Friday, May 21, 2010

Random Shots: Guild Wars 2's Dynamic Events

  • The biggest news on the Guild Wars 2 front is Dynamic Events, ArenaNet's attempt to avoid the Christmas Tree Effect. Everything I've read about it sounds amazing. By turning the world into something you explore and experience instead of running errands in, they seem to have turned the leveling paradigm on its head.

  • Where the GW2 combat article raised only a few questions, ArenaNet has been running double time to explain this system in detail, as well as reassure people that they've really thought it through. Two Q&As have gone up on A.Net's blog as well a great post on Kill Ten Rats. And all those answers have been sorely needed because there is so much about this that we just don't know.

  • If there are any worries on my part, it's that I wonder at the potential for a group of players to lock the events in a zone in place. The example given in the original blog post is about how a dredge army could potentially overrun a large area and how players can stop them even as they begin their march. If all events are triggered like that, there is the possibility at players can stall them at their initial states. It's hard to worry too much because I'm sure ArenaNet has thought of the same thing and will have events branch a different way in such cases. But I'm eager to see first hand how the system works.

  • On the positive side, the thing that excites me the most is that the game might fulfill the promise of Public Quests. I bought into the idea of PQs from the very beginning. I think they are great ways to expand storytelling and gameplay options within the standard questing framework. Giving people a goal that encourages cooperation is quite commendable. Everyone likes to pick up PQs nowadays, but I always thought they were great while they were active.

  • That's the most important part for me. WAR's Public Quests and CO's Open Missions are useless if the critical mass of players is not achieved. If the difficulties really can scale properly, then that solves the primary issue I have with those systems. Of course, playing with other people would be the ideal. But the reality is that you can't ever count on anyone else to even be around. So if I get to play through a scaled-down event even though I can't round up a tank, a healer, and several DPSers, I will call that a good thing.

  • Hmm. I wonder if a plume of smoke on the horizon will become GW2's equivalent to the golden exclamation mark?


© 2010 Marty Runyon. All rights reserved.

3 comments:

  1. I'm right there with you. PQs in WAR launch week when there were enough players to get through them were absolutely amazing. I even liked the lottery system for distributing bags. If GW II can take that idea to the next level, I'm on board.

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  2. Even though I agree with you that ArenaNet has tried to cover all the bases on their dynamic events, I'm sure that players will come up with some surprises for them.

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  3. @ Yeebo - It was interesting to read that GW2 is doing away with loot as a reward from events. Hitting the lottery in PQs was a lot of fun, but people did treat it as a grind. I rather hope events chaining and cycle encourages people to move around instead of grinding in one spot.

    @ Blue Kae - I'm always interested to see how players go about breaking a system. I'm hoping this is resiliant enough that A.Net can fix individual events or event chains instead of scrapping the whole system.

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