Comments on: Guild Wars 2: Lead Designer Talks Dynamic Events System

By: Qix213

Qix213 — Fri, 14 May 2010 12:52:55 +0000

Agreed, procedurally generated world’s (little details and all) will be a huge boon to MMO’s. It would allow for things to be destroyed permanently, and replaced later with something completely different. All without anywhere near as much ongoing work from the Dev’s.
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I remember reading about it being used in other RPG’s like oblivions forests. Back then at least, it required a lot of revisions and personal touches and checking after the fact or it ended up too boring, etc.

By: Callan S.

Callan S. — Fri, 14 May 2010 03:21:10 +0000

The step to actual world persistancy.
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(sorry for the extra post!)

By: Callan S.

Callan S. — Fri, 14 May 2010 03:19:32 +0000

Thanks for that, Qix!
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“if you don’t stop those 20 goblins, they will destroy the farmer’s house, or oppositely, if you defeat them, they will be gone and the farm will truly be saved.”
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“These events change the world when they occur, but it isn’t a change that lasts forever in the persistent world”
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So the farm is saved for twenty minutes, or half an hour, or something.
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And their example of Skritt? It makes it sound like you have to go through Skritt, somehow, to get to the ending. Like it’s B in A, B, C and D, where D is the game end. In other words, the bigger picture is linear, no matter how many ways you can approach Skritt.
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That said, even with that critique, they still seem to be taking a giant stride ahead of other mmorpgs!
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And the non subscription plan seals it for me – I’ll buy it. But I really think this is just a giant stride ahead. In the end, that farm is still put back into danger.
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If they could procedurally generate new farms, or have player built ones somehow, and after being saved X number of times that particular version of a farm is permanently saved, that’d be taking the next big step.

By: Qix213

Qix213 — Thu, 13 May 2010 14:51:05 +0000

Sorry for all the comments, but I found the answers to Cullen’s and my questions here:
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/4235/Guild-Wars-2-Dynamic-Events-Interview.html

By: Qix213

Qix213 — Thu, 13 May 2010 14:41:08 +0000

I loved WAR’s PQs. But there were so many player diluting factors in the game (server/racial zone/multiple PQ’s/PvP instance/world PvP/Teirs 1-4) that it was hard to do them later and later in the game on both the servers I tried. I really hope that these ‘quests’ scale all the way down to solo content when needed.

By: Qix213

Qix213 — Thu, 13 May 2010 14:30:42 +0000

Yea. One way or another, that farm has to have a way to come back. Maybe the idea is that the content coming back is also part of the quest line.
After a certain interval, a couple of farmers could be waiting in the local tavern, looking for escorts to the farm. They could need escorting (depending on how many people are helping escort there could be more/bigger ambushes (or only something the NPC’s could fend off themselves if nobody helps). After making it to the destroyed farm, there are a million things that could be done to help the farmer get re-started, Go get wood, collect seed bearing fruit, help defend, etc etc.
Problem with this line of thought is that none of the changes in these quests are really permanent then. Though at least they do have an effect on the world and impact later quests.

By: Callan S.

Callan S. — Thu, 13 May 2010 08:57:51 +0000

I’d imagine they’d make it seamless, rather than make it another cash cow with paid server transfers (Oooh, we changed a few bits of data – that costs $25! (or however much it costs on wow))

And I’d agree that it sounds like warhammer PQ’s

What I don’t understand is if the farm is destroyed or truely saved…well, your going to run out of content? They haven’t said how their going to handle that. You could just have the farm saved or destroyed for a certain period. Or even generate a farm with new randomised names for the farmers and some randomised elements to the farm, to make it appear a new farm.

But just having a farm that is really saved or really destroyed…certainly this is something no other mmo offers at all right now. But HOW are they going to do it? If at all??

By: Qix213

Qix213 — Wed, 12 May 2010 20:29:37 +0000

Sounds like they took the idea of the Player Quests in Warhammer and turned it to 11. I loved PQ’s in WAR. One of my favorite parts of the game (even if they did have other drawbacks).

This appears to be amazing. Sounds like a lot to live up too, but if they can pull this off… it will reinvent questing in general, not just MMOs.

One of my biggest pet peeves with WoW and most other MMOs (outside of EVE), is the server aspect I have met literally 100′s of people who I would like to play WoW with. But every single one is on a different server. Will GW2 keep the single server aspect of the game. Seems like it would be tough to make enough world for everyone without servers or instancing the entire game world. If not, will I be able to move servers as easily as I did instances in GW1? Then in regards to these quests that change the game world, will each instance evolve differently, etc?

Please Arena.net, don’t go the server route like WoW, if you have to, make it seamless and easy to transfer instantly so I don’t have to choose which friends to play with.