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Scaling Dynamic Events Question
AlBQuirky
Member EpicPosts: 7,432
I almost don't want to ask, for it may plant some ideas in some players' heads. I also apologize if this has been covered elsewhere. Here goes...
I have been wondering (worrying) about the scalable dynamic events. I know that as more players join in, they get more difficult. Is the reverse also true?
Here is the scenario I wonder about:
A guild that likes griefing decides to go out and mess with people. Let's say 25 of them gather together and start running around Tyria. They end up triggering or joining in a dynamic event. This raises the difficulty level. What if they back out of the event? Does it "re-scale" back down? Do added mobs disappear? What if there is an elite-type mob involved?
What if I am in a group and we are going someplace specific? Do we affect DEs as we pass through them, not staying to partake?
I could be worrying about nothing here. I was just curious 
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Comments
As far as I know the events scale based on the amount of people actively participating, not just standing around. If 25 people participated in the event and 20 leave, the event will re-scale itself for 5 people. It's not going to be instant though.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dynamic_events
Some of the events do recognize anyone within a certain vicinity as "participating", so I imagine those would scale in a way that makes them too hard for actual participants if a whole lot of people in the area are just standing around.
Not a huge deal though, there's nothing wrong with failing the objectives of events once in a while. In many cases you still end up getting rewarded Karma and xp when the event ends, and in some cases failing triggers a different, new event than you would have gotten for suceeding, which makes it worthwhile actually failing once in a while for those DEs.
All in all, while your situation is theoretically possible, I don't see that the amount of "grief" actually caused would be worth the effort for the AssHat's 'R' Us guild.
During a Q&A last fall, an Arenanet dev said that the events poll for participation at least once per second and the difficulty scales to match it. So, there really isn't any way to grief them in the way you speculate. Scaling seems to use a combination of adjusting mob stats, spawning extra mobs and allowing mobs to use certain skills based on participation in the event. Added mobs don't despawn, so I'm assuming that they just adjust the stats down even further if the event needs to scale down.
So, a group trying to grief this way may achieve nothing other than triggering additional mobs to provide extra kill XP for the active participants, while the toughness of those mobs decreases to adjust for the drop in participants.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
If they back down it does rescale back down. This means less monsters during defend events, or less items required for collect events. Added mobs don't dissapear BUT next wave has less waves. If there was an elite mob involved, it'll still say elite, but the number of skills it uses will go down along with its maximum hp.
No, you don't affect DEs if you are in a group. Since GW2 doesn't have kill stealing that means as long as you some damage to mob, you will get full experience when that mob dies and you do not need to be in a party for this. And DEs are simply things happening in the game world. If you come to a town and see it taken over by bandits and decide you don't want to help, then that's fine. That town will stay taken over until someone does decide to help and repel them.
Thanks for the replies and links
The thought of failing an event wasn't really paramount in my thinking, but rather equipment repair costs upon repeated deaths due to too few players for the event. As pointed out, failure can lead to new and interesting new events
As far as the group scenario goes, I was thinking of a group just passing through an event on their way to say, a dungeon or something. Since they won't be "actively participating", it looks like that won't factor in. I didn't want to worry about affecting other players play in that scenario
On the downscaling, it looks that skills and abilities will be a factor in the mobs "toughness".
Again, thanks or the replies
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR