Do we need Dynamic Events?

Morana · August 2014

Yes

Back in especially it's pre-FTP days, the devs in Fallen Earth used to do dynamic events with some regularity. Spawning invasions, dropping mobs in the major cities, that sort of thing. They also regularly ran trivia nights in a bar in a low level zone. Events were often well attended enough to crash the zones. They also loved to jump in and help with player-run events.

Though nothing will ever beat the call to arms that ended in the detonation of a nuclear bomb in the starter town that they wanted to redesign. That was epic. They even set up a radiation death zone around the town for a while.

Robotukas · February 2015

Yes

lordrichter wrote: »

I have already suggested that the ZOS people look into bringing over aspects of the Radiant Story system in order to craft dynamic quests in the game. Parts of Radiant Story don't really work well in an MMO, particularly the parts that would modify the game world outside the capabilities of the phasing system, but the dynamic locations and targeting stuff would work.

However, Bethesda got beaten up pretty bad after Oblivion for scaled monsters. Anywhere the character went, the monsters were scaled to the character. This may have been a concept poorly implemented in Oblivion, but if you played long enough, every Goblin was a Warlord. In such a system, there is never the feeling of conquering, all the monsters are of a similar difficulty, and the character has little to worry about running into places that are really deadly.

They modified this in Skyrim so that areas would scale with the character when entering new areas and respawns would be held to that level. This made more sense, but once the character went to all of these places, no harder creatures would appear. It addressed the detail about harder monsters arriving in cleared areas, but it still has problems with lots of monsters that are level appropriate and little to worry about deadly monsters.

Personally, I would prefer that random monsters not scale to my character in ESO. Every creature should be the same level for every player and not change just because the player is higher or lower level. Furthermore, I don't want to feel like high level creatures are chasing me across the map and spawning in Bleakrock just because I am there collecting Jute.

If dynamic events are wanted, and I do want them, then they should be appropriate difficulty for the area they appear in.

One of my thoughts along this line has to do with these random dark fissures that open. The Fighter's Guild could have optional dynamic quests that lead right to them, scaled to the level of the player by having them travel to a dark fissure in a zone of the appropriate level. The Devon's Watch Fighter's Guild could issue a dynamic quest based on research that indicates a fissure will open up in the Rift and send the character there. When the character shows up, the fissure just happens to be opening (thank the gods the character arrived in time) and the character can deal with it for Fighter's Guild reputation.

In this case player have scale to mob level, but not other way round. Like in Guild Wars 2. Lets say you reached max level, and you come in zone 1-15 level. Also zone 1-15 level are divided into subzone like, 1-4, 4-8, 12 -15 and so on. So you level is downgraded to max subzone level. But you all skills unlocked just them power is reduced. Anyway obviously stronger than player with low level, because you have bet gear, but anyway you are not terminator, because always met challenges. The reason why why done to get lot appropriate to your level. Even if you in low zone you most of the time your level gear. I like this system because you met all the time high level players across world. Is very good system. World map always full of players. Same as dynamic events which your level scale to event level. So every one are rewarded. I love this system. Because want back in some nice places to do event where you liked.

MasterSpatula · February 2015

Yes

I'm shocked this isn't already happening. It totally plays to what ESO does best.

Tarrin · February 2015

Yes

Public quests from Warhammer Online (same in GW2) would be great too, instead monotonous anchors

jpp · February 2015

Yes

It all started in old Oblivion - I really got no idea why this was not implemented in ESO - when I started and was too weak to fight some mob, but if there were NPCs close I run away and NPC started to fight with this mob helping me this way in early stages.
I know GW2 and I liked it, but it's pattern was too repetitive - it was almost only way to play GW2. Also dragons - world bosses were static events (same respawn place, repetitive times) - these types I did not like a lot.

I got hope that ESO will bring something interesting some time since justice system - this allows NCP to interact dynamically, you can hit NPC or even kill it, but also should mean that you can fight together with NPC against mobs, you should be able to heal them same as other players.

- What could be world bosses is all zone walking boss that requires 100 zone level players (players with the level that matches zone) or less of veterans are around. Randomly spawn place tons of health and slow recoverable health should give better fights. Dolmens could also "produce" such bosses. But most important is random walk path and clearing all NPCs on way of such boss.
- NPC should interactively react to mobs (by attacking / fleeing)
- mobs should have higher radius of sight, but react not by attacking immediately, but first should group - this could provide much fun for sneaky characters

Interesting could be to give evil chars parallel economy. Since we can kill NPC we should be able to make friends with bandits.

Invasions - if two dolmens are left open for long time then there is crowd od deadra surrounding major cities, so noone can walk away...

Flynch · February 2015

Yes

MasterSpatula wrote: »

I'm shocked this isn't already happening. It totally plays to what ESO does best.

All of this. QFT

rawne1980b16_ESO · February 2015

Yes

Tabbycat wrote: »

I'd honestly rather have Skyrim's Radiant Questing.

That's what I was hoping we'd get from Fighters and Mages guilds.

Constant quests sending you out to deal with little problems.

That's what the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild should be but i'm worried they will just be dead end quest chains that are done and then forgotten about (if DB and Thieves ever come).

That said, yes ESO needs dynamic events.

AleriSadasIndoril · February 2015

No

~168 = that is not meaningful!

Jeremy · February 2015

No

It sounds cool in theory. But I've yet to see this idea become anything good.

The so-called dynamic events on GW2 were like boring distractions to me and I usually avoided them. The FATE system from FF 14 was just as bad if not even worse . So I don't share in your enthusiasm for it.

At least when I do the anchor events on this game I feel like its helping me to complete the map. So I would argue this game actually does these types of events better than your acclaimed GW2 did.

If they invested a lot of time and programming into the events it might could be fun and interesting. But to be honest: if you are wanting dynamic events on the map why not just go to Cyrodiil. Because PvP is really the best way to accomplish something like this.

alainjbrennanb16_ESO · February 2015

Maybe

They where on about this but if done it must be done right and not feel scripted

eisberg · February 2015

Yes

Yes, very much yes to this. I am on my 3rd character in Guild Wars 2, and I am still seeing a ton of events that I never saw on a previous play through. having only static quests means that every character does the same thing all the time, with no variation. Dynamic events give that variation. Dynamic events in Guild Wars 2 is by far one of the best ideas and implementation of a new idea in MMOs.

RSram · February 2015

Yes

I would like to see towns get invaded with either Daedra or warriors from the other Alliances, but not on a small scale, I want 100K bosses that own the town until the players and NPC's band together kill them, so until the Bosses are killed, you can't enter any of the houses or access quest objectives in that town.

If the bosses aren't removed after a period of time, another, and then another town will be attacked, until all the towns in the zones are under siege.

I would even like small scale bank robbery attempts in the banks, so until the bosses in the banks are killed, the banks cannot be used.

You could even have a town being hit with siege weapons making it difficult to move within the town.

As stated earlier, if you help out, the town shops give you a small discount from the shop keepers.

The bosses would be scaled higher than the world bosses in the same zone to a difficulty level that would required at least 6 players of the same level as the town to take out each boss.

I think this would be really awesome.

Gidorick · February 2015

Yes

Yes!

rawne1980b16_ESO · February 2015

Yes

Jeremy wrote: »

But to be honest: if you are wanting dynamic events on the map why not just go to Cyrodiil. Because PvP is really the best way to accomplish something like this.

Love to but I can only do it on 3 of my characters.

The rest are in another faction and there are no other campaigns with a constantly healthy population.

It's great for doing the quests there but about as far away from fun as you can possibly get with regards to PvP.

Jeremy · February 2015

No

rawne1980b16_ESO wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

But to be honest: if you are wanting dynamic events on the map why not just go to Cyrodiil. Because PvP is really the best way to accomplish something like this.

Love to but I can only do it on 3 of my characters.

The rest are in another faction and there are no other campaigns with a constantly healthy population.

It's great for doing the quests there but about as far away from fun as you can possibly get with regards to PvP.

It would be a huge amount of work to program the kind of events people are suggesting in here. They would basically have to create a brand new game system within the current one and I doubt it will happen.

PvP allows programmers to rely on other players for dynamic AI rather than having to program every new reaction to every new variable themselves. So it makes the kind of dynamic events you are wanting a lot more feasible. Because artificial intelligence is always scripted.

That's why I think people who are wanting this kind of thing would be better served by concentrating on ways to improve Cyrodil and adding new gameplay elements to it. It's just the more reasonable course for constantly changing non-scripted gameplay that never stays the same.