My previous video on dynamic events generated quite a few comments, while many of them where
positive a few highlighted the fact that in their opinion Arenanet did not deliver on
the promise that dynamic events will shape the world
around You.
from my limited experience I think this is only true in the beginning levels of the game.
Let me explain. Guild Wars 2 is a game that doesn’t believe in hand holding. The game
doesn’t point out that a comment by an NPC about his wife
leaving in the morning will eventually cascade in a bear invasion. Likewise the game doesn’t
tell you how to use your skills to good effect and the game doesn’t tell you how you should
play it either.
What the game does instead is ease you in these game mechanics and events so that you
get a chance to learn how everything works by yourself. Consider the fight going on right
now, I am currently level 6 and I can just stand there
immobile spam my 2 most damaging attack skills and I can kill my enemies easily with no risks
at all.
That however changes as you level up. Fast forward to level 14. Standing still and using
random attacks skills will quickly result in your death as we can see during this particular
fight. Enemies are now more insidious, they don’t just
use regular attacks, they also employ skills to good effect.
That being said provided I used my time wisely while the game was relatively easy and learned
my skills, what exactly they do and when is the best time to use them. If I learned how
to get out of the way when my enemy uses his skills
and If I learned how to dodge attacks the same fight against the same enemy that resulted
in my death just moments ago becomes easy again.
I believe this same philosophy applies to dynamic events as well. In the beginning dynamic
events allow players to fail with little to no consequence but that does not last forever.
Let me share my experience on this once I was in a level 17 area.
While walking around I ran into an NPC called Brina, she wanted help to capture some rabbits.
I was enjoying the event when suddenly I noticed the event was gone and I see Brina running
away, I give chase to see why she ran off only to
find her village under attack by the ICEbrood and all the villagers dead.
I failed defending the village and this was is captured by the icebrood. I tried to kill
the invaders but there were just too many of them and I end up dead. That’s when I
discovered Soderhem wasn’t the only village captured, there was
also Njordstead to the north of it who had suffered the same fate. It is quite likely
soderhem invasion was launched from Njordstead. Until these two towns are liberated and the
NPCs revived, players in the area loose out on travel
waypoints, Vendors as well as certain dynamic events.
We need to keep in mind that this was just the start of the 2nd zone. Dynamic events
are already escalating in their consequences when failed. Here players actually pay a price
for their failures. I cannot wait and see how much further
Dynamic events will escalate as I dive deeper and deeper in the Guild Wars 2 story.
