GW2: killing 10 mobs - Quest vs. Dynamic Event

[omlech]

Does anyone know how exactly the game decides how many players are "participating" in the event? Is it just anyone who is within the area? If everyone leaves the area, are the enemies instantly downgraded so the remaining person/people can successfully complete the objective?

It certainly sounds like a neat system, but I can definitely see it running into problems when I want to log in to maybe do a specific thing in a specific area and find out I can't because of world events.

EDIT: Also, will the events themselves be random, or will it run into a situation where these zombies are always attacking this fortress, or a small list of situations where it cycles through?

The game is constantly polling to see what players are doing and will scale things up or down as needed. If you're hitting an enemy once every 5 min the game doesn't consider you as a participant and it won't scale. Yeah if people leave an area it will be downscaled, enemies become weaker, less enemies spawn, etc.

If you really want to do a specific DE you're going to have to push it to that point, doing whatever that entails.

The events aren't random, the zombies will attack the fortress again at some point, but it's not so cut and dry. The events don't just start over on a timer, events are persistent and the outcome of an event then affects the world around you. If those zombies attack the fortress and succeed they'll push in and kill everything, fortify it, they'll keep moving out to conquer other areas of the map which spawns new events from that event. If YOU succeed in killing the zombies, the native wildlife will come back in, the zombies might retreat to nearby areas to plan a new attack, new events will spawn because of your success and you'll push along the branch in that direction just as you'd push along the branch in the other direction if the zombies took the fort.

I say branch because events aren't so black and white, success in an event might spawn a couple new events in the area, success of failure of those new events might spawn more events and so on until it reaches an end point in the branch. Failure from the same original event will spawn new events, and those spawn new events, etc. Then events can be affected by other events or other variables such as weather, time of day, etc. So events aren't one dimensional so you're really not going to know what's going on in the world at any given time, the world is far too dynamic to be predictable.

---------- Post added 2012-01-22 at 11:44 AM ----------

Something I've kind of wondered is whether or not dead will be dead. What I mean by that is if you go down and no other player rescues you, or you fail in getting back up yourself, can you just run back to the event and start participating again or are you locked out of that particular event until it concludes or a certain amount of time passes? Apologies if it's in the sticky and I missed it.

You can start participating again as long as the event hasn't concluded by the time you get back. If it does conclude prior to you getting back you'll get credit for the participation that you did while you were alive.

[Fencers]

Good point on how the other games used their public quest system. Although, on a personal note, one of the reasons why I got bored of Rift was because they had the traditional quest system in there. If they would have done everything based on the Rifts (and obviously expand upon that) I think I would have enjoyed the game a lot more.

Oh yea, that I agree with to a large degree. PQs/Rift didn't go far enough, IMO. There is a difference of intention, sure. However, when those systems [PQs/Rifts] are marginalization in a structure players are already familiar; dungeons, kill 10 rats, raids-- then that is where the system becomes somewhat of a bullet point and nothing more.

Very true in Warhammer's case in actual practice. Less so in Rift's, but there is still a lot of ridiculous grind they saddle the player with vis-a-vis familiar upgrade paths.

Yea, I can grind 100 rifts and walk away with raid gear or I can just raid? What's the point. Failure, imo.

[Maarius]

Something I've kind of wondered is whether or not dead will be dead. What I mean by that is if you go down and no other player rescues you, or you fail in getting back up yourself, can you just run back to the event and start participating again or are you locked out of that particular event until it concludes or a certain amount of time passes? Apologies if it's in the sticky and I missed it.

you will be able to go back to the event, but it will probably be hard to get a gold award after this. It's also entirely possible that the event fails now and while you are back there is a follow up event running.

[omlech]

You are misunderstanding the concepts behind PQs and Rifts. Neither was suppose to be a sole questing path.

PQs in Warhammer had the intention of being gathering points leading to PVP. As PVE was threadbare and not the focus it allowed Mythic to set distinct gear thresholds as reward between PVP lakes.

Rifts are also not a sole means of questing. Trion specifically want players to not spend much time leveling as the bulk of content is intended for level 50s- where open world DEs and rifts do matter [& are significant]. Having rifts open during the leveling experience was more of a way to situate players with the concept and provide even quicker xp gains- xp vials and boost are the standard now in Rift. You are expressly not meant to wallow as a level 23 in Rift.

GW2 uses their DEs as a questing scheme but that was not the intention of the above two mention games.

I'm well aware that they weren't meant to be the sole questing path and that was their downfall. The entire experience was watered down because they didn't focus on one or the other, instead we got halfassed implementations of systems that clashed with the standard questing model. So had both developers taken the questing model out and focused their entire design on PQs or Rifts, we might have got better implementation than we did.

PQs were flawed because they gave specific loot bags making people only do specific ones or even wanting ones to fail so they got the loot they wanted. They didn't scale at all, the loot roll system was horribly designed and made no sense at all, you could do all the work and end up with a green bag if you weren't the only one there. Three different difficulties ended up being a bad idea in conjunction with the fact that nothing scaled. People ignored tons of PQs and only did certain ones making 2 of 3 PQs in an area a wasteland.

Rifts were better designed in some ways, but there wasn't much variation at all. Every single one I did up to 25 had you kill 1 of 4 different elemental types. Either the Rift was made for a solo player, a small group, a full group, or a raid. That isn't scaling, that's just different difficulties and they seemingly spawned at random with no rhyme or reason. Now it's possible Rifts took into account who was in the area and spawned the appropriate Rift based on that criteria, but I can't be sure. Eventually Rifts became a giant distraction while leveling, especially when one spawned right on top of your quest objectives and it's meant for a group of players and well there's not exactly anyone around. There wasn't many people around in the first zone and when i got to the second zone I think I saw maybe 5 people in 3 levels? Hard to take down any Rifts when no one is playing. I'll take your word that Rifts became more useful and had consequences, but I couldn't be bothered to even get halfway to the level cap because I'm just so tired of that kind of MMO.

[Beavis]

well there were many many conventions so far where players could play the game... We don't base our knowledge on nothing.

Of course, but there's a huge difference between playing something for 20 minutes at a con and playing it for years like an mmo. My only contention is that as a relative outsider to the GW2 world, I come in and read Arenanet is saying and then see how people are reacting and I can't help but wonder if there's extra excitement being generated by sheer boredom with the status quo. Hence the Obama thing. But, just like politicians, games do come along and completely revolutionize things from time to time. Maybe GW2 really is that game.

Keep politics out of these forums. Seriously, bringing politics into a discussion on the internet always ends in tears. -Edge

[Koshun]

I saw that it was mentioned that gear was purely cosmetic, and that didn't appeal to that particular person.

This is not true. Gear has stats. However, gear progression that exists in WoW will not exist in Guild Wars 2, so, to a degree, gear won't matter.

[Rooflesstoofless]

Of course, but there's a huge difference between playing something for 20 minutes at a con and playing it for years like an mmo. My only contention is that as a relative outsider to the GW2 world, I come in and read what they're saying and then see how people are reacting and I can't help but wonder if there's extra excitement being generated by sheer boredom with the status quo. Hence the Obama thing. But, just like politicians, games do come along and completely revolutionize things from time to time. Maybe GW2 really is that game.

I'm a GW2 noob myself and wasn't even a gamer when GW1 was popular (I know some people still play, but you know what I mean), but I do think that if they implement all of the things which are talked about/shown in the sticky at the top of the GW2 subforum it will be revolutionary to the MMO industry.


In Rift, the Rifts were nearly static in their nature. One would spawn...perhaps even spawn on the area you were questing. You couldn't stop the Rift in its early stages and there was more incentive to avoid the Rift patrols that spawned and continue with your kill x quests than to do anything about it. World events were pretty fun, but smaller rifts while leveling were just an annoyance.

SWTOR offered voice acting...but that's it. Other than that the standard kill x for lootz was ever present and your choices made no difference other than giving you light side/dark side points (which really did nothing than make different looking gear available, change the color of your eyes, and make the NPC for that quest be scared or angry with you). Your choices really had no effect on the world.

I guess, to me at least, there is a lot of room for innovation if a company chooses to seek it out. Do I want to kill x droids, kill x welps, or kill x alligator people? Do I want to close Rifts or just do nothing knowing they will simply go away in an hour or so? Or do I want to help push back an invasion that can take me and other players weeks to accomplish and actually risk failing causing the problem to become worse and more widespread?

[zito]

hi troll
you should get informed before you leave comments like that. There are many threads in this forum for you.
e.g.

mass info for newbies
false assumptions

I wanted it named mass info for the idiots... oh well..

[Lucky_]

No, I guess that was too loaded and vague. What I meant is that people are putting a tremendous amount of hope for positive change in the genre into GW2 and I'm skeptical that the experience they deliver will be quite as mold breaking as people are hoping. But, maybe it will. That would be awesome.

Ignoring the Obama-themed trolling, I agree with this. They set the bar very high. Chances on proper delivery of everything promised are not high. There is simply too much promised, and as SWTOR showed no matter how much time and money you throw at a project, it can still end up not living to even a fraction of promises made during development.

For "we could play the game already" counter to this, SWTOR looked wonderful and completely set to meet the goals during the beta. Then came release, and massive disappointment.

[Fencers]

I'm well aware that they weren't meant to be the sole questing path and that was their downfall. The entire experience was watered down...<snip>

They can't be watered down as they both filled the intention the developer wanted. They weren't questing motivators, they were each an addendum to the over world. Neither was intended to be a focus in the way DEs are in GW2. Flawed in ways, perhaps. But not "watered down", that doesn't make logical sense.

GW2 DEs are different in function and premise.

I personally don't really see DEs in GW2 in the same league as Rift/Warhammer/FF11. They are so different as motivators.

...but I couldn't be bothered to even get halfway to the level cap because I'm just so tired of that kind of MMO.

This is really the crux of most criticisms of forums. I respect you did not like the style of the above games. However, I don't think GW2 does anything 'better than' so much as 'different than' but we get a lot of fan enthusiasm nonsense in between all that.

There are many elements forums goers state about games which are not particularly thoughtful. Often coming down to, "I do not like pie" wrapped in incorrect terms of "broken" and "flawed".

Something to keep in mind as the MMO-C forums see a lot of "I do no like pie" sentiments followed by "Cake is boring!".

[Slavemaker]

What happens when those zones are no longer occupied because of future expansions or loss of interest? Newer players will have to deal with them? Interesting but seems a bit.... unfair.

[Wrathonia]

What happens when those zones are no longer occupied because of future expansions or loss of interest? Newer players will have to deal with them? Interesting but seems a bit.... unfair.

how is that relevant at all? Dynamic events scale down to a single player...

[Lothaeryn]

how is that relevant at all? Dynamic events scale down to a single player...

I think what he means is what will happen if a zone if left on the shelf of the community for too long and someone comes by to quest there, chances are that almost all of the DE's will have reached their conclusive state, and it will make it rather difficult for newcomers to the area to progress due to having everything cut off to them (I.E. town vendors, inns, etc...)

But I personally doubt this will be anywhere near a commonplace thing, seeing as there will be people leveling alts all the time, not to mention potential new players

[Fencers]

What happens when those zones are no longer occupied because of future expansions or loss of interest? Newer players will have to deal with them? Interesting but seems a bit.... unfair.

The events scale with players. Or rather, players scale with events. So in theory, all events remain a challenge relative to players.

There is also the fact that DEs spawn chain DEs. Which means if a DE goes undefeated, it will spawn a new set of DEs that can spawn another set of DEs.

The difference is that DEs have consequence good or ill. That's a major separation from Rift/Warhammer DEs which were inconsequential (rift) or static (warhammer). That isn't to say DEs don't reset after a time in GW2. But it is to say the sequence of events that lead to one or the other is [as far as we know] a long & intricate process.

[luedieniel]

I hope it's every bit as epic as advertised ^^

Place that hope elsewhere, I believe that GW2 will be a truly great game and I will have countless of hours of fun in it, but as epic as the hype has gotten it to? No.

[omlech]

What happens when those zones are no longer occupied because of future expansions or loss of interest? Newer players will have to deal with them? Interesting but seems a bit.... unfair.

All content in the game will always be relevant. Even after expansions and even if they were to raise the level cap it wouldn't matter because of sidekicking and scaling. Even after 2 campaigns and 1 expansion, people are still spread all throughout Tyria in GW1, it's not like everyone is only in EOTN since it's the last release. Content in Guild Wars games stays relevant and nothing becomes obsolete like other MMOs. This is even more true for GW2 than GW1.

[Deleted]

A rose by any other name...

People seem to forget that when WoW came kill 10 X was a revolution, since Everquest had been kill X until you're bored, fall asleep at the keyboard, or out level the zone.

GW2 looks good, but this is definitely becoming the Obama of MMOs.

and WoW was an incredibly successful game with millions of subs of which i'm sure a lot of us have very fond memories of. However it is starting to feel old and is going stale. It's time for that new "revolution".

If this game is even half as successful as WoW was, then we can expect something very special and I, for one, am excited.

[Beavis]

Ignoring the Obama-themed trolling, I agree with this. They set the bar very high. Chances on proper delivery of everything promised are not high. There is simply too much promised, and as SWTOR showed no matter how much time and money you throw at a project, it can still end up not living to even a fraction of promises made during development.

For "we could play the game already" counter to this, SWTOR looked wonderful and completely set to meet the goals during the beta. Then came release, and massive disappointment.

I guess I'm probably going to eat an infraction for this, but I feel the need to clarify that I wasn't Obama trolling. What I was trying to say was that as an outsider it seems like a lot of people who are tired of the WoW hegemony are looking at GW2 to make a messianic entrance and change everything about the genre. I don't think it's trolling to say that some people felt that way about Candidate Obama. I volunteered for the campaign and even I thought people were getting carried away. That's all. Nothing about undelivered promises or anything like that.

And on topic, hopefully, GW2 will be great. I'll certainly be happy if Arena.net injects some new life into the genre.

[Glytch]

If the fortress is overrun it will remain occupied by zombies until cleared, a valuable travel point will be lost, merchants and other NPC’s will be unavailable. My act of killing the zombies actually protected the fortress with the consequence of possibly losing the fortress when I failed the event.

i would like to highlight this point for the next inevitable waypoint thread

[papajohn4]

so unless if you play for 10+ hours straight at least you aren't going to experience a full Event right?so lets say I am logging in and going to the swamp to kill the zombies..the zombies after attack the fortress and after ..... and then I am going to sleep or I am going for a beer..when I come back I log in and the event is over without even know what happened..so I miss the whole story..

or I log in and again I have to kill zombies in a different location without knowing how the story evolved and the zombies are in this place now..At the end it will be like
loggin -> kill some mobs of an event you don't know how/where it started -> logout -> login tomorrow and kill some other mobs of an event you that again you don't know how/where it started -> logout

so either you are online 8-10+ hours per day and keep up with the story and how map changes and why changes or just grind mobs without reason/story. Well to avoid misunderstanding , I don't mind grinding..I played Lineage and I am playing Aion atm and if the combat is enjoyable I don't mind grind for hours :P and I have high hopes about the combat in GW2..I just have a concern that maybe Dynamic events in GW2 is not going to offer much story to casuals rather than being a "without reason" mobs killing..except if I am missing something...

from the other hand this is realism...the world continue to live and evolve...

Also lets say I am fighting in an event and suddenly I must log off before a part of the event even finished..will I get any rewards once I log back for the time I was participating? Or I must be there when the event is finished?

Again, these are some slight concerns..in no way I am saying that questing or rifts are better in any way..