World Immersion-related improvements to world events

World events are probably the biggest addition to the game in the recent update and If I have anything negative to say, it is that they are anything but immersive.

The idea behind these events is that you are supposed to stumble upon them while exploring and you get ambushed by enemies. At least as far as I know. The problem is that it feels like the opposite happens. You seek the enemies out, not the other way around. This is caused by the fact that there is no way to learn about these without opening your quest book, and encountering these is also very unlikely and the hologram kind of spoils everything away. The whole system feels more like a sort of arcade event rather than an actual ambush you that catches you by surprise, which I don't think achieves its goal at all.

But just getting rid of the content book page and the overworld hologram would suck too. It would just make it very hard to figure out where they happen and when.

So, for the sake of immersion without ruining gameplay, I've thought of something. You know how in most RPG-like settings there is always this "quest board" of sorts? So I suggest something like that, but for world events.

Spoiler: The "Local incidents board"

It will be a board in each town with notes about their respective areas' world events and it could be called something like "Local incidents board". The notes will not provide the name of the event nor the lore itself, just a vague description, the location, and the frequency of the ocurrence, effectively telling the player the timer of each world event (make it an approximate range if the timer is irregular, I guess) and making them more mysterious and climatic to encounter. This will also make waiting less of a problem since it will make the first time waiting a lot more fun due to the anticipation of encountering something you know very little about. After that, just calculate when the next one will happen.

Once you have interacted with a board from a city once, the entire list of world events from that board will begin showing in your content book too for convenience (although it will also hide information until you complete it). This can be explained as the player writing the notes from the board down into its content book since this is already done in other quests such as A Sandy Scandal. And if you encounter a world event before finding the board for it, you will also write down about that individual event. Once you have completed them, all the information about the world event will show up in your book and the board too.

As for how to explain the existence of the board lore-wise, it could be explained as reports and sightings citizens and soldiers, and the government of each city puts notes on the board with the purpose of having adventurers willingly investigate and solve these incidents. A citizen could be placed near the boards that explains all of this.

Spoiler: A better timer

The timer could also work in different ways. For example, instead of happening every 4 minutes, it could be a world event that only happens at night and will trigger instantly once you get to the location and you meet the right conditions. As for parties, this could be solved by only having the event start specifically when all party members are at the location.

This way you can also get rid of the necessity of showing the "world event" hologram in the overworld itself, which also takes away from the immersion. Instead, it could just make the current world event start noise and show some text on the chat. For example, take the Approaching Raid world event. A line of text could appear in chat saying "You perceive a rapidly approaching wave of undead. They seem to be coming towards Ragni. You quickly prepare to confront this threat." and then a second later the world event begins.

I'm sure this would take a bit of reworking the way the system itself works but I think it would be worth it and much more interesting than the hologram that just shows up and outright tells you that something is going to happen.

Spoiler: The major world events question

As for what to do with major world events, I already did a thread during the beta in which I said that these events should be separated from the normal ones by giving them their own icon that differentiates them from the rest. I think the same should be here, being a much bigger note than the rest to emphasize how big of a deal they are.

And unlike the normal ones, I think this one could actually show all the information from the get-go. After all, the newbies will inevitably get spoiled by the players who already did the event when they get there anyways, otherwise they will have a very hard time finding a party since nobody wants useless teammates on their teams. This could be explained lore-wise as having enough reports from other players due to the urgency and gravity of the situation to be able to provide more details on the described incident. No need for you to spoil anything, the game will do that itself.

As I said, the current system is extremely immersion-breaking. There is no reason why the player should know a wave of mobs will appear at a very specific location and this would likely make it feel much less like a sort of arcade gamey system and more like an actual piece of content integrated with the rest of the world. The timer is also problematic because it just tells you the minutes left until it starts but that can be extremely unreliable and because you have no clue how long the timer until the next one actually is, you might miss the next attempts too. This proposal should solve this too.

Of course, this idea can probably be refined a lot, but I think something like this would be much more immersive and impactful than the current system.

EDIT: So after posting a thread about this in the feedback section of the discord server, it seems my perception of world events might be mistaken. I can see how this completely changes the idea of world events as it's been described there and why it wouldn't actually be a good idea (even if I still have issues with the timer and the presentation), but hey maybe this idea could be repurposed for a sort of "world encounter" type of content where instead you investigate and solve local incidents similar to world events but differing in format?

 

I agree with the reworked timer and the other stuff but I think it should be optional, forced content isn't usually good. It would be cool if the first time you encounter a world event there was a little bit of story to it, though.

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And maybe just making the timer just the amount of time you have to get there, but once you get there you can choose to start it for you only (or your party) so you don't have to wait.

 

Perhaps the message I suggested to pop up right before a world event could give you a decently long window of time (let's say 30 seconds?) to get out of the area so that you can choose whether to ignore the message and flee or stay and fight? That way you won't be forced to fight.

 

The way they work says the opposite. They're meant to be sought out as opposed to something you walk into not knowing that it's going to happen.

This is no different than how Lootruns work.

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There was a post made very recently here on the exact same subject where this was discussed.
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Lootruns aren't really the most immersive piece of content, though, lol. Knowing how world events are meant to be now, I understand why they were made the way they were. But I still feel like there could be more done to make it a little more immersive, like an animation for when mobs appear, like how mobs with burrow AI will come out of the ground. It's already kind of done with the enraged eagle event, where it flies down from the sky instead just appearing out of nowhere.

 

These are good ideas but it’s not in what the Wynn team’s vision for world events, and that’s ok, but the teasers for world events were so good and exciting (like the guy in the woods getting jumped by a monster or something, or the tweets about the hoards for mobs) but it’s completely different

 

My opinion is just that the system we got wasn't what they advertised. The teasers showed surprise ambushes and mysterious occurrences, but that isn't what we got.

I love the idea of a recent incident board, and i feel like those should replace encounters like the mysterious manor, the unified gnome could appear as one maybe, and the burning man in CotL.

 

cough cough
Lootrun random events
cough

 

Don’t change the subject lol

 

Lootrun random events is absolutely not an excuse for what we were advertised as world events. Arachnid "Ambush" or the supposed hoards of mobs around Detlas has absolutely nothing to do with lootruns. And most of the random events I've heard of are pretty minor or just extra mobs, like a cave in SE getting a shortcut or something.
But anyway, yeah. The teasers made them look much different and more interesting than they actually are and you can't deny that, and the existence of lootrun random events is sure as heck not a valid argument against it.

Sorry if this is harsh but seriously. Lootrun random events have nothing to do with world events being advertised as something different (and arguably more interesting) than they are

 

if someone's main complaint about world events is lack of immersion the fact that there ARE a lot of new random events you can stumble into, but only in the middle of the other really unimmersive activity, kinda just adds insult to injury.

 

goofballs. I'm saying that some of what was advertised was random events.

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The whole swarm of mobs around Detlas was meant to be a reference to the old swarms feature, which is pretty close to how current world events work (there's a notification it's going to happen, you show up at the location, you wait for it to start, you do the event)

I dont know if the teaser of the spiders was meant to be for a world event, as much as it was meant to imply something there was changed (the spiders there and stuff, just like how the corruption Portal teaser was to show that there was new stuff there. Also originally Olinus was filming a nivlan beauty and had me drop a spider down from above, which further lends me to believe it wasn't meant to be about the world event)

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Anyways. I do want to add more stuff like world encounters. Things like the brute zombie that blocks your path to Detlas, or the "weather" I recently added to the molten Heights. I understand why you guys want that kind of stuff, but the world event system we have and the concept of their gameplay as multiplier content just doesn't work for the ideas you lot have.
I do really want to add stuff like weather cycles and roaming bands of mobs (like the zombie militia being turned into a shambling patrol) and other neat stuff that can occur during a playthrough

 

(i have not lootrunned since 2.0.4 so...)

 

how much have you lootrunned today (just because run becomes ran does not mean lootrun becomes lootran) ;)

 

no its how much have you Lootran today.
that is the only correct option

 

The very understandable problem people have with world events in Wynncraft is that the entire point of a game's world events is to present that game as a world that will continue with or without your direct intervention. A "world event" is quite literally an event that goes on in the world itself and everything in it, which does not happen in Wynncraft. For starters, they don't even start unless you're in an exact area when a timer counts down, and even if that happens, it only happens to you and whoever is in your party by essentially sucking you into a pocket dimension in which you literally cannot escape by any means other than death.
World events in Wynncraft... aren't world events at all.
Now, whether or not real world events are even possible in Wynncraft is another discussion entirely, but you have to admit that the title of "world event" is incredibly misleading for something that does not involve the world in any way whatsoever beyond just the theming of the enemies it spawns (assuming of course you're there to make the event begin at all).

Ironically, the actual Wynncraft website does a better job of portraying a world event than anything that actually happens in the game, with a gif of an Assassin silently watching a foreboding gathering of cultists. That's what a world event in Wynncraft should be. Either something that you stumble upon already happening, or something that begins happening with or without your involvement.
Again, whether or not that's possible for Wynncraft is another discussion but regardless I think that the title "world event" should absolutely be changed to something else.
I personally like the idea of them being called "ambushes", "exterminations", or something of the like.

 

How would events already start without a player to load in the chunks they are in?

 

Again, whether it's possible in Wynncraft is a whole different discussion.
But to answer your question, I imagine in a similar way to Skyrim's world encounters