My point is that with Dynamic Events, where you have to be able to accomodate multiple players at the same, the objectives deal entirely with quantities of X, but in a very crude manner because these objectives need to be scalable. The objectives will never deal with something tailored to the individual, losing depth and specificity. I'll try and provide a better example:
You are tasked by your faction leader to infiltrate an enemy camp with the use of a disguise to assassinate their chieftain in a way that it looks like he suffered an accident, to avoid turmoil and a general riot from beginning. In a Dynamic Event system, this quest would not work because you would need multiple people infiltrating the same camp at the same time to kill one guy. Not only would this approach be tactically unsound and impossible, you would not be able to scale the objective of killing their leader because there is only one leader. Specificity impossibilitates the ability to do quests "pubicly".
What happens when you can't make objectives too specific or too tailored to an individual? The system can only make use of objectives with scalable quantities, and that is a severe limit that eventually leads to repetition within the gameplay experience itself.
And like I just said... that's all handle in the personal story. Heck, I've seen seen a video similar to the example you gave, where the player and his/her companion goes into stealth in order to follow some NPCs back to their hideout and assassinate their leader. So you're concerns are pretty much unfounded. If you don't like the fact that the Dynamic Events are limited, in some ways, to accomodate large groups of players then just stick to the personal story and enjoy it as if it were a singleplayer MMO.
You can't do Personal Stories all the way from 1-80. Not only that, Dynamic Events are a MAJOR selling point of this game and some people rever it like the most amazing innovation. To not take part in them would be like not experiecing half of the game. However, there are some major flaws with this system, and I am here to show my preocupations, yet you seem rather oblivious.
But you can supplement the personal story with Dungeons, that also offer their own tailored storytelling experience.
Also who said I was oblivious of the limitations with the Dynamic Events system? Earlier today I answered a person's question, highlighting another limitation of DEs. So no, I'm not sticking my head in the sand, to avoid the issues with DEs. I just look at how they would play out in the bigger picture, without isolating it as it's own game, like you seem to be doing. Guild Wars 2 will come with a buttload of features so why are you singling out Dynamic Events as if it's the "be all end all" of Guild Wars 2.
Also in every single convention panel, ArenaNet always highlight 3 key areas, that they are trying to innovate: Personal Story, Dynamic Events & Combat. So no... they aren't just pushing DEs.
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.
Except the fact that they already confirmed that IT WILL NOT BE LIKE THIS. Well no, it will not be like this.
And lol at @ it can't be a real dynamic game because it's not a sandbox... So many overused word for no reason.
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.
Except the fact that they already confirmed that IT WILL NOT BE LIKE THIS. Well no, it will not be like this.
And lol at @ it can't be a real dynamic game because it's not a sandbox... So many overused word for no reason.
Everything cycles...they have confirmed this. The boss will eventually respawn once the full cycle of zone chains is complete.
Well it looks like you were the one that said it! Your reasoning here on why GW2 cannot do certain things with DEs is because it becomes redundant and stupid. I think anyone with half a brain on this website can find tons of things in themepark MMOs that are redundant and stupid! So if every other themepark MMO can do it, why can’t GW2? What because you say so?
IF ANet can add an event in the game that has people answering riddles, then why can't they have someone get info from a prisoner? Since in the event with the riddles the riddles do not scale just the amount you have to do to get the objective done at that shrine scales. So why couldn’t ANet have an objective in the game to get info from a prisoner along with like 5 other things to help out a Charr Spy. Then to make it scalable you would just have to increase the amount people would need to do to fulfill what the spy wants. There you go there is a way to have that objective in GW2 and include scaling, and I have never even designed a game. Are you really trying to tell me that people that design games for a living cannot out think a person that likes playing games?
After all there is over 1500 DEs in this game at launch and until we play through all 1500 none of us know the limits of the design!
Let me rephrase did this for you apparently misunderstood what I meant to say. I'm not talking about repetition in the sense that I kill a monster, he respawns, and someone else kills him. Or I do a Dynamic Event, someone else comes, and does that same event. That is not the point since all online games are not entirely persistent.
My point is that with Dynamic Events, where you have to be able to accomodate multiple players at the same, the objectives deal entirely with quantities of X, but in a very crude manner because these objectives need to be scalable. The objectives will never deal with something tailored to the individual, losing depth and specificity. I'll try and provide a better example:
You are tasked by your faction leader to infiltrate an enemy camp with the use of a disguise to assassinate their chieftain in a way that it looks like he suffered an accident, to avoid turmoil and a general riot from beginning. In a Dynamic Event system, this quest would not work because you would need multiple people infiltrating the same camp at the same time to kill one guy. Not only would this approach be tactically unsound and impossible, you would not be able to scale the objective of killing their leader because there is only one leader. Specificity impossibilitates the ability to do quests "pubicly".
What happens when you can't make objectives too specific or too tailored to an individual? The system can only make use of objectives with scalable quantities, and that is a severe limit that eventually leads to repetition within the gameplay experience itself.
I don't know if you missed my earlier post, but I do partially agree with you. DEs don't do the solo experience very well. I agree that if you think back to some of the more unusual quests in WoW, there will probably be some that can't be done as a DE. There is a tradeoff because DEs can do things quests can't; they actually happen, they're more immersive, they can be failed, have consequences and are scalable and repeatable.
That isn't to say that there aren't creative ways to mix up the content. You can have a cave with a prisoner you need to rescue, where the number of mobs in the cave is scalable.
We know there is an event where centaurs have prisoners where not only the number of centaurs attacking you is scalable, the toughness of the cell door you need to destroy is also scalable.
For variety's sake, we might even be able to do something at least similar to what you're proposing. When you enter an area, you get a message from a witch saying she's put an illusion on you so you can sneak past all the guards into the boss's room to kill him. The boss himself is scalable and gains new abilities and such when more people fight him. One problem with DEs is that they need to be ungriefable, so we can't have people be able to ruin the event by dropping the illusion and training a bunch of enemies inside, but maybe that could be worked around.
There's one WoW quest where you have to collect a bunch of mementos of an NPC's past from around the world, then use an illusion to get to him, convince him of the error of his ways and help him fight his way out. With DEs you can't do all the prequests (unless they're in a chain down the road) but you could probably use the illusion to get to him, and any latecomers could use it to get to where the fight has already started.
I think escort DEs in general allow for a lot of variety of context. Where a quest might have been "take this thing and go somewhere and do something", it can be "protect me while I go somewhere and do something."
And as I pointed out earlier, if they can make solving riddles into a DE, maybe there is more flexibility than we imagined.
"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
And what quests would you need to hand in that the dynamic events prevent you from handing in?
If you haven't guessed it, then the answer is "none".
The thing about GW2 is that it provides viable options. If I get bored of doing Dynamic Events then I have the choice of: Dungeons, Personal Story & World v World World as a viable form of progression. Where Rift failed is that doing the quests was the only viable form of progression. Everything else was filler.
Yes, because time is the answer to everything.... If you take some time off from doing Dynamic Events because they became boring, a week later you can go back to them because they'll feel fine and dandy. Yep...
No, but variety is the answer in this case. Man I feel like I'm being trolled here. Guess I'll stick with the GW2 forums for a while, cause this is getting boring.
I guess I have to play devils advocate being a Rift fan here. If there had been no Rift then I am under the belief that GW2 dynamic event system would have been a complete distater.
The reasoning behind this is ArenaNET has little to no reference in the mmorpg model to base theirs on until Rift came out. Now neither did Trion. People can call Trions Rift system a simple copy and paste of WAR's pq system, but there is enough info to prove you completely wrong.
Trion has shown that a invasion can spawn and move into a town. Most importantly and ArenaNET better learn from this that people do not like having their progress halted because of said invasion. GW2 will have more character models and different storys like pirates or zombies, but the concept is the same as Rift invasions.
GW2 does not have raiding so unlike Trion their end game HEAVILY relies on their dynamic world changing and keeping people engaged and this means rewards. We go back to Rift for examples of what gets people motivated and what does not work.
Even Blizzard has recognized Rift has a good way of getting people out of the cities and moving around the world and MoP is their attempt at doing it. While Rift, GW2, WoW are moving to dynamic ToR is counting on story.
But you can supplement the personal story with Dungeons, that also offer their own tailored storytelling experience.
Also who said I was oblivious of the limitations with the Dynamic Events system? Earlier today I answered a person's question, highlighting another limitation of DEs. So no, I'm not sticking my head in the sand, to avoid the issues with DEs. I just look at how they would play out in the bigger picture, without isolating it as it's own game, like you seem to be doing. Guild Wars 2 will come with a buttload of features so why are you singling out Dynamic Events as if it's the "be all end all" of Guild Wars 2.
Also in every single convention panel, ArenaNet always highlight 3 key areas, that they are trying to innovate: Personal Story, Dynamic Events & Combat. So no... they aren't just pushing DEs.
Oh, so it's fine for one of the largest features in a game to present a series of major flaws because in the "bigger picture" there will be more things to do?
And what quests would you need to hand in that the dynamic events prevent you from handing in?
If you haven't guessed it, then the answer is "none".
The thing about GW2 is that it provides viable options. If I get bored of doing Dynamic Events then I have the choice of: Dungeons, Personal Story & World v World World as a viable form of progression. Where Rift failed is that doing the quests was the only viable form of progression. Everything else was filler.
Yes, because time is the answer to everything.... If you take some time off from doing Dynamic Events because they became boring, a week later you can go back to them because they'll feel fine and dandy. Yep...
No, but variety is the answer in this case. Man I feel like I'm being trolled here. Guess I'll stick with the GW2 forums for a while, cause this is getting boring.
Variety? Hah! So you suggest people completely neglect a major part of the game? Btw, my last post was something called sarcasm, not trolling.
I guess I have to play devils advocate being a Rift fan here. If there had been no Rift then I am under the belief that GW2 dynamic event system would have been a complete distater.
The reasoning behind this is ArenaNET has little to no reference in the mmorpg model to base theirs on until Rift came out. Now neither did Trion. People can call Trions Rift system a simple copy and paste of WAR's pq system, but there is enough info to prove you completely wrong.
Trion has shown that a invasion can spawn and move into a town. Most importantly and ArenaNET better learn from this that people do not like having their progress halted because of said invasion. GW2 will have more character models and different storys like pirates or zombies, but the concept is the same as Rift invasions.
Interesting theory... Except that ArenaNet started developing Guild Wars 2 around 5 years ago and had major conference explaining their Dynamic Event design, long before any info was released about Rift. I think that conference vid, which I can't be assed to find, dates back to 2009. So yeah, ArenaNet got ideas from a game they probably didn't know even existed, at the time.
Also I may be wrong about this, but isn't there a lot of ex-Mythic developers working for Trion, so I doubt they had no influence from WAR.
But you can supplement the personal story with Dungeons, that also offer their own tailored storytelling experience.
Also who said I was oblivious of the limitations with the Dynamic Events system? Earlier today I answered a person's question, highlighting another limitation of DEs. So no, I'm not sticking my head in the sand, to avoid the issues with DEs. I just look at how they would play out in the bigger picture, without isolating it as it's own game, like you seem to be doing. Guild Wars 2 will come with a buttload of features so why are you singling out Dynamic Events as if it's the "be all end all" of Guild Wars 2.
Also in every single convention panel, ArenaNet always highlight 3 key areas, that they are trying to innovate: Personal Story, Dynamic Events & Combat. So no... they aren't just pushing DEs.
Oh, so it's fine for one of the largest features in a game to present a series of major flaws because in the "bigger picture" there will be more things to do?
Sure. If the cons are reletively minor and the pros are awesome then why shouldn't I neglect a "minor issue". I play MMOs to easily play & have fun with other people. Questing doesn't provide that experience, but dynamic events do. I think that's a major plus in my book. Dynamic Events are built to replace questing, not single-player story telling.
Interesting theory... Except that ArenaNet started developing Guild Wars 2 around 5 years ago and had major conference explaining their Dynamic Event design, long before any info was released about Rift. I think that conference vid, which I can't be assed to find, dates back to 2009. So yeah, ArenaNet got ideas from a game they probably didn't know even existed, at the time.
Also I may be wrong about this, but isn't there a lot of ex-Mythic developers working for Trion, so I doubt they had no influence from WAR.
True, but there is a difference between saying and doing. Even to this day outside of that dragon thing I think we have yet to actually see Dynamic Events be demonstrated and how the rewards will be handled.
I think Rift does deserve credit for showing what works and what does not work. It has become beyond obvious by that even WoW is starting to copy some of the stuff Rift has done and I believe ArenaNET is no different.
Dynamic events that repeat are exciting at first, but become an annoying burden in the end. As you mentioned, the invasions in Rift become a grind when you are farming planarite and are just plain annoying when you just need to turn in a quest but the NPC's are all dead because the population in that zone is low and you are the only one even participating in the invasion.
And what quests would you need to hand in that the dynamic events prevent you from handing in?
If you haven't guessed it, then the answer is "none".
That's definately an improvement if complete failure of DE in GW2 isn't annoying like it was in Rift. The game looks innovative and interesting even discluding the DEs, so such an improvement over previous scripted DE systems is great. My main point was that after experiencing the invasion of monster(s) controlled by a person(developer), scripted AI invasions will come up short (due to predictability).
But you can supplement the personal story with Dungeons, that also offer their own tailored storytelling experience.
Also who said I was oblivious of the limitations with the Dynamic Events system? Earlier today I answered a person's question, highlighting another limitation of DEs. So no, I'm not sticking my head in the sand, to avoid the issues with DEs. I just look at how they would play out in the bigger picture, without isolating it as it's own game, like you seem to be doing. Guild Wars 2 will come with a buttload of features so why are you singling out Dynamic Events as if it's the "be all end all" of Guild Wars 2.
Also in every single convention panel, ArenaNet always highlight 3 key areas, that they are trying to innovate: Personal Story, Dynamic Events & Combat. So no... they aren't just pushing DEs.
Oh, so it's fine for one of the largest features in a game to present a series of major flaws because in the "bigger picture" there will be more things to do?
Sure. If the cons are reletively minor and the pros are awesome then why shouldn't I neglect a "minor issue". I play MMOs to easily play & have fun with other people. Questing doesn't provide that experience, but dynamic events do. I think that's a major plus in my book. Dynamic Events are built to replace questing, not single-player story telling.
If you consider these minor issues, then I see no point in taking this discussion further. I believe Dynamic Events, with all their praiseworthy aspects, will be overshadowed by the major flaws that comes with making quests "public" and will quickly become stale and boring.
True, but there is a difference between saying and doing. Even to this day outside of that dragon thing I think we have yet to actually see Dynamic Events be demonstrated and how the rewards will be handled.
I think Rift does deserve credit for showing what works and what does not work. It has become beyond obvious by that even WoW is starting to copy some of the stuff Rift has done and I believe ArenaNET is no different.
My thing is just give credit where credit is due.
I agree that credit should be given where it's due. I disagree that Rift deserves any credit at all. I think it is a cautionary tale, showing developers that polish alone is not enough to gain mass-market success if you simply create a dramatically smaller, shallower version of what came before.
You are incorrect in your assumption that there is no demonstrated evidence of dynamic events. There is TONS of demo play evidence, from both players and media, of dozens of different dynamic events, including how they chain, how they scale, and how they affect the world. If you haven't spent 2 seconds to look around, it's probably better not to post assumptions.
If you consider these minor issues, then I see no point in taking this discussion further. I believe Dynamic Events, with all their praiseworthy aspects, will be overshadowed by the major flaws that comes with making quests "public" and will quickly become stale and boring.
Major flaws? enlighten us further please.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
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.
fact: you're a troll who didn't even bother to google gw2 dynamic event system and the maps where it's drawed how many and where the paths of dynamic events are (in some areas). So you couldn't possibly know how many event's there is, and YES they can make enough events to make it dynamic because they already did that. Check around this forum and you'll see a few topics with maps of gw2 dynamic events, so you can see how many DE there is (and they will add new ones as the game goes on).
shatterer will not "respawn"... it's not world of warcraft where you kill a boss and then wait till he comes back... it has advantages if you do kill him (maybe you'll be able to push him back to where he goes when he's defeated and try to defeat his army to banish him for some period of time away from the world). How it's different again says the fact that they do not have to be killed, you can fail with killing him but then you don't just stand up from the dead and go for another try because he goes on and sends minions or armies to other cities which then have to be rescued and liberated to be able to go back to "killing" the dragon, even if you fail to liberate the cities they will move on and try to get the whole area for them selves, which might have effect on the other DEs and the look of the area (it might not be green and bloomy anymore, but dark and burned to dust).
Does this sound anything like rifts to you ? In rift only thing which happens new is rifts open up and invadors come in, but they're not invading the world untill they're defeated and it doesn't have any consequences on the world around you.
Failing or succeeding in DE will have consequences to the world around you, it will affect the people in the map, it will change the looks of that area where it happens and it will change the way NPC's "live" in that area.
Atleast bother to read more than just titles on the websites regarding GW2. And watch more than 2 clips on GW2 site or youtube.
"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life." -------------------------------
Interesting theory... Except that ArenaNet started developing Guild Wars 2 around 5 years ago and had major conference explaining their Dynamic Event design, long before any info was released about Rift. I think that conference vid, which I can't be assed to find, dates back to 2009. So yeah, ArenaNet got ideas from a game they probably didn't know even existed, at the time.
Also I may be wrong about this, but isn't there a lot of ex-Mythic developers working for Trion, so I doubt they had no influence from WAR.
True, but there is a difference between saying and doing. Even to this day outside of that dragon thing I think we have yet to actually see Dynamic Events be demonstrated and how the rewards will be handled.
I think Rift does deserve credit for showing what works and what does not work. It has become beyond obvious by that even WoW is starting to copy some of the stuff Rift has done and I believe ArenaNET is no different.
My thing is just give credit where credit is due.
If you still cannot grasp the basics of Dynamic Events from the numerous demonstrations they have provided in conventions, then there's no helping you in that area. Because I seen the beginnings & ends of dynamic events, I have seen the rewards they give and I have seen an event chain play out; where you start off by reclaiming an outpost, then escort some Vigil soldiers to explode a cave entrance, then explore the cave and so on.
I don't see what ArenaNet could have learnt from Rift, because at the time, they had already thought up the designs around Dynamic Events in Guild Wars 2, back when it was still known as Guild Wars: Utopia. They knew their ideas were too ambitious to be another expansion, thus it gave birth to GW2 and the core design of the dynamic events system, which hasn't really changed much in all these year of development.
So I will give credit where credit is due, but it's not directed o Rift. It's mostly directed to WAR, DAoC, TF2, Borderlands and GW1.
I think the problem inherent with any type of dynamic event system like RIFT or GW2 is not the content itself, but the players.
In RIFT, the zone invasions basically just turned into a bunch of people who weren't communicating eachother running around not really understanding what they were supposed to do, and not doing anything like defending the wardstones, causing the event to fail. The extent of communication I would usually see in zone invasions was maybe a mini map signal and that was about it.
I think that's just what happens when you throw a bunch of random people together to beat something.
Maybe GW2 will be better, but I kind of think the players just make content like this not work.
I agree that credit should be given where it's due. I disagree that Rift deserves any credit at all. I think it is a cautionary tale, showing developers that polish alone is not enough to gain mass-market success if you simply create a dramatically smaller, shallower version of what came before.
You are incorrect in your assumption that there is no demonstrated evidence of dynamic events. There is TONS of demo play evidence, from both players and media, of dozens of different dynamic events, including how they chain, how they scale, and how they affect the world. If you haven't spent 2 seconds to look around, it's probably better not to post assumptions.
I have spent alot of time actually because defending Rift means I have to defend it against games that are not even released yet. Right now at the most recent GW2 panel they stated" we have not come to a conclusion on how rewards will be handled".
The reason ArenaNET is being pushed on this is because when Rift first started out everyone went into WoW mode and ignored the Rifts. Now Trion since day 1 has had to make Rifts and rewards much more rewarding to give people incentives and carrots to chase.
It turns out if you just put them there then that is not enough reason to want to do it. I believe ArenaNET is learning a ton about how dynamic system should work and will apply it to their own model.
I guess I have to play devils advocate being a Rift fan here. If there had been no Rift then I am under the belief that GW2 dynamic event system would have been a complete distater.
The reasoning behind this is ArenaNET has little to no reference in the mmorpg model to base theirs on until Rift came out. Now neither did Trion. People can call Trions Rift system a simple copy and paste of WAR's pq system, but there is enough info to prove you completely wrong.
Trion has shown that a invasion can spawn and move into a town. Most importantly and ArenaNET better learn from this that people do not like having their progress halted because of said invasion. GW2 will have more character models and different storys like pirates or zombies, but the concept is the same as Rift invasions.
GW2 does not have raiding so unlike Trion their end game HEAVILY relies on their dynamic world changing and keeping people engaged and this means rewards. We go back to Rift for examples of what gets people motivated and what does not work.
Even Blizzard has recognized Rift has a good way of getting people out of the cities and moving around the world and MoP is their attempt at doing it. While Rift, GW2, WoW are moving to dynamic ToR is counting on story.
Do you know GW2 is in development much longer than Rift is on the market?
"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life." -------------------------------
My point is that with Dynamic Events, where you have to be able to accomodate multiple players at the same, the objectives deal entirely with quantities of X, but in a very crude manner because these objectives need to be scalable. The objectives will never deal with something tailored to the individual, losing depth and specificity.
This is no different to how things are now. Currently games have hundreds of solo quests which have to be beatable by a solo player from any class within a narrow level range. DEs may only one scalable factor but that's one more than there is at present.
If the core mechanic is combat there's only actually four options in a PvE game
- solo mob-grinding (a lot of the earlier Asian FTPs)
- group mob-grinding (EQ)
- solo quest-grinding (current standard, mostly solo mob-grinding in a more entertaining (or at least more OCD) form)
- group quest-grinding (not used much)
DEs sound like a combination (and replacement) of all four. They repackage the meat of the game in a different and what looks likely to be a more entertaining form (and theoretically if there are enough of them could give rise to unforseen semi-emergent type events as they interfere with each other).
There are a *few* solo quests/activities in most games that stand out from the crowd, like the druid shape-shifting quests or the animal taming in WoW (nb story in show don't tell form) or because the story behind it is particularly good, but not many. I think you still want elements like that but seems to me once you have the tools working to create DEs easily then the bulk of the game can be built around that and flavour can be added for specific race / class / path / moral choice combinations.
Dynamic events that repeat are exciting at first, but become an annoying burden in the end. As you mentioned, the invasions in Rift become a grind when you are farming planarite and are just plain annoying when you just need to turn in a quest but the NPC's are all dead because the population in that zone is low and you are the only one even participating in the invasion.
And what quests would you need to hand in that the dynamic events prevent you from handing in?
If you haven't guessed it, then the answer is "none".
That's definately an improvement if complete failure of DE in GW2 isn't annoying like it was in Rift. The game looks innovative and interesting even discluding the DEs, so such an improvement over previous scripted DE systems is great. My main point was that after experiencing the invasion of monster(s) controlled by a person(developer), scripted AI invasions will come up short (due to predictability).
Well remember there's always World v World v World. Where you'll have dynamic events like say... escort caravan full of resources to the keep and you can treat any attacking players as NPCs.
If you consider these minor issues, then I see no point in taking this discussion further. I believe Dynamic Events, with all their praiseworthy aspects, will be overshadowed by the major flaws that comes with making quests "public" and will quickly become stale and boring.
Major flaws? enlighten us further please.
Try reading my previous posts. You may find that helpful.
Interesting theory... Except that ArenaNet started developing Guild Wars 2 around 5 years ago and had major conference explaining their Dynamic Event design, long before any info was released about Rift. I think that conference vid, which I can't be assed to find, dates back to 2009. So yeah, ArenaNet got ideas from a game they probably didn't know even existed, at the time.
Also I may be wrong about this, but isn't there a lot of ex-Mythic developers working for Trion, so I doubt they had no influence from WAR.
True, but there is a difference between saying and doing. Even to this day outside of that dragon thing I think we have yet to actually see Dynamic Events be demonstrated and how the rewards will be handled.
I think Rift does deserve credit for showing what works and what does not work. It has become beyond obvious by that even WoW is starting to copy some of the stuff Rift has done and I believe ArenaNET is no different.
My thing is just give credit where credit is due.
Then the credit should be given to R.G and the Uo team once more, since they are the first making mob factions fighting each others in mmos. But maybe you can find some deeper influence in Muds. Credit mean nothing if people are unable to make anything of what they create, and Rift is definitely one of those game that didn't made anything worth mentioning. Their Rift model is not even much more evaluated than 2 spawns of enemy mob faction overlapping, and mob path isn't something really new either. Sure they made something around this, but honestly even they haven't put much emphasis on this because they know its not that much either. They probably had a bit more ambition in the beginning, but its clear the Rift idea isn't much developed.
From what i saw the DE from GW2 are on an other dimension, they seam really worth mentioning.
My point is that with Dynamic Events, where you have to be able to accomodate multiple players at the same, the objectives deal entirely with quantities of X, but in a very crude manner because these objectives need to be scalable. The objectives will never deal with something tailored to the individual, losing depth and specificity.
This is no different to how things are now. Currently games have hundreds of solo quests which have to be beatable by a solo player from any class within a narrow level range. DEs may only one scalable factor but that's one more than there is at present.
If the core mechanic is combat there's only actually four options in a PvE game
- solo mob-grinding (a lot of the earlier Asian FTPs)
- group mob-grinding (EQ)
- solo quest-grinding (current standard, mostly solo mob-grinding in a more entertaining (or at least more OCD) form)
- group quest-grinding (not used much)
DEs sound like a combination (and replacement) of all four. They repackage the meat of the game in a different and what looks likely to be a more entertaining form (and theoretically if there are enough of them could give rise to unforseen semi-emergent type events as they interfere with each other).
There are a *few* solo quests/activities in most games that stand out from the crowd, like the druid shape-shifting quests or the animal taming in WoW (nb story in show don't tell form) or because the story behind it is particularly good, but not many. I think you still want elements like that but seems to me once you have the tools working to create DEs easily then the bulk of the game can be built around that and flavour can be added for specific race / class / path / moral choice combinations.
No, many quests have factors that are simply impossible to scale or would not work with scaling.. Read my previous posts and find the most recent example I gave (I.E.: the assassination of the chieftain one).
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But you can supplement the personal story with Dungeons, that also offer their own tailored storytelling experience.
Also who said I was oblivious of the limitations with the Dynamic Events system? Earlier today I answered a person's question, highlighting another limitation of DEs. So no, I'm not sticking my head in the sand, to avoid the issues with DEs. I just look at how they would play out in the bigger picture, without isolating it as it's own game, like you seem to be doing. Guild Wars 2 will come with a buttload of features so why are you singling out Dynamic Events as if it's the "be all end all" of Guild Wars 2.
Also in every single convention panel, ArenaNet always highlight 3 key areas, that they are trying to innovate: Personal Story, Dynamic Events & Combat. So no... they aren't just pushing DEs.
Except the fact that they already confirmed that IT WILL NOT BE LIKE THIS. Well no, it will not be like this.
And lol at @ it can't be a real dynamic game because it's not a sandbox... So many overused word for no reason.
Everything cycles...they have confirmed this. The boss will eventually respawn once the full cycle of zone chains is complete.
I don't know if you missed my earlier post, but I do partially agree with you. DEs don't do the solo experience very well. I agree that if you think back to some of the more unusual quests in WoW, there will probably be some that can't be done as a DE. There is a tradeoff because DEs can do things quests can't; they actually happen, they're more immersive, they can be failed, have consequences and are scalable and repeatable.
That isn't to say that there aren't creative ways to mix up the content. You can have a cave with a prisoner you need to rescue, where the number of mobs in the cave is scalable.
We know there is an event where centaurs have prisoners where not only the number of centaurs attacking you is scalable, the toughness of the cell door you need to destroy is also scalable.
For variety's sake, we might even be able to do something at least similar to what you're proposing. When you enter an area, you get a message from a witch saying she's put an illusion on you so you can sneak past all the guards into the boss's room to kill him. The boss himself is scalable and gains new abilities and such when more people fight him. One problem with DEs is that they need to be ungriefable, so we can't have people be able to ruin the event by dropping the illusion and training a bunch of enemies inside, but maybe that could be worked around.
There's one WoW quest where you have to collect a bunch of mementos of an NPC's past from around the world, then use an illusion to get to him, convince him of the error of his ways and help him fight his way out. With DEs you can't do all the prequests (unless they're in a chain down the road) but you could probably use the illusion to get to him, and any latecomers could use it to get to where the fight has already started.
I think escort DEs in general allow for a lot of variety of context. Where a quest might have been "take this thing and go somewhere and do something", it can be "protect me while I go somewhere and do something."
And as I pointed out earlier, if they can make solving riddles into a DE, maybe there is more flexibility than we imagined.
"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
No, but variety is the answer in this case. Man I feel like I'm being trolled here. Guess I'll stick with the GW2 forums for a while, cause this is getting boring.
I guess I have to play devils advocate being a Rift fan here. If there had been no Rift then I am under the belief that GW2 dynamic event system would have been a complete distater.
The reasoning behind this is ArenaNET has little to no reference in the mmorpg model to base theirs on until Rift came out. Now neither did Trion. People can call Trions Rift system a simple copy and paste of WAR's pq system, but there is enough info to prove you completely wrong.
Trion has shown that a invasion can spawn and move into a town. Most importantly and ArenaNET better learn from this that people do not like having their progress halted because of said invasion. GW2 will have more character models and different storys like pirates or zombies, but the concept is the same as Rift invasions.
GW2 does not have raiding so unlike Trion their end game HEAVILY relies on their dynamic world changing and keeping people engaged and this means rewards. We go back to Rift for examples of what gets people motivated and what does not work.
Even Blizzard has recognized Rift has a good way of getting people out of the cities and moving around the world and MoP is their attempt at doing it. While Rift, GW2, WoW are moving to dynamic ToR is counting on story.
Oh, so it's fine for one of the largest features in a game to present a series of major flaws because in the "bigger picture" there will be more things to do?
Variety? Hah! So you suggest people completely neglect a major part of the game? Btw, my last post was something called sarcasm, not trolling.
Interesting theory... Except that ArenaNet started developing Guild Wars 2 around 5 years ago and had major conference explaining their Dynamic Event design, long before any info was released about Rift. I think that conference vid, which I can't be assed to find, dates back to 2009. So yeah, ArenaNet got ideas from a game they probably didn't know even existed, at the time.
Also I may be wrong about this, but isn't there a lot of ex-Mythic developers working for Trion, so I doubt they had no influence from WAR.
Sure. If the cons are reletively minor and the pros are awesome then why shouldn't I neglect a "minor issue". I play MMOs to easily play & have fun with other people. Questing doesn't provide that experience, but dynamic events do. I think that's a major plus in my book. Dynamic Events are built to replace questing, not single-player story telling.
True, but there is a difference between saying and doing. Even to this day outside of that dragon thing I think we have yet to actually see Dynamic Events be demonstrated and how the rewards will be handled.
I think Rift does deserve credit for showing what works and what does not work. It has become beyond obvious by that even WoW is starting to copy some of the stuff Rift has done and I believe ArenaNET is no different.
My thing is just give credit where credit is due.
That's definately an improvement if complete failure of DE in GW2 isn't annoying like it was in Rift. The game looks innovative and interesting even discluding the DEs, so such an improvement over previous scripted DE systems is great. My main point was that after experiencing the invasion of monster(s) controlled by a person(developer), scripted AI invasions will come up short (due to predictability).
If you consider these minor issues, then I see no point in taking this discussion further. I believe Dynamic Events, with all their praiseworthy aspects, will be overshadowed by the major flaws that comes with making quests "public" and will quickly become stale and boring.
I agree that credit should be given where it's due. I disagree that Rift deserves any credit at all. I think it is a cautionary tale, showing developers that polish alone is not enough to gain mass-market success if you simply create a dramatically smaller, shallower version of what came before.
You are incorrect in your assumption that there is no demonstrated evidence of dynamic events. There is TONS of demo play evidence, from both players and media, of dozens of different dynamic events, including how they chain, how they scale, and how they affect the world. If you haven't spent 2 seconds to look around, it's probably better not to post assumptions.
Major flaws? enlighten us further please.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
fact: you're a troll who didn't even bother to google gw2 dynamic event system and the maps where it's drawed how many and where the paths of dynamic events are (in some areas). So you couldn't possibly know how many event's there is, and YES they can make enough events to make it dynamic because they already did that. Check around this forum and you'll see a few topics with maps of gw2 dynamic events, so you can see how many DE there is (and they will add new ones as the game goes on).
shatterer will not "respawn"... it's not world of warcraft where you kill a boss and then wait till he comes back... it has advantages if you do kill him (maybe you'll be able to push him back to where he goes when he's defeated and try to defeat his army to banish him for some period of time away from the world). How it's different again says the fact that they do not have to be killed, you can fail with killing him but then you don't just stand up from the dead and go for another try because he goes on and sends minions or armies to other cities which then have to be rescued and liberated to be able to go back to "killing" the dragon, even if you fail to liberate the cities they will move on and try to get the whole area for them selves, which might have effect on the other DEs and the look of the area (it might not be green and bloomy anymore, but dark and burned to dust).
Does this sound anything like rifts to you ? In rift only thing which happens new is rifts open up and invadors come in, but they're not invading the world untill they're defeated and it doesn't have any consequences on the world around you.
Failing or succeeding in DE will have consequences to the world around you, it will affect the people in the map, it will change the looks of that area where it happens and it will change the way NPC's "live" in that area.
Atleast bother to read more than just titles on the websites regarding GW2. And watch more than 2 clips on GW2 site or youtube.
"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."
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If you still cannot grasp the basics of Dynamic Events from the numerous demonstrations they have provided in conventions, then there's no helping you in that area. Because I seen the beginnings & ends of dynamic events, I have seen the rewards they give and I have seen an event chain play out; where you start off by reclaiming an outpost, then escort some Vigil soldiers to explode a cave entrance, then explore the cave and so on.
I don't see what ArenaNet could have learnt from Rift, because at the time, they had already thought up the designs around Dynamic Events in Guild Wars 2, back when it was still known as Guild Wars: Utopia. They knew their ideas were too ambitious to be another expansion, thus it gave birth to GW2 and the core design of the dynamic events system, which hasn't really changed much in all these year of development.
So I will give credit where credit is due, but it's not directed o Rift. It's mostly directed to WAR, DAoC, TF2, Borderlands and GW1.
I think the problem inherent with any type of dynamic event system like RIFT or GW2 is not the content itself, but the players.
In RIFT, the zone invasions basically just turned into a bunch of people who weren't communicating eachother running around not really understanding what they were supposed to do, and not doing anything like defending the wardstones, causing the event to fail. The extent of communication I would usually see in zone invasions was maybe a mini map signal and that was about it.
I think that's just what happens when you throw a bunch of random people together to beat something.
Maybe GW2 will be better, but I kind of think the players just make content like this not work.
I have spent alot of time actually because defending Rift means I have to defend it against games that are not even released yet. Right now at the most recent GW2 panel they stated" we have not come to a conclusion on how rewards will be handled".
The reason ArenaNET is being pushed on this is because when Rift first started out everyone went into WoW mode and ignored the Rifts. Now Trion since day 1 has had to make Rifts and rewards much more rewarding to give people incentives and carrots to chase.
It turns out if you just put them there then that is not enough reason to want to do it. I believe ArenaNET is learning a ton about how dynamic system should work and will apply it to their own model.
Do you know GW2 is in development much longer than Rift is on the market?
"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."
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My point is that with Dynamic Events, where you have to be able to accomodate multiple players at the same, the objectives deal entirely with quantities of X, but in a very crude manner because these objectives need to be scalable. The objectives will never deal with something tailored to the individual, losing depth and specificity.
This is no different to how things are now. Currently games have hundreds of solo quests which have to be beatable by a solo player from any class within a narrow level range. DEs may only one scalable factor but that's one more than there is at present.
If the core mechanic is combat there's only actually four options in a PvE game
- solo mob-grinding (a lot of the earlier Asian FTPs)
- group mob-grinding (EQ)
- solo quest-grinding (current standard, mostly solo mob-grinding in a more entertaining (or at least more OCD) form)
- group quest-grinding (not used much)
DEs sound like a combination (and replacement) of all four. They repackage the meat of the game in a different and what looks likely to be a more entertaining form (and theoretically if there are enough of them could give rise to unforseen semi-emergent type events as they interfere with each other).
There are a *few* solo quests/activities in most games that stand out from the crowd, like the druid shape-shifting quests or the animal taming in WoW (nb story in show don't tell form) or because the story behind it is particularly good, but not many. I think you still want elements like that but seems to me once you have the tools working to create DEs easily then the bulk of the game can be built around that and flavour can be added for specific race / class / path / moral choice combinations.
Well remember there's always World v World v World. Where you'll have dynamic events like say... escort caravan full of resources to the keep and you can treat any attacking players as NPCs.
Best escort quest ever. ^_^
Try reading my previous posts. You may find that helpful.
Then the credit should be given to R.G and the Uo team once more, since they are the first making mob factions fighting each others in mmos. But maybe you can find some deeper influence in Muds. Credit mean nothing if people are unable to make anything of what they create, and Rift is definitely one of those game that didn't made anything worth mentioning. Their Rift model is not even much more evaluated than 2 spawns of enemy mob faction overlapping, and mob path isn't something really new either. Sure they made something around this, but honestly even they haven't put much emphasis on this because they know its not that much either. They probably had a bit more ambition in the beginning, but its clear the Rift idea isn't much developed.
From what i saw the DE from GW2 are on an other dimension, they seam really worth mentioning.
No, many quests have factors that are simply impossible to scale or would not work with scaling.. Read my previous posts and find the most recent example I gave (I.E.: the assassination of the chieftain one).