Anet - Good job, but maybe it's time to change strategy!

Grats with Nightfall! In my mind it's vastly superior to any online RPG I have ever played. As far as Im concerned it craps all over the two previous GW games. Im nicely surprised and happy.


However, playing Nightfall now and going back to Cantha and Tyria, starts to show me how far these games have become in mission structure, and design and so on.


Jeff Strain once said, that NF was the final part of a GW trilogy. That NF would round of the loose ends. I think it did that very well.


But I also think that this can not go on. It's apparent right now, that bigger changes needs to happen if the 50 bucks campaigns are gonna keep being interested.

What I suggest, is that you take one of your development team and put them on hold. Give the other team who is currently doing chapter 4(the factions team), extra time to really give Campaign 4 some groundbreaking new features for the series.

The Nightfall team, should instead go back and update cantha and tyria and just in general add some stuff for the game. Like what? perhaps some more end game areas. the other gods realms(lyssa, mendu...). more armor. add lip synching and improving cut scenes and improving confusing story points for the first two campaigns.

maybe improve the trading and LFG system. Adding some benefical interface updates, adding some more faces for cantha, doing some tweaking with the much hated "locked gates" in cantha.

its important that ArenaNet also gives the old areas alive. heroes is a great tool for people to help gather skills and getting titles and getting quests done, in a more easier way in the old campaigns because of their superiority compared to henchies, but still. I really think that tyria and cantha needs a tune up.


I honestly would have no problem waiting a year again. I would much rather wait 1 year from now, for campaign 4 and have campaign 5 team doing some much needed content and game upgrade here and now.


thoughts?

I whole heartedly agree with everything you just typed.

Nightfall has certain things that lacked in factions, having the Nightfall Team tuning up Tyria and Cantha would be a good idea (although not the best one to Anet, economically speaking)

The again, im [Guessing] the nightfall team will still be busy updating things in Nightfall as problems apear, and generally balancing things as needed.

The Factions team needs a completel overhaul. Nightfall shows how much more focused they were. Factions was an aborted fetus, pure and simple. And this is coming from a primarily PvP player. It added zero high level content for PvP. ABs are/were a joke. The new classes weren't well received at all in high level play (Ritualists are barely seen now that Rit Lord was nerfed, Assassins have a couple viable builds however).

Nightfall did far more for PvP than Factions did, even though Factions was billed as PvP focused. If this is what a PvE focused chapter does for PvP, they should make all chapters PvE focused. The classes are better, there is a higher percentage of good skills and the new armor/focus/inscriptions are a godsend to PvP players.

Also, Factions PvE was unbearably bad. I never did finish that campaign. The enemy density was absolutely ridiculous. Every 10 paces, you'd fight a mob of 8-10 guys. They weren't even difficult to defeat, it was just tedious. On top of that, they'd plant traps every possible time they could. So after killing those guys, you'd walk 5 paces, trigger a Spike Trap, and fall down. Walk 5 paces, trigger Spike Trap, fall down. Fight 8 rangers, walk 5 steps, fall down. Nightfall PvE, however, is so much more sensible. The enemies are more varied (eles, mesmers, warriors, dervishes in a single group), the enemy density is down to probably an encounter every 30-45 seconds and the quests are much more involved. Factions' quests primarily consisted of going into the middle of an explorable area, clear 15 mobs surrounding the quest guy, get the quest, go into 4 different zones to hit the green star (clearing 15 mobs in each zone unless it was a town/outpost), go back to the original zone, clear the same 15 mobs surrounding the reward. Ugh.

/signed

I completely agree. That is a great idea. I was also thinking how far Guild Wars has come and I think it would be great if they went back and did a few of the updates to previous chapters. I rather have little updates for the night six months and wait a year before chapter 4 thus letting chapter four be even more exciting.

I hope A.Net considers that!

The teams would not have autonomy on how they create a chapter. The chapters don't turn out how the particular team wants them to - they work out according to what they have to create. it's not specifically the Factions teams fault that Factions was a poor expansion, Arenanet was just trying something new which didn't work. I'll lay odds a hell of alot of dev time was put into the alliance battle system and town control. Nightfall didn't have anything like that, so they had more time to develop other parts of the game.

they should add the 4 expansion professions to all the chapters, if a user combines the accounts. instead of limiting to chapter specific professions.

Excellent suggestion. I think part of A-Net's thinking is fear of losing customers (and revenue) with the length of time between expansions.

A Sorrow's Furnace update would do much more to "tide us over" than these weekend events, and would buy enough time for the developers to really start something groundbreaking in Chapter 4.

There will be more chapters, however, this is the end of the TRILOGY...so expect them start new series' and do various things in the future.

Great suggestion but think about it for a second. Would A-Net take the time to update what is already implemented? Sure it would make the first two chapter more enjoyable but the time it take might be too long and hence slow down their plan for future series of Guild Wars. I like those changes but think about how long it took (and still waiting) for auction house and bigger storage. Not to mention a better trading system. I'm still surprise that we gotten Lip-sync and white dye from Nightfall. Also what would stop A-Net from doing a new series (or start up another path for Guild Wars) using these new ideas.

Well, at any rate - I still bought factions. its stilla part of guild wars. its still connected and its still relevant. GW factions affect us all on a daily basis in the game.

I dont want to look at factions and tell new players not to buy that campaign because they made some strange choices.

We need focus. They are running on a succes. they proved everyone wrong, when we thought that their 6 month campaign model would not work. we where sad to see factions as a result after 1 years work.

There are so much they can do. right of the bat - Im thinking vista, and DX10 support. HDR lightning?

what about perhaps revisiting some of the more mordane aspects of the game? And try to add some more sense to the story. I know alot of people felt disconnected in the first game, as far as story went. Alot of people felt it was confusing and suddenly things happened and people just lost track of it. this was before the pop up boxes that was introduced in factions.

First and foremost, I agree with the OP, that Arenanet should slow down and focus more on quality rather than speedy productions.

I do see the reasons, however, behind their system. Their production value every six months seems to round off the game at 35 dollars per game. Which means that witholding the summer release of a game, and forcing an annual release, would mean future Guild Wars game would be 70$ per year.

That would certainly raise alot of demand on the quality (not that Anet can't meet that demand...).

They are nice suggestions, but the whole "update the old games or not" idea has been done to death. Anet does have good customer support, and really seems to enjoy our imput, but they have to make money, and how could they make money from spending time rejigging the old stuff?

Sure I'd love more god realms, and maybe they are a future possibility, and yes certainly since Ch4 is the begining of a whole new set of story arcs, it does need alot of effort, but pausing team1 isn't going to help for that i dont think

I disagree, I think that six months for each chapter is enough time to wait between them. This concept was introduced as soon as Guild Wars was announced, I doubt very seriously that Anet is going to change their buisiness model because you think that one chapter is more polished than another. Redoing all the original character models in the original chapters of all the NPCs that take part in all the cutscenes would be a lot of work with little impact on a large portion of the Guild Wars community. As someone pointed out, the faction system, town ownership and such probably took up a lot of time in the development of Factions. I personally loved Factions, and I know that I wasn't the only one, however Anet has probably heard the cries of a large portion of their fanbase and won't likely be revisiting concepts such as locked gates (I loved how you could explore as much as you wanted up to the Desolation in Nightfall [after you were off the island], yet you had to complete the storyline in order, and I anticipate that will be the style of future chapters).

good points. Anet would loose possible more gained revenue, but both they and NCsoft has to look at the long term.

If they continue to build a stable and large playerbase, they might will be able to grow the GW brand for much longer. Diablo 2 is still kicking and thats 7 years old now!

I aggree, but I dont think it's feasible for them. Their business model is a game every 6 monthes to keep them rolling. They did a great job to convince me to buy nightfall on release day. I'll wait and see for chap 4.

Bottom line: Changes takes time and effort. If A-Net has other ideas, they would probably spend their resources to do that now that got the first three chapters out of the way.

Honestly, I'm not certain that gw gameplay has been exhausted enough to do this yet. Keep in mind that they have to make up for quite a few years of development with no revenue, and that the aggressive release schedule is what keeps them financially solvent. We do want these guys to stay in business, correct? I'm sure they will do this eventually - just not yet.

Besides, I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with for campaign 4 and 5. I have often wondered why game development companies have previously felt like they needed to re-invent everything between each game instead of releasing more iterative improvements. It seems like a smarter business model to me (reusing valuable code and content), and gives people more of what they like.

Oh, and I honestly don't buy into the entire notion that they have some sort of A-team (Prophecies, Nightfall) that produces gold, and B-team (Factions) that dumps out crap. I recall interviews where Jeff Strain said a number of key personnel, such as all the leads (including the lead designer - can't recall his name) work on all products. So, a lot of the top people are pretty much responsible for all the games. They obviously tried some different things with Factions that players didn't care for. The result? They returned with Nightfall, having learned a lot of lessons. I'm betting that the next campaign will be as good or better than Nightfall.

Totally agree...after campaign four people will begin moving on, because the game in itself is getting repetitive.

Guild Wars however, is very fun, and adding new things to tyria/cantha, perhaps even making one giant map, would make the game overall more enjoyable.


*coughauctionhousepleasenowgodagahh*

I see what your saying but still! factions town control! This is exactly one of does systems that needs to be looked at.

maybe alliance battles, and alliance stuff in general. maybe it is time to spread some of these features out across the campaigns to make a wider appeal.

if you go to shing jea island right now, you will still see tons and tons and tons of new players coming in every single day who have just bought factions. As I see it, they need to be satisfied to continue buying these chapters. Yes, that is exactly why I think it will be worth it for the long term investment.

I can not explain to you how much NF has motivated me.

I went from a average GW player with GWP and GWF to a super hardcore dedicated fanboy nerd with GWNF. And I think im not the only one. The core of GWP and GWF are there. we are not talking fundamental changes, but tweaks, additions and little upgrades. stuff like trading, auction house and new LFG system of course would be universal changes.

they always talked about that new technology would be free of charge and made for all players to keep interest, while new actual content would be the reason why people would pay for the new campaigns. so maybe the new god realms are stretching it.


maybe the favor of the god system needs to be revisited? who knows how china is going to affect it, once they join in on the fun!? same with India... if they plan to launch there aswell!

ok - But then let me ask you this mate. Do you think that the new additions like alliance battles and heroes, have been enough so far?

for a new set of feature of this scale for campaign 4 and 5, will it really be enough.

nothing wrong with the GW formula. its great. but perhaps its just time to be more ambitious.

GW still looks great today. but actually if we think about it, GWP is 1,5 years old now. the first one is beginning to show a bit of age. ?