In theory is it the best idea in a long time. No full quest journals, no doing 10 quests at the same time, no running on and off to the same questgiver 15 times to be asked to kill 10 of a slightly larger creature every time.
But the idea is unproven, we are talking about large scale here, not just a few PQs or rifts that opens up once in a while. I don't know if this really can keep us busy or not, and neither can anyone here.
We need to try it first, any vote is useless yet, noone of us really know how fun this will be for years.
This.I hope it's great and a step forward but I ain't trumptetting it as the second coming till I've expereince dit for awhile.
Dynamic events are a fantastic, revolutionary, epic win of an innovation over the traditional quest model without question. If you do not believe that, then you do not understand dynamic events.
The traditional quest system has a lot of limitations.
First, you've got to read a wall of text (like this post) to understand what it's about. You've got to pick it up and turn it in. The mobs you're killing aren't actually threatening anybody, but most likely standing in a field somewhere. With the exception of escort quests and atypical ones, they're pretty hard to fail (eventually you are going to kill those 10 rats). You don't get any reward except for full completion.
You've got to compete against others for the spawns or ground items you need to collect. There's no cooperation with strangers unless you decide to group for some elite quest you can't do yourself (after which you immediately disband). If it is a solo quest, grouping makes it way too easy. You can't do a quest more than once. If you want to group with someone and you're on different stages of a quest, one of you has to redo the content so the other can catch up. It makes you not want to play the game if your friend isn't on because you know you'd have to redo it.
And if you or your friend is the wrong level for the content, you can't really group at all without one person trivializing it. Ever delete someone from the friends list because the next time you saw them you were 10 levels ahead?
Anyway, dynamic events address all those things.
Dynamic events run whether players are there or not. You don't have to read anything or talk to anyone, you can just jump in if you see it going on. You get rewarded when it's over for your level of participation. They are immediate, bandits are burning things, harpies are attacking the friendly ogres. Failure is possible.
Everything is purely cooperative. There's no killstealing or tagging. No xp halving. They scale up in difficulty based on the number of people participating. You don't have to be grouped with people, you can just fight along side them and maybe help each other out with cross profession combos. They chain into other events based on success or failure, this keeps people working together over time.
The events run in cycles so you can repeat one anytime it's running. If you have a friend who wants to join you, they can jump in any time, it doesn't matter if you've done three events already, you've already been rewarded for those and they'll be rewarded for what they do when they jump in. You can jump out at any time and still be rewarded for however much you accomplished.
On top of it, the game features automatically mentoring you down in strength if you want to participate in a lower level event (to keep people from griefing lower level events by 1-shotting everything). You can also sidekick people up to your level if you want. In GW2, you CAN meaningfully group with that guy that you're 10 levels ahead of, mentoring down to their level and either redoing events or maybe doing some you didn't see last time you were there, or inviting them up to give them a taste of what's to come.
In a more general sense, when you're max level, the entire game's content is still open to you. Want to redo any of those 1500-1600 dynamic events? Feel like doing the entire Asura starting zone but can't stand the thought of playing an Asura? You can!
I apologize for the length of this post, but I can't help but want to get it out there. Dynamic events are not just quests in a different wrapper, or quests you don't have to pick up. They're a major innovation that increases immersion, cooperation and community.
"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
Even if GW2 completely flops, it is enough to shake the MMO genre to accept that there ARE different ways to make these kinds of games.
I highly doubt it will flop though. Srsly...Even if it were just a CoOP game that had those dynamic worlds, I would still buy it o.O
''/\/\'' Posted using Iphone bunni ( o.o) (")(") **This bunny was cloned from bunnies belonging to Gobla and is part of the Quizzical Fanclub and the The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club**
I think the idea is fantastic, I'm more worried about the execution. I've only seen a limited amount of these DEs but they are really just traditional quests that you just *happen* to come across. I'm hoping its done in such a way that the novelty of the "dynamic" execution of these quests won't wear out after doing my 50th quest where instead of killing 30 centaurs trying to attack a town, I'm instead killing 30 lizards from attacking an orchard.
Next gen? Hmm, possibly, a step in the right direction for sure.
Remember that the Shatterer is part of a dynamic event chain too. So I think we can expect those DEs to give us some pretty epic content between the centaurs and the lizards.
I think the idea is fantastic, I'm more worried about the execution. I've only seen a limited amount of these DEs but they are really just traditional quests that you just *happen* to come across. I'm hoping its done in such a way that the novelty of the "dynamic" execution of these quests won't wear out after doing my 50th quest where instead of killing 30 centaurs trying to attack a town, I'm instead killing 30 lizards from attacking an orchard.
Next gen? Hmm, possibly, a step in the right direction for sure.
Remember that the Shatterer is part of a dynamic event chain too. So I think we can expect those DEs to give us some pretty epic content between the centaurs and the lizards.
Honestly, I'm skeptical. Phasing looked interesting on paper but clearly isn't somehing I enjoy, nor do I consider it a positive direction for future MMOs. Beyond that is a we'll see how it goes.
Only phasing that occurs is in your home instance that involves your personal story. Out in the world where the dynamic events occur there is no phasing.
It sounds to me like for the most part this just eliminates the hoofing it back and forth from the questgiver. (which is much appreciated but hardly next gen)
I think the idea is fantastic, I'm more worried about the execution. I've only seen a limited amount of these DEs but they are really just traditional quests that you just *happen* to come across. I'm hoping its done in such a way that the novelty of the "dynamic" execution of these quests won't wear out after doing my 50th quest where instead of killing 30 centaurs trying to attack a town, I'm instead killing 30 lizards from attacking an orchard.
Next gen? Hmm, possibly, a step in the right direction for sure.
Remember that the Shatterer is part of a dynamic event chain too. So I think we can expect those DEs to give us some pretty epic content between the centaurs and the lizards.
Isn't the Shatterer a lizard though? o.O
No more so than Zhaitan or Kralkatorrik, and I'm expecting those beasts to likely redefine the notion of epic. Call them lizards at your own peril.
I think the idea is fantastic, I'm more worried about the execution. I've only seen a limited amount of these DEs but they are really just traditional quests that you just *happen* to come across. I'm hoping its done in such a way that the novelty of the "dynamic" execution of these quests won't wear out after doing my 50th quest where instead of killing 30 centaurs trying to attack a town, I'm instead killing 30 lizards from attacking an orchard.
Next gen? Hmm, possibly, a step in the right direction for sure.
Remember that the Shatterer is part of a dynamic event chain too. So I think we can expect those DEs to give us some pretty epic content between the centaurs and the lizards.
Isn't the Shatterer a lizard though? o.O
No more so than Zhaitan or Kralkatorrik, and I'm expecting those beasts to likely redefine the notion of epic. Call them lizards at your own peril.
Right now I can't be bothered to read through all the previous comments so I'll give my thoughts on the matter.
Currently I'm playing LotRO and I know that all you MMO vets have gone through this, but I'm still new to this whole quest grind thing. Well a couple nights ago I'd just killed a bunch of boars and collected their: toenails, stomachs, testicles, whatever for the umptenth time and I had to ask myself & my guild mates... what did these boars ever do to deserve this mass genocide? Sure maybe the paragraphs of quest text would give me some arbitrary reason, as to why I have to cull the various critters. But the problem is why should I care?
And here comes Guild Wars 2, showcasing a system that will give me a valid reason to go an kill these mobs. Because if I don't kill these hostile mobs, then it will possibly effect me and the rest of the game world in a negative way. That' why GW2's dynamic event system is full of win.
Right now I can't be bothered to read through all the previous comments so I'll give my thoughts on the matter.
Currently I'm playing LotRO and I know that all you MMO vets have gone through this, but I'm still new to this whole quest grind thing. Well a couple nights ago I'd just killed a bunch of boars and collected their: toenails, stomachs, testicles, whatever for the umptenth time and I had to ask myself & my guild mates... what did these boars ever do to deserve this mass genocide? Sure maybe the paragraphs of quest text would give me some arbitrary reason, as to why I have to cull the various critters. But the problem is why should I care?
And here comes Guild Wars 2, showcasing a system that will give me a valid reason to go an kill these mobs. Because if I don't kill these hostile mobs, then it will possibly effect me and the rest of the game world in a negative way. That' why GW2's dynamic event system is full of win.
well said : )
Being a young gamer, whenever I played an MMO I loved my alts. But the problem was, that playign through the quest grind each time was pretty annoying; if there way any exp farm available I would just hop on that and skip the quests enitrely.
But Guild wars 2 is looking to fix this issue, not by dissallowing us to farm, but by making the content fun and different to an extent that every time you make an alt, theres something new to experience : )
I think the idea is fantastic, I'm more worried about the execution. I've only seen a limited amount of these DEs but they are really just traditional quests that you just *happen* to come across. I'm hoping its done in such a way that the novelty of the "dynamic" execution of these quests won't wear out after doing my 50th quest where instead of killing 30 centaurs trying to attack a town, I'm instead killing 30 lizards from attacking an orchard.
Next gen? Hmm, possibly, a step in the right direction for sure.
Remember that the Shatterer is part of a dynamic event chain too. So I think we can expect those DEs to give us some pretty epic content between the centaurs and the lizards.
Isn't the Shatterer a lizard though? o.O
No more so than Zhaitan or Kralkatorrik, and I'm expecting those beasts to likely redefine the notion of epic. Call them lizards at your own peril.
Looking forward to it.
I'm really looking forward to those larger epic battles as well, though I have some misgivings on that too (the whole event scaling thing) but its mainly because I keep a healthy skepticism over most titles I'm looking forward to. Well... all titles except Skyrim (regular bethesda bugs aside), gah I can't wait!!!
Uhm.. aside from that, I am very much looking forward to seeing how the GW2 world comes together. My first response to the thread is, I'd like to play it before deciding how big of a step forward it is. My second response would be, no matter if it works perfectly or falls just shy of being a revolution, I think its definitely a major step in the right direction, just how WARs PQs were kind of a small step forward to what Arenanet is doing now.
I'll take the wait and see aproach on this one, I've played mmo's a long time and I've seen a lot of different ideas. From near questless muds, which focus on gm run events and you doing your own thing to make your way in the world. To sandboxes and themeparks, having played GW1 a while I know I got tired of the first one very quickly as if really didn't hold my intrest that well. Yet, it was more of the themepark style game, and focused on collect x of something. Do I think the dynamic event thing will work or not, I can't say. I think it will be different, but different only does so much and if the game is a short sprint to end level no ammount of extra crap to do will keep me in a game where I am just earning more points to buy skills with.
If it truly scales like they say it will, then I think it will be fabulous. Dynamic events that can actually be done solo / duo / trio all the way up to raid sized and rewarded fairly for it will be a nice change of pace. Rift attempted to do this, but their rifts not only suck in scaling, but soloers get the the major finger when it comes to rewards from them. So, here's to a new game mechanic that will hopefully provide lots of fun no matter your play style with a reward system that is also satisfying for non-raiders.
P.S. I can't help but love a mechanic that rewards you for exploring. I'm so sick of games that actually punish you for exploring by killing you instantly if you move beyond the one tiny single area designated for your level or the ones that virtually lack exporation at all with their single path, railway progression.
Yeah, thats how I see it for me, too. As far as I understand it, I love the idea.
Still uncertain tho how the majority will react to "hey where are my quest givers?"
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
If it truly scales like they say it will, then I think it will be fabulous. Dynamic events that can actually be done solo / duo / trio all the way up to raid sized and rewarded fairly for it will be a nice change of pace. Rift attempted to do this, but their rifts not only suck in scaling, but soloers get the the major finger when it comes to rewards from them. So, here's to a new game mechanic that will hopefully provide lots of fun no matter your play style with a reward system that is also satisfying for non-raiders.
P.S. I can't help but love a mechanic that rewards you for exploring. I'm so sick of games that actually punish you for exploring by killing you instantly if you move beyond the one tiny single area designated for your level or the ones that virtually lack exporation at all with their single path, railway progression.
Yeah, thats how I see it for me, too. As far as I understand it, I love the idea.
Still uncertain tho how the majority will react to "hey where are my quest givers?"
Hopefully the scout system works as intended and helps people transition out of that mindset.
I think GW2 will do fine because of it's established following and mostly unique pricing model.
Speaking for myself, I played GW1 and bought the first expansion (NightFall? can't remember). I didn't finish it though, and I haven't played GW since. I found the combat and movement too sluggish and I have no interest in PvP. I also found it annoying to have to clear so much trash en route to completing every quest. By the end, the most enjoyable thing for me was watching some of the PvP matches while I ate my lunch.
If those events scale to always be within reach of completion by players... well where's the challenge? Where's the point in advancement? You won't be calling friends to help you out with a difficult event because the difficulty will always be relatively the same.
Hmm.. I wonder how it'll turn out actually. Left 4 Dead does a pretty good job at dynamically scaling the game's difficulty to the players' skill so it seems that it can be done in an enjoyable and challenging manner. It's just a matter of ramping up difficulty high enough. However, I have no idea how it's going to function in a persistent mmorpg environment... And besides there are the dungeons and PvP which do not scale in anyway so I guess even if DEs turn out to be casual there are still some major areas of the game that can provide real challenge. We'll see.. /cross fingers
If those events scale to always be within reach of completion by players... well where's the challenge? Where's the point in advancement? You won't be calling friends to help you out with a difficult event because the difficulty will always be relatively the same.
Hmm.. I wonder how it'll turn out actually. Left 4 Dead does a pretty good job at dynamically scaling the game's difficulty to the players' skill so it seems that it can be done in an enjoyable and challenging manner. It's just a matter of ramping up difficulty high enough. However, I have no idea how it's going to function in a persistent mmorpg environment... And besides there are the dungeons and PvP which do not scale in anyway so I guess even if DEs turn out to be casual there are still some major areas of the game that can provide real challenge. We'll see.. /cross fingers
I think you nailed it yourself right there. People will want to go out and do things on their own as well, for relaxation purposes just like most other mmorpgs offer a lot of content for single players or maybe duo's. You don't want solo players to be barred from most of a zone's content if they happen to be the only ones there for whatever reason.
If you regard the dynamic events as also offering a replacement for this solo questing content in most mmorpgs, the scaling especially adds a benefit for groups; scaling up events without making it a laughably easy experience like it would with unscalable content.
But if you see some of the vids there is still quite some challenge there. The bossfights I saw took damn long
Honestly, I'm skeptical. Phasing looked interesting on paper but clearly isn't somehing I enjoy, nor do I consider it a positive direction for future MMOs. Beyond that is a we'll see how it goes.
The way I always heard phasing described for how it would be implemented in games (Like WoW), it always seemed like a bad implementation to me.
It's still an interesting IDEA, people are just using it wrong. Guild Wars 2 for example, uses phasing so people can mine the same resource nodes. That's not actually a bad usage of phasing.
You could actually use it in really INTERESTING ways.
By the way, I keep hearing people say that the home instance in GW2 is 'phased'. That's untrue, it's instanced, because if you invite somebody with you, they see your home instance, and not their own. You cannot stand side by side with another person and see different things in a home instance, because you're joining the same instance.
I actually built a whole game design off of phasing... a world where you either have different kind of mages who can see the world in different ways, or a cyberpunk style world where people can have different implants that allow them to see different kinds of virtual overlays of the world that allow them to see and interact with the world in different ways.
That would be a kind of phasing that would actually create teamwork, as people need to work together within the same area to solve problems or traverse terrain. (Like if somebody can see an 'invisible' bridge and nobody else on the team can)
Phasing can be used creatively, and to make interesting problems and improve gameplay... it's just mostly used as a crappy copout while storytelling.
Phasing is a technology though, and can be used for good or bad.
In theory is it the best idea in a long time. No full quest journals, no doing 10 quests at the same time, no running on and off to the same questgiver 15 times to be asked to kill 10 of a slightly larger creature every time.
But the idea is unproven, we are talking about large scale here, not just a few PQs or rifts that opens up once in a while. I don't know if this really can keep us busy or not, and neither can anyone here.
We need to try it first, any vote is useless yet, noone of us really know how fun this will be for years.
I agree with this! Although I am choosing to be optimistic about the direction ANet is going with GW2, no one can deny there is a possibility it all could go down in flames for them. I look forward to seeing how it turns out though, and I am hope it is a success.
I'll take the wait and see aproach on this one, I've played mmo's a long time and I've seen a lot of different ideas. From near questless muds, which focus on gm run events and you doing your own thing to make your way in the world. To sandboxes and themeparks, having played GW1 a while I know I got tired of the first one very quickly as if really didn't hold my intrest that well. Yet, it was more of the themepark style game, and focused on collect x of something. Do I think the dynamic event thing will work or not, I can't say. I think it will be different, but different only does so much and if the game is a short sprint to end level no ammount of extra crap to do will keep me in a game where I am just earning more points to buy skills with.
I totally understand your boredom with Guild Wars 1. While I found it fun to try out different skill combinations, etc, advancement just didn't matter really. All you were gaining was new options for playing. The only purpose to play the game is for the story, which was pretty well done. However, using Guild Wars 1 as an example as to what Guild Wars 2 will be is a mistake. The most significant thing in common that they have is the lore (and even then, there is a 250 year difference). ArenaNet has been using complaints like your own for the past several years to craft this game to be something that has the depth and challenge that hardcore MMORPG players are looking for, with a fresh approach to content delivery that will feel accessible to the masses.
Watch the videos, check up on the news as it keeps coming. This is definitely a game that you should be looking for if the status quo MMO is boring you (as I'm starting to feel after my first month of RIFT).
I must admit this has just pipped my interest in GW2, i thought the original was ok but felt like nothing special compared to all the other mmo's out there but being a exUO player nothing since EQ pretty much has, in UO there were no quests either and to not be bound to a pre defined route lead me to be more imaginative in how i wanted to spend my time playing.
When you look at the run of the mill MMO its not hard to see the lack of difference in what you actually do in the game, run to quest hub, click accept on every npc (usually without actually reading the quest description) then heading off in the direction your minimap is telling you to go. Its a look at ! mark click button, follow arrow, press 12345, there is no thought process in it. Any game without this, is a winner in my book.
If those events scale to always be within reach of completion by players... well where's the challenge? Where's the point in advancement? You won't be calling friends to help you out with a difficult event because the difficulty will always be relatively the same.
Hmm.. I wonder how it'll turn out actually. Left 4 Dead does a pretty good job at dynamically scaling the game's difficulty to the players' skill so it seems that it can be done in an enjoyable and challenging manner. It's just a matter of ramping up difficulty high enough. However, I have no idea how it's going to function in a persistent mmorpg environment... And besides there are the dungeons and PvP which do not scale in anyway so I guess even if DEs turn out to be casual there are still some major areas of the game that can provide real challenge. We'll see.. /cross fingers
Please see this, especially the Q&A part towards the end. They specifically explain how they approached the problem of difficulty scaling, and they actually use Oblivion as comparison too. Most importantly, they say where they didn't solve the problem, and give their reasoning behind it.
I totally understand your boredom with Guild Wars 1. While I found it fun to try out different skill combinations, etc, advancement just didn't matter really. All you were gaining was new options for playing. The only purpose to play the game is for the story, which was pretty well done. However, using Guild Wars 1 as an example as to what Guild Wars 2 will be is a mistake. The most significant thing in common that they have is the lore (and even then, there is a 250 year difference). ArenaNet has been using complaints like your own for the past several years to craft this game to be something that has the depth and challenge that hardcore MMORPG players are looking for, with a fresh approach to content delivery that will feel accessible to the masses.
Watch the videos, check up on the news as it keeps coming. This is definitely a game that you should be looking for if the status quo MMO is boring you (as I'm starting to feel after my first month of RIFT).
From the many interviews, Q&As etc, i got the impression that hardcore MMORPG players are exactly not the focus. The design of GW2 throws many of the MMO tropes overboard that are most relevant to those hardcore players.
Maybe we have a different idea of what hardcore means in this regard?
Comments
This.I hope it's great and a step forward but I ain't trumptetting it as the second coming till I've expereince dit for awhile.
Dynamic events are a fantastic, revolutionary, epic win of an innovation over the traditional quest model without question. If you do not believe that, then you do not understand dynamic events.
The traditional quest system has a lot of limitations.
First, you've got to read a wall of text (like this post) to understand what it's about. You've got to pick it up and turn it in. The mobs you're killing aren't actually threatening anybody, but most likely standing in a field somewhere. With the exception of escort quests and atypical ones, they're pretty hard to fail (eventually you are going to kill those 10 rats). You don't get any reward except for full completion.
You've got to compete against others for the spawns or ground items you need to collect. There's no cooperation with strangers unless you decide to group for some elite quest you can't do yourself (after which you immediately disband). If it is a solo quest, grouping makes it way too easy. You can't do a quest more than once. If you want to group with someone and you're on different stages of a quest, one of you has to redo the content so the other can catch up. It makes you not want to play the game if your friend isn't on because you know you'd have to redo it.
And if you or your friend is the wrong level for the content, you can't really group at all without one person trivializing it. Ever delete someone from the friends list because the next time you saw them you were 10 levels ahead?
Anyway, dynamic events address all those things.
Dynamic events run whether players are there or not. You don't have to read anything or talk to anyone, you can just jump in if you see it going on. You get rewarded when it's over for your level of participation. They are immediate, bandits are burning things, harpies are attacking the friendly ogres. Failure is possible.
Everything is purely cooperative. There's no killstealing or tagging. No xp halving. They scale up in difficulty based on the number of people participating. You don't have to be grouped with people, you can just fight along side them and maybe help each other out with cross profession combos. They chain into other events based on success or failure, this keeps people working together over time.
The events run in cycles so you can repeat one anytime it's running. If you have a friend who wants to join you, they can jump in any time, it doesn't matter if you've done three events already, you've already been rewarded for those and they'll be rewarded for what they do when they jump in. You can jump out at any time and still be rewarded for however much you accomplished.
On top of it, the game features automatically mentoring you down in strength if you want to participate in a lower level event (to keep people from griefing lower level events by 1-shotting everything). You can also sidekick people up to your level if you want. In GW2, you CAN meaningfully group with that guy that you're 10 levels ahead of, mentoring down to their level and either redoing events or maybe doing some you didn't see last time you were there, or inviting them up to give them a taste of what's to come.
In a more general sense, when you're max level, the entire game's content is still open to you. Want to redo any of those 1500-1600 dynamic events? Feel like doing the entire Asura starting zone but can't stand the thought of playing an Asura? You can!
I apologize for the length of this post, but I can't help but want to get it out there. Dynamic events are not just quests in a different wrapper, or quests you don't have to pick up. They're a major innovation that increases immersion, cooperation and community.
"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
Even if GW2 completely flops, it is enough to shake the MMO genre to accept that there ARE different ways to make these kinds of games.
I highly doubt it will flop though. Srsly...Even if it were just a CoOP game that had those dynamic worlds, I would still buy it o.O
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( o.o)
(")(")
**This bunny was cloned from bunnies belonging to Gobla and is part of the Quizzical Fanclub and the The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club**
Remember that the Shatterer is part of a dynamic event chain too. So I think we can expect those DEs to give us some pretty epic content between the centaurs and the lizards.
Isn't the Shatterer a lizard though? o.O
Only phasing that occurs is in your home instance that involves your personal story. Out in the world where the dynamic events occur there is no phasing.
It sounds to me like for the most part this just eliminates the hoofing it back and forth from the questgiver. (which is much appreciated but hardly next gen)
It is a solid Idea and long overdue though.
No more so than Zhaitan or Kralkatorrik, and I'm expecting those beasts to likely redefine the notion of epic. Call them lizards at your own peril.
Looking forward to it.
Right now I can't be bothered to read through all the previous comments so I'll give my thoughts on the matter.
Currently I'm playing LotRO and I know that all you MMO vets have gone through this, but I'm still new to this whole quest grind thing. Well a couple nights ago I'd just killed a bunch of boars and collected their: toenails, stomachs, testicles, whatever for the umptenth time and I had to ask myself & my guild mates... what did these boars ever do to deserve this mass genocide? Sure maybe the paragraphs of quest text would give me some arbitrary reason, as to why I have to cull the various critters. But the problem is why should I care?
And here comes Guild Wars 2, showcasing a system that will give me a valid reason to go an kill these mobs. Because if I don't kill these hostile mobs, then it will possibly effect me and the rest of the game world in a negative way. That' why GW2's dynamic event system is full of win.
well said : )
Being a young gamer, whenever I played an MMO I loved my alts. But the problem was, that playign through the quest grind each time was pretty annoying; if there way any exp farm available I would just hop on that and skip the quests enitrely.
But Guild wars 2 is looking to fix this issue, not by dissallowing us to farm, but by making the content fun and different to an extent that every time you make an alt, theres something new to experience : )
I'm really looking forward to those larger epic battles as well, though I have some misgivings on that too (the whole event scaling thing) but its mainly because I keep a healthy skepticism over most titles I'm looking forward to. Well... all titles except Skyrim (regular bethesda bugs aside), gah I can't wait!!!
Uhm.. aside from that, I am very much looking forward to seeing how the GW2 world comes together. My first response to the thread is, I'd like to play it before deciding how big of a step forward it is. My second response would be, no matter if it works perfectly or falls just shy of being a revolution, I think its definitely a major step in the right direction, just how WARs PQs were kind of a small step forward to what Arenanet is doing now.
It will be a nice approach to questing. Looking forward to trying it out.
I'll take the wait and see aproach on this one, I've played mmo's a long time and I've seen a lot of different ideas. From near questless muds, which focus on gm run events and you doing your own thing to make your way in the world. To sandboxes and themeparks, having played GW1 a while I know I got tired of the first one very quickly as if really didn't hold my intrest that well. Yet, it was more of the themepark style game, and focused on collect x of something. Do I think the dynamic event thing will work or not, I can't say. I think it will be different, but different only does so much and if the game is a short sprint to end level no ammount of extra crap to do will keep me in a game where I am just earning more points to buy skills with.
Yeah, thats how I see it for me, too. As far as I understand it, I love the idea.
Still uncertain tho how the majority will react to "hey where are my quest givers?"
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Hopefully the scout system works as intended and helps people transition out of that mindset.
I think GW2 will do fine because of it's established following and mostly unique pricing model.
Speaking for myself, I played GW1 and bought the first expansion (NightFall? can't remember). I didn't finish it though, and I haven't played GW since. I found the combat and movement too sluggish and I have no interest in PvP. I also found it annoying to have to clear so much trash en route to completing every quest. By the end, the most enjoyable thing for me was watching some of the PvP matches while I ate my lunch.
Imo there is a hidden danger in dynamic events...
Oblivion anyone?
If those events scale to always be within reach of completion by players... well where's the challenge? Where's the point in advancement? You won't be calling friends to help you out with a difficult event because the difficulty will always be relatively the same.
Hmm.. I wonder how it'll turn out actually. Left 4 Dead does a pretty good job at dynamically scaling the game's difficulty to the players' skill so it seems that it can be done in an enjoyable and challenging manner. It's just a matter of ramping up difficulty high enough. However, I have no idea how it's going to function in a persistent mmorpg environment... And besides there are the dungeons and PvP which do not scale in anyway so I guess even if DEs turn out to be casual there are still some major areas of the game that can provide real challenge. We'll see.. /cross fingers
I think you nailed it yourself right there. People will want to go out and do things on their own as well, for relaxation purposes just like most other mmorpgs offer a lot of content for single players or maybe duo's. You don't want solo players to be barred from most of a zone's content if they happen to be the only ones there for whatever reason.
If you regard the dynamic events as also offering a replacement for this solo questing content in most mmorpgs, the scaling especially adds a benefit for groups; scaling up events without making it a laughably easy experience like it would with unscalable content.
But if you see some of the vids there is still quite some challenge there. The bossfights I saw took damn long
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The way I always heard phasing described for how it would be implemented in games (Like WoW), it always seemed like a bad implementation to me.
It's still an interesting IDEA, people are just using it wrong. Guild Wars 2 for example, uses phasing so people can mine the same resource nodes. That's not actually a bad usage of phasing.
You could actually use it in really INTERESTING ways.
By the way, I keep hearing people say that the home instance in GW2 is 'phased'. That's untrue, it's instanced, because if you invite somebody with you, they see your home instance, and not their own. You cannot stand side by side with another person and see different things in a home instance, because you're joining the same instance.
I actually built a whole game design off of phasing... a world where you either have different kind of mages who can see the world in different ways, or a cyberpunk style world where people can have different implants that allow them to see different kinds of virtual overlays of the world that allow them to see and interact with the world in different ways.
That would be a kind of phasing that would actually create teamwork, as people need to work together within the same area to solve problems or traverse terrain. (Like if somebody can see an 'invisible' bridge and nobody else on the team can)
Phasing can be used creatively, and to make interesting problems and improve gameplay... it's just mostly used as a crappy copout while storytelling.
Phasing is a technology though, and can be used for good or bad.
I agree with this! Although I am choosing to be optimistic about the direction ANet is going with GW2, no one can deny there is a possibility it all could go down in flames for them. I look forward to seeing how it turns out though, and I am hope it is a success.
I totally understand your boredom with Guild Wars 1. While I found it fun to try out different skill combinations, etc, advancement just didn't matter really. All you were gaining was new options for playing. The only purpose to play the game is for the story, which was pretty well done. However, using Guild Wars 1 as an example as to what Guild Wars 2 will be is a mistake. The most significant thing in common that they have is the lore (and even then, there is a 250 year difference). ArenaNet has been using complaints like your own for the past several years to craft this game to be something that has the depth and challenge that hardcore MMORPG players are looking for, with a fresh approach to content delivery that will feel accessible to the masses.
Watch the videos, check up on the news as it keeps coming. This is definitely a game that you should be looking for if the status quo MMO is boring you (as I'm starting to feel after my first month of RIFT).
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I must admit this has just pipped my interest in GW2, i thought the original was ok but felt like nothing special compared to all the other mmo's out there but being a exUO player nothing since EQ pretty much has, in UO there were no quests either and to not be bound to a pre defined route lead me to be more imaginative in how i wanted to spend my time playing.
When you look at the run of the mill MMO its not hard to see the lack of difference in what you actually do in the game, run to quest hub, click accept on every npc (usually without actually reading the quest description) then heading off in the direction your minimap is telling you to go. Its a look at ! mark click button, follow arrow, press 12345, there is no thought process in it. Any game without this, is a winner in my book.
Please see this, especially the Q&A part towards the end. They specifically explain how they approached the problem of difficulty scaling, and they actually use Oblivion as comparison too. Most importantly, they say where they didn't solve the problem, and give their reasoning behind it.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1013691/Designing-Guild-Wars-2-Dynamic
From the many interviews, Q&As etc, i got the impression that hardcore MMORPG players are exactly not the focus. The design of GW2 throws many of the MMO tropes overboard that are most relevant to those hardcore players.
Maybe we have a different idea of what hardcore means in this regard?