[devPLEASE] Dynamic World - If Ever You Do Something - Do This!

[Alhanelem]

I just lost a bet.

I bet my friend the first response to this thread would be someone telling me to GTFO and whine like a miner's guild scut about what I said.

I would never say that to anyone.

While I don't really care for GW, There are a few simple things they could do to make the world feel a bit more animated. Nearly every NPC that isn't part of a levequest or other content is completely static. They could easily add a few NPCs, objects, monsters etc that at least look like they're leading a daily life. e.g. an NPC that comes out of The Dunes district in the morning, goes over to one of the shopping avenues, stops at the tavern, and goes back home in the evening. Even FFXI with its mostly static NPCs had more of this.

Also, why are you telling me about how WoW isn't original? Did I say it was? You don't need to tell me it wasn't original, because I know that already.

Everything that was ever original about FFXIV has already been cut from it, because originality doesn't seem to sell games.

[Icehunter]

I would never say that to anyone.

While I don't really care for GW, There are a few simple things they could do to make the world feel a bit more animated. Nearly every NPC that isn't part of a levequest or other content is completely static. They could easily add a few NPCs, objects, monsters etc that at least look like they're leading a daily life. e.g. an NPC that comes out of The Dunes district in the morning, goes over to one of the shopping avenues, stops at the tavern, and goes back home in the evening. Even FFXI with its mostly static NPCs had more of this.

XI had more life I agree, XIV has the life of a we paper bag. I have 2 copies of XIV and 2 of GW2 for wife and I and to be honest unless XIV 2.0 has something really substantial about it I'll move to GW2 if it ends up launching with all it says it does. I've played XIV since the first alpha test and stuck by it and will keep doing so as long as I see they are improving it at a good rate of fuel consumption.

[casker]

For stuff like behests where you have to talk to a person to queue, and then wait for it to start, a system where it just happens on its own and anyone can join would definitely be better. It would cuts out a lot of the clutter, facilitate playing with each other, removes the issue of feeling like there's a deadline, and removes the issue leaving players out if they miss that deadline. Something spontaneous would definitely be better.

The empire invasion stuff is sort of like this, though I've only done it once as I am a bit of a noob, I talked to an npc and then started killing. I don't know if talking to the npc was necessary, but there was a pretty large battle that followed and I thought it was pretty cool. It was spontaneous (or it seemed like it since i didnt know about it), anyone could join, stuff like this should be expanded and developed further.

From my understanding, the difference between that empire invasion and GW2 is just that GW2 has some branching based on how successful you are. Seems pretty interesting, but still, I think people are overblowing how much of a game changer this is. It's definitely better than stuff like, say, behests, but I really don't think I'm going to give a crap whether Old McDonald is able to sell some carrots to me if I fail to save them from the centaurs. That is secondary to making the world feel alive, which is the main thing, and thats just how GW2 approaches it. In the end, for me, automated events are still automated events, whether branching or not, and after a few times doing them I can't imagine they would feel all that fresh, eventually you're going to exhaust the possible outcomes and it will still feel like any other theme park mmo.