What if they made it as simple as something popping up whenever a world event happened, and then you could click it to "Join" the battle. Or there's a set "radius" of an event that once you're in it it would activate UI stuff to designate commanders for that specific battle.
I guess that wouldn't work for map-spanning events though, so I dunno.
I think that creates a whole new set of problems without solving the existing ones. It'd still create overflows, and it'd still suffer from people logging in and going afk in the event radius, just like they do for entire zones now. You'd still have groups trying to have their own private event as well. But on top of that, you now have to deal with world 'phases', which was horribly implemented in WoW and seems to be working out just wonderfully in that other game. What happens if you're feared out of the radius of the event, does it kick you out like a personal story mission? What if the UI stuff designates someone who's AFK?
Just seems like a bigger headache than is needed, especially when the point of having big world events is to serve as an alternative to instanced content (i.e. dungeons).
They also tend to boil down to a lot of repetition that gets padded out over a long period of time, which is not fun. The combat system just isn't built to make those type of large scale fights as engaging as they should be. Plus the game is very bad at letting you know how much you're actually contributing, so it can feel moot. I've never minded the lack of a trinity, but in big events you do want more "roles", so that people can feel like they're contributing in more ways than just personally DPS'ing well, popping might occasionally, and knowing how to dodge. Anet talks at length about having challenging events to help make players better, but in a huge group it's much much easier to blame someone else for the loss than to say "oh, well I need to have better survival stats to help out the team".
I get the reason people want their own instances: It's to have better communication. And it's true, in order to beat some of these events, communication is crucial. I'm not sure where I stand on the issue to be honest. I just know they're not going to do individual instances for bosses, at least not for the time being. Although, they did do it for Scarlet, so that's something.
I dunno if you were playing at the time, but the Marionette addressed a lot of those problems, and based on how the Scarlet battle went they're adapting that further (the actual battle, not the story instance where you finish her off).
The "Lots of people doing things" element was broken up by the five lanes, and further broken up by the five platforms (Scarlet had the three platforms for the hologram fight, but there were more players in there at a time).
There was also a very clear indication of individual contribution since each platform had only five players, and all five platforms needed to beat their warden to succeed (this also addresses the "That one guy fucking things up" problem since it was, at all times, a team effort.) And even failing one phase didn't ruin the entire run, as they were pretty generous with second chances (I think two or three lanes could fail completely and it was doable).
The Marionette fight also had a nice distribution of roles, though no where near the level of the Taco fight. Front line defense (stopping the Watchwork mobs), back line clearing (getting rid of the other Alliance mobs that destroyed your barriers and siege), and barrier-builders (to slow down the watchwork mobs) were all needed if you wanted to keep the lanes locked down. I honestly think they could go bigger, and I think the Wurm and Scarlet General fights were tests to see how far-flung cooperative objectives can be.
In the end, I guess what it really boils down to is that nothing is really exclusionary in Guild Wars 2. There's dungeons, and open world fights, story instances and Living Story events, WvW and sPVP. There's really nothing
off the table here, but it's also pretty clear they don't just throw shit in because that's what every other MMO is doing, instead choosing carefully what works and what doesn't for this particular game. For all I know, they could be announcing World Event instances this Wednesday. But I'm pretty sure that if they did, it'd be in a way that feels right for the game.
I think EotM is better than the Borderlands and Eternal Battleground.
You're not alone or wrong, and hopefully it's use as a testbed for future WvW development starts paying off soon. I want destructible bridges and barriers to create all sorts of unpredictable trouble in the borderlands.
It doesnt contribute so its kinda pointless >_<
What I played of it when it first released and a little last night while waiting for the queues was fun, if fairly simple and disorganized. Being fun should really be enough, but I think it also has the added benefit of the Karma trains sort of relocating there. As Lump said, when they sort out the overflow issues it'll be much better, especially for that extra purpose.
It not contributing to WvW proper is kind of the point, I imagine, since it would just become a frustrating, unpredictable thing WvW players have to deal with. That said, I also don't see any reason why it couldn't affect WvW in bigger ways if they wanted to add it later.
Started a Guardian recently. I never really played a melee role before and i'm having a real tough time seeing things due to all the spell effects flying around. Is there anything in the settings i can tweak to prevent me from going blind playing my Guardian?
Options > Graphics > Check "Graphics LOD" at the bottom. This will reduce the level of detail of the spell effects. It's still pretty crazy in there at melee, but it should help. Really needs to be a slider at this point.
