Yeah I agree, I was little put off by how easy the event appeared to be. The dragon basically just sat there and sent enemies out and you could hit him from afar with no threat of him coming after you.
That said, this WAS just a demo, so maybe they toned him down. Hopefully he will be a bit more challenging in the real game!
I agree with you if the character's level was par for the event. Is it possible they were playing amped up characters, at a level beyond what a normal undertaking of the dragon would occur? Or, like you mentioned, a watered down Dragon/Undead mob?
I would have an issue if 2 characters could duo what is supposed to be the ultimate event chain for the Sparkfly Fen.
Yeah I agree, I was little put off by how easy the event appeared to be. The dragon basically just sat there and sent enemies out and you could hit him from afar with no threat of him coming after you.
That said, this WAS just a demo, so maybe they toned him down. Hopefully he will be a bit more challenging in the real game!
This is my biggest fear, that the whole bloody game will be too easy. I would still play it for the FPS like PvP matches, no subs, and the WvWvW.
The PvE though...I like PvE sometimes you know? It's fun, but it needs to be challenging. I'm just concerned how you balance a game where you've removed such a staple like the holy trinity.
If you try to balance a game where 5 Thieves, or 3 Elementalists and 2 Engineers, or whatever combination can succeed. How easy does the game become when the ingenious playerbase figures out the "best" party makeup. (You know it will happen).
I think this is a big problem for them, but I'm excited to see what Anet comes up with.
I disagree, not everyone, in fact I would wager quite a few people actually like content above all else.
I dunno though, im an old time gamer and I still would rather play every game on easy mode with hardly any chance of dieing, just to experience the content.
I don't mind if certain pieces of content are easier, that's fine. And really, I wouldn't expect an outdoor event that is most likely going to be highly uncoordinated to be very difficult.
That said, I don't think the AI should be as easily exploitable as the dragon appeared to be. The demo made it seem like two people could beat the event by just camping a turret and pelting the dragon from outside his range. This is kind of ridiculous. It is analogous to exploiting the pathing in a SPRPG so that you can kill an enemy as it repeatedly runs around you in circles, unable to reach you due to glitchy pathfinding.
Once again, I realize that this is just a demo, I realize that my impression may be wrong and that the demo fight may not (hopefully) reflect the actual dragon fight in the game.
That event was detached from it's chain for the demo. In the live game, there's a limited amount of time before the event fails and the chain begins sweeping outward. The next step would be that the undead hordes begin raiding the nearby sylvari and hylek settlements. Also, with only two players, the boss was restricted to a narrow band of abilities to use. This expands as more players get involved, upping the difficulty and rewards.
Yeah I agree, I was little put off by how easy the event appeared to be. The dragon basically just sat there and sent enemies out and you could hit him from afar with no threat of him coming after you.
That said, this WAS just a demo, so maybe they toned him down. Hopefully he will be a bit more challenging in the real game!
I agree with you if the character's level was par for the event. Is it possible they were playing amped up characters, at a level beyond what a normal undertaking of the dragon would occur? Or, like you mentioned, a watered down Dragon/Undead mob?
I would have an issue if 2 characters could duo what is supposed to be the ultimate event chain for the Sparkfly Fen.
I don't think they were below the level of the event, because TB got destroyed by the wandering undead MOBs several times before he teamed up with his legendary friend, "Herp Derp."
But this video could have been a bit misleading. Alot mentioned that the MOBs are supposed to charge the turrets every now and then. If this is true, then it would resolve the "camp the turret" exploit. Maybe TB and Herp just didn't get the dragon's health low enough for him to charge?
Anyway, I think "what are you doing to prevent people from exploiting the AI of big dynamic events?" would be a good question for ANet.
Yeah I agree, I was little put off by how easy the event appeared to be. The dragon basically just sat there and sent enemies out and you could hit him from afar with no threat of him coming after you.
That said, this WAS just a demo, so maybe they toned him down. Hopefully he will be a bit more challenging in the real game!
This is my biggest fear, that the whole bloody game will be too easy. I would still play it for the FPS like PvP matches, no subs, and the WvWvW.
The PvE though...I like PvE sometimes you know? It's fun, but it needs to be challenging. I'm just concerned how you balance a game where you've removed such a staple like the holy trinity.
If you try to balance a game where 5 Thieves, or 3 Elementalists and 2 Engineers, or whatever combination can succeed. How easy does the game become when the ingenious playerbase figures out the "best" party makeup. (You know it will happen).
I think this is a big problem for them, but I'm excited to see what Anet comes up with.
I disagree, not everyone, in fact I would wager quite a few people actually like content above all else.
I dunno though, im an old time gamer and I still would rather play every game on easy mode with hardly any chance of dieing, just to experience the content.
I don't mind if certain pieces of content are easier, that's fine. And really, I wouldn't expect an outdoor event that is most likely going to be highly uncoordinated to be very difficult.
That said, I don't think the AI should be as easily exploitable as the dragon appeared to be. The demo made it seem like two people could beat the event by just camping a turret and pelting the dragon from outside his range. This is kind of ridiculous. It is analogous to exploiting the pathing in a SPRPG so that you can kill an enemy as it repeatedly runs around you in circles, unable to reach you due to glitchy pathfinding.
Once again, I realize that this is just a demo, I realize that my impression may be wrong and that the demo fight may not (hopefully) reflect the actual dragon fight in the game.
That event was detached from it's chain for the demo. In the live game, there's a limited amount of time before the event fails and the chain begins sweeping outward. The next step would be that the undead hordes begin raiding the nearby sylvari and hylek settlements. Also, with only two players, the boss was restricted to a narrow band of abilities to use. This expands as more players get involved, upping the difficulty and rewards.
Ah okay that makes sense. So in all liklihood, there is no way 2 people would be able to beat the dragon before the timer ran out even if they could do that camp the turret exploit.
Still, one thing ANet will probably need to consider is what abilities they restrict to scaling, and which are always allowed. Because without an ability to charge the turrets or otherwise project his power outwards, that dragon is vulnerable to an AI exploit. So even though 2 folks can probably never take down the dragon, 10 may be able to if the dragon doesn't get his "charge" ability until he scales for 15 players for example.
Anyway, if this shows anything it's that each individual DE has its own minute aspects that ANet needs to consider to make sure they aren't easily exploitable.
Ah okay that makes sense. So in all liklihood, there is no way 2 people would be able to beat the dragon before the timer ran out even if they could do that camp the turret exploit.
Still, one thing ANet will probably need to consider is what abilities they restrict to scaling, and which are always allowed. Because without an ability to charge the turrets or otherwise project his power outwards, that dragon is vulnerable to an AI exploit. So even though 2 folks can probably never take down the dragon, 10 may be able to if the dragon doesn't get his "charge" ability until he scales for 15 players for example.
Anyway, if this shows anything it's that each individual DE has its own minute aspects that ANet needs to consider to make sure they aren't easily exploitable.
Well as the above poster mentioned about scale and that this event is normally tied to a long chain. Two players likely wouldn't be able to get through that chain to get the end with the dragon fight. And yes they probably wouldn't be able to beat the dragon before the timer ran out as well. However 10 people may very well be able to. Anet has specifically said they don't want to make the non-end game (and this is late game) events so difficult they require 20+ people to compete because as an MMOG ages, the lower lvl zones are less likely to have dozens of people in them at any one time. So while 10 people probably can beat this, if they are quardinated enough, I doubt it would be easy.
Thanks for the link! I liked the comment about how two people could beat the DE if they spent a couple hours working on the dragon. Sounds like a challenge. LOL
I don't know. The 2 of them already got the dragon to 75% and they were really casually screwing around. It seemed all they had to do was defend the 2 turrets nearby, then hop in and blast the bone wall + dragon. Rinse and repeat. It looked like it would have taken them no longer than 15 minutes if they were focused on doing that. TB at least was busy multitasking, talking with Colin (that's who it sounded like anyway) and showing the different weapon set skills to the viewers.
I liked the general concept of what needed to be done though. It looked fun.
Yeah I agree, I was little put off by how easy the event appeared to be. The dragon basically just sat there and sent enemies out and you could hit him from afar with no threat of him coming after you.
That said, this WAS just a demo, so maybe they toned him down. Hopefully he will be a bit more challenging in the real game!
Do no that events scale. That dragon was so easy because there were only 2 characters there fighting it. So the dragon had lower hit points, reduced abilities itself and reduced damage output. That same event has been in a wide variety of videos and when there are dozens of players around it is a 'much' more difficult event to beat because with so many players the dragon gains his full strength, the use of all it's abilities, etc.
The puprose of having events scale with the number of players in the vicinity is to maintain approximately the same difficulty level regardless of how many players are participating in it. A huge event is not supposed to be significantly easier with only 2 players, which seems to be the argument you're using. Just like the event shouldn't become significantly harder with many more players. Yes, the boss should become more powerful, but only to compensate for the players becoming more powerful. The difficulty should remain relatively the same. At least that was the impression I was under with the scaling philosophy
Interestingly, Colin Johanson, the Anet dev who was standing right there with Total Biscuit, said the opposite of what you propose. He said the event would be way to difficult for just 2 players and would probably take them hours to complete if they could at all. This goes both against your argument that it would only get more difficult with more players and what I believed to be the philosophy behind scaling DEs retaining the same relative difficulty.
That said, I'd understand if there were some scaling "caps" where, say, they'd never expect a huge event to have fewer than 20 participants. So, whether there are 10, 19, or 3 players around, the strength of the enemies in the event would be the same, making it significantly more difficult for the 3 people to accomplish what is balanced for 20. But that also doesn't seem to be the case as this large event looked easily doable by 2 players.
Yeah I agree, I was little put off by how easy the event appeared to be. The dragon basically just sat there and sent enemies out and you could hit him from afar with no threat of him coming after you.
That said, this WAS just a demo, so maybe they toned him down. Hopefully he will be a bit more challenging in the real game!
This is my biggest fear, that the whole bloody game will be too easy. I would still play it for the FPS like PvP matches, no subs, and the WvWvW.
The PvE though...I like PvE sometimes you know? It's fun, but it needs to be challenging. I'm just concerned how you balance a game where you've removed such a staple like the holy trinity.
If you try to balance a game where 5 Thieves, or 3 Elementalists and 2 Engineers, or whatever combination can succeed. How easy does the game become when the ingenious playerbase figures out the "best" party makeup. (You know it will happen).
I think this is a big problem for them, but I'm excited to see what Anet comes up with.
I disagree, not everyone, in fact I would wager quite a few people actually like content above all else.
I dunno though, im an old time gamer and I still would rather play every game on easy mode with hardly any chance of dieing, just to experience the content.
I don't mind if certain pieces of content are easier, that's fine. And really, I wouldn't expect an outdoor event that is most likely going to be highly uncoordinated to be very difficult.
That said, I don't think the AI should be as easily exploitable as the dragon appeared to be. The demo made it seem like two people could beat the event by just camping a turret and pelting the dragon from outside his range. This is kind of ridiculous. It is analogous to exploiting the pathing in a SPRPG so that you can kill an enemy as it repeatedly runs around you in circles, unable to reach you due to glitchy pathfinding.
Once again, I realize that this is just a demo, I realize that my impression may be wrong and that the demo fight may not (hopefully) reflect the actual dragon fight in the game.
That event was detached from it's chain for the demo. In the live game, there's a limited amount of time before the event fails and the chain begins sweeping outward. The next step would be that the undead hordes begin raiding the nearby sylvari and hylek settlements. Also, with only two players, the boss was restricted to a narrow band of abilities to use. This expands as more players get involved, upping the difficulty and rewards.
Ah okay that makes sense. So in all liklihood, there is no way 2 people would be able to beat the dragon before the timer ran out even if they could do that camp the turret exploit.
Still, one thing ANet will probably need to consider is what abilities they restrict to scaling, and which are always allowed. Because without an ability to charge the turrets or otherwise project his power outwards, that dragon is vulnerable to an AI exploit. So even though 2 folks can probably never take down the dragon, 10 may be able to if the dragon doesn't get his "charge" ability until he scales for 15 players for example.
Anyway, if this shows anything it's that each individual DE has its own minute aspects that ANet needs to consider to make sure they aren't easily exploitable.
I agree with pretty much everything Creslin has said.
Colin did state that if the event goes on long enough, the dragon would dispatch undead hordes to nearby settlements, but he didn't specify what that time limit would be. He also didn't specifiy what would happen to the state of this particular event once the undead was dispatched. I can't imagine the event just stops, unless the dragon flys away temporarily until you clear out the undead from nearby towns. But if he doesn't fly away, then could you not just stay and finish the event? Also, like I said it looked like those 2 could have taken down the dragon in a solid 15 minutes, which doesn't sound like it would exceed a time limit.
Also, shouldn't it still take relatively the same amount of time for 10 players to defeat him as it would 2 or 20, as A) the boss's health is supposed to scale, the number of adds you'd have to deal with before you can even target the dragon are supposed increase and become stronger, and C) the amount of time you will have to spend evading more ferocious attacks and ressurecting other players/NPCs will increase? Is it not supposed to be balanced so that it should take approximately the same amount of time regardless of how many players are around?
I agree with pretty much everything Creslin has said.
Colin did state that if the event goes on long enough, the dragon would dispatch undead hordes to nearby settlements, but he didn't specify what that time limit would be. He also didn't specifiy what would happen to the state of this particular event once the undead was dispatched. I can't imagine the event just stops, unless the dragon flys away temporarily until you clear out the undead from nearby towns. But if he doesn't fly away, then could you not just stay and finish the event? Also, like I said it looked like those 2 could have taken down the dragon in a solid 15 minutes, which doesn't sound like it would exceed a time limit.
Also, shouldn't it still take relatively the same amount of time for 10 players to defeat him as it would 2 or 20, as A) the boss's health is supposed to scale, the number of adds you'd have to deal with before you can even target the dragon are supposed increase and become stronger, and C) the amount of time you will have to spend evading more ferocious attacks and ressurecting other players/NPCs will increase? Is it not supposed to be balanced so that it should take approximately the same amount of time regardless of how many players are around?
I doubt you could kill that dragon with two people in fifteen minutes, Colin said in that video (at 11:41) that as you do damage to the dragon he gets angry and sends out undead to stop you. So if that is true you are going to have to be taking on escalating swarms as the dragons health gets lower, so unless the mobs are so weak you can one shot them there is no way two people can do it in fifteen minutes.
As for the part in RED no that is not true, the event is designed for the minimum of ten people so anything below ten should take longer to do the event. Now because of the way scaling works you are correct anything above ten should take the same amount of time to kill the dragon. With twenty people there the dragon should scale up to maintain the same difficulty as it would have had with ten people. So in theory the time should remain the same, now in most DEs that scale to one then yes it should be the same time to complete for the one as the many. But it was said many times in that video and other places that the event was designed for ten, so anything below ten should make the fight harder and increase the time to complete it.
Originally posted by Unlight
That event was detached from it's chain for the demo. In the live game, there's a limited amount of time before the event fails and the chain begins sweeping outward. The next step would be that the undead hordes begin raiding the nearby sylvari and hylek settlements. Also, with only two players, the boss was restricted to a narrow band of abilities to use. This expands as more players get involved, upping the difficulty and rewards.
To the part in RED the scaling is not suppose to just increase the difficulty; it is suppose to help maintain the challenge as more people get in the fight not just make the mob impossible to kill by making the game hardcore mode. As for the rewards getting scaled I have not seen a developer say this, I would like to see a developer quote saying that the gold reward is better with five people compared to one. Because everything I have read makes it sound like a gold reward is a gold reward no matter how many people are there. The scaling is there to maintain challenge not to make it so that people that travel around in a group gets better rewards.
So if a developer has said that the gold, silver, bronze DE reward scale by the amount of people that are doing the DE I would like to see it.
I guess TotalBiscuit wasn't done yet with the Guild Wars 2 vids, now bringing us a 2 part video of the Dev Panel that was held at Eurogamer. Shame it was rife with technical difficulties.
I guess TotalBiscuit wasn't done yet with the Guild Wars 2 vids, now bringing us a 2 part video of the Dev Panel that was held at Eurogamer. Shame it was rife with technical difficulties.
Even with the technical difficulties it was a great video for information. I really liked hearing about the Charr Fort DE and how there is 3 other DEs in the zone that can impact how that DEs happens. I cannot wait to see how different variations on that one DE will play out after it has been impacted by the three other DEs.
Also I think with the final answer in that video we can put to rest the idea that the rewards in DE scale up when more people enter into them. It is the same reward gold, silver, bronze, or the special item for killing the elder dragon lieutenants; scaling just makes it so the fight is challenging for more players not for better rewards.
Comments
I agree with you if the character's level was par for the event. Is it possible they were playing amped up characters, at a level beyond what a normal undertaking of the dragon would occur? Or, like you mentioned, a watered down Dragon/Undead mob?
I would have an issue if 2 characters could duo what is supposed to be the ultimate event chain for the Sparkfly Fen.
That event was detached from it's chain for the demo. In the live game, there's a limited amount of time before the event fails and the chain begins sweeping outward. The next step would be that the undead hordes begin raiding the nearby sylvari and hylek settlements. Also, with only two players, the boss was restricted to a narrow band of abilities to use. This expands as more players get involved, upping the difficulty and rewards.
I don't think they were below the level of the event, because TB got destroyed by the wandering undead MOBs several times before he teamed up with his legendary friend, "Herp Derp."
But this video could have been a bit misleading. Alot mentioned that the MOBs are supposed to charge the turrets every now and then. If this is true, then it would resolve the "camp the turret" exploit. Maybe TB and Herp just didn't get the dragon's health low enough for him to charge?
Anyway, I think "what are you doing to prevent people from exploiting the AI of big dynamic events?" would be a good question for ANet.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Ah okay that makes sense. So in all liklihood, there is no way 2 people would be able to beat the dragon before the timer ran out even if they could do that camp the turret exploit.
Still, one thing ANet will probably need to consider is what abilities they restrict to scaling, and which are always allowed. Because without an ability to charge the turrets or otherwise project his power outwards, that dragon is vulnerable to an AI exploit. So even though 2 folks can probably never take down the dragon, 10 may be able to if the dragon doesn't get his "charge" ability until he scales for 15 players for example.
Anyway, if this shows anything it's that each individual DE has its own minute aspects that ANet needs to consider to make sure they aren't easily exploitable.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Well as the above poster mentioned about scale and that this event is normally tied to a long chain. Two players likely wouldn't be able to get through that chain to get the end with the dragon fight. And yes they probably wouldn't be able to beat the dragon before the timer ran out as well. However 10 people may very well be able to. Anet has specifically said they don't want to make the non-end game (and this is late game) events so difficult they require 20+ people to compete because as an MMOG ages, the lower lvl zones are less likely to have dozens of people in them at any one time. So while 10 people probably can beat this, if they are quardinated enough, I doubt it would be easy.
The puprose of having events scale with the number of players in the vicinity is to maintain approximately the same difficulty level regardless of how many players are participating in it. A huge event is not supposed to be significantly easier with only 2 players, which seems to be the argument you're using. Just like the event shouldn't become significantly harder with many more players. Yes, the boss should become more powerful, but only to compensate for the players becoming more powerful. The difficulty should remain relatively the same. At least that was the impression I was under with the scaling philosophy
Interestingly, Colin Johanson, the Anet dev who was standing right there with Total Biscuit, said the opposite of what you propose. He said the event would be way to difficult for just 2 players and would probably take them hours to complete if they could at all. This goes both against your argument that it would only get more difficult with more players and what I believed to be the philosophy behind scaling DEs retaining the same relative difficulty.
That said, I'd understand if there were some scaling "caps" where, say, they'd never expect a huge event to have fewer than 20 participants. So, whether there are 10, 19, or 3 players around, the strength of the enemies in the event would be the same, making it significantly more difficult for the 3 people to accomplish what is balanced for 20. But that also doesn't seem to be the case as this large event looked easily doable by 2 players.
I agree with pretty much everything Creslin has said.
Colin did state that if the event goes on long enough, the dragon would dispatch undead hordes to nearby settlements, but he didn't specify what that time limit would be. He also didn't specifiy what would happen to the state of this particular event once the undead was dispatched. I can't imagine the event just stops, unless the dragon flys away temporarily until you clear out the undead from nearby towns. But if he doesn't fly away, then could you not just stay and finish the event? Also, like I said it looked like those 2 could have taken down the dragon in a solid 15 minutes, which doesn't sound like it would exceed a time limit.
Also, shouldn't it still take relatively the same amount of time for 10 players to defeat him as it would 2 or 20, as A) the boss's health is supposed to scale, the number of adds you'd have to deal with before you can even target the dragon are supposed increase and become stronger, and C) the amount of time you will have to spend evading more ferocious attacks and ressurecting other players/NPCs will increase? Is it not supposed to be balanced so that it should take approximately the same amount of time regardless of how many players are around?
I doubt you could kill that dragon with two people in fifteen minutes, Colin said in that video (at 11:41) that as you do damage to the dragon he gets angry and sends out undead to stop you. So if that is true you are going to have to be taking on escalating swarms as the dragons health gets lower, so unless the mobs are so weak you can one shot them there is no way two people can do it in fifteen minutes.
As for the part in RED no that is not true, the event is designed for the minimum of ten people so anything below ten should take longer to do the event. Now because of the way scaling works you are correct anything above ten should take the same amount of time to kill the dragon. With twenty people there the dragon should scale up to maintain the same difficulty as it would have had with ten people. So in theory the time should remain the same, now in most DEs that scale to one then yes it should be the same time to complete for the one as the many. But it was said many times in that video and other places that the event was designed for ten, so anything below ten should make the fight harder and increase the time to complete it.
To the part in RED the scaling is not suppose to just increase the difficulty; it is suppose to help maintain the challenge as more people get in the fight not just make the mob impossible to kill by making the game hardcore mode. As for the rewards getting scaled I have not seen a developer say this, I would like to see a developer quote saying that the gold reward is better with five people compared to one. Because everything I have read makes it sound like a gold reward is a gold reward no matter how many people are there. The scaling is there to maintain challenge not to make it so that people that travel around in a group gets better rewards.
So if a developer has said that the gold, silver, bronze DE reward scale by the amount of people that are doing the DE I would like to see it.
I guess TotalBiscuit wasn't done yet with the Guild Wars 2 vids, now bringing us a 2 part video of the Dev Panel that was held at Eurogamer. Shame it was rife with technical difficulties.
- Developer Talk Part 1
- Developer Talk Part 2
Even with the technical difficulties it was a great video for information. I really liked hearing about the Charr Fort DE and how there is 3 other DEs in the zone that can impact how that DEs happens. I cannot wait to see how different variations on that one DE will play out after it has been impacted by the three other DEs.
Also I think with the final answer in that video we can put to rest the idea that the rewards in DE scale up when more people enter into them. It is the same reward gold, silver, bronze, or the special item for killing the elder dragon lieutenants; scaling just makes it so the fight is challenging for more players not for better rewards.