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In Guild Wars 2, quests do you!
Creslin321
Member Posts: 5,359
The topic may seem stupid, but I actually think it's accurate in describing how DE's work in GW2. Let me explain...
You see, in normal MMORPGs, the player definitively does the quest. The player initiates the quest by talking to an NPC. The player progresses the quest at their own pace by completing the objectives. And the player completes the quest by talking to the NPC again.
But in GW2...DE's don't really care about individual player, they are just happening regardless. I watched a video recently that showed an entire DE chain in a Norn village (wish I could link it, YouTube doesn't work here). Anyway, the quest involved a Norn smith, his mischievious daughter and her friend.
The whole thing starts when the player gives some meat to the Norn smith so he can smoke it out in his yard. After he does this, his daughter starts playing in the house, acting like she's slaying monsters, and accidentally embeds an axe in her father's beast head trophy. Feeling horrible about this, she gets with her friend, and they conspire to kill a large beast (veteran mob) outside their house to replace the trophy...but they need help. This kicks off a DE to kill the monster, and a bunch of players participate.
After the monster is dead, the daughter tells her father, and he reprimands her for hunting alone, but says he will take her on a hunt soon. Then the mischievious children decide they are going to summon and slay a bear to prove to the father that they are strong enough to hunt. The ritual they do goes terribly wrong and they summon a HORDE of bears, triggering another DE.
Now...here's the interesting part about all this...this stuff would happen even if no players were there to witness it. The girl would still run around and break the trophy, the kids would still try to kill the beast outside, even if no players were around. This is what I mean by "quests do you." You tend to get just swept away in events, which you have the option of following all the way through if you like, but you don't have to.
I honestly think this is just a much more organic way to do questing, and I think a lot of players haven't really appreciated DEs for what they are yet. The fact that I can just explore a town and see "live" quests happening in the moment, with storylines and all, is just so cool to me.
Thoughts?
EDIT:
Here's the link to the YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CyqGJHTjes
Thanks Vannor 
!
Credits:
Special thanks to Vannor and Yakov Smirnoff for inspiring the topic and being my light in the darkness or some such.
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Comments
They certainly make you feel a lot more like a participant in the world / events of the world than traditional questing.
RIFTs had the same effect, they were just so static and every one was the same... the novelty got boring really fast for many.
Dynamic events have a lot more variety, and thus a lot more longevity.
I think alot of the reason people don't appreciate how they play out is due to character level. Most people that have played the game, I imagine, havn't gotten out of the newbie area. Not only are the DE's easier there, but the population in them is alot more dense. I never failed a DE in the first zone. However I think people will really start seeing their impact once the population disperses further and they start failing DE's and seeing the consequences.
Lurke® Circa 2004
Think this is the video you wanted to link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CyqGJHTjes
I agree. I never really knew what was going on in the newbie area DE's...there were just so many players, all I knew was we had to kill things and make the bar go up.
But later on, when the players spread out more, DE's seemed much more involving. I could see that each one actually had their own stories, and sometimes it was fun to try to see what you could do to make a DE trigger. It's also interesting because in GW2, NPC idle banter may actually be telling the story of, and leading up to, and event. So it gives you a big incentive to actually "smell the roses" instead of just running to the next objective.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Actually I love the DE system, no running to a quest giver to recieve or turn in etc I actually stayed in the starter area's for BWE2&3, want the rest of the world to be fresh and amazing on launch.
Thanks
!!
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It sounds good on paper (or forums, lol).
My questions are this though:
Why do I care about the quest if it happens without me? Do I lose a sense of purpose to the world if I see this quest happening irregardless if I participate? Is it interesting or do I benefit by just watching it unfold and not participating? Does this make the quest in itself more or less interesting in any way? After the initial presentation of how these quests are delivered or "spawned", does it just become another tired mechanic of the MMO (e.g. after the initial awe wears off).
Personally, I think it makes questing 1000% more interesting because it can happen without you. With traditional questing, every single player will have the same experience, they will initiate the quest and finish it until the end.
But with this kind of questing, each player's experience may be slightly different. Maybe player A brought the smith the meat and initiated the quest, and left. Maybe player B just happened upon a village under attack by bears. Maybe player C followed the quest all the way through. One quest, many different possible experiences.
And even better, it encourages discovery. You may complete the end of the DE where the bears come, and you may be wondering...how the heck did all these bears get here??? Well, hang around that area long enough, and the event will play out again so you can learn the story.
I really feel like, notwithstanding PQs and Rifts which really lacked in the variety and story departments, this is the first successful "MMO" implementation of questing. All other types of questing are essentially "single player," in that they are attached to inividual players, and really have absolutely nothing to do with the world. But this type of questing involves everyone, it's just something happening in the world and everyone around can get involved. I think that is SO much better than trying to staple an SPRPG feature (traditional questing) into an MMORPG.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Can't hate on WAR too much. At least it brought us the PQs.
Honestly, I don't know how these will play out. As I said, it sounds good on paper. The problem is a lot of ideas in the past for this genre have sounded good....but in practice, they didn't really pan out.
We shall see.
We shall see.
I still don't see the pull. In the example the children still summon the bear, so it should maul them and then they are no longer available, or the same if the player decides not to help. But don't worry, the kids will be back shortly so that the DE can cycle through again. Same with the humans and centaurs taking over forts/villages, then starting over again. Don't feel like saving the city? Don't worry, you can come back later and save it then.
Well my first thought is I can't beleive your user rating is down so low conciddering you are one of the more level headed and infomative people in the MMORPG GW2 community. After I got past that.. I agree that the chain you mentioned serves as a wonderful example of why the DE's are not the same as a traditional quest. What I notice that the nay sayers tend to get hung up on is the fact that no matter how you break down any task in any game, they are either kill/gather/escort in nature. The video is a good example of just how a DE managed to incorperate all elements into one chain (gather ore at some point, kill creature are some point).
The most annoying thing that I felt quest did were send you to an area to complete a quest and then return back to the NPC only to get sent back to the same area. I noticed this very heavily in TSW and tera. Because these quests are the staple of your leveling exp, you were obligated to carry them out or progression was hamstrung. On the other hand, I noticed that even when skipping DE's that I had seen before, when passing through to explore I would do a few things in route and still get rewarded for the DE even when I was nowhere near it when it completed. It was only bronze, but it was nice and surprising anyways.
I agree that DE's have core elements found in other games quests. When someone says that I do get why they claim this is the case, but they are really missing the point when they get caught up by it's core. The DE's do an outstanding job of not only making the world feel alive, but engrossing the players in their environment. I know when I play TSW, WoW, Tera, etc.... I already know pretty much what I am going to do and where I am going from the moment I log in. In GW2 I have yet to know wtf I will be doing when I log in because I get carried away by the game.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
1.You shouldn't/don't have to care if a quest happens without you.
2.For your second question is about how you feel. I don't feel any loss what so ever if I see DE going on and i don't participate, don't know about your feelings.
3.There are no benefits in watching a DE take place, but some have a little skit before the DE starts that is interesting to watch. When I was on the lvl 30+ map I was watching an Asura work out a plan with some Pirates to rob his sister and inlaw's mansion (think it was his sis) because he felt that her wealth should have been his.
4.The little skits before hand make the DE's more interesting because you know WHY what is going is going on. But just watching isn't interesting in my opinion.
5.After a while, depending on the person, they may or may not find the presentation boring. I think if more games start popping up with this mechanic, then it'll be just another tired mechanic.
Difference is, most of us have already seen this in practice. And they work, they really, really do.
What makes DEs so much better than, for example, WAR's PQs, is the fact that they just happen with or without you.
Watch this for a more indepth commentary on how the system plays out in the game: TotalBiscuit's Final Thoughts on GW2
Not only does having events that happen around you, instead of waiting to be triggered, make the world feel a lot more alive (and immersive), it also leads to a lot more interesting situations. For example if you trigger an event without realizing, and it fails, it will trigger consequences. You may not even realize what those consequences are. Sometimes they are small 'oh, why is this NPC dead way over here?', sometimes they are large 'the swamp has been overrun by evil forces! we must drive back the shadow demon!'.
Furthermore, the way in which events chain together does a really good job of carrying players away on a journey. Because the events are all entirely optional, and you can change your course at any given time, you really get this feeling of 'where will this take me next?'. Some events are even so large as to carry players half way across the map throughout the chain, where players will see many other events triggered along the way.
I enjoyed WAR for what it was, but when it came to the PQs, they had the same problem as Rift's. They were far too static in implementation, and as such they got boring rather quickly.
While you have a point, what you are suggesting is highly impractical.
Even in sandbox games, things come back. You can't have a rich, massive world, crammed full of content, and have it dissappear forever the second somebody touches it. It's just not realistic.
That said, while the DE's in GW2 do sometimes cycle, they don't always cycle in the same way. They chain, and depending on whos doing the chain, how complex it is, and whether it's a pendulum, or a tree of events, the event is constantly progressing in different ways.
While yes, you can expect to see the NPCs in the world always (or at least for a while until they perhaps get switched out by their Dynamic Event live team), you don't know if they will be alive or not the next time you see them. Or if that town / outpost is available. You won't know if you will be happily picking flowers, fighting off a dragon, or herding cows the next time you visit the same zone.
At the end of the day, it IS an MMO. Having things that are permanently gone isn't a feature really condusive to MMOs. If you want that, you are better off playing single player games, or perhaps minecraft.
Through all 3 BWEs, I've not played the DEs as "quests". I go through the world exploring as I wish and come across the DEs as stories that I am walking into. It's much more fun if you look at it in that sense.
View the world you set off in as a living breathing world that has all sorts of things happening in it. A choose your own adventure book so to speak. It's really enjoyable knowing that when you set out from a city that there's not this specific goal that you've got to make a mad rush for along with 100s of other players trying to beat each other to the first punch.
Yeah I agree.
While the "they aren't dynamic because they will always repeat" criticism is technically true, it's also incredibly unrealistic. The only way you could have a game full of non-repeating content, is if the content were all procedurally generated via formulas, like how the worlds of Minecraft or Terrarria are generated.
But content generated in this manner is going to get old fast, because, being made from a formula, it is obviously formulaic. So while DEs aren't the perfect dream for everyone, I think they are a great leap forward from traditional questing.
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I feel this is an area in which Rift is better than GW2.
When a rift happens in Rift you can easily find it on your map screen, when a DE happens in GW2 you have to look for an orange circle on your mini map.
I think better is in the eye of the beholder on this one. Rift shows you where the invasions are happening, but that's because they are always happening in the same spots. GW2 doesn't do this, but that's by design because it feeds into the feeling of exploration and adventure. Keep in mind that when you see any symbol (orange circcle, skull, shield, etc..) you have to be within an undisclosed distance. Imagine if they advertised every DE for the zone that was going on as it was happening. The map would look like chaos.
I agree that viewed form that perspective, Rift does show you where things are happening, but I dont agree it is better.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
Not want to nitpick you here but in 5:35 he did trigger the bear attack by talking the Jeffrey boy, he who wanted the head, if none talked to that kid there wouldn't be a bear invasion
Don't get me wrong I really enjoyed GW2 BW and I have allready bought it.
Most DE do happends with or without player interaction been on several ones that I was in awe and told my self...EPIC.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
Rifts were also standalone, many DEs are chained together or even form a branching spider web of causation in the later zone.
Its not use a question of when you will see one but also whether you will see one.
User ratng don't mean poop. Don't post for a while and it will go down.
Ah I stand corrected
, yeah I couldn't remember every detail from the video yesterday.
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Actually repeating and dynamic are not mutually exclusive. In fact if something is dynamic you must assume it will repeat and handle all its state information accordingly. How do you think most memory leaks happen?
Anyway many DE's do not repeat perpetually or regularly because they are triggered. The base condition may reconsitute itself but whether or not subsequent DEs trigger is often entirely up to how the players are interacting with the zone.
The Dynamic Events are the main focal point of the game but finding them can be a chore sometimes. When I first got into the Sylvari zone I wandered around for 10 minutes trying to find a DE, I gave up and started doing Heart quests.
Thats kinda like going into McDonald's and they have no burgers on the menu just their awful Apple pies. Ah, buts that all part of the "exploration and adventure" of ordering a burger at McDonald's.
Im not saying they have to put all active DEs on the map but a bit more than just an orange circle or some other symbol on the mini map would go a long way in presenting the main focal point of the entire game to the players. I wouldnt be surprised a lot of players ended up thinking the Heart quests were the main focal point of GW2 and that the DEs are just some extra fluff because of how the game presents the Hearts to the players.
Ouch. No credit for the "quest do you" quote.
Oderint, dum metuant.