understand a clear structure for what you are trying to build.

Does such a vision exist? To me, unfortunately, it seems to revolve around making as much money in the store as possible. Which would explain why this game is not living up to the expectations of millions.

Calsifer.6079:

The problem with implementing random DE’s with unique component drops etc. is that even ANet will think that they’ve done something the community wanted, people will just start to complain about how they’re being “forced” to wait for events to spawn and they’ll complain about RNG.

People will always find some stupid kitten to cry about, and even if they expand the open world PvE, people still won’t be satisfied because there are some people who just cry for the sake of crying.

That being said, I would like this to happen. More standalone random DE’s and more jumping puzzles would be nice!

Yes, its a thin line they will need to walk, but its very doable.

The trick is pushing more and more DEs out whenever they can. Put all the development time behind unique, chain like DEs.

In the example I detailed above about the bear (obviously…it was JUST and example), the components needed to finish it, and the randomness, would mean it would take a week or longer for anyone to it out.

1. You would NEED to find the item.
2. you would NEED to figure out where to use the item regarding the NPC
3. after giving the item to the NPC, you would NEED to figure out what to do with the cub.
4. You would only have a 2 hour window to figure this out.
5. This would mean many people would have to constantly be contributing to the causes if the NPC is not “active”
6. When it is finally figured out, you move onto the next step, and continue the process.

If 10 of these things are happening at any given time, the game becomes about exploration and problem solving…something you simply don’t get in other MMOs.

To provide incentive towards the larger goal, introduce a new ‘DE contribution’ token that yields more rewards.

Did you find a tuft of bear hair? Did you hand it, but not figure out what to do? Heres 1 token anyway. Thanks!

The problem is not the game…the DE system is expansive. The problem is that the Devs have no clue where they want to take the game, and are essentially making every possible wrong decision.

Dont like the idea? Think out of the box and try and understand more about the concept:

Other possibilities…based on randomness or DE overlapping.

1. Item component is found at the end of a jumping puzzle at random time of day.
2. Following a DE completion, a secret passage opens temporarily (boulders blown up?), which allows players to set in motion another DE based on 3 choices (similar to dungeon paths).
3. Random NPC spawns in random area and walks around a little bit.
4. Bonus boss in Dungeons.
5. Utilize rare components to similar World contribution towards finishing/starting quests.

the trick is making it so a single player can not do all of the quest himself, or rather, that he will benefit much more so by working with the rest of the world.

Sylv.5324:

Yes, please! I’d much rather do things in the world than in a dungeon!

Especially in the cities— investigating that big hole in DR, maybe helping to train cubs or something in the Black Citadel, or pirate stuff in LA.

Imagine this:

You are in the city, training cubs. But, on a random chance, a black cub spawns. Now, this sets off a chain of events, that if done correctly, starts a SIEGE on the town youre in.

For instance, a typical cub training consists of interacting with a spawned cub, clicking an option, then having it follow you to a cage.

The black club allows the same interactions, (although a unique interaction appears to suggest to the player something is different), and you can bring it to the cage and it vanishes, just like the others.

However, lets assume that you found something out in the wilderness…a random spawn “pile” that lasts only 1 hour in that random area.

Now, rather than train this cub, you walk it over to an NPC in town who, if you take the time to talk to, says he is looking for the rare a mysterious ‘animal.’ If you give this NPC the hair, for 2 hours, he will ‘know’ that the animal in question is a black bear mama.

This leaves players 2 hours to find this black cub in that quest, and bring it over to him. If done correctly, it spawns a DE where you go hunting for the bear.

Then, whether you succeed or not depends on some other factors.

Success or defeat spawns different choices.

THIS is how a DE should behave….whatever the hell the current devs think of DEs is wrong, and imo, just plain stupid.

you guys created one of the most detailed and beautiful worlds out there..and yet you are intentionally pulling people from it and pushing them into dungeons.

really..wtf?

Its all about exploration. Please implement RANDOM DE’s that spawn spontaneously and reward you with unique components for crafted gear.

Things like dragon events that happen in random places that occur after someone does a jumping puzzle at the right time of day and activates an item that has a 5-10 minute spawn window.

Start implementing things like this all over the map. This is the only thing that will save this game at this point…not fractals

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Red Falcon.8257:

If you lack communications players complain, but if you talk too much players will use your words against you.
There is no winning beside maybe letting out informations that are confirmed to be happening soon.

Indeed. I can say this though, we recognize failures not just in random occasions, but in total systems and dungeons in general. The great thing about an MMO/Live game, is that we can change it for the better. We have plans to change things based on feedback, and we are finalizing those plans right now. As soon as we are done and have a solid actionable plan, we’ll let you all know what that is, and what you can expect for the future of dungeons.

This is reassuring to hear.

What many people aren’t understanding is that its not the difficulty of a specific dungeon that should be discussed, but rather, what is difficulty in regards to the GW2 game mechanics.

The current dungeon difficulty is based around …seemingly random thoughts…not the unique traits of the guild wars 2 combat system, which are:

1) Red Circles on the ground, and moving/dodging out them.
2) Fully voiced Dynamic Events system
— Verbal queues to go with the physical ones, since its sometimes difficult to see
— Dungeons incorporating DEs in a more complex way (which is kinda there)
3) Dodging mechanics
— I shouldn’t have to doge normal attacks. And there shouldn’t be 3 enemies on the screen all casting the same spell on rotation…We have 2 dodges…build around that
Less confusion and chaos, the more strategic it feels.
4) Picking up weapons
— With this mechanic, you can create some wild boss fights, and specify exactly what kind of skill is needed. Go back and look at some WoW fights, like professor putricide. No offense, but your dungeon system right now is essentially a kitten(pun intended) compared to Blizzard’s Mufasa.
5) Jumping puzzles
6) Condition removal and boons
— Yes, youre trying to eliminate the need for specific groups…but you need stuff like this. Just make it so its significantly easier with this.

In addition, you need to make strategies more visible. For instance, make a boss invincible unless it has 5 stacks of vulnerability. This way, players KNOW they need to keep 5 stacks up. They don’t just get murdered and feel like the dungeon is too difficult.

Vaerah.4907:

Hippocampus.8470:

Vesuvias.9326:

However we all know that “winning” in the market has an huge impact on how you can play the rest of the game.

Yes, but would changing the ask/bid asymmetry actually change the fact that people who don’t understand economics can’t make lots of money through the BLTC?

No, markets and wealth are one of the many “85%-15%” things that show a majority consistently losing over time and a minority slowly accruing immense riches and power. Altering some parameter might delay this situation a bit, but that’s it.

This is complete nonsense in terms of a video game. You are completely disregarding the fact that "casuals’ and in fact, every player out there is constantly finding ‘more gold’ and constantly finding more items.

Hippocampus.8470:

frOst.2198:

The TP translates to a dynamic vendor. That is ALL it is. There is no ‘playing the TP’, especially back when the ‘tax’ was 15%.

Those of us who’ve made profits playing the TP would beg to differ.

Sure, not many are playing it by buying materials and selling the finished product for huge profits, since that tends to work poorly. But buying something at a low price and then selling that same thing later at a higher price looks a lot like profit to me, anyway. I don’t have an economics degree, though, so I guess I could be mistaken.

the fact that it is dynamic, makes it so you can buy low sell high…of course. Thats is the only place there are profits..and i SAID that already. With the 15% tax it made it incredibly difficult to do however..because you needed to not only make up for the listing fee…but then sell the item for higher than 15% of what you purchased it for.

And im not tlaking about things like mystic conduits..thats clearly a money maker due to the fact that you can’t get it anymore. I invested everything i had to get as much of them as possible.

But normal items that can be found off monsters will NEVER yield a profit unless they are intentionally manipulated by forcing the price higher or lower with individual purchases.

Even then…it will eventually even out (and go down in price). There is no stopping the inflation. Even with the mystic conduits..butter is already back down to 3 copper.

In addition, you have things like the anti-farm code. I had the genius idea to buy discarded garments and salvage for gossamer. Made 20 silver in 1 minute. cool. I’ll do it again. Made 12 silver. Did it again, lost 12 silver. Did it again, lost 20 silver.

That goes without saying that everytime YOU luck out on a mystic forge craft, someone else misses.

Again, its all about equilibrium. You will not sustain any kind of profit, it will always go back to 0. Its just how this game is laid out.

whiran.1473:

frOst.2198:

I’ll reiterate: The TP will never offer anyone any profit due to the design of the rest of the game.

And yet many people make a lot of profit by using the Trading Post. I think you are really trying to say that crafting won’t make a profit?

But, that too is incorrect. There are -some- items that are profitable to craft. The majority though are not.

Profits in games like this come solely from ‘having something other people can’t get.’ And that simply doesn’t exist.

No. Profits in economies are from providing goods that people need and / or want. There are many items in GW 2 that are wanted from crafting items to interesting looking models to good stat items.

The solution, imo, is to create a slew of rare recipes that are randomly found, at a low drop rate.

This is why I think you are really writing about crafting and not the trading post as such.

Yes, i was writing predominantly about crafting. You can completely ignore anything else on the TP because its essentially a translation of time to money, which is what I said at the end of my post.

To your first point about people ‘making a profit’ using the TP. ‘Technically’ yes..they are ‘making gold’. But in reality, they are making the same amount of money as everyone else based on the amount of time invested in the game. So therefore no ‘profits’ are truly being made through playing it.

The TP translates to a dynamic vendor. That is ALL it is. There is no ‘playing the TP’, especially back when the ‘tax’ was 15%.

Regarding your second point. You are just saying what i said in a different way. Your definition of ‘profits’ strongly differs from my own, as you can see in the above paragraph. Profits, for me, are when you actually come out ahead of what you put into the system.

Selling gossamer scraps that you find isn’t a profit. It just converts items you already own into the appropriate gold value…You already found that item…so it is NOT profit.

Profit would be investing 10 g in materials you bought from the TP to craft a RARE item that only you have found, then selling it on the TP for 15g. That IS profit.

If you look at it that way, go back and reread my post to get a true understanding of what I was trying to say.

Robert Hrouda is delusional, or a liar.

there is 100% no way you, or I, or anyone is getting refunded tokens.

Sebrent.3625:

Honestly, I’m not quite sure how bad the source code has to be for there to be a bug that messes up calculating how many tokens you get … the logic is simple and there really isn’t room for a race condition unless their machines are taking 10+ minutes to update a few bytes..

(1) Reset (dailies, dungeons, etc.) … start from clean slate for simplicity

(2) PlayerA runs Dungeon1, takes PathX.

(3) PlayerA finishes PathX in Dungeon1.

(4) System calculates how many tokens to give based on (PlayerA, Dungeon1, PathX) and gives it to PlayerA

(5) System updates how many times PlayerA has finished Dungeon1, PathX

Very simple. It’s one get() type function and one set() function each time a player finishes a dungeon path.

Hell, even if they are taking into account how fast a player is completing dungeons, it should only turn into 2 get() and 2 set() functions because now you have to also get_last_dungeon_clear_time(playerA) and set_last_dungeon_clear_time(playerB) … obviously incorporating the last dungeon clear time in the calculation for how many tokens to give to the player.

---

Very simple, but somehow it has been magically bugged.

Either bad programming or a lie and I’m a fan of neither of these options.

Bad programming lowers my confidence in things being “done right” … such as my Phantasms getting both retaliation and fury when I’m specced for them to have both (doesn’t work right now … like many other classes’ traits)

A lie is worse because it means that to compensate for people getting tokens faster than ArenaNet desired, they have created a “bug” that drastically reduces this in order to combat it.

---

What’s also aggravating is seeing other people who were able to get enough tokens in a week to get full sets of exotic weapons and gear … while the rest of us are now screwed … those people are running around happy.

You can tell from just playing the game that the coding isn’t ‘linear.’ For example…COF, since its bugged out to hell and back.

Firstly: The entrance is merely blocked off during an invasion. You can still bug your way into it. I have to assume the rest of the game is made in the same way. I personally think its a cool idea to program it this way (or just lazy?), because it makes jumping a little more useful, and kind of alludes to the idea of, “why can’t I just squeeze through those 2 rocks?” “Well if you try hard enough, you can!”

Then when you get into CoF, you can see that everything is based, not on progression, but on merely reaching specific ‘waypoint’ lines or specific trigger areas.

This just screams inefficient to me. And explains why there are so many bugs everywhere else.

The DE system seems to rely FAR too much on waypoints, and doesn’t have a reset feature integrated if something causes the NPCs to veer off path.

Auxilium.2487:

..seriously…^
Like you have the right to say anything, you have nothing to contribute to the thread except “assume” we’re not patient because we spend “hours” on one part of the game?

Than if we do get past that part, after hours of deaths we still dont know if we’re going to get the correct amount of tokens we’re suppose to get, I’d say with us even knowing we have a chance to get as little as maybe 5 tokens, which means that we will be farming maybe longer than most, I’d say thats quite a bit of patience.

I’m more annoyed by the fact that I can get a group into the dungeon at once, we all have to relog multiple times and keep attempting to get into the same instance, that’s patience enough right there.

The event is stupidily designed, yes. Is it impossible? not at all.

happened to my group about 15 minutes ago.

Its because of ‘that group member’ that doesnt understand that he aggros the mobs around him, making him stay in 1 stop ( his pathing resets right at the edge of one of the fire circles…way to go robert hrouda!).

You just need 5 rezzing him, need to grab an extinguisher as fast as possible, then put it out, rez him again, and make sure all mobs around you are dead.

Then you need to make sure that thekittenin your group that stands there waiting for him to move actually runs to the end.

I’ll chime in as to what I believe is wrong with the TP. This is much more a discussion piece, listing ideas that should be discussed when trying to understand whats wrong with the TP.

As John Smith mentioned in the first page, or at least alluded to, people do not act the same way in this game as they do in real life.

I don’t think the TP has any inherent design flaw. Instead, the problem lies in any players ability to do anything with no limits. In addition, psychologically, there are no ‘necessary items’ that aren’t being reproduced by hundreds of thousands of players. In real life, this is not the case. Players need to rely on others for services, and are willing to provide a premium(or profit) to save time/pay for a service which they can not do themselves.

GW2’s core design philosophy doesn’t give players any reason to ‘need’ anything but some exotic gear(to which millions of people are making). There is nothing to upgrade, there is no place anyone else can go that I myself can’t. And there is a lack of (none?) rare recipe ingredients to be used in tandem with rare recipes.

I’ll reiterate: The TP will never offer anyone any profit due to the design of the rest of the game.

Profits in games like this come solely from ‘having something other people can’t get.’ And that simply doesn’t exist.

The current set up can be equated to time = money. 1 hour = 1 gold. This is flat across the board…where as some may be overly lucky and get a dusk of rage, where as someone else might get zero greens for 2 days straight.

The solution, imo, is to create a slew of rare recipes that are randomly found, at a low drop rate.

Overall score: bad

Discussion and response to actions taken:

1) Dungeon tokens are now rewarded at the end of an explorable chain.
So what about all the work that goes into reaching the end? What happens if someone has to leave, or your group falls apart? You get nothing? Did you even think of things like this? I have to believe no thought at all goes into these design decisions.
—-

2) Dungeons reward 20 tokens for completion and now reward an additional 40 tokens for the first time they are completed each day.
This should be in addition to what you receive in chests.
—-

3) Dungeon tokens should be account bound. This will allow players to have a single character farm tokens for their other characters.
Doesn’t affect me. Good for some people though, im sure. Now, once you have your gear, you can run with friends and not be wasting time.
—-

4) This week, we’re updating the system to not impact clearing different chains of the same dungeon. We’ll continue to evaluate this system in coming weeks.
Great that youre working out bugs..but they shouldn’t be there to begin with. TEST YOUR PATCHES, and not on US.
—-

You are simply not addressing the actual problem.

Dungeon design is poor on every account except, imo, the minigame portions (diffuse bombs).

Boss fights have no hint of strategy. If you DID build a strategy, you did so by simply picking one moveset shared between a group and built an entire 10-15 minute boss fight around it. This is a horrible way of doing it because it severely limits customization and forces players into a playstyle they don’t want.

Stick to telegraphed attacks, red circles on the ground, and terrain. Stick to condition removal, kiting, and LOS. That is what your combat system promotes. I don’t know what the heck youre doing now, but it doesn’t work.

Regarding rewards. As I said above, the fact that you aren’t giving us any until completion is flat out absurd, especially with the artificially inflated HP pools of most mobs and the amount of time it now requires to beat these dungeons.

You need to provide rewards throughout the dungeon

1) All dungeon mobs have % chance to drop a token
2) Bosses/Chest have a % chance to drop an actual dungeon item

There, suddenly everyone doesn’t mind killing what theyre supposed to.

Urejt.5648:

black lion salvage kit always gives 1-3 globs, for me.

incorrect

Aphix.9846:

Fr0st is right, besides all that, as I mentioned, most of those weapons dont even look good.

Also I love how he says:

-The only thing having a legendary is going to prove is that you are legitimately insane. That you are the embodiment of a wasted life.
With the current recipe scheme, I would be embarrassed to actually hold one of these prior to 1-2 years after this point in time.-

Then mister Xalkyriezzz says that he has basically got the weapon already, 1 month into the game. Haha, what a guy.

There are 2 way he could have done it …

1) Have people feed him everything he needs
2) Invest a wahoo amount of real $$’s into the game. (something like 1500 dollars for ~500 gold @ 34s per 100 gems)

I simply need to laugh at the people who say getting karma, and running dungeons is fun.

Obviously they haven’t actually started the process, or they are delusional, or mentally ill…and I say that with as much honesty and as little disrespect as possible.

Getting 500 tokens, quite possibly the easiest requirement is just flat out mind-numblingly repetitive and disengaging task possible. Play the dungeon once, twice, 3-4 times…thats great. Play it upwards to 30 times, and its getting masochistic.

I can argue that MAYBE if you plan on being as inefficient as possible in regards to karma farming that you MIGHT be able to avoid the repetitive feel. Go through every zone and participate in different events continuously. However, good luck with that. Low level zones give 1/4th the karma reward compared to higher zones…so you’ll be farming karma for roughly 3x’s as long.

And thats not even counting the karma/skill points required for mystic clovers.

The only thing having a legendary is going to prove is that you are legitimately insane. That you are the embodiment of a wasted life.

With the current recipe scheme, I would be embarrassed to actually hold one of these prior to 1-2 years after this point in time.

Designers. I will share with you my infinite gaming wisdom on the subject of MMOs and all games that require repetition in content.. The same wisdom I tried to share with D3 devs prior to Diablo 3 release. They failed to heed my warning.

Its important to read this without thinking of these words coming from a random internet nobody. Put aside your ego, your biased, and all those ‘Making game’s for dummies’ books and start fresh.

For shorter version, skip—-
I admit that I have absolutely no palpable credentials related to game design. I do have a few dozen games I’ve designed on paper in my spare time, some maps I did for CS/Unreal back in the day, and maybe one or 2 web based games I tried to make when learning how to program PHP/HTML5.

In addition, I have played nearly every ‘genre’ of game to a hardcore level, from RTS, to MMO, to FPS to RPGs (I really think i was the first person to get the Super Suit, as I was surprised it was called such when nintendo mag and the net was calling it the Super Jacket), to iphone and kongregate, to whatever. You name it, I’ve either played it, beaten it, or hated it.

Im not boasting, as that’s nothing to boast about. I just want to state that while I might not meet the credentials that a ‘guy in the biz’ might have, I consider myself far more knowledgeable and experienced on this subject than anyone. period.
—-End—-

In short, Gaming Is My Life

I love games, and moreso, I love critiquing them. I would make an amazing QA employee, but moreso, I would make an amazing designer. This is because my understanding of what players want, and how they react to specific decisions is unsurpassed. I see life in ‘game form.’ Limitations, repetition, OOP, pscyhology. Every critique I’ve made, even based on a minuscule amount of information from recent releases such as CS:GO, to Diablo 3, to GW2, and onward, has blew up in the faces of fanboys and devs.

The problem stems from a few fundamentally poor design choices made most likely through misunderstanding of what gamers want.

There are many different types of games, I will talk about the MMO genre in particular. The genre that is required to keep players active through repetitive content and grinding.

Grinding is a very important aspect of the MMO, because its impossible to churn out content at a rate faster than the user can consume it. WoW found a good model that appeased its user base (gear progression)…GW2 has yet to find a practical model.

Here is my advice to you while you seek to find how to entice players to ‘grind’ in your game. One word:

Efficiency

It is the single most important design factor to focus around. No matter how great your content is, it will be beaten, and it will get boring. The only thing left is for the player to learn how to maximize efficiency in regards to that content so that they can rationalize to themselves that completing that content is worthwhile.

Let me emphasize: Without the ability to allow for an increase in efficiency, there is no reward that can justify a player to keep playing.

Skill in MMO’s is inherently related to efficiency. The more skillful a player is, that faster they should be able to progress through the repetitive cycle, and the further they should come out ahead in terms of reward progression.

Build efficiency around skill, and your game will flourish.

The next time you release a dungeon patch, make sure that there is a pathway towards efficient grinding. Its harder without a gear treadmill, but this is what YOU wanted. You accepted the challenge to make content that requires more finesse, and encounters that have to be tailored for nearly infinite class builds.

And its possible. Easily by throwing jumping puzzles with timers into the mix. And in a tougher way by creating challenging encounters that focus more on condition/boon management than burst DPS.

Take these words for what they’re worth. You might see it as obvious, and if so, its because you’re not truly understanding the importance of efficiency.

supergica.8652:

I think the scaling is definitely the problem with the events. Yes some are by nature boring, but the fact that there is no way you can loose that makes them even more boring. You know from the start that it’s just another type of grind spamming abilities in a zerg. Zero challenge. Of course even the most elaborate event will look dull when you just press 2 buttons: AOE and loot

So far i’m finding the most fun events those that are 5-6 players max, or those out of the ordinary (like the one you’re turned into a crab and have to fight that large crab in the arena), most are just xp and loot farm.

If the scaling would be done properly, and 20 people zergs could actually wipe from time to time i’m sure even the current events would look more appealing. Sure, make some easier, but have at least a few that need some sort of coordination to be able to complete so zerg fests cannot win them anymore.

The problem as I’ve stated either in this thread or others, is that scaling past a certain threshold tunes battles past the threshold of ‘well designed.’

You can’t simply make more mobs spawn, as AOE will still kill them just the same. You can’t give them more HP, because then it just takes too long and isn’t fun hitting the same thing for an hour. You can’t give them too much damage, because they’ll just 1 hit KO everyone.

Buffing mobs is simply NOT the answer. The answer is creating truly ‘dynamic’ events which require the zerg to break apart in order to be successful.

I know I said you can’t simply increase Mob strength,hp,etc, but you CAN if there is a way to disable that strength…say…through an alternative DE in another area.

By the looks of things, it just looks like a.net didn’t build this kind of complexity into the system (complexity used lightly). I don’t see any other reason things like this don’t already exist unless its due to incompetent game design…a trend in recently released video games.

based on thread title, it would be fun to actually have jumping puzzle instances…

where you win/lose by jumping to specific areas.

For instance: Giant Fire Magma Boss:

You reach a point where you only see lava. The boss explodes out of it, creating earth shattering wakes which cause the jumping puzzle to ‘take form.’

Maybe this could be set in a Steel Mill or factory, with giant cauldrons of water floating above the bosses head.

So the strategy would be to continuously ‘release’ that water onto the head of the giant lava monster.

Make it team oriented by requiring simultaneous button presses from different areas. After the first bucket, he gets angry and ‘changes’ parts of the jumping puzzle. Requiring players to go higher, and further.

Dang, that would be unique.

Its a slow day at work, so let me try and map out how I imagine one of these events to work:

A bunch of players arrive in Orr, where the battlefield has already been bathed in conflict.

At the front of the zone, there is 3 DEs in various locations. Their main goal is: “Collect scraps to be used in the upcoming Siege of Zhaitan’s Fortress”

The Siege of Zhaitan’s Fortress is a DE much further ahead in the zone. And the higher level players are out there doing something else to contribute to the effort (killing waves of minions?)

Anyway, Each of the 3 DEs collect something different, and succeeding at any given one would provide benefits to the onslaught, such as Trebuchets(collect wood and metal) (for destroying walls), Arrow Carts(broken arrows), or NPC waves(scrap metal/swords).

The 3 DEs and the minion killing wave DE would all be connected via a timer. Obviously, having as much help as possible when sieging would be beneficial.

Lets say that only 2 of the 3 early DEs succeed (Trebs and NPC waves): So the players start the siege, and NPCs filter in with them as they charge the gates. They see the Trebs pop up and some players hop into them and start blasting the Wall.

But hang on a sec…As one of the players is running, he hears an NPC from the wave say in a scared but annoyed voice, ‘I shouldn’t even be here! Why didn’t my superiors listen!’

The majority of the players ignore it, or dont hear it. However, some curious player decides to investigate. So he talks to the NPC. A dialog opens. Now, to make things more fun, this NPC is not actually running towards the fight, but towards the side, where he will eventually ‘run’ or ‘vanish’ and not be clickable. This NPC also doesn’t spawn everytime.

So during the dialog, the NPC explains, " I told my superious I had a better way of beating Zhaitain, but they didn’t listen! They told me black magic is evil! HAH"

Player responds: “Tell me more about this plan” …Eventually you agree to help him, and you follow him to the wooded area. No DE marker opens, so there is no signal to other players. The NPC works quickly, jams a staff into the ground, says some words and opens a portal (like mesmer). He yells, “quickly, inside!” In 30 seconds, the portal closes up.

In this area, you have to fight a mini-boss(champion), because of course, the NPC botched his portal up. If you defeat it, you can then loot a rare ingredient, then perform a step that will spawn a few siege rams on the field.

Then you portal back, and the fight continues…

Note, that this example is merely that. Its meant to demonstrate how events should be connected to each other, and where outcomes of one should effect the outcomes of another. In addition, it shows how randomness and awareness can lead to some interesting and fun opportunities that helps break the monotony. It gives players a choices as to where they want to contribute, and what strategically may be the best option. The zerg might decide to stay at the main quest and let the 3 DEs regarding collecting dwindle and fail, only to find that its far too difficult to succeed the next part of the DE without those siege weapons and NPC helpers.

SoPP.7034:

@frOst.2198

I agree with you post all except for replacing DE’s which would seem counter productive imo. Better to focus on new content for expansions, learning and build upon current DE’s would be much more cost effective. Would people really be happy going through old content for new DE’s?

My issue is that a lot of the ‘big’ events ultimately become a group of people beating on one bad guy. The bad only has generic attacks skills which do little but to look impressive.

Replacing DEs seems appropriate based on their mantra, “play anywhere, do anything.”

Again, this is why they need to get creative. There needs to be reasons or incentives for you to actually want to head back to a lower level zone. Right now, there are zero reasons other than to experience some repetitively dull content, or to hear some voice acting.

Thus the creativity: Legendary’s and the mystic forge are the perfect vehicle for spicing up the economy and bringing life to lower area zones. (I personally feel it should be ‘random’ so that people don’t just sit and farm the same lower level DE again..and again for their item. )

By randomizing the chance to get rare materials through interesting, truly dynamic events that happen throughout the world of tyria, no matter WHERE the player is, they might have a chance of seeing something truly unique, and being rewarded with something rare.

Finding the balance between rare, and impossible to find (time lost proto drake), would be something they need to work on. I think it would be nice to be able to participate in one, once every 10 hours played or so.

lol at people defending this decision.

Im all about difficulty as well for dungeons. Except, there is no such thing as a difficulty curve in this game because the designers are horrible. They think increasing damage or numbers equates to skill in a game where skill is denoted via dodging and predicting attack.

Another triple A game killed by lazy designers, cheap producers, and greedy owners.