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i have a feeling gw2 dynamic events will be no better than rifts or PQs
bishbosh
Member Posts: 388
fact: gw2 will not be truly dynamic since it is not a sandbox
however
the illusion of a dynamic world can be created by having a large variety of events so that the same event does not occur for a couple of months after it first occured.
i really doubt gw2 will have enough unique events to even create an illusion of a dynamic world. from what i have seen the
-shatterer will respawn repeatedly in the same location every time
-the same centaurs will raid the same human city every single time
- the same pirates will attack the same city every single time
seems it will be like invasions in rift (mundane and repetitive); if i kill this boss he will be back in an hour and if i dont kill him he will occupy some trivial quest hub.
Comments
What game isn't repetitive?
Worst thing about rifts, IMHO, was just that the entire mechanic was tossed out at endgame, to be replaced with instance grinding. I'm not saying the rift idea is perfect, and of course its going to get repetitive, but it was still a big step forward, compared to most other MMOs - but then they failed to take the idea the whole way, especially important in a game with such fast leveling.
So if GW2 is even a small step forward from that AND makes it a rewarding part of endgame somehow, I'd be happy.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
none of those events happen that way in the first place. the centaurs do not just spawn and start attacking towns. if you come across a centaur camp and kill them then there is no centaur event, and there might not ever be one unless the mobs are actually allowed to gather and increase their number. they'll start out with scouting groups, and if they're unimpeded it graduates to raids, then occupations which lead to fortifications and more scouting, etc. increasing their numbers as time goes by.
this is not set in stone though, you won't just zone in at 12 every tuesdays and OH SHIT CENTAURS!!!
ditto for pirate event.
the boss battles for the shatterer and tequati are at the end of loooong event chains and again, may not happen at all, at least for a good while. there is no timer involved. they puposely put the mjaor events in a 20 minute timer in the demo so showgoers could play them.
but this post is lost on you, and everyone who hates Guild Wars 2. it's just time for your weekly dick stroking reassurance topic.
I think the idea is this:
1st time you play and see the centaurs attacking the village, you kill them etc and keep leveling and eventually your friend joins, and sees no cntaurs attacking, because they were pushed back and instead they hide in the forest and gather on the outskirts prepearing for an invasion. So he never nexperiences the same attack you did unless he stays long enough. Another of your friends might find the town burned down and no traders at all, they fled the city because players failed to help push back the invasion.. so he too wont see the place in the same state as you and your friend saw it. And so on.
The trick is chaining events, if ArenaNet can add enough stages it might sustain the illusion. But it can't just 'reset' magically, like in Champions Online for example...
My Guild Wars 2 First Beta Weekend "reviewette" : http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/4944570/thread/349125#4944570
Well, I seem to recall the developers saying that they're trying their best to add so many events in the same areas that there will be large periods of time before an event repeats, and that they will continue adding events after launch in order to decrease the repetitiveness. I think they've also said that creating a dynamic event does not take a whole lot of time thanks to their toolset, so hopefully they'll be able to put out a lot of events.
<childish, provocative and highly speculative banner about your favorite game goes here>
To be honest, the worst thing about Rifts wasn't that they became minimalized at end game. The worst thing about them is that they happened ALL THE TIME. And there wasn't any real variation to them. They occured in stages with most of the stages being, "Kill this many of that mob." Honestly, they were simply another Kill X of Y quest that occurred in stages, and in random spots. Most people got bored of doing them by level 30. It was a nice idea, but simply not varied enough in frequency or type to hold people's interest for too long.
I think GW2's dynamic events will be a further step in that evolution, improving on what Rift did, just as Rift improved upon what WAR did with their public quests. But I still question whether those dynamic events will be varied enough to truly make the levelling process much different than other MMOs. There will still be scout npcs directing the players to specific locales to do these dynamic events, which in my mind, doesn't make them a whole lot different than a quest chain at a quest hub. I do like the direction they are going with it, and think it does improve upon what is currently out there, I just question whether this will be able to function as the main levelling system and give you a truly different experience than regular themeparks when all is said and done. And I definitely question how this will be able to hold up as a staple of their endgame content, which I believe will be seriously lacking. I could be wrong about all that, though, and I do plan to give this game a shot and go into it with an open mind.
I attempt to address this point all the time. I actually am really starting to hate that dynamic events are called "dynamic" because the fact that they "change the world" is the least compelling aspect. To me, it's a nice bonus. Yes, it helps immersion to see that the world is different. And I am happy that they chain together, but more because keeping people working together longer (why leave when you have another event queued up for you?) leads to people being more likely to talk.
Usually after I write an entire page about them, I link that people should just watch this video. I really think everybody should watch it. It explains the evolution of MMO content and how DEs are the next step past quests and PQs. http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1013691/Designing-Guild-Wars-2-Dynamic
I really do believe that dynamic events are awesome and revolutionary, but it's not because you can "change the world". Changing the world is a dumb reason to do something in an MMO if you can't change things permanently.
Dynamic events are almost strictly better than traditional MMO quests. I won't get into that because this thread is about PQs and rifts, where there are a few major differences.
DEs are the major form of PVE content. They aren't something you do because they're in the way of your questing. People will be wanting to do DEs.
DEs chain together. This gives people more of an opportunity to be social because they're sticking together longer. It's not like a rift or a PQ where you do it and then scatter.
DEs are purely cooperative. Everybody gets xp and loot for helping kill a mob. You always want to see other people. DEs scale up or down with number of participants, so they're always challenging.
The game automentors you down to an appropriate level if you're in a lower level zone. If you're max level, the entire game is open to you so you can do anything. You can group with friends no matter what their levels are. You never have to worry about an event being impossible or trivial.
People get rewarded for their level of participation. You could just run around rezzing people and be rewarded.
DEs have context that rifts lack. A rift could be a complicated minigame, but it's just a hole in the sky. An invasion is mobs trying to take something over. With DEs, again, you're not really about trying to "change the world", but you're walking down the road and you see an NPC yelling about something that's actually happening, and you jumping in to help. Bandits are poisoning a well, centaurs have prisoners, ogres need help clearing an oasis so they can get water for their pets.
TL:DR Seriously, watch the video. But also seriously, it's like a whole world of quests, but the quests are more immediate (no wall of text, no picking up and turning in, no prequests), more immersive (it's actually happening), repeatable (you can redo the ones you like because they run in cycles and the game scales you down), failable (unlike quests where you're going to kill those rats eventually, you can fail if the enemy achieves certain conditions), scalable (up to 10 or up to 100 people in the area can take part), and cooperative (everybody gets xp and loot, everyone rezzes everybody, cross profession combos). Oh, and they also kind of change the world for a while.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
It may be quest loops, with added steps? I have no clue...
They had me at WvWvW with objectives and sieges...
I agree with Rift being a instance grind for pve or pvp at the end, felt limited and the world was small for you when you were max level. Rift is good for what it is, but I admit I like more sandbox, and I am trying to be satisifed and compromise...Loved Vanguard (till they stopped putting resources into it), and it isn't a sandbox...So I don't need a sandbox to be happy. I am hoping for some DAoC nastalgia with the WvWvW in GW2.
I also share your fear. Trion nor Mythic/EA could pull it off. Hopefully, Anet can. From what I've been led to believe, though, the same event should not happen twice. Even then, though, the events could come to feel the same. What is the difference between an ogre boss or a gnoll boss? Just different costumes.
Though, something tells me this is more a diatribe about GW2 not being a sandbox than actual discussion. I bet this game is going to be more of a sandbox than Rift, WAR or WoW. Oh yea, and that other game coming out.
Whether it is truly dynamic or just an illusion, either way it's better than the static PQs of WAR and better than those same PQs made portable in Rift. This time, they cause a chain reaction, one dynamic event affects the next and so on down the line/zone thereby making the impact on the world much larger and more poignant. Illusion? probably, because sure, at some point it will all reset. But by that time my character will have moved on to other areas. It will only be brought to my attention when I make an alt, but that's a given in any game, isn't it?
On that note, let me end by saying, I actually enjoy PQs in WAR, Rifts in Rift and soon the Dynamic events in GW2. Sure beats doing the same old grind mobs/quests we've been seeing before WAR hit. ...Am I really in another thread complaining about something that was actually innovative in the genre and now evolving? When will this negativity end, sheesh.
I'm of the opinion that the illusion of a dynamic environment can be achieve by use of unpredictability and variety.
Take a town, we'll call it Burbank for example. If there is one event for Burbank and it happens repeatedly every four hours, the pattern is obvious. Oh look, the Troggs are attacking... right on time.
On the other hand, if Burbank has five events that can happen to it, scheduling of events is very unpredictable, and application of event is also randomized (location and intensity) then Burbank will have more chance of being perceived as dynamic.
A flip side to this is that if Burbank is constantly having an event, that too is predictable. Sometimes Burbanks should have nothing going on... just to keep them guessing.
Dynamic events influencing other dynamic events sounds trick. Are there examples of this?
Alas the wonders of the syllogism. However you are using a perception as your lesser fact which really makes the logic flawed. A proper syllogism would use a greater fact supplimented by a lesser fact to determine a truth. My favorite syllogism is "God is love, and love is blind therefore God is Ray Charles."
I am sorry however if my post seems pointless, I am just trying to keep the spirit of the thread
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
Computer code is no substitute for a human when it comes to sponteneity, originality, story, agenda, war,..... Unfortunately no game has been created to take advantage of this, gaming companies think that they can make computer code that will replace humans, hahahaha, it will fail, it will always fail. This aint AI.
I serously doubt it can work as advertised, ever since WOW all the rough edges and peaks and valleys have been smoothed out of MMORPG's.
Notice you said "respawn" you have no idea of the respawn rate so you don't know,The Shatterer could respawn a month or 2 months later meaning it take could 2 months set all events to trigger the dragon,The Centuars and pirates are in the area so it make sense they attack the city you can logically plan different events to trigger it happening ,once again it could take couple months to set up events plus some small events makes sense that they happen over and over
It is not matter of having enough events it is matter making those events don't happen over and over.GW2 as buy to play game does not care about population and player entitlement like other games.If their any game that won't care that you don't get to see cool dragon it is guild war 2
Also Fact: Because GW2 is not a sandbox,It will always have interesting content to do
Great post. Thanks for that.
Totally agree. What makes DEs great and innovative isn't their 'dynamic' nature, which imho is just a trick to temporarily make us believe that we're in a changing dynamic world. It's their communal nature: easy, rewarding and meaningful grouping. That's what makes DEs great.
We are the bunny.
Resistance is futile.
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( o.o) ( o.o) ( o.o)
(")("),,(")("),(")(")
There are bigger problems in the world other than sandbox vs themepark gamer preferences.
Whether GW2 is a Sandbox or not, this is a worthy thing to build on. It would fit in better and work better in a Sandbox world, and as long as Developers start working in this direction then Sandbox games won't be far behind.
I really hope that what is being said here is what actually comes about. This would be the first good news in years.
Edit: Instanced dungeons...bleh!
Once upon a time....
Even in the PQs of Warhammer we would talk to each other and discuss how to go about the next stage and some who had done it before would make suggestions. Talking was not the problem the PQs it is just that they got boring is all and some people who played certain classes never could get high enough on the loot list to win a good loot item because often the healers got the top score or the one who did the most damage so the alsorans left the PQs and pretty soon people started skirting them and came to a point I had to solo only a couple of stages and go hide till it reset.
I lke the way Quests have different rewards, such as interesting or special items. People from far and wide would search out those Quests amd encounters that were most rewarding.
With Dynamic Events the rewards are the same very time - tokens. Then go buy something that everyone else anywhere else can.
And let's face it, once the novelty wears off, people do things for the rewards.
I think DEs are a great step in the right direction and the GW2 ones sound great so far.
"The worst thing about them is that they happened ALL THE TIME"
Agree. I'm not knocking them as a i think the Rifts are very well done but if something "dynamic" is happening all the time it becomes normal. I think it's a mistake to set a game in a state of war. The default state needs to be peace and the dynamic events breach the peace. That way they stand out as events.
"I just question whether this will be able to function as the main levelling system and give you a truly different experience than regular themeparks when all is said and done."
Initially i don't think games should aim too high. There's an evolution to this and so much scope for simple improvements. Also the base game needs to be adjusted to fit. If the base game has a complete linear quest-grinding path that fully levels the character then the DEs can end up just being a distraction.
I think the three levels to it are
1. World zones as a steady-state engine.
A zone-level steady-state engine should actually be pretty easy as it's just a system of flags being set and having alternate models e.g. a border zone has a central ruin that can have orc or human guards/merchants and the flag for which of them (or neither) spawns gets set either randomly by the game or through player action. If a game continent has twelve zones and two states for each zone then IIRC that's something like 12 to the power of 2 permutations. Either way it's a lot.
Over time extra permutations can be added on like if one zone has the orc vs human state and an adjacent dark elf zone has a united houses vs divided houses state then the combination of the two flags could create futher state conditions. I think this should be used for macro-level political changes like zone control so you can have empires expand and contract over time. The engine would be weighted so it had a tendency to decay to the default state without player action but empires could still (rarely) happen randomly also.
For example the default state for the dark elf zone might be divided houses but each real world week the game tests a random 1 in 6 chance the state changes to united houses. One of the adjacent zones might have a default state of contested between orcs and humans but a 1 in 6 chance of orc control. A second adjacent zone might have a default state of contested between centaurs and something else with a 1 in 6 chance of centaur control. If all three were set that way at once then a combined alliance state would trigger and the zones adjacent to the orc and centaur zones would have dark elf / centaur / orc invasions until the state was changed back again.
Obviously player action would be able to change the odds in either direction (and it would create the perfect opportunity for diplomacy and espionage type quests that actually had an effect).
In a way it's not even dynamic content. It's static content which is dynamically switched on or off - but that's still more fun.
The other major zone level element i'd like to see is something like a seasonal version of rifts i.e. the game world is say one game month per real week so there's a 12 week cycle in the game. For example in the 12th week (midwinter) there's a chance of an undead rift opening in certain zones. The zone could have five mob camps that act as control points and if the undead take all five there's a chance of another undead rift opeining in an adjacent zone and so on - but only in that week every twelve weeks. In the 6th week of the cycle (midsummer in game) there could be Wild Hunt events like Life rifts opening up with satyrs, minotaurs and faeries etc. These would be more chaotic and last for a fixed time and then despawn before opening again in another zone. Also just for that one week.
2. Dynamic quest-grinding / mob-grinding
This should be easy also as it's basically the same thing in a different form. For example you could have a static version of a quest giver standing in a field or a dynamic version. The only real difference is the dynamic one is set to be invisible until a flag is set. Similarly you could have a farm in a starter zone overrun with constantly respawning bandits (which looks silly) and a quest to get rid of them (which doesn't do anything) or you could have the same spawn points and quests but switched off by a flag which gets switched on from time to time and switched off when you complete the quest. In reality all it is is randomizing the same mob-grinding and/or quest-grinding but that's fine by me. It's still more varied plus it makes the game world feel more worldy.
I think this needs to be integrated with the standard grinding though. The standard grinding on its own maybe shouldn't be enough to level (or maybe just slower) as that risks turning the dynamic content into a distraction.
Example:
Take a starter zone with a bunch of friendly settlements connected by roads. The standard now is you start at one end of a linear chain and follow a fixed path with the mobs and quests getting progressively higher level as you move further away from the start. The mobs are mostly in place from the start and constantly respawning.
Change it so all the settlements and the roads in between are safe with a grey periphery around all those safe bits which are fairly safe apart from small pest type mobs. The dark islands in between the safe parts are the next most dangerous for the most part with the dark areas around the edges of the zone as the step beyond that. (The zone map would look like this at the start with the settlements and roads marked with everything else dark).
In this case the static content for each settlement might be one or two one-off chore style newbie quests and a repeatable or daily chore style newbie quest. If each settlement is distinct in some way e.g. fishing village, forestry village etc, then these quests are easy to think up. The chore quests run you between the safe parts of the map and into the grey bits. Say these repeatable chore quests grey out at level 6 and then you get a mission type one-off at each settlement and a mission type daily / repeatable at each settlement for level 7-12. These missions take you into the dark islands of the map in between the settlements. Finally at 13-16 these internal repeatable missions grey out and are replaced with some border missions to the dark edges of the map. The whole set of 30-40 mostly very simple static chores / quests / missions are designed to not be in a chain and to not give eneough exp to level on their own except through repeating the dailies. The dynamic content is there to fill the gaps in exp or, if there's enough of it the other way round, the static content is there as the filler in between the dynamic.
For the most part it's the same content served up in a different form. Example: Six farms. Six fields. Instead of having beetles swarming all over them all the time and stupid quests to get rid of them that don't do anything instead every 20 minutes or so, if there isn't one already active, there's a beetle eruption in one of the fields which is like a rift or PQ and can be switched off by player action. The spawn points and tunnel entrance model are already in place on all six fields the same they would be in the standard form except they're switched off until a flag is set. Similarly there might be a static high level bandit camp on the edge of the zone which spawns raids of varying lower levels like the invasions in Rift, e.g a boss and some followers of a specific level i.e. 4, 6, 8, etc up to max, spawn and run off to attack one of a set of targets like a farm or a guardpost, or a set of pre-placed invisible bandit spawns blocking a bridge are made active but can be switched off again by player action.
3. Actually dynamic world.
I wouldn't even aim for that until the first two had been perfected.
###
Reason for doing this
There's a lot of reasons but one which hasn't been mentioned yet which i think is important is that as a game continues over time the old content may become stale to veteran players but constant expansions can have the effect of diluting players between too many zones and continents. One way to counter this is having new content within the old zones or at least connected to them. Another is to add content but make it part of a dynamic cycle with existing content e.g you add a new dungeon of a certain level range and at the same time change an existing one of the same range so the entrances opens depending on the stars. When there's two of them they are each open six weeks then closed six weeks. Later you might add a third in the same range and change the cycle so they're now all open for four weeks each. So instead of adding new zones and diluting the players you add new zones while keeping the players concentrated.
Sure. You can build and use some siege weapons in one dynamic event and then use those same engines to kill a boss in another dynamic event. Those dynamic events are not necessarily even in the same event chain and you can kill the boss without the siege weapons -> without completling the other event, although I can imagine it would be easier if you did.
If a boss event fails, undead enemies start marching through the land and start attacking settlements. Events in that area may become harder because of the roaming undead. People really want to kill that boss when he appears.
Things like that.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
At the OP I agree with you, in fact, I've debated this very topic many times, and I've come to the conclusion that a lot of those looking forward to the game understand that dynamic events will be cyclical in nature overall, even if we do not know how long each cycle for an event is.
We do know without a shadow of a doubt that you will never miss an event that will not be able to be completed again at a later time.
That being said, I think DEs are a step ahead of PQs overall.
I feel they eventually will feel like PQs as far as playability, as you will essentially be doing a PQ everytime you walk into an area, they just cascade and change based on reactions, but what you'll be doing won't differ greatly from regular MMO conventions -- and theres nothing wrong with that.
I'm actually looking forward to that more than anything else in the game. Sometimes the aesthetic and slight change in functionality of something is more than enough to keep someones interest, and it certainly is enough to keep mine.
I can't even take this post seriously. This grammar is horrible. I'm not sober. Get me in an hour and I'll come up with a better response than this.
Don't fuckin' worry. GW2 is going to be great no matter what it plays like. Why? Because it's fucking awesome. Why? Because it's fucking awesome. Why? Because shut the hell up and play.