Are Dynamic Events fun enough?

[DrunkenBeard]

Much like regular quests, it depends on your immersion level. If you talk to the NPCs involved, understand what their problem is, stay around the DE area for possible follow ups, then yes it will be fun. If you're just jumping from Heart to Heart and doing the occasional DE inbetween without much consideration to the overarching storyline or the potential events that might branch out of it, then no it's going to be tedious. Mechanics wise, it will always boil down to a limited set of basic activities that DEs will try to mix and mash. Purpose and characters is what makes this DE different than that other one.

[Syro]

Some are some arent but after doing them the first time you will probably avoid them when they pop up again

[Siq1ne]

The fact that you can choose if you want to kill, collect, or do some other random task is what really stands out for me. Personally, I love the combat system and would rather just kill anything and everything in sight.

In fact I found myself grinding random mobs at points during the BWE3 and Stress Tests because it's the funnest part. Imagine that? the funnest part of the game is actually playing it. o_O

[Deleted]

I found them fun, and as long as fresh events continue to be added to the game they should continue to be enjoyable. However if you end up repeating same event, or very similar events for more than a few months then that's when they will start to become tedious. Like all other mmorpg's before it, Guild Wars 2 success will depend on keeping players interested by adding new and refreshing content.

I like the way A.net has looked to other games that have dynamic events (rift etc) and group questing (most mmo's), and essentially merged them and polished them up a bit. Whilst it is not a revolutionary style of new game play, it is a solid evolution of the genre and a sign of things to come.

[Deleted]

I hope we will see some good ones at later levels because the first 10 levels were just really boring zergfest, I didnt feel any impact on the world how they were marketing this feature.

[Dodrin]

I hope we will see some good ones at later levels because the first 10 levels were just really boring zergfest, I didnt feel any impact on the world how they were marketing this feature.

I noticed that they kept ramping up in scale as you leveled. The highest I played was to level 30, and in that zone about half could be taken up by centaur battles. Feels pretty cool, definitely has an impact on the world.

And of course they will get repetitive at some point. But that may not bother a lot of people. Think of all the people who raid for 10 months, doing the same 8-12 bosses every week. Or the people who level 10 characters to max level. It's the same idea; video games function off of algorithms to maintain a sense of "randomness", but given enough time, you'll see every outcome of that algorithm.

[Deleted]

But at their root, when it comes to actual gameplay are DE really much more than standard MMO questing? As far as I can tell, they are not. Yes there are triggers and chains and whatnot, but none of that really changes how you actually play, you simply follow the chain, play your toon, kill some mobs, get some loot - just like standard questing.

When I was a kid my parents would make me and my brother clear the leaves off of the lawn. When my father made us do it we were told "go clear the lawn, don't come in 'til it's clear" - that was no fun. When my mother made us do it she'd say "each take a bag, the one who fills theirs first gets to choose what flavour cookies I make - and gets to lick the spoon" - that was fun.

The action of picking up the leaves was identical in both cases - yet one situation was fun and the other not.

Sometimes we must look beyond just the immediate mechanics to see the difference something makes.

[Sylvanie]

At low levels, dynamic content is for the most part pretty straightforward because low-level mobs are not particularly dangerous, and GW2 combat depends on having to use your defensive abilities to be interesting (not just dodge, but also class-specific ones). That holds both for solo and dynamic content. When you encounter mobs that are more dangerous (veteran/champions and/or using more dangerous abilities), this can change:



You can also see the difference early on in personal story missions, some of which have pretty nasty veteran rank mobs, quite different from most of the open world solo mobs.

That said, I don't expect a WoW heroic raid-level difficulty even at higher levels; this is, after all, meant to be puggable content, not content that you are meant to bash your head against for hours or days.

[Mamut]

DE are nice addition but not enough for me to keep PvE interesting. At first time was fun but later I just ignore them (got 3x the same DE). And after XX DE it was looking the same to me, come to boss/adds poke him, dodge atacks, fight for survi if failed, kill next repeat.

Dont get me wrong, for some people probably very interesting especially when playing with guildies but for me just meh ;/

[zito]

Fun is purely subjective. However for me, DE having a chain storyline is just awesome.

I laugh at people leaving when an event is over. I just wait by the npc and what do you know 5 seconds later he starts talking and then a new chain begins.

[Sylvanie]

Sometimes we must look beyond just the immediate mechanics to see the difference something makes.

While framing is important (assertions to the contrary, Frankenstein and My Fair Lady aren't really the same story), in a game, mechanics still do matter; if content is too repetitive and does not engage our minds, there is a risk of it becoming boring; it does not have to be superhard, but just spamming one button is not going to do it either. That said, a lot of the low level dynamic events appear to be relatively simplistic only because they don't exercise the combat mechanics much.

[rhandric]

Early levels (both mobs and DEs) are balanced around low level players not having vast amounts of skills (weapon or utility, and definitely not elite). As players level, mobs and DEs get more complex, allowing players to have a larger challenge and take full advantage of their skills. So in that vein, lower level DEs will be somewhat repetitive, there's only so much you can give a player new to the game with very few skills (in or out of game).

[Deleted]

this is, after all, meant to be puggable content, not content that you are meant to bash your head against for hours or days.

I really hoped some DEs , especially in Orr to be a <<bash your head against for hours or days>> for server vs server competition , like the WvWvWvW :P

[nachitoh]

"ArenaNet has said things aren't going to just respawn 5 minutes later, events can take hours, days, weeks, and even months to be back in the same exact way you may have seen it originally. Also, this has to take into account player interaction, if no player does anything the enemy will still move on and conquer the world whether you're there or not. Events also affect other events like a chain reaction, some events can have zone wide consequences, some are triggered through player interaction with an NPC or an object in the world, weather systems, day & night cycles, etc."

If they did what they said... It will be amazing.

[Enkidulgaa]

If you look at DEs in a very micro way, yeah they're not all that different than quests in other MMOs. Though in the bigger picture I think its a pretty big deal. They make the whole leveling process much more involved. The WoW-style questing system feels like doing a checklist. You just pick up every quest thats available, complete them, take the next batch. By yourself the whole time. If you visit a zone for a second time you do it all over again, in the same order because apparently blizzard thought making every zone one giant linear questchain was fun for players.
In GW2, you feel like you're actually in the game world. Stuff just happens around you, and you never know what will happen. Sometimes you visit a particular place and think "lets see if this event is going on" and indeed it is, but you will discover new things probably quite as often.
I leveled 1-15 in plains of ashford on 2 different characters. I spent probably a good 10 hours just in that zone and when coming back one month later there were still events I didnt see yet.
Leveling in GW2 just doesnt feel like a grind. To me at least, its actually fun. The last MMO where I actually reached endgame was TOR, and that game was also hailed for its incredible leveling experience. Leveling in GW2 feels at least twice as fun as in TOR.

[styopa]

I think leveling speed-racers will always say they're slow, boring, and not worthwhile.

However, in the last BWE when I deliberately stopped trying to sprint through content, listened to the NPCs, and waited for the dynamic content to cycle into its later versions - it was actually engaging and interesting. Was I using my online hours most "efficiently" in terms of xp gain? No, but it was entertaining and that's the ultimate bloody point, wasn't it?


I do think their 'novelty' value has been oversold. They're scripted participatory events, not unlike what we've seen in WotLK+, with the exception that your participation is measured better, rewarded on a scale, and the next script in the chain is variable based on your (players') participation and "success" level.

[Beazy]

They are fun, but repetitive. Sure there are big boss encounter DE's, but after the first time you do them . . . the "wow" factor is gone. Im not dogging public quests, its just ~ in the end, they tend to be as boring as normal quests. Add to that the fact that you have to play the game at other peoples pace, they can become a turn off ~ especially when you just want to log in, crack open an beer, and get your solo on. What I mean by that is, you can enter a public quest halfway through, and maybe you just want to kill the mobs at your own pace and search around the terrain for "goodies", but you cant because a mob of humans just plowed through the onjectives and the quest dynamically changes to a new goal. This happened to me alot in beta. While its not a "OMFG THIS GAME SUX" problem, it does kinda suck. Luckily for me, I could care less for the PvE in this game, Im all about PvP ~ which is the heart of GW2.

[Nezera]

I think standard rift/wow/swtor style hotbar combat is fun.

The issue is that general world questing in these games provide combat experiences that are predictable, unchallenging and generally do not require your full range of skills and abilities. I think questing could be made a lot more interesting in these games with tweaks to these areas.

GW2 tweaks the existing system not because existing mmo combat isn't fun but because it is fun and just needed a more interesting context and environment to make it shine.

[DanBowie]

The game is not a gearmill. You play the content purely for the sake of enjoying the content, not for the purpose of endlessly growing your character power. This notion has been restated countless times. Playing for fun. My question is, are DE really that fun?

They are one of the biggest aspect of PvE, something the game is largely built around. They are used as one of the main selling points of the game in differentiating it from other MMO's, similar to what SWTOR did with their voice-acting marketing.

But at their root, when it comes to actual gameplay are DE really much more than standard MMO questing? As far as I can tell, they are not. Yes there are triggers and chains and whatnot, but none of that really changes how you actually play, you simply follow the chain, play your toon, kill some mobs, get some loot - just like standard questing.

If DE were just for leveling purposes I think they would do fine, but to build a large part of the entire PvE game on them? I'm not sure how long they will remain compelling and fun.

Seems like a valid point

[Fencers]

In fact I found myself grinding random mobs at points during the BWE3 and Stress Tests because it's the funnest part. Imagine that? the funnest part of the game is actually playing it. o_O

Oddly, I didn't feel this way in GW2. Even though I was initially drawn to the combat style of the game. In practice I find GW2's combat rather dull in PVE. So while leveling [every class to 30, 2 classes above 50] in GW2 I simply looked for the fastest method of clearing DEs/Hearts or avoiding combat w/o the XP boosters on.

However, in both Tera and Raiderz the combat was so engaging I would slaughter hundreds of mobs unaware I was "done" in a given area. Yet I wasn't particularly excited for either Raiderz or Tera's combat system initially.

I simply find your POV to be a rather stark contrast to my own. Nothing wrong with either POV, natch.