Feedback:User/JiaYow/Instanced Dynamic Events
Instanced Dynamic Events | |
|---|---|
| User | JiaYow |
| Categories | Player vs. Environment |
I see lots of people worrying about the lack of raids in GuildWars2 and I completely agree with them. I want to play GuildWars2 with my guild, so naturally I hope for plenty of endgame content specifically for guilds.
In PvP, HotJoins will be the obvious choice (5v5 tournaments being to small for most guilds, considering guilds usually have at least 10+ members) and I hope and trust ANet that there will be plenty of reasons to play them.
In PvE, as far as I see, there are not many options.
Dungeons are nice, but limited to five players. There's no doubt that most guilds will usually have more than 5 players online, small to medium sized guilds will have like 15-20 online players who might want to do something together, not split into 4 dungeon groups.
World events/Dynamic events/Elite events are awesome as well, but anyone can join them anytime. While I'm usually happy whenever I see other players (I play an MMO after all), there might be some times where I wish to spend time specifically with my guild. For example, we might try to down The Shatterer (which is meant for at least 10 players) with only 9 guildies. Or try out a specific strategy. Or defeat an extremely hard boss that requires lots of strategy and coordination to defeat.
You see, Dynamic Events might be epic, but need to have reduced complexity and difficulty simply because ANet cannot and will not assume that every player in the fight is very skilled, also random players won't have voice chat and so on. Coordination is not really possible to a significant degree, so the bosses need to be relatively simple.
In short, I - same as many many other players - wish to raid.
Now I do understand ANet's motivation to exclude raids from GW2, like the lack of the tank/dps/heal system and having to wait for a certain number of players. But in my opinion, being able to do something challenging with your guild - in a coordinated and well-planned setup - is crucial for the long-term success of any guild-based MMO.
Considering all this, the solution seems quite simple:
- Raids provide long-term PvE goals for guilds seeking challenges in defeating very hard encounters that require skill, coordination, tactics and strategy. But raids traditionally have fixed setups and long waiting queues. Ideally there would have to be raids designed for any guild size thinkable. An impossible feat?
- Dynamic events need to be a tad easier than a traditional raid boss because of the lack of coordination and skill and also "random" players could join in anytime, spoiling the "Our guild did it!!!" feeling. However, they provide the capability to scale (awesome!) based on participants and show that epic boss fights are possible (and even better) without the Holy Trinity system.
Long story short, why doesn't ANet implement some instanced zones (like in GW1) where Elite Dynamic Events happen that are much harder than the average Elite Event? Using the now available technology, let those zones scale for like 5-50 players, and use the side-kick system so that any guild member can participate regardless of current level. The Dynamic Event chains happening inside those zones would require tactics and coordination to complete, and voila, there's your raid for any guild size. The zones would be private for every guild, so every guild can progress their private event chain in its own pace. You don't even need weekly resets. Maybe add a "retreat" function to reset the chain if you wish so. This system emphasizes the importance of your guild in GuildWars2. Here, the skill combination feature really starts to shine, because you might need the power of combined skills (not a specific combination) to down a boss. You can't ask random players in the open world to PLEASE throw down a flame wall NOW because you want to send your arrows through it. You can't absolutely expect random Guardians to use their healing field so you can aoe-heal-unload before half of the people here die. But, if everyone in the fight is in your guild and communicating with you, you can utilize the great battle system of GW2 to its fullest.
So, you get the epic feel of raiding, but don't need to wait for players. Small 10-man-guilds can run the same raids as 50-man-guilds, without additional effort from ANet. So in my 20-man-guild 3 guys called in sick? No problem, just tackle the next few events with 17 people.
For progress, one could even implement an "unfair scaling" system. For example, after a guild has "defeated" a chain 5 times, the bosses start to scale for <number of players> + 1 participants, making the raid harder and harder. There could be achievements for having the system scale a boss for 20 players, but defeating him with only 15. Note that this is specifically possible because of the lack of the Holy Trinity System! Otherwise you would always "need" tanks and healers and you couldn't scale freely.
The possibilities would we almost endless, hardcore raiders would get their much-desired raids, and even small guilds with instable participant numbers (most of the time 1-3 people aren't here because of RL) could enjoy raiding without needing to fill "slots" with random players. And all that with minimal effort for the developers, because all the systems and challenges are already existing in the game today. Use instancing from GW1 paired with Scaling Dynamic Events of GW2, done. Of course it's not that easy, but ANet could do it if it wanted to :-)
GuildWars2 has a great combat system, and it would be a dire waste to limit all those skill combinations to PvP. Bring the epicness to endgame PvE as well. Please.
