Respawns hurting DE immersion

jezvin

Ok I know not too many people have played GW2 yet but back at PAX east there was something that bothered me when I played one of the DE. Basically I was in a courtyard of some castle and had to kill a bunch of the undead who were attacking it.

So I ran in and started to kill them, I was higher level and just AOEing so I quickly killed everything in sight. I then looked around for more mobs to kill, until a minute or so later when the mobs just respawned. I quickly killed them again but this time looked up at the progress bar for the event and saw that it was barely at 25%. Only 25% of the undead were killed, but there was none in sight anywhere.

It was then that I lost the immersion feeling for that event. I wasn't saving the castle anymore I was just pushing a bar again.

I just feel that this is something they are trying not to make happen, yet it did.

feena750

Ouch I hope they look into things like this.  Something like this can really mean the difference between fun and not fun.

n3verendR

I don't know if a demo created for 2 conventions is something we can really look at as an indicator of release mechanics and what to expect in terms of dynamic event progression.

They've said multiple times that DE's in the demos are scaled in such a way that people get to play the game, not really be impressed by the little things. That is what pre-release polish is for.

 

Though I do see how your concerns are relevant and completely founded. Lets hope my above statement is right and not yours =p

djazzy

Post this on GW2guru, the developers look there and do respond to feedback.

Jimmy2Hat

If you was on your own, it's plausible that the event was scaling for one person and more importantly to the level the event is set to. Perhaps this is why the respawns were taking a long time?

jdram14

Also keep in mind that you were much higher level than them. In any other rpg (MMO or not) you can't fight lower leveled creatures and expect excitement out of the battle. It's just not challenging enough.

Perhaps the dynamic events should not just scale to the number of people, but also to their levels? That gets tricky when you have a level 3 and a level 55 working together. I don't know the answer, but certainly put it to the devs to consider, like Arenasb said, on GW2Guru.

Jimmy2Hat

I think the dynamic events do scale to level using the sidekick system? It should bump you down level if you are participating in a lower level DE.

just1opinion

Originally posted by jdram14

Also keep in mind that you were much higher level than them. In any other rpg (MMO or not) you can't fight lower leveled creatures and expect excitement out of the battle. It's just not challenging enough. Perhaps the dynamic events should not just scale to the number of people, but also to their levels? That gets tricky when you have a level 3 and a level 55 working together. I don't know the answer, but certainly put it to the devs to consider, like Arenasb said, on GW2Guru.

 

They ARE going to scale to level, according to information that has already been given, but....I'm thinking perhaps they haven't gotten that part DONE yet and his high level, therefore, is what caused the problem.

just1opinion

Originally posted by Jimmy2Hat

I think the dynamic events do scale to level using the sidekick system? It should bump you down level if you are participating in a lower level DE.

 

Yes, this.

dinams

The scaling only reduces your status to something more average of that determined level, but do not modify your gear bonuses (including weapon), so if you are level 80 you will still win a level 10 DE with ease (other than raping everything in your path)

Its more of a system to slow people down as a brake and not put them at equal fighting terms of a lowbie, put this in your mind

Jimmy2Hat

I read that a higher level player would still be "slightly OP" for the lower area they are in but not enough to grief a DE. 

jezvin

I don't think my character being alot stronger was the issue here. Yes it is why the situation happened but I don't think it should have.

It was the fact that at some point I killed everything in the DE and it wasn't over it just said keep killing things but everything was dead. I saved the village killed everything but a little bar up top was saying I didn't.

There was no more visual queues no more sense of danger just a progress bar.

(The game was awesome btw.)

Oberonn

Hopefully that's just an artifact of the pre-Beta state of the code. I agree that having to waity on respawning in a situation like that would ruin the imersiveness.

Oberon

chikso

Let's be honest, the scaling, flailing and whatnot you guys mention has little to do with what the OP says. IF what the OP says is true then we can only pray it gets fixed and please someone post this on gw2guru so it hopefully gets the devs attention. I have seen countless gw2 videos since I'm a fan and haven't seen this happening but it sounds like a great immersion killer. Surely it's not going to stop me from playing cause I have a whole 'nother bunch of reasons to play it but it seems important.

H3Terminator

Also, in the demos and such, they had the content on "easy mode".

They scaled it so it was a little bit easier for everyone.

So the retail content will be upped a bit.

n00bit

I've seen this in a lot of games  - "go kill these enemies, they're too numerous!" and you kill 4 and wait for more to respawn. Doesn't seem like there's too many to me!

Jimmy2Hat

Originally posted by chikso

Let's be honest, the scaling, flailing and whatnot you guys mention has little to do with what the OP says. IF what the OP says is true then we can only pray it gets fixed and please someone post this on gw2guru so it hopefully gets the devs attention. I have seen countless gw2 videos since I'm a fan and haven't seen this happening but it sounds like a great immersion killer. Surely it's not going to stop me from playing cause I have a whole 'nother bunch of reasons to play it but it seems important.

 As the DE system is a core mechanic in terms of content, I think they HAVE to get it right, simple as. But, I am confident they will, from the interviews and videos I have seen of the devs, I think they all have the passion and drive to make the best game possible. I think they will deliver.

tavoc

Just throwing it out there, the devs have already stated that all the demos you see at the conventions are already out of date. Also they significantly scalled down the dificutly due to the short time to be able to play and they wanted people to progress in the game to get a feel for the whole experiance.

That being said please do post this on gw2guru so the devs will read it, howerver it may be already fixed since the demos are 'out dated'

Requiamer

Ye OP in a lot of video i watched this appear to be true. The first few weeks i was looking a bit more deeply in the game i had the exact same conclusion.

Now the fans seam to find a lot of excuse to that, but honestly none are very conforting to me.

 

The pve seam very unchallenging, and i straight up totally dislike it. It remind me so much the level of challenge pve have in most korean games this mean totally none existant 

That is a big drawback to the GW2 game as shown in the videos, when i watch SWTOR videos you can clearly see the pve is a lot more chalanging and interesting for exemple.

 

Also that critic have been done by a lot of people, you are not the only one, and the fan always flood it under many excuses.

romanator0

Originally posted by Requiamer

Ye OP in a lot of video i watched this appear to be true. The first few weeks i was looking a bit more deeply in the game i had the exact same conclusion.

Now the fans seam to find a lot of excuse to that, but honestly none are very conforting to me.

 

The pve seam very unchallenging, and i straight up totally dislike it. It remind me so much the level of challenge pve have in most korean games this mean totally none existant 

That is a big drawback to the GW2 game as shown in the videos, when i watch SWTOR videos you can clearly see the pve is a lot more chalanging and interesting for exemple.

 

Also that critic have been done by a lot of people, you are not the only one, and the fan always flood it under many excuses.

Devs stated the demos were on easy mode. The pirates invading the town from the PAX East demo was the only part not on easy mode and apparently people were having a tough time with it.

Requiamer

Originally posted by romanator0

Originally posted by Requiamer

Ye OP in a lot of video i watched this appear to be true. The first few weeks i was looking a bit more deeply in the game i had the exact same conclusion.

Now the fans seam to find a lot of excuse to that, but honestly none are very conforting to me.

 

The pve seam very unchallenging, and i straight up totally dislike it. It remind me so much the level of challenge pve have in most korean games this mean totally none existant 

That is a big drawback to the GW2 game as shown in the videos, when i watch SWTOR videos you can clearly see the pve is a lot more chalanging and interesting for exemple.

 

Also that critic have been done by a lot of people, you are not the only one, and the fan always flood it under many excuses.

Devs stated the demos were on easy mode. The pirates invading the town from the PAX East demo was the only part not on easy mode and apparently people were having a tough time with it.

 I know that but honestly it doesn't help for me at least.

You need a sparkle to make your combat interesting, i think that sparkle doesn't exist. In SWTOR for exemple the multi oponents make it interesting, its nothing that spectacular right, but thats a factor that exist in all pve encounters in the game. I love fps combat and GW2 seam to have made a very interesting system, but it just seam they didn't quiet create a challenge up to that system. The mobs just doesn't seam to react at all, they are just dummies, they don't even seam to move that much as fps bots usally do for exemple or whatever.

Ok i'm off; since i already even made post about it and i don't feel like repeating myself every time someone esle came to the same conclusion. Devs can take care of such critic or ignore it, its their job afterall.

In any case my point is not to be negative about the game, but to give a comment for the dev to make their game better. The pve is seriously lacky imo, thats all really.

BTrayaL

Originally posted by jezvin

Ok I know not too many people have played GW2 yet but back at PAX east there was something that bothered me when I played one of the DE. Basically I was in a courtyard of some castle and had to kill a bunch of the undead who were attacking it.

So I ran in and started to kill them, I was higher level and just AOEing so I quickly killed everything in sight. I then looked around for more mobs to kill, until a minute or so later when the mobs just respawned. I quickly killed them again but this time looked up at the progress bar for the event and saw that it was barely at 25%. Only 25% of the undead were killed, but there was none in sight anywhere.

It was then that I lost the immersion feeling for that event. I wasn't saving the castle anymore I was just pushing a bar again.

I just feel that this is something they are trying not to make happen, yet it did.

Hopefully, that was just for testing. It sounds really bad if this will be like that on release, at least for the people that need immersion.

jezvin

Originally posted by Requiamer

Originally posted by romanator0

Originally posted by Requiamer

Ye OP in a lot of video i watched this appear to be true. The first few weeks i was looking a bit more deeply in the game i had the exact same conclusion.

Now the fans seam to find a lot of excuse to that, but honestly none are very conforting to me.

 

The pve seam very unchallenging, and i straight up totally dislike it. It remind me so much the level of challenge pve have in most korean games this mean totally none existant 

That is a big drawback to the GW2 game as shown in the videos, when i watch SWTOR videos you can clearly see the pve is a lot more chalanging and interesting for exemple.

 

Also that critic have been done by a lot of people, you are not the only one, and the fan always flood it under many excuses.

Devs stated the demos were on easy mode. The pirates invading the town from the PAX East demo was the only part not on easy mode and apparently people were having a tough time with it.

 I know that but honestly it doesn't help for me at least.

You need a sparkle to make your combat interesting, i think that sparkle doesn't exist. In SWTOR for exemple the multi oponents make it interesting, its nothing that spectacular right, but thats a factor that exist in all pve encounters in the game. I love fps combat and GW2 seam to have made a very interesting system, but it just seam they didn't quiet create a challenge up to that system. The mobs just doesn't seam to react at all, they are just dummies, they don't even seam to move that much as fps bots usally do for exemple or whatever.

Ok i'm off; since i already even made post about it and i don't feel like repeating myself every time someone esle came to the same conclusion. Devs can take care of such critic or ignore it, its their job afterall.

In any case my point is not to be negative about the game, but to give a comment for the dev to make their game better. The pve is seriously lacky imo, thats all really.

Actually GW2 combat was really fun, It's alot different playing the game than just watching the videos. But I guess I could say the same for SWTOR but I havn't actually played it.

Which begs the question did you read my post because I wasn't talking about how easy the demo was, I love aoeing the crap out of things so I specifically found an area about 3 or 4 levels lower just to aoe things.

I was concerned not with how easy it was to kill everything but that the DE respawns were on a timer. I was expecting that there would be combat throughout that stage of the event and when I had to just camp the area for respawns it was a huge clash with my expectations.

Anyway for all the people talking about posting on guru just make a thread and quote me or link it w/e, I don't really post there.

Requiamer

Yes i read your post and already made a post about the lack of work usually developer put into their spawning system. I worked on some emulated games, and definitly amateurs seam to put more effort in tweaking their spawn systems than officials. Sure they have other priority right, but never the less.

The simple fact there is no source for the spawn points in any mmo i played seam totally strange to me. I know it is a quiet challenging problem and work  intensive, but my concern is that never ever did a dev team even try to deal with it. Even when they have zombies for exemple, those doesn't come from grave or earth when they respawn, they just come from thin air, which make no sense to me.

 

As said in an other post only UO made some work on their spawing system, and it wouldn't hurt the developer to come back and analyse that work to develop and put some progress in that domain. I think it might enhance pve by a lot, a lot more than trying to make heavy on resource AI for exemple. Giving a source and "personality" to their spawnings would enhance the pve by a lot.

 

I tryed to give you a link to the post where i already talked about this, but its just too far into my history.

MumboJumbo

Originally posted by jezvin

-snip-

Actually GW2 combat was really fun, It's alot different playing the game than just watching the videos. But I guess I could say the same for SWTOR but I havn't actually played it.

Which begs the question did you read my post because I wasn't talking about how easy the demo was, I love aoeing the crap out of things so I specifically found an area about 3 or 4 levels lower just to aoe things.

I was concerned not with how easy it was to kill everything but that the DE respawns were on a timer. I was expecting that there would be combat throughout that stage of the event and when I had to just camp the area for respawns it was a huge clash with my expectations.

Anyway for all the people talking about posting on guru just make a thread and quote me or link it w/e, I don't really post there.

Yeah, that was somewhat a diversion. GW2 combat looks v good imo and much more impressive than other mmos. Challenge is indeterminate I suppose until game releases/more info?

Back to OP, that's really interesting. I guess DEs are based on basic rules and it's how many cracks around the edges expose the rules to players that will affect immersion? So what you've described is exactly a case of that? Hopefully ArenaNet can attend to that (among the 50 million other things!) and get the DE timing/mob spawning and player numbers/level side-kick all in sync with each other.

I've heard reports that player numbers do scale resoundingly so that's one bit that's on song, but:

Tbh, there will be more cracks as time goes on I'm sure, but it's question of how successful ArenaNet are at covering them up among variety and polish in the DEs. This is really why I reserve my biggest scepticism for GW2 with the DE system: It has to achieve almost impossible things to snap that connection to quests that are so familiar. I think it will be a good system but it needs to be a great system.

Ender4

I don't know, the old non instanced dungeons are a million times better than the new instanced with no respawn type that WOW introduced. I just don't see respawns as bad from a gameplay standpoint, I'll gladly take a small hit in immersion for a big leap in gameplay.