Predicting the future of Anets “Stand alone game” approach to guild wars

If only someone was reading this. When I mean someone, I mean someone who is part of the Guild Wars staff that can change things. Why? Because this is like a gold mine of information. The players are actually yelling out to them everything that's wrong and what needs to be done, but it's being completely ignored. Sadly so.

If the two were seperated and PvP was given full UAX, you could easily do the same in that model.

I like Tryria to and the whole game should reflact on your char.s advancment and keeping up with other players not just skills and new sets of armor.

A certain title of mine comes to mind... When they finally enable people to max that.. Then you know its all over. *cough* Skills *cough*

At that stage you might aswell sell your account on ebay before people get wise that its the last chapter, i know i probably will. At least to make up the cost of buying the game in the first place.

The games are standalone but they are unequivocally linked together. The company position of completely ignoring old games when they are just as viable to sell as the current game is a ridiculous idea on its face. Combine that with poorer and poorer marketing and word of mouth, less games will be sold of new chapters but more people will spread across the various worlds maknig every single chapter worthless, especially with the company emphasis on playing with a team while simultaneously making playing with a team unfavored. Soon the thing will break down entirely.

There are 25 new skills, plus 5 copies per class. However very few of the new skills actually bring something new and worthwhile to the core classes. But then there's always been skills that have never been used.

Well I was concerned too but I think the older chapters are more or less SUPPOSE to die away and everyone is suppose to flock to the new one. Assuming it works that way i don't see a major problem.. the majority of the people will be in the most current Chapter... and if they get bored they can go to some older chapters just for the heck of it. So it will probably work out though I too was concerned with there being too many but they'll have to add something new because as someone said
if the levels never get higher
if the weapons have the same stats more or less even greens will be cheap and many to choose from ect.

You could still do that if they separated PvE and PvP, meaning use the same character to do both. By separating them, I mean allowing PvE and PvP to have different skills, not tying access to PvE areas with PvP results, and not forcing or encouraging PvP action as part of the PvE storyline.

It's not working that way, though, at least from what I've seen. When I wrote about mission areas having only one district, I was referring to Canthan missions. Anet itself has said many times that you can pick what chapters to buy and which ones to skip. They, of course, want you to buy them all, but they've also acknowledged people will skip chapters for whatever reason. And when I buy an online game that's advertised as a game with no monthly fees!!!, I don't expect it to have a six-month expiry date. That's hardly remarkable.

You do know thats essentially destroying the basic model of how the game functions?

The battle system in PvE is the same battle system in PvP.

If we seperate the skills and completely make each side seperate, then it wouldnt be the same game.

It might as well be 2 games. Like how Unreal and Unreal Tournament both use the same game engine and exist in the same universe, but its not the same game.

If thats the case then PvPers should get their own "pvp expansion" with different skills and PvErs should get a "PvE expansion".

Why pay for content when you dont even play it? Can't you see how ridiculous that sounds?

I believe Isaiah Cartwright addressed the issue of a UAX as something of a possibility when more chapters exist and a player wants to "catch up" on older skills after entering Guild Wars from a later chapter. As it stands, a UAX would allow players to "burn through content".

I completely oppose seperating pvp and pve. I think what needs to happen is allow players an easier way to jump into pvp and unlock things much more easily to be competitive.

Arena Net has driven too much of the wedge between PvP and PvE to continue to try and link them without removing the wedge

I never said the skills would be completely separate. I said that PvE and PvP could have different skills. Separating PvE and PvP would change the game in some fashion (natch!), but it wouldn't be as radical as you make it sound. It wouldn't destroy the game's model, and both could still have the same battle system.

Not really, since many of us are doing that now, anyway, with the current model.

Exactly. It would fragment the community even further. I mean, we're already fairly divided as it stands.

Its like the Luxon/Kurzick thing. Why really "choose" a side?

You can play both sides and you need to if you want 100% of the map. You can enjoy more of the game if you play both sides.

Why choose PvE only? Why choose PvP only?


I feel that Anet should continue to try to resolve the rift between the two player types and maybe we'll have just 1 type of GW player, The PvE/P player. I think that should be the direction that Anet should go. Better PvP and PvE that is interconnected enough that players will want to play both types.

Because they are practically 2 different games. Apples and oranges are both fruits, but you don't have to like both, you can like apples but not oranges. Some people find pve mindnumbingly boring. Some people don't like the competive atmosphere and dont want to put up with zomg you arent rank x you cant play. So they play what they like and don't play what they don't like. People choose PvE only or PvP only because they can chose.

I think the problem is not pvp and pve. but people who want both.Pvp and pve they are in a real minaority.

Yes, in the end its about the player and their choice of playing styles. However, i feel that GW is the one of the best games that fosters a playing style with this duality of PvE and PvP and they should continue that mindset instead of splitting the game in half.

I for one would LOVE to make PvP and PvE more interconnected. Things like World At War (although flawed) and Alliance battle/PVE-P missions (Also flawed) are good ideas in this direction but are of course, flawed. The benefits have to be more obvious and still reward more hardworking players, without punishing people new to PvP.

Yes its quite sad that people who enjoy all aspects of the game are the minority vs the extreme pvp or pve inclined who are close minded completely to one side of the side or the other.

There are already ghost towns in Factions. I mean major cities like HzH and Cavalon only have 2-3 districts at a time from what I've seen. Thats not a lot. This will be a major problem, when Chapter 3 comes out. Who will want to own any cities in Factions, what will be the point? None. So far the only reason ANYONE will go back to Factions is for the material storage, and nothing more. Why oh why couldn't such a bueatiful game taken a different approach.

Well if guild wars starts going down hill, i say let the people eat cake! Give them what they want, guns, rockets, heck give them sportcars!

Yes, well some of us want that, but many of us don't. Who knows, if things do get bad, and you have to appeal to the masses, things happen.

If they want original ideas, i say let them looks at the suggestions, i mean heck so many have voted for engineer, and many other cool concepts classes. I know i have one, nevin you have some, actionjack has a bunc too. Rikumaru, although i'm not sure at 1:19 am if it's riki or er i don't know my brain hurts lol. Still i mean heck those are some crazy orignal thoughts, never know maybe we will seem them someday.

Although you never know, the factions may be popular, i mean heck if less people fight for it, more will. If it seems easy, like hey i can finally control a town, more will get the idea and go through cycles of grinding again.

Still either way, i'll be playing guildwars for a while, only thing that will stop me will be real life issues, or if they change the game in such a way.. that makes me not want to login.

We just have to see what the future holds, i doubt it will be the apocalpse.

I'm very optimistic about Chapter 3. Why you ask ? Because if Chapter 3 is as average as factions , there will be no more guild wars

Thats some serious flamebait right there.

There are some really good points ppl are making on here. This is my input, A-net created a great game mmropg without a monthly fee, I believe a first. They claimed that they would release stand alone expansion in place of a monthly fee. On paper this seems like a wonderful idea. But as we have seen, things get unorganized and hinder the game. Personally I loved prophices, factions on the other hand was good but with the unfinished story, somewhat slummer maps ect, did not compare. From reading the forums It seem that most people found prophices to be superior, which would not be bad if factions was an expansion, but it supposed to be a stand alone game.

MY IDEAS:

Anyways heres what I prepose, many ppl have suggested seperate pvp, from pve, I agree but only do that to a certain extent. I woul have the new games not necessarly expand into new places but instead expand the story. Heres an example, You buy the next game, with all its new content, now you have defeated the white mantal, the undead, and held of the charr invasion, inorder to advance you must complete the titan quests and because you owe the dwarfs a favor finish sorrows fernece, ( who else has had trouble finding ppl to do these missions. Now you can port to new maps like ascalon being rebuilt, but you can still go back to old ascalon (prophices ascalon).

You goal now would be to prepare Tyria for it huge offence into the nothern charr lands, so you must travel to Kratya to ask for help, (you of course will be sent on different missions before they will help you) as well as the dwarfs for their gun powder, Cantha for men, Kurziks for their those walker things, luxons for siege turtles. Now as for openning up new areas you could also be sent south to see if the rumors of a large surviving Orr army are true.( that huge blank spot on the map in Tyria will be open explorable). Now you would head north with all that firepower, for new content in missions you could have it were you guard the Ascalon catpults as they bomb Charr homes or be in the invasion force, not that new, but A-net could think of something, but the plus side would be that you could kill charr babies or something this would require like 2 or 3 teams of 8 as well as several NPC's so it would seem like a HUGE battle. Well this is getting to long but you get the idea, expand the story within the game, you could always have a new enemy appear that are allies of the charr or something but adding brand new stuff every 6 months is crazy. This also would still not solve the problem of not enough ppl in towns.

Sorry this is so long, my above solution is just part of a story That I'm writting about GW, I'm a poltics major which is boaring so I take up creative writting as a hobby. So you think the idea of expanding the story is a good idea or what, please dont flame me to bad on the poor writting.

Best situation would be to link these new chapters to old ones so that we have one big world that gets bigger by every chapter. Not 10 continents with no interaction between each other. That way older chapters won't be so dead in future.

That is the flaw of Stand Alone concept & zero proper connection with each chapters.

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure a multi-million dollar company with a long history in MMORPG's has a better idea of how to execute Guild Wars from a business and gameplay viewpoint than your average bitchy, whiney yet frequent player of the game.

Have a little faith. Being jaded and negative about the game isn't doing anyone any good, and you can't sit there an pretend you have any where near the clear view of the game as A-Net regarding how things should go, nor full understanding of the reasons behind their decisions.

If you did, you'd be doing what they do, and visa versa...

If y'all hate factions so much (a flawless addition to an existing winning title), why do you bother sitting behind a forum screen bad mouthing it for hours on end.

Have faith in the powers behind Guild Wars because it's a given they know more about the business than you do...

You're saying Factions is flawless? Are you serious? .... wow

For what it is, a stand alone/add-on for the original, big enough to be fun, small enough to keep people hanging around in chapter one, with a host of new items and skills as well as 2 new playable professions... yes, it's flawless in that regard...

I mean, what exactly did you expect? It's more Guild Wars, if you're looking for a different game, perhaps you should just continue your search...

Actually, as players we've become aware of problems that have begun to arise with the introduction of Chapter II and that appear to run the risk of increasing in severity with the release of additional chapters.

Guild Wars is a new style of game that ANET is sort of monitoring as it unfolds for what does and does not work, and believe it or not, they seem to be working and exploring as they go along and likely don't quite know everything yet, as no one can clearly predict the future or the results of each of their decisions.

As the masses of players that know the game from the position of customers, our concerns are the developers' concerns and just as with actual players being the best means of testing out a game, our perspective on their work is a valuable tool to them.

If we'd always "had faith" and didn't speak up about any of our discrepencies, the changes we've ever desired would never have been realized and often met as they have been many times in the past up through the present. We don't hate the game just because we have issues with and worries for certain aspects of it, and feedback is important to any business. Through criticism, we get more of what we want in the game and they get happy(er) customers and their money. We're trying to ensure that each chapter of Guild Wars is successful, in which case, everyone wins.

Ah, but that's where you hit a snag! A successful business venture is quite different from an engaging computer game. Just look at how many "nice" games have been absolutely loved by gamers but were discontinued as commercial failures, and how many spectacularly produced (or hyped if you prefer) games failed to live up to player expectations and died on the player side. Considering the history of PC games, it seems that finding that perfect balance between a "good game" and a "profitable franchise" is nearly impossible.

ANet, however, tried to make a "good game" with a new business model. What we see now, and what concerns a lot of people, is that instead of expanding the "player friendly" game ANet has made some "profit-driven" decisions - like shortening the release schedule and restricting expanded storage access - which could end up tipping it into the "commercial success" territory at the expense of "gameplay experience."

I'm sorry, but I can't blindly trust any gaming company because blind trust usually results in abuse. While ANet may be able to measure how commercially viable the new model is through the number of copies sold, only player feedback can determine the customer satisfaction, the "good game" side of the equation. A "multi-million dollar company" may have an idea of how to develop Guild Wars, but plenty of those same companies have died when their ideas failed to coincide with reality.

Its a good idea and hopefully anet are considering it.

Pretty much. This isn't an MMO, it's a competitive online roleplaying game, and you really have no reason to play through the old chapters over and over. The PvE isn't massively multiplayer and it doesn't need to be packed full of people. The campaigns are made to be fun/interesting one or two times through, and the only reason they're still crowded now is that people play this game wanting it to be a free WoW MMO alternative.

With the business model A-net has created, they have no reason to make people feel warm and fuzzy about the PvE of old chapters. The emphasis is on buying and playing the next chapter, and enjoying it enough to buy the next chapter after that. Personally I like the model.

i hope they make Chapter 3 more like Prophecis and skip the whole Faction thing which was pretty bad in the first place having diffrent faction's too choose betwen it was more hmmm political crap in faction an ''less'' of an adventure like it was in prophecis i don't want too be some delivery boy runing around giving messages sorting out problemms from each faction i want it too be like prophecis where yu get's side quest's as you follow the mainstory
and i really hope they skip having big cities it's like runing around in a maze
and i hope they allso make upp some new farming place and nott some Elite mission stuff maybe something new like fow where you can do quests if you wan't.. oh and that they fix new skills and not just slap on a new name tag and picture to it.

First off, congratulations for the most generic rant ever.

Second, I am tired of seeing people say this:

Name me three quests from Prophecies that WEREN'T "go get this for me" "take this here" "kill that guy/those guys".

For me you summed it all up really nicely there. I think Anet has got most things planned out with approx dates. They had every intention of releasing added storage during Chp2 to make it Chp2 exclusive (obvious way for maximising profits), but they keep giving the classic "Anet soon" answer to everything (its in their best interest not to answer one way or another) I think they are taking this route

Some of your suggestions will be looked in to, and possibly added.






Oh yes, only for the next chapter, and there's going to be a catch don'tchaknow! Oh and it might get changed after that too. Please preorder. Stop whining. Deal with it. <end sarcasm> <sigh>

They can, but they'll lose players who strongly prefer one type of play over the other. Nothing wrong with that, as long as they're sure the game will survive if that happens.

It's not a matter of being close-minded. It's a matter of preferring one type of play over the other. Different people prefer different things. You can't force people to like something that just doesn't appeal to them.

Yeah, because no game company with a long history has ever gone under because of bad decisions that have alienated its fan base.</sarcasm> And I haven't seen much bitchy and whiney happening in this thread--I've seen a lot of reasonable discussion.

I can't think of one single company that has done that, no. They've gone down by developing games nobody wants to play, and GuildWars is SO FAR away from that mark, your point holds no water what-so-ever...

(FYI)

*cough*sierra*cough*ion storm*cough* oh my I need to get a drink for that cough. The history of gaming is awash with games developers thinking they know best. Well, to be fair, probably marketing execs these days. They might still be around in one form or another but they've surely helped kill game series/titles. Then you have the guys who made awesome games like Looking Glass, and they still went under...

On a side note, if it's so amazingly flawless and great, why is it most places in Factions seem to be empty on euro servers at least (and I've been trying a lot of hours day and night over the past few weeks due to holiday/time off work). During the height of Prophecies' popularity this was not a noticeable problem. Maybe PvP has increased in popularity I dunno, not my forte, but the rest of it doesn't appear so (from personal experience)

Then you either haven't been gaming very long or haven't been paying attention. Someone has already mentioned Sierra. The one that springs to my mind immediately is 3DO. Had two lucrative franchises that they managed to destroy. There have been others. Not all sequels live up to their predecessors.

Yeah, Looking Glass was really unfortunate....

Nobody wanted to play them because the devs made bad design decisions. The two things aren't unrelated. And I never said GW is a game nobody wants to play. We're talking about the future, not the present.

Why are you presenting the above as facts and thinking you are speaking on behalf of the majority of the community?

So as new chapters release, you won't be able to PUG your way through older chapters. You'll have to use hench or play with helpful guildmates. If you're into pugging, you should buy each chapter as it comes out and focus on it. Doesn't seem like the end of the world.

Exactly. People who keep telling us to play WoW need to get something through their head: We bought Guild Wars and enjoyed it because it was not one of those massive, neverending, monthly fee MMO's. It has an ending that is achievable within a relatively small time frame. It does not require you to grind for weeks just to obtain the equipment required in order to remain competitive. It is a one shot charge. You pay. You play. You don't pay again unless you want more and, if you decide you don't want more, you can still play with what you've already bought.

Those online games are nothing like what I am looking for in a game at all. I'd honestly rather not play games than play any of those for free (since money isn't honestly an issue for me).

I have a lot of time between tasks at work I don't even really play Guild Wars any more but I still enjoy adding my opinions in hopes that one day I'll feel like playing it again And yes, Factions is the reason I no longer play so it's pretty safe to say I hated it....

You say they know better than we do but the method most companies use to decide whether or not their decisions and/or features were good ones is through customer feedback. You think these guys took some classes in college and now just automatically know what's best? They made a great game and altered it during alpha/beta testing based on the feedback they recieved.

But I digress....

Personally, I think the problem is too many gaming companies try to milk a game name until it's dry. They should accept the fact (yes, fact) that Guild Wars can only really go so far and move on to another game. Take the ideas they have and, by all means, implement them, but do it in something completely new and exciting so that we can say "A.Net releases amazingly fun games!" instead of "A.Net released areally great game and then expanded it into the depths of futility..."

I would really love to see what A.Net would come up with next while they are still completely inspired from their success. I would most likely buy their next RPG based on their success with Guild Wars so long as they don't burn out every idea they have on a game that really should not be expanded infinitely.

For example, I loved Halflife and bought the sequel because the original was great. After playing the sequel, I found myself wishing they had just come up with a whole new story line, new characters, and named it something completely unrelated to the original. A few thousand more dollars on script, plot, and story arc combined with some more character interaction and originality would have made that game the most epic FPS ever. As it was, I won't even be buying any of their expansions for it.

You milk a cow for what it's worth and then sell it off before it dries up. Gaming companies have a tendency to keep on milking until there's nothing left. It's really a shame.

I asked this question in another forum once and I can't remember if I ever received any kind of response so I will ask it again. Why do PVP players so desperately want me(or in general PVE players) to play PVP? There is nothing Anet or anyone else can do that will entice me to play a format that I do not find fun and entertaining. If you further blur the line between the two then PVE players will go elsewhere for there gaming fun. Now if Anet's great game design vision is to have this type of forced PVP play at the expense of inovation on the PVE side then so be it. What they need to understand is that its the PVE player who upholds their very lively hood and if we go elsewhere GW will become another bright star that suffered a tragic burnout.

On another side note, I noticed they published some info on two new classes for chapter 3. Still early as I am sure more info on the game will be forthcoming but I find it disappointing that I won't be able to see the new classes on their beta weekend unless I PVP. Also 2 new classes is not the kind of content I am looking for in chapter 3. I already have 6 characters I am fond of playing and I want those classes to be expanded on (haven't even bothered making an assassin or a ritualist). Please Anet, can we get a little love for our existing characters so they don't end up going through another chapter with naught to gain but a few new skills.