Most "dynamic" events aren't really dynamic. They are "triggered" events which happen either at a random interval or when x or y happens in the area z.
Developers love to use the word dynamic so much that it's become more of a tag word than anything else. There is very little in today's MMO's that could truly be considered dynamic. Eve Online has a dynamic null-sec area because it sees suedo-permanent changes over time.
The most truly dynamic event I've seen in the standard MMO's is weather changing as actual seasons change.
/equips flame suit
WoW has probably one of the most dynamic MMO's of our time as it employs phasing technology where your actions actually change the world, both physically and politically, as you complete quests.
What I am truly worried about is the depth of dynamic events. Since it has to accomodate multiple players at once, the objectives will always be related to killing X amount of monsters or interacting X amount of times with an object in the world, etc. This gets old VERY FAST. Sure, the culmination of the players' actions can lead to more than one different stage of an event, unlike Public Quests. However, the actual process of doing this will always be limited to accomodate the fact that these events are done by many players at once.
Most "dynamic" events aren't really dynamic. They are "triggered" events which happen either at a random interval or when x or y happens in the area z.
Developers love to use the word dynamic so much that it's become more of a tag word than anything else. There is very little in today's MMO's that could truly be considered dynamic. Eve Online has a dynamic null-sec area because it sees suedo-permanent changes over time.
The most truly dynamic event I've seen in the standard MMO's is weather changing as actual seasons change.
/equips flame suit
WoW has probably one of the most dynamic MMO's of our time as it employs phasing technology where your actions actually change the world, both physically and politically, as you complete quests.
I think the real problem is dynamic is being used way too often. GW2 events ARE dynamic. People have just decided that dynamic should mean magically super awesome, truely deep, unique, undeniably innovative, and impossible to achieve.
The REASON people believe GW2 is going to have better content than WAR's PQs and Rift's rifts is frankly because GW2 is just more fun. I can say that because I have played all 3 to approximately the same extent. Well...GW2 a bit less because it was a demo at a convention with people waiting on me.
Also, their is no path of least resistance problem in this game, which helps. If you want to level through PvE you do your personal story (which is a bit like a primary quest line but more involved) and events. You get levels very quickly, and there isn't a leveling curve. If you want to level through PvP, you do WvWvW which has dynamic events as well.
Now, to address the last part. I actually agree, but GW2 is going to surpass it in a number of different ways.
instead of phasing, stuff happens for everyone. This is superior because it makes the game about more than just you. PvE content is supposed to be more than just you, or why are we playing the game online...
GW2's system means that things will eventually undo the actions of the players, and people will see the same things more than once. This is superior because of 2 points. You WILL NOT see everything in a zone on your first time playing through a zone. Things keep changing and you will miss things here and there and after a short adjustment time, you won't even really worry about the fact that you miss some things. You can always go back. It also means that players will become more reactive to a situation, as there is no real way to do everything, instead of seeking out specific events (unless you want to take down some epic boss event).
MMO quests are about completion. DEs are about playing the game. A fun DE will provide more overall content to players than a fun quest because you can do it multiple times. There are repeatable quests, but in my experience they feel a bit like vending machines. you talk to the guy, you do the quest you get the reward. DEs are a method of world developement.
And lastly, because it is nearly halloween, I would like to ask which you think would be better? Halloween themed events or Halloween themed quests?
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
What I am truly worried about is the depth of dynamic events. Since it has to accomodate multiple players at once, the objectives will always be related to killing X amount of monsters or interacting X amount of times with an object in the world, etc. This gets old VERY FAST. Sure, the culmination of the players' actions can lead to more than one different stage of an event, unlike Public Quests. However, the actual process of doing this will always be limited to accomodate the fact that these events are done by many players at once.
ok...so how about if the DE recorded partial participation and SCALED to accomodate additional people.
Also...event presentation is a factor here. You may be "killing X monsters" or whatever, but you know what? that farmer who grows grain for the livestock is having sickly green poison spewing from his water pipes. What do you do? Do you attack the monsters being fed by the poison? Do you go to the source of the water to purify it? Do you find the people who did the deed and smash some heads? Do you ignore it, deciding that villager over there is making fine pies? It is up to you, but eventually, you are going to use that fine axe and shield to do something. Otherwise, why play a game at all?
my point is, even one event can have a LOT of things going on for you to do.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
What I am truly worried about is the depth of dynamic events. Since it has to accomodate multiple players at once, the objectives will always be related to killing X amount of monsters or interacting X amount of times with an object in the world, etc. This gets old VERY FAST. Sure, the culmination of the players' actions can lead to more than one different stage of an event, unlike Public Quests. However, the actual process of doing this will always be limited to accomodate the fact that these events are done by many players at once.
ok...so how about if the DE recorded partial participation and SCALED to accomodate additional people.
Also...event presentation is a factor here. You may be "killing X monsters" or whatever, but you know what? that farmer who grows grain for the livestock is having sickly green poison spewing from his water pipes. What do you do? Do you attack the monsters being fed by the poison? Do you go to the source of the water to purify it? Do you find the people who did the deed and smash some heads? Do you ignore it, deciding that villager over there is making fine pies? It is up to you, but eventually, you are going to use that fine axe and shield to do something. Otherwise, why play a game at all?
my point is, even one event can have a LOT of things going on for you to do.
You misread my post. I know Dynamic Events scale to the number of players currently doing it. However, my point was that the objectives will always consist of killing X amount of monsters or interacting with X amount of objects because these events are designed to be able to accomodate multiple people. Therefore, the way you do the event will always be limited, where as in a quest system, the quest can be tailored specifically to each individual allowing for greater depth in the objectives.
Also, I aknowledged the fact that these events present multiple "conclusions", however, the way you get to these "conclusions" will always consist of killing x or interacting with x.
“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”
You misread my post. I know Dynamic Events scale to the number of players currently doing it. However, my point was that the objectives will always consist of killing X amount of monsters or interacting with X amount of objects because these events are designed to be able to accomodate multiple people. Therefore, the way you do the event will always be limited, where as in a quest system, the quest can be tailored specifically to each individual allowing for greater depth in the objectives.
Also, I aknowledged the fact that these events present multiple "conclusions", however, the way you get to these "conclusions" will always consist of killing x or interacting with x.
?
Just out of curiousity, what greater depth in quest objectives are you talking about?
Can you give me a few examples?
Because the overwhelming majority of quests I can remember is 'kill this, fetch this, poke this with a stick'. Maybe 'escort this' (Which can easily be done as a dynamic event as well).
Also, I aknowledged the fact that these events present multiple "conclusions", however, the way you get to these "conclusions" will always consist of killing x or interacting with x.
OK...so? Thats every other MMO period. end of line. end of story.
In fact, I can't think of anything that CAN'T be reduced to that. ANYTHING.
For example, I can say the same thing over and over (X number of times) but if my persuasion skills aren't high enough, I will never persuade a group of people of something (defeat mob with X number of people). Their combined will is too much for my feeble arguments (I get killed and have to walk back to my corpse in shame). With enough people agreeing with my point of view, the defeat of the enemy is much easier (100 people zerging 10).
It sounds a bit silly but thats life for you. If you are willing to look at things a little differently, things become a little less bleak.
Ninja'd: Meowhead beat me to it.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
What I am truly worried about is the depth of dynamic events. Since it has to accomodate multiple players at once, the objectives will always be related to killing X amount of monsters or interacting X amount of times with an object in the world, etc. This gets old VERY FAST. Sure, the culmination of the players' actions can lead to more than one different stage of an event, unlike Public Quests. However, the actual process of doing this will always be limited to accomodate the fact that these events are done by many players at once.
ok...so how about if the DE recorded partial participation and SCALED to accomodate additional people.
Also...event presentation is a factor here. You may be "killing X monsters" or whatever, but you know what? that farmer who grows grain for the livestock is having sickly green poison spewing from his water pipes. What do you do? Do you attack the monsters being fed by the poison? Do you go to the source of the water to purify it? Do you find the people who did the deed and smash some heads? Do you ignore it, deciding that villager over there is making fine pies? It is up to you, but eventually, you are going to use that fine axe and shield to do something. Otherwise, why play a game at all?
my point is, even one event can have a LOT of things going on for you to do.
You misread my post. I know Dynamic Events scale to the number of players currently doing it. However, my point was that the objectives will always consist of killing X amount of monsters or interacting with X amount of objects because these events are designed to be able to accomodate multiple people. Therefore, the way you do the event will always be limited, where as in a quest system, the quest can be tailored specifically to each individual allowing for greater depth in the objectives.
Also, I aknowledged the fact that these events present multiple "conclusions", however, the way you get to these "conclusions" will always consist of killing x or interacting with x.
I agree. In the end it is the same as a public quest. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's not the grand inovation that many want to make it out to be.
I agree. In the end it is the same as a public quest. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's not the grand inovation that many want to make it out to be.
You don't understand where the innovation is. That's like looking at say... a Prius, and saying it's not really any different from a Model T, because they both have four wheels. :< You're looking in the wrong places.
Do me a favor and look up cali59's post history. He writes a huge post about what is good about dynamic events, every third post or so. He's like a saint or something, he has way more patience than me.
Just like its hard to speculate on whether or not SWTOR's whole voice cutscene choices thing is good or not, I think its hard to speculate on how these DE's will be. Many of GW2's other systems have twisted what we already have into something that looks to be much more fun (See water combat or active blocking). I think based on what we know though that they will be a little bit more dyanamic and varied than WAR's PQ, and if so then I'm fine with that.
I dont think anyone should expect them to be completly random events happening that impact the global world and are permanant changes and you will never see a repeat. I think thats just expecting too much from even the currently level of software or hardware.
DISCLAIMER: no idea how warhammer PQs work, and never played rift, only read about it.
For me the real innovation of dynamic events aren't the events themselves (by themselves they basically are quests that are happening instead of picking them from an NPC), but the posibility of failure.
Basically the way group quests work in most games is that (to use an example) if you fail to stop the waves of incoming enemies, you just get a "failed quest" message and depending on the game either drop it and start it again from scratch, or just start again from where you failed and try again, and keep trying until you succeed. Rifts (again from what I've read) basically work the same, if nobody is there to kill the enemies they'll eventually despawn.
In the DE system (using the same example), if you fail to stop the incoming enemies, you don't get to try again, you failed and now you have to chase them, or go try to save whichever town they were going to, and you can succeed or fail at that one as well, the following quest (event) depends on which one you manage.
Will they get repetitive?... most likely, it all depends on how many are there at first, and how fast anet can keep adding/tweaking them Vs. how fast can people do them. One advantage is that you get de-leveled to an apropiate level if you want to do old DEs, so the ones you might find (or miss) while leveling will still be there later, and you'll be able to do them as intended, not steamroll trough them as a high level.
Personally I'm just happy that there are companies that are trying something new in this generation of MMOs, either with TOR multiple choice options during quests that seem to actually be meaningful (multiple dialoque options aren't new, they were there in Age of Conan, for example, but they really didn't change anything) and with GW2's DEs.
I agree. In the end it is the same as a public quest. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's not the grand inovation that many want to make it out to be.
I completely agree with this statement. The problem is that the amount of innovation in MMOs is typically next to none. Any progress is "innovative".
WAR PQs were innovative, but had bad implementation.
RIFT rifts were innovative, but lacked diversity.
Both Rift and WAR weren't willing to risk completely abandoning the traditional quest structure, which meant that the game had to try to both stay the same as what came before and bring something new to the table.
GW2 is going further. That is worth noting.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
You misread my post. I know Dynamic Events scale to the number of players currently doing it. However, my point was that the objectives will always consist of killing X amount of monsters or interacting with X amount of objects because these events are designed to be able to accomodate multiple people. Therefore, the way you do the event will always be limited, where as in a quest system, the quest can be tailored specifically to each individual allowing for greater depth in the objectives.
Also, I aknowledged the fact that these events present multiple "conclusions", however, the way you get to these "conclusions" will always consist of killing x or interacting with x.
?
Just out of curiousity, what greater depth in quest objectives are you talking about?
Can you give me a few examples?
Because the overwhelming majority of quests I can remember is 'kill this, fetch this, poke this with a stick'. Maybe 'escort this' (Which can easily be done as a dynamic event as well).
Yes, pretty much everything can be broken down to kill X or use X. That is not the point however. What I am trying to say is that since Dynamic Events need to consider the POSSIBILITY of multiple different players doing it at the same time, the objectives are more crude and will always depend on quantity. For instance, there will never be objectives such as: "Locate the hostage and see if he has information regarded as important by your superiors." Objectives will always be "kill 20 monsters" or "pick up 30 jars of water" because they need to be scalable. You can't make multiple hostages with the same information for people to investigate because it becomes redundant and stupid.
fact: gw2 will not be truly dynamic since it is not a sandbox
however
the illusion of a dynamic world can be created by having a large variety of events so that the same event does not occur for a couple of months after it first occured.
i really doubt gw2 will have enough unique events to even create an illusion of a dynamic world. from what i have seen the
-shatterer will respawn repeatedly in the same location every time
-the same centaurs will raid the same human city every single time
- the same pirates will attack the same city every single time
seems it will be like invasions in rift (mundane and repetitive); if i kill this boss he will be back in an hour and if i dont kill him he will occupy some trivial quest hub.
What game isn't repetitive?
I agree all games are repetitive,so it comes down to what you think is fun to do and for me it is combat.This is why i don't care much for quests,i rather setup an organized camp and play some challenging PVE.I think combat remains fun always but chasing down events will become boring rather fast,maybe not like Rifts did which was only a few days for me but i think after a couple months for sure.The ONLY reason people will continue to chase down events is if they offer some "candy" loot.However from what i gather about GW2 is the game will be easy mode[constant need for the player to feel HEROIC].Players will advance to end level very quickly,this means loot really is superficial as you will be replacing it very quickly.
These dynamic events sound good on paper but do have flaws as in MANY people will miss most of them.Also i am not sure you can replace the fun of killing stufff with having people chase Event markers on a map,it is unorganized and not really group content at all,it is instead auto grouping.
I did not code the combat scaling so i can only guess that they did it in a VERY simplistic way and that is to scale "mainly" to each individual and not according to numbers.I could see them scaling the mobs hit points to the number of players but even that is not needed just scale the indiviuals damage output.Also the loot tables can be scaled to again the individual,this again takes but a few minutes of code,really A-Net is not doing much in this game that takes a lot of effort.
The thing that boggles me is why we are calling these "EVENTS".These are pre scripted triggers,they take what a normal game does with content and just leaves it out until it is triggered,it is really simple to do,that code can be rehased for ever single event and takes them about 5-20 minutes to code.
We can't start calling all content that phases in via a trigger dyanmic events it is ridiculous and really stretching the truth.For as long as i have been gaming a Dynamic event is a sort of Christmas or Halloween or Easter event that the devs put on and remove from the games content after a week or two.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Yes, pretty much everything can be broken down to kill X or use X. That is not the point however. What I am trying to say is that since Dynamic Events need to consider the POSSIBILITY of multiple different players doing it at the same time, the objectives are more crude and will always depend on quantity. For instance, there will never be objectives such as: "Locate the hostage and see if he has information regarded as important by your superiors." Objectives will always be "kill 20 monsters" or "pick up 30 jars of water" because they need to be scalable. You can't make multiple hostages with the same information for people to investigate because it becomes redundant and stupid.
Yeah just like the millionth person, in a traditional quest base MMO, going and getting that important piece of information from the hostage is redundant and stupid. So your point is what? That you described a large problem with ever themepark MMO to date, I guess congratulations is in order for pointing that out to us all.
In traditional MMO:
"hey John what did you do today"
“Oh man you would not believe it I snuck into this camp and got this information from this hostage that will change the whole direction of the war.”
“Oh yeah Bob did that quest on Tuesday, I plan on doing it tomorrow, it sounds like a fun adventure.”
In GW2:
"Hey john what did you do today"
“Oh man you would not believe it I snuck into this centaur camp and rescued these villagers, and helped rebuild the village it was freaking awesome.”
“Oh was that over by the river?”
“Yes, why do you ask?”
“Oh because I did that like 3 months ago it was so much fun, you should have told me I would of came over and helped save the citizens again”.
Yep like I said thanks again for pointing out a problem that we have all know about with themepark MMOs, we would of never ever figured this out without you!
You misread my post. I know Dynamic Events scale to the number of players currently doing it. However, my point was that the objectives will always consist of killing X amount of monsters or interacting with X amount of objects because these events are designed to be able to accomodate multiple people. Therefore, the way you do the event will always be limited, where as in a quest system, the quest can be tailored specifically to each individual allowing for greater depth in the objectives.
Also, I aknowledged the fact that these events present multiple "conclusions", however, the way you get to these "conclusions" will always consist of killing x or interacting with x.
?
Just out of curiousity, what greater depth in quest objectives are you talking about?
Can you give me a few examples?
Because the overwhelming majority of quests I can remember is 'kill this, fetch this, poke this with a stick'. Maybe 'escort this' (Which can easily be done as a dynamic event as well).
Yes, pretty much everything can be broken down to kill X or use X. That is not the point however. What I am trying to say is that since Dynamic Events need to consider the POSSIBILITY of multiple different players doing it at the same time, the objectives are more crude and will always depend on quantity. For instance, there will never be objectives such as: "Locate the hostage and see if he has information regarded as important by your superiors." Objectives will always be "kill 20 monsters" or "pick up 30 jars of water" because they need to be scalable. You can't make multiple hostages with the same information for people to investigate because it becomes redundant and stupid.
Actually, the hostages are possible. There was a dynamic events panel at PAX prime 2010 where fans got to design their own dynamic event. Some of the things suggested were saving prisoners of the krait (evil aqua snakes). The idea that one of those prisoners is then taken by you to your superiors is the wrong way of looking at it.
Think of it like this (purely hypothetical example). You, and anyone else who can help, must go and save a group of civilians from the krait before they are eaten. Go save them by whatever means and bring them back to the vigil camp (the vigil are the most militarily minded of the PvE factions in GW2). After you save them, an event starts that allows you to go back and destroy the prison and kill the warden of the prison (a very tough sourceress, this being a very gender equal game and all). After that, the krait attempt to strike back by bringing in GIANT SHARKS WITH LASER BEAMS ON THEIR HEADS...no...really...they do (its sort of a joke and sort of not...just go here and watch it all if you are interested.
Or you could stop an asura from exploiting the grawl by pretending to be the great and powerful OOOOHHH (wizard of oz reference, actually in the game).
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
Yes, pretty much everything can be broken down to kill X or use X. That is not the point however. What I am trying to say is that since Dynamic Events need to consider the POSSIBILITY of multiple different players doing it at the same time, the objectives are more crude and will always depend on quantity. For instance, there will never be objectives such as: "Locate the hostage and see if he has information regarded as important by your superiors." Objectives will always be "kill 20 monsters" or "pick up 30 jars of water" because they need to be scalable. You can't make multiple hostages with the same information for people to investigate because it becomes redundant and stupid.
I don't believe this is true. Sure, you can't have multiple hostages with the same information, but you can have a single hostage with information. Everyone doing an event does it at the same time.
There can be an NPC outside of a cave asking people to go in and find the hostage. Failure conditions could be a time limit or having the hostage's life slowly deplete from torture. Or have an NPC who wants to be escorted to the top of the hill so they can take a survey reading.
This event is totally different from anything else on the map; it’s a riddle contest. There’s little combat involved, unless you stray into the outskirts of the shrine where skelk like to steal raven eggs. The riddles have an old-school adventure game feel.
Honestly, I have no idea how they can pull that off with multiple people, but apparently they can.
The thing about DEs is that there is a little bit of a tradeoff. It's true, you can't do a solo experience very well, especially involving travel. But you can have failure conditions and do things which are very hard to do with a quest structure. Like having bandits win by burning enough hay bales. You can't really do that with a quest unless you're triggering it right then and there, which is very unimmersive.
What it comes down to is the care that goes into them. Anybody can put a ton of kill X, loot Y quests in a game, and I'm sure you can put in a bunch of uninspired DEs as well that would be the same thing. But when you put in the effort, the story can elevate it. One of the examples they give of a DE chain is friendly ogres wanting to get water from an oasis controlled by harpies. The first stage is probably just a kill X as you clear out the harpies. The 2nd stage is defending the ogres while the wild animals come to try to get water now that the harpies are gone. This might be escort/timed. The 3rd stage is to escort them back home. The self contained story arc here elevates this.
Also, as they say, when you have a whole quest log of things to do, they appear individually unimportant, especially if it gets to the point where you just accept it and then go off to kill the enemies without even reading it. With DEs, the DE you're on is the only one that matters. It makes it easier to get caught up in the event as its unfolding, instead of just being something you'll get around to when you get around to it.
"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
Well I played Warhammer at launch and enjoyed the PQs quite a bit, but the rest of the game not so much.
Then I played Rift and enjoyed the rifts very much in the beginning, but the rest of the game not so much after awhile.
I expect I'll play GW2 at launch and enjoy their dynamic system ever more than the previous two games with that kind of thing, but eventually I'll get tired of it too.
The question is: can all the other stuff in the game keep me interested as well unlike WAR and Rift couldn't do?
Yeah just like the millionth person, in a traditional quest base MMO, going and getting that important piece of information from the hostage is redundant and stupid. So your point is what? That you described a large problem with ever themepark MMO to date, I guess congratulations is in order for pointing that out to us all.
In traditional MMO:
"hey John what did you do today"
“Oh man you would not believe it I snuck into this camp and got this information from this hostage that will change the whole direction of the war.”
“Oh yeah Bob did that quest on Tuesday, I plan on doing it tomorrow, it sounds like a fun adventure.”
In GW2:
"Hey john what did you do today"
“Oh man you would not believe it I snuck into this centaur camp and rescued these villagers, and helped rebuild the village it was freaking awesome.”
“Oh was that over by the river?”
“Yes, why do you ask?”
“Oh because I did that like 3 months ago it was so much fun, you should have told me I would of came over and helped save the citizens again”.
Yep like I said thanks again for pointing out a problem that we have all know about with themepark MMOs, we would of never ever figured this out without you!
I'm not talking about repetition. I'm talking about the fact the Dynamic Event system has to create objectives that HAVE TO BE SCALABLE. A traditional quest system does not have this limitation and therefore can create a far greater variety of objectives for the character to undertake, objectives that would be impossible to scale.
Well I played Warhammer at launch and enjoyed the PQs quite a bit, but the rest of the game not so much.
Then I played Rift and enjoyed the rifts very much in the beginning, but the rest of the game not so much after awhile.
I expect I'll play GW2 at launch and enjoy their dynamic system ever more than the previous two games with that kind of thing, but eventually I'll get tired of it too.
The question is: can all the other stuff in the game keep me interested as well unlike WAR and Rift couldn't do?
Exactly my point. This sytem limits itself in objective creation and the experience becomes old VERY fast.
I'm not talking about repetition. I'm talking about the fact the Dynamic Event system has to create objectives that HAVE TO BE SCALABLE. A traditional quest system does not have this limitation and therefore can create a far greater variety of objectives for the character to undertake, objectives that would be impossible to scale.
To the part in red really you are not?
Originally posted by stealthbr You can't make multiple hostages with the same information for people to investigate because it becomes redundant and stupid.
Well it looks like you were the one that said it! Your reasoning here on why GW2 cannot do certain things with DEs is because it becomes redundant and stupid. I think anyone with half a brain on this website can find tons of things in themepark MMOs that are redundant and stupid! So if every other themepark MMO can do it, why can’t GW2? What because you say so?
I am going to steal one part from what Cali59 said, thanks Cali for referencing this!
This event is totally different from anything else on the map; it’s a riddle contest. There’s little combat involved, unless you stray into the outskirts of the shrine where skelk like to steal raven eggs. The riddles have an old-school adventure game feel.
IF ANet can add an event in the game that has people answering riddles, then why can't they have someone get info from a prisoner? Since in the event with the riddles the riddles do not scale just the amount you have to do to get the objective done at that shrine scales. So why couldn’t ANet have an objective in the game to get info from a prisoner along with like 5 other things to help out a Charr Spy. Then to make it scalable you would just have to increase the amount people would need to do to fulfill what the spy wants. There you go there is a way to have that objective in GW2 and include scaling, and I have never even designed a game. Are you really trying to tell me that people that design games for a living cannot out think a person that likes playing games?
After all there is over 1500 DEs in this game at launch and until we play through all 1500 none of us know the limits of the design!
fact: gw2 will not be truly dynamic since it is not a sandbox
however
the illusion of a dynamic world can be created by having a large variety of events so that the same event does not occur for a couple of months after it first occured.
i really doubt gw2 will have enough unique events to even create an illusion of a dynamic world. from what i have seen the
-shatterer will respawn repeatedly in the same location every time
-the same centaurs will raid the same human city every single time
- the same pirates will attack the same city every single time
seems it will be like invasions in rift (mundane and repetitive); if i kill this boss he will be back in an hour and if i dont kill him he will occupy some trivial quest hub.
They're designed so that instead of a quest where people are getting in your way and stealing your kills, instead you are more than happy for more people to show up. And if they dont it doesnt matter. Its designed to get people playing together and actually enjoying it. Just like a lot of other facets of GW2.
I know its a strange concept for an mmorpg and all. Mechanics built to get players actually playing together and LIKING it? I mean whats next?
Yeah just like the millionth person, in a traditional quest base MMO, going and getting that important piece of information from the hostage is redundant and stupid. So your point is what? That you described a large problem with ever themepark MMO to date, I guess congratulations is in order for pointing that out to us all.
In traditional MMO:
"hey John what did you do today"
“Oh man you would not believe it I snuck into this camp and got this information from this hostage that will change the whole direction of the war.”
“Oh yeah Bob did that quest on Tuesday, I plan on doing it tomorrow, it sounds like a fun adventure.”
In GW2:
"Hey john what did you do today"
“Oh man you would not believe it I snuck into this centaur camp and rescued these villagers, and helped rebuild the village it was freaking awesome.”
“Oh was that over by the river?”
“Yes, why do you ask?”
“Oh because I did that like 3 months ago it was so much fun, you should have told me I would of came over and helped save the citizens again”.
Yep like I said thanks again for pointing out a problem that we have all know about with themepark MMOs, we would of never ever figured this out without you!
I'm not talking about repetition. I'm talking about the fact the Dynamic Event system has to create objectives that HAVE TO BE SCALABLE. A traditional quest system does not have this limitation and therefore can create a far greater variety of objectives for the character to undertake, objectives that would be impossible to scale.
If you have dynamic events you probably want to avoid dependencies so the scaling needs to be based simply on numbers of players which limits the scope (or does if you don't want dependencies).
It's a variation on having the same quests for all classes. If you had thief quests they could be built around unique thief skills. If you had priest quests they could be built around unique priest skills etc.
But the standard quest system does that most of the time as well
What i think dynamic events give you is a way of repackaging one-off static content in a more entertaiining (and also more repeatable) way. By making content entertaining enough to be repeatable you can then concentrate your story telling efforts to quests worthy of the name.
So chores early on, many repeatable or daily, followed by faction missions, also often repeatable or daily. This is like the bread of the sandwich. Second, dynamic events which are the meat in the sandwich. Thirdly, story quests which can be crafted to suit specific class types *or* have multiple ways to complete them (to fit various classes or playstyles) which is the sauce on the meat of the sandwich.
Personally i'd have it so you could only have one chore/mission, one dynamic event and one quest active at a time.
If you tried to make a worldy world based on a detailed lore this is the sort of thing you come up with automatically.
Personally i'd have it so you could only have one chore/mission, one dynamic event and one quest active at a time.
I like most of what you said, but the idea is you don't have dynamic events active, they just are, and there are lots of them in an area at a time. You also don't have quests (personal story is something that I would say is beyond a simple quest).
From my personal experience, and that of others I know, and people giving impressions on youtube, the way DEs work in practice is you just start doing one of the 5 or so things you can see going on at any given time, and then you move on to the next thing. You scarcely need to look for a DE as they are everywhere, and you kind of find yourself doing DEs during times where, in other games, you would just be grinding mobs. This leads me to believe something interesting. DEs aren't public quests. They aren't tasks. They aren't chores. They are bits and pieces of the world.
In many games, you see a mob of spiders (that imfamous MMO monster of choice). You may decide to kill it but what is the point, they give relatively little in the way of rewards.
Let me do my best to describe what DEs are like from my first hand experience, as abstract descriptions are meaningless.
In GW2, odds are those spiders are part of a DE (not that you will need to pay too much attention to that) and a soldier runs up to you and shouts at you to clear the trees of spiders so that they can set up camp or something. you kill a few and you notice a few other people come along and before you know it, you have a big flashing reward saying you finished the event. the camp gets set up in rapid order and you use your karma (DE reward) to buy a weapon or armor or crafting materials or food (consumables with temp. buffs). you see the soldiers in the camp march off to attack a nearby encampment of centaurs and you think that it seems like a decent fight, so you join in. Another event done and another reward gained, you move on to another area and decide to see whats happening to the north. Their you find several things happenening, most interesting to you being the giant monstrous drake that is spinning around and breathing fire, and is surrounded by players. The event is already half way over but you join in and get yet another reward for participating in an event. You notice that you leveled up and you spend your points and move on to that interesting temple ruins in the swamp that is nearby. There isn't anything going on but you decide to swim around and you find an underwater cave that leads to an area you hadn't seen before, with more events to do. You decide to fight a giant shark and get eaten, but thats is alright, you found a new waypoint on your way here and you go back, where you find a lost merchant being attacked by nasty insects. you run past him ignoring his crisis and you head to town. You try to buy some stuff from town, but the merchants are out of the stuff you want, and you think to yourself "did that merchant have that thing I wanted"...
i could go on, but I think you can see that the idea of repetition is going to be lessened by the fact that you choose where you go, when you go there, but not what is actually happening while you are there or whether you actually participate.
I hope you all enjoyed my narrative.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
Comments
Most "dynamic" events aren't really dynamic. They are "triggered" events which happen either at a random interval or when x or y happens in the area z.
Developers love to use the word dynamic so much that it's become more of a tag word than anything else. There is very little in today's MMO's that could truly be considered dynamic. Eve Online has a dynamic null-sec area because it sees suedo-permanent changes over time.
The most truly dynamic event I've seen in the standard MMO's is weather changing as actual seasons change.
/equips flame suit
WoW has probably one of the most dynamic MMO's of our time as it employs phasing technology where your actions actually change the world, both physically and politically, as you complete quests.
What I am truly worried about is the depth of dynamic events. Since it has to accomodate multiple players at once, the objectives will always be related to killing X amount of monsters or interacting X amount of times with an object in the world, etc. This gets old VERY FAST. Sure, the culmination of the players' actions can lead to more than one different stage of an event, unlike Public Quests. However, the actual process of doing this will always be limited to accomodate the fact that these events are done by many players at once.
I think the real problem is dynamic is being used way too often. GW2 events ARE dynamic. People have just decided that dynamic should mean magically super awesome, truely deep, unique, undeniably innovative, and impossible to achieve.
The REASON people believe GW2 is going to have better content than WAR's PQs and Rift's rifts is frankly because GW2 is just more fun. I can say that because I have played all 3 to approximately the same extent. Well...GW2 a bit less because it was a demo at a convention with people waiting on me.
Also, their is no path of least resistance problem in this game, which helps. If you want to level through PvE you do your personal story (which is a bit like a primary quest line but more involved) and events. You get levels very quickly, and there isn't a leveling curve. If you want to level through PvP, you do WvWvW which has dynamic events as well.
Now, to address the last part. I actually agree, but GW2 is going to surpass it in a number of different ways.
instead of phasing, stuff happens for everyone. This is superior because it makes the game about more than just you. PvE content is supposed to be more than just you, or why are we playing the game online...
GW2's system means that things will eventually undo the actions of the players, and people will see the same things more than once. This is superior because of 2 points. You WILL NOT see everything in a zone on your first time playing through a zone. Things keep changing and you will miss things here and there and after a short adjustment time, you won't even really worry about the fact that you miss some things. You can always go back. It also means that players will become more reactive to a situation, as there is no real way to do everything, instead of seeking out specific events (unless you want to take down some epic boss event).
MMO quests are about completion. DEs are about playing the game. A fun DE will provide more overall content to players than a fun quest because you can do it multiple times. There are repeatable quests, but in my experience they feel a bit like vending machines. you talk to the guy, you do the quest you get the reward. DEs are a method of world developement.
And lastly, because it is nearly halloween, I would like to ask which you think would be better? Halloween themed events or Halloween themed quests?
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
ok...so how about if the DE recorded partial participation and SCALED to accomodate additional people.
Also...event presentation is a factor here. You may be "killing X monsters" or whatever, but you know what? that farmer who grows grain for the livestock is having sickly green poison spewing from his water pipes. What do you do? Do you attack the monsters being fed by the poison? Do you go to the source of the water to purify it? Do you find the people who did the deed and smash some heads? Do you ignore it, deciding that villager over there is making fine pies? It is up to you, but eventually, you are going to use that fine axe and shield to do something. Otherwise, why play a game at all?
my point is, even one event can have a LOT of things going on for you to do.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
You misread my post. I know Dynamic Events scale to the number of players currently doing it. However, my point was that the objectives will always consist of killing X amount of monsters or interacting with X amount of objects because these events are designed to be able to accomodate multiple people. Therefore, the way you do the event will always be limited, where as in a quest system, the quest can be tailored specifically to each individual allowing for greater depth in the objectives.
Also, I aknowledged the fact that these events present multiple "conclusions", however, the way you get to these "conclusions" will always consist of killing x or interacting with x.
I have a feeling no one will know.
The supporters will say it is fresh and new.
Others will dissagree.
We will know at some point.
--John Ruskin
?
Just out of curiousity, what greater depth in quest objectives are you talking about?
Can you give me a few examples?
Because the overwhelming majority of quests I can remember is 'kill this, fetch this, poke this with a stick'. Maybe 'escort this' (Which can easily be done as a dynamic event as well).
OK...so? Thats every other MMO period. end of line. end of story.
In fact, I can't think of anything that CAN'T be reduced to that. ANYTHING.
For example, I can say the same thing over and over (X number of times) but if my persuasion skills aren't high enough, I will never persuade a group of people of something (defeat mob with X number of people). Their combined will is too much for my feeble arguments (I get killed and have to walk back to my corpse in shame). With enough people agreeing with my point of view, the defeat of the enemy is much easier (100 people zerging 10).
It sounds a bit silly but thats life for you. If you are willing to look at things a little differently, things become a little less bleak.
Ninja'd: Meowhead beat me to it.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
I agree. In the end it is the same as a public quest. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's not the grand inovation that many want to make it out to be.
You don't understand where the innovation is. That's like looking at say... a Prius, and saying it's not really any different from a Model T, because they both have four wheels. :< You're looking in the wrong places.
Do me a favor and look up cali59's post history. He writes a huge post about what is good about dynamic events, every third post or so. He's like a saint or something, he has way more patience than me.
Just like its hard to speculate on whether or not SWTOR's whole voice cutscene choices thing is good or not, I think its hard to speculate on how these DE's will be. Many of GW2's other systems have twisted what we already have into something that looks to be much more fun (See water combat or active blocking). I think based on what we know though that they will be a little bit more dyanamic and varied than WAR's PQ, and if so then I'm fine with that.
I dont think anyone should expect them to be completly random events happening that impact the global world and are permanant changes and you will never see a repeat. I think thats just expecting too much from even the currently level of software or hardware.
DISCLAIMER: no idea how warhammer PQs work, and never played rift, only read about it.
For me the real innovation of dynamic events aren't the events themselves (by themselves they basically are quests that are happening instead of picking them from an NPC), but the posibility of failure.
Basically the way group quests work in most games is that (to use an example) if you fail to stop the waves of incoming enemies, you just get a "failed quest" message and depending on the game either drop it and start it again from scratch, or just start again from where you failed and try again, and keep trying until you succeed. Rifts (again from what I've read) basically work the same, if nobody is there to kill the enemies they'll eventually despawn.
In the DE system (using the same example), if you fail to stop the incoming enemies, you don't get to try again, you failed and now you have to chase them, or go try to save whichever town they were going to, and you can succeed or fail at that one as well, the following quest (event) depends on which one you manage.
Will they get repetitive?... most likely, it all depends on how many are there at first, and how fast anet can keep adding/tweaking them Vs. how fast can people do them. One advantage is that you get de-leveled to an apropiate level if you want to do old DEs, so the ones you might find (or miss) while leveling will still be there later, and you'll be able to do them as intended, not steamroll trough them as a high level.
Personally I'm just happy that there are companies that are trying something new in this generation of MMOs, either with TOR multiple choice options during quests that seem to actually be meaningful (multiple dialoque options aren't new, they were there in Age of Conan, for example, but they really didn't change anything) and with GW2's DEs.
What can men do against such reckless hate?
I completely agree with this statement. The problem is that the amount of innovation in MMOs is typically next to none. Any progress is "innovative".
WAR PQs were innovative, but had bad implementation.
RIFT rifts were innovative, but lacked diversity.
Both Rift and WAR weren't willing to risk completely abandoning the traditional quest structure, which meant that the game had to try to both stay the same as what came before and bring something new to the table.
GW2 is going further. That is worth noting.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
Yes, pretty much everything can be broken down to kill X or use X. That is not the point however. What I am trying to say is that since Dynamic Events need to consider the POSSIBILITY of multiple different players doing it at the same time, the objectives are more crude and will always depend on quantity. For instance, there will never be objectives such as: "Locate the hostage and see if he has information regarded as important by your superiors." Objectives will always be "kill 20 monsters" or "pick up 30 jars of water" because they need to be scalable. You can't make multiple hostages with the same information for people to investigate because it becomes redundant and stupid.
I agree all games are repetitive,so it comes down to what you think is fun to do and for me it is combat.This is why i don't care much for quests,i rather setup an organized camp and play some challenging PVE.I think combat remains fun always but chasing down events will become boring rather fast,maybe not like Rifts did which was only a few days for me but i think after a couple months for sure.The ONLY reason people will continue to chase down events is if they offer some "candy" loot.However from what i gather about GW2 is the game will be easy mode[constant need for the player to feel HEROIC].Players will advance to end level very quickly,this means loot really is superficial as you will be replacing it very quickly.
These dynamic events sound good on paper but do have flaws as in MANY people will miss most of them.Also i am not sure you can replace the fun of killing stufff with having people chase Event markers on a map,it is unorganized and not really group content at all,it is instead auto grouping.
I did not code the combat scaling so i can only guess that they did it in a VERY simplistic way and that is to scale "mainly" to each individual and not according to numbers.I could see them scaling the mobs hit points to the number of players but even that is not needed just scale the indiviuals damage output.Also the loot tables can be scaled to again the individual,this again takes but a few minutes of code,really A-Net is not doing much in this game that takes a lot of effort.
The thing that boggles me is why we are calling these "EVENTS".These are pre scripted triggers,they take what a normal game does with content and just leaves it out until it is triggered,it is really simple to do,that code can be rehased for ever single event and takes them about 5-20 minutes to code.
We can't start calling all content that phases in via a trigger dyanmic events it is ridiculous and really stretching the truth.For as long as i have been gaming a Dynamic event is a sort of Christmas or Halloween or Easter event that the devs put on and remove from the games content after a week or two.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Yeah just like the millionth person, in a traditional quest base MMO, going and getting that important piece of information from the hostage is redundant and stupid. So your point is what? That you described a large problem with ever themepark MMO to date, I guess congratulations is in order for pointing that out to us all.
In traditional MMO:
"hey John what did you do today"
“Oh man you would not believe it I snuck into this camp and got this information from this hostage that will change the whole direction of the war.”
“Oh yeah Bob did that quest on Tuesday, I plan on doing it tomorrow, it sounds like a fun adventure.”
In GW2:
"Hey john what did you do today"
“Oh man you would not believe it I snuck into this centaur camp and rescued these villagers, and helped rebuild the village it was freaking awesome.”
“Oh was that over by the river?”
“Yes, why do you ask?”
“Oh because I did that like 3 months ago it was so much fun, you should have told me I would of came over and helped save the citizens again”.
Yep like I said thanks again for pointing out a problem that we have all know about with themepark MMOs, we would of never ever figured this out without you!
Actually, the hostages are possible. There was a dynamic events panel at PAX prime 2010 where fans got to design their own dynamic event. Some of the things suggested were saving prisoners of the krait (evil aqua snakes). The idea that one of those prisoners is then taken by you to your superiors is the wrong way of looking at it.
Think of it like this (purely hypothetical example). You, and anyone else who can help, must go and save a group of civilians from the krait before they are eaten. Go save them by whatever means and bring them back to the vigil camp (the vigil are the most militarily minded of the PvE factions in GW2). After you save them, an event starts that allows you to go back and destroy the prison and kill the warden of the prison (a very tough sourceress, this being a very gender equal game and all). After that, the krait attempt to strike back by bringing in GIANT SHARKS WITH LASER BEAMS ON THEIR HEADS...no...really...they do (its sort of a joke and sort of not...just go here and watch it all if you are interested.
Or you could stop an asura from exploiting the grawl by pretending to be the great and powerful OOOOHHH (wizard of oz reference, actually in the game).
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
I don't believe this is true. Sure, you can't have multiple hostages with the same information, but you can have a single hostage with information. Everyone doing an event does it at the same time.
There can be an NPC outside of a cave asking people to go in and find the hostage. Failure conditions could be a time limit or having the hostage's life slowly deplete from torture. Or have an NPC who wants to be escorted to the top of the hill so they can take a survey reading.
Take a look at this example from http://www.arena.net/blog/norn-week-designing-and-redesigning-events
Raven Shrine
This event is totally different from anything else on the map; it’s a riddle contest. There’s little combat involved, unless you stray into the outskirts of the shrine where skelk like to steal raven eggs. The riddles have an old-school adventure game feel.
Honestly, I have no idea how they can pull that off with multiple people, but apparently they can.
The thing about DEs is that there is a little bit of a tradeoff. It's true, you can't do a solo experience very well, especially involving travel. But you can have failure conditions and do things which are very hard to do with a quest structure. Like having bandits win by burning enough hay bales. You can't really do that with a quest unless you're triggering it right then and there, which is very unimmersive.
What it comes down to is the care that goes into them. Anybody can put a ton of kill X, loot Y quests in a game, and I'm sure you can put in a bunch of uninspired DEs as well that would be the same thing. But when you put in the effort, the story can elevate it. One of the examples they give of a DE chain is friendly ogres wanting to get water from an oasis controlled by harpies. The first stage is probably just a kill X as you clear out the harpies. The 2nd stage is defending the ogres while the wild animals come to try to get water now that the harpies are gone. This might be escort/timed. The 3rd stage is to escort them back home. The self contained story arc here elevates this.
Also, as they say, when you have a whole quest log of things to do, they appear individually unimportant, especially if it gets to the point where you just accept it and then go off to kill the enemies without even reading it. With DEs, the DE you're on is the only one that matters. It makes it easier to get caught up in the event as its unfolding, instead of just being something you'll get around to when you get around to it.
"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
Well I played Warhammer at launch and enjoyed the PQs quite a bit, but the rest of the game not so much.
Then I played Rift and enjoyed the rifts very much in the beginning, but the rest of the game not so much after awhile.
I expect I'll play GW2 at launch and enjoy their dynamic system ever more than the previous two games with that kind of thing, but eventually I'll get tired of it too.
The question is: can all the other stuff in the game keep me interested as well unlike WAR and Rift couldn't do?
"TO MICHAEL!"
I'm not talking about repetition. I'm talking about the fact the Dynamic Event system has to create objectives that HAVE TO BE SCALABLE. A traditional quest system does not have this limitation and therefore can create a far greater variety of objectives for the character to undertake, objectives that would be impossible to scale.
Exactly my point. This sytem limits itself in objective creation and the experience becomes old VERY fast.
To the part in red really you are not?
Well it looks like you were the one that said it! Your reasoning here on why GW2 cannot do certain things with DEs is because it becomes redundant and stupid. I think anyone with half a brain on this website can find tons of things in themepark MMOs that are redundant and stupid! So if every other themepark MMO can do it, why can’t GW2? What because you say so?
I am going to steal one part from what Cali59 said, thanks Cali for referencing this!
IF ANet can add an event in the game that has people answering riddles, then why can't they have someone get info from a prisoner? Since in the event with the riddles the riddles do not scale just the amount you have to do to get the objective done at that shrine scales. So why couldn’t ANet have an objective in the game to get info from a prisoner along with like 5 other things to help out a Charr Spy. Then to make it scalable you would just have to increase the amount people would need to do to fulfill what the spy wants. There you go there is a way to have that objective in GW2 and include scaling, and I have never even designed a game. Are you really trying to tell me that people that design games for a living cannot out think a person that likes playing games?
After all there is over 1500 DEs in this game at launch and until we play through all 1500 none of us know the limits of the design!
They're designed so that instead of a quest where people are getting in your way and stealing your kills, instead you are more than happy for more people to show up. And if they dont it doesnt matter. Its designed to get people playing together and actually enjoying it. Just like a lot of other facets of GW2.
I know its a strange concept for an mmorpg and all. Mechanics built to get players actually playing together and LIKING it? I mean whats next?
If you have dynamic events you probably want to avoid dependencies so the scaling needs to be based simply on numbers of players which limits the scope (or does if you don't want dependencies).
It's a variation on having the same quests for all classes. If you had thief quests they could be built around unique thief skills. If you had priest quests they could be built around unique priest skills etc.
But the standard quest system does that most of the time as well
What i think dynamic events give you is a way of repackaging one-off static content in a more entertaiining (and also more repeatable) way. By making content entertaining enough to be repeatable you can then concentrate your story telling efforts to quests worthy of the name.
So chores early on, many repeatable or daily, followed by faction missions, also often repeatable or daily. This is like the bread of the sandwich. Second, dynamic events which are the meat in the sandwich. Thirdly, story quests which can be crafted to suit specific class types *or* have multiple ways to complete them (to fit various classes or playstyles) which is the sauce on the meat of the sandwich.
Personally i'd have it so you could only have one chore/mission, one dynamic event and one quest active at a time.
If you tried to make a worldy world based on a detailed lore this is the sort of thing you come up with automatically.
I like most of what you said, but the idea is you don't have dynamic events active, they just are, and there are lots of them in an area at a time. You also don't have quests (personal story is something that I would say is beyond a simple quest).
From my personal experience, and that of others I know, and people giving impressions on youtube, the way DEs work in practice is you just start doing one of the 5 or so things you can see going on at any given time, and then you move on to the next thing. You scarcely need to look for a DE as they are everywhere, and you kind of find yourself doing DEs during times where, in other games, you would just be grinding mobs. This leads me to believe something interesting. DEs aren't public quests. They aren't tasks. They aren't chores. They are bits and pieces of the world.
In many games, you see a mob of spiders (that imfamous MMO monster of choice). You may decide to kill it but what is the point, they give relatively little in the way of rewards.
Let me do my best to describe what DEs are like from my first hand experience, as abstract descriptions are meaningless.
In GW2, odds are those spiders are part of a DE (not that you will need to pay too much attention to that) and a soldier runs up to you and shouts at you to clear the trees of spiders so that they can set up camp or something. you kill a few and you notice a few other people come along and before you know it, you have a big flashing reward saying you finished the event. the camp gets set up in rapid order and you use your karma (DE reward) to buy a weapon or armor or crafting materials or food (consumables with temp. buffs). you see the soldiers in the camp march off to attack a nearby encampment of centaurs and you think that it seems like a decent fight, so you join in. Another event done and another reward gained, you move on to another area and decide to see whats happening to the north. Their you find several things happenening, most interesting to you being the giant monstrous drake that is spinning around and breathing fire, and is surrounded by players. The event is already half way over but you join in and get yet another reward for participating in an event. You notice that you leveled up and you spend your points and move on to that interesting temple ruins in the swamp that is nearby. There isn't anything going on but you decide to swim around and you find an underwater cave that leads to an area you hadn't seen before, with more events to do. You decide to fight a giant shark and get eaten, but thats is alright, you found a new waypoint on your way here and you go back, where you find a lost merchant being attacked by nasty insects. you run past him ignoring his crisis and you head to town. You try to buy some stuff from town, but the merchants are out of the stuff you want, and you think to yourself "did that merchant have that thing I wanted"...
i could go on, but I think you can see that the idea of repetition is going to be lessened by the fact that you choose where you go, when you go there, but not what is actually happening while you are there or whether you actually participate.
I hope you all enjoyed my narrative.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.