Mega boss events

So i was watching some of old screenshots from game some of u still remember, Lineage 2. In short (best game ever :) ), this game had some events , where friends and enemies (mostly enemies ) would have a chance to crazy fight to death (and gear loss) to get again , chance to fight single boss.One of them was called , Baium. So in general boss would spawn once every 5 days or exact time 5 days after he was last time killed, and he would drop SINGLE item (will not go into charging crystals and so on :) ), and thats it. And ok so its boss who drops single item, nice, but , tons of ppl would come to this event , we would wake up in mid of night or morning or noon, get ready to fight for hours to get good spot to even start boss and , protect the boss from other players , and kill it. And again, all that for single item, every 5 days. But this event , attracted tons of ppl and was insane fun.Why i wrote all that, well , ages ago i asked why our dragons have 1 static spot where they spawn and do what they do , die and drop trash. I was wondering , why in this world of dragons and mass event , we never got dragon that would randomly spawn each week on different map , make some mess , and fight players.Atm we have tons of mob mechanics from bounty bosses , we have large maps with huge flat areas , hills, where boss could "randomly" spawn.I think from perspective of developing this , we have quite a bit already done, bosses, mechanics, beautiful locations. Why is there no initiative to make this happen ?Lastly , would it not be fun to see msg that "Steve the Dragon has landed in Queensdale" and tons of ppl would chase it coz this guy will for SURE drop something really cool to one of you . And you fight it in Queensdale and he fly away to other zone and other zone , up and up in level , and at the end he lands in 80 lvl zone and u finish it. This would make ppl explore more to have maps, would make huge lag and ppl jumping maps and tons of other technical issues, but hell it would be fun.Just a thought.

PS .What if he would drop, this !https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Paper-Bag_Helm_4-PackJust sayin .....

This was done in the past when karkas invaded Lion Archs and was a complete technical disaster.On top of that, how should something like this be balanced? Because we don't even have "servers" anymore. If you make it too difficult, then large guilds would spawn their own megaserver and kill the boss there while most random maps keep failing. If you don't, then you have nothing but a glorified pinhata which will drop some super exclusive shiny to a completely random person out of hundreds.It kinda worked in L2 because that game was all about PvP and server domination and the ring was a BiS item (some years ago at least). Then the drop wasn't soulbound so it was likely going to be directly assigned by whichever guild got it bassed on merits or something.Here you'll get a randomly assigned cosmetic item for mashing buttons against what most probably would end up being an HP sponge. Too much hassle for something impressive but not exactly engaging or gamechanging. IMHO we're perfectly fine with things like Tequatl or Triple Wurm.

I think it would be better to compare your ideas not with Lineage II, but with WoW Cataclysm and Deathwing random attacks (I didn't play it, but if I understand correctly, it worked it this way).First of all, you should remember about players limit for each map instance. To make this thing work your dragon should exists for every map instance, so everyone would have chances to kill him, but not only lucky players who entered this map first.Second, in this case there can be a situation, when in Instance №1 dragon is already defeated, but in Instance №2 still not (low damage, lack of CC, whatever). What message will see others, somewhere in LA, for example? "Steve the Dragon has landed in Queensdale?" But they TP there and see nothing, because defeated dragon is in another instance.For now, ANet has added something what you're talking about called "Defeat the invading Awakened". It has its own solid schedule (xx:30) and feels really boring (for me, for example).Maybe Kralkatorrik with Branded invasion in different locations could be a nice idea, where he and his army moves from one location to another or lands in a single (but random from time to time) location, where everyone can participate in killing him. Level scaling will make a good work making everyone not equal, but close to is, like on any world boss. And once again - let's imagine Instance №1 defeated dragon, while Instance №2 did not. This means that Map №1 will stay clean, but Map №2 will become "dirty one" like after Tequatl? Or what?Another example is Anomaly fight. Having a special item you see a message "....anomaly has formed in...". For me the very first time a got in this fight it was... "What the hell was that?". But later became just a routine.What I support is introducing some "Mega-Meta Event", like you described above. Some real threat, which could force everyone to fight with it. With a long "reset time", maybe a week or so. I came in GW2 just a year ago and know about Scarlet War and temporary events only from a film and other videos / wiki articles. And I think it's pretty the same what you're talking about, but should make a lot of technical problems with locations redesign (especially it our theoretical dragon moves from one location to another).

@"Rihar.3465" said:

What I support is introducing some "Mega-Meta Event", like you described above. Some real threat, which could force everyone to fight with it.

I understand your enthusiasm for such an event; however, I don't like events in which players would be forced to participate.

@kharmin.7683 said:

@"Rihar.3465" said:

What I support is introducing some "Mega-Meta Event", like you described above. Some real threat, which could force everyone to fight with it.

Agree, should said it in another way. Of course I didn't mean that everyone MUST take part in it and can't just ignore this event.

anet already tried ops little idea . it did not go very well and nor did it work out at all . called heart of thorns .

this is something that will never work for this game at all anet is just not able to pull it off . from balance and mega server stand points .

HoT seems to be working just right. It may be ironic after all the bickering, but it seems Maguuma metas are retaining more player's interest than PoF after all. Anet shouldn't have acceded to the faceroller pleas.

@WARIORSCHARGEING.2637 said:anet already tried ops little idea . it did not go very well and nor did it work out at all . called heart of thorns .

this is something that will never work for this game at all anet is just not able to pull it off . from balance and mega server stand points .

Except that it has worked and is still working. Many players have expressed frustration with PoF specifically because it deviates from the successful event structure HoT pioneered. Just because HoT wasn't perfect doesn't mean everything about it was a failure. There is a lot they should have brought over to PoF. Instead, they swung the pendulum too far toward the core gameplay that many players find unsustainable and boring in the long term. I think that was the big mistake they made with PoF.

This is what happened when the Karka Queen/southsun map was revealed (3 hour mega event chain).... and I gotta say that was one of the best events I played in this game to date. Also one of the few events that had a higher than normal drop rate for precursors - which is why it was so popular.

Other things I can think of that are similar ... Scarlet attacking Lion's Arch, and that level 15-25 map 2 below divinty's reach. Changed the whole map.

While I like the idea of getting more engagement from players across mulitple maps fighting some world changing force, I think Anet decided that boss timers events and meta battles were the appropriate happy median.