Save Guild Wars - Ideas to Fill Empty Towns

EDIT - This thread is about collecting ideas to bring more players and life to the game (specifically fill towns and get people helping eachother).

We've already established my first idea is no good, so add or progress other ideas.


Original Idea

It's a problem that makes me miss 'the good ol' days'. I remember my computer struggling to cope with the full Ascalon City or having to look through 5 full districts to find suitable players for a PvP attempt but now all that is found is an eiree silence and a few tumbleweeds.

The towns are empty, and it's made the game less enjoyable.

Now this is just an idea, but I believe properly implimented, it would work. Why not make Guild Wars entirely free?

I suggest Areanet create an unlimited free access key, for anyone to use on a game client (obtained free off their site or off a CD from say, a game shop). Allow them to access all areas of the three maps, all the towns and missions, and allow them to participate in any party, but impose major restrictions on their gameplay. Do this in such a way that they get the fun feeling of participating in Guild Wars (the one I felt playing Prophecies the first time through), but with all the fun detailed bits missing, driving them to buy the game. Also, allow players with 1 or 2 campaigns to acces the ones the don't have with the free access key privelages.

In short, it will attract more players (and hopefully further sales) and those who don't purchase it fill up the game and make towns more lively (also have them act as a gold sink)!

The only challenge is making the system balanced, fair but unfair at the same time.


I could post a list of suggestions (for restrictions etc) but I think that would be better listed in the replies in this thread.

I like free free and its a novel idea but...
I don't know if anet could swing the bandwidth / big enough yet

They would have to change several things:

Create a datafile set that only has chapater 1.. or everyone will be downloading 2.7gb.. or worse if they hit that bug that makes you download factions twice causing the gw.dat to grow to 4+ gb.

No trading (or this will be used to unlesh bots on the world) this would include not allowing you to drop items on the ground.

I would more like to see they get access to Pre-Searing + Post Ascalon Region, Starting Island Faction / Nightfall and access to no where else. Sample all 3 flavor's and changes .. but at same time not cause too much disruption.

Like EternalTempest said, it would take up bandwidth. Since Guild Wars has no monthly fees, I can't see how they could do all that without going bankrupt. Sure, they have a "store" where you could buy character slots for $10, more campaigns, or PvP unlock packs, but I'm not sure that'd support the game enough to allow such a thing. However if they do come up with such a method that doesn't involve monthly fees, then seeing something like this actually happen would be cool.

- Unlimited mule characters for everyone

- eBay/account traders/money sellers (remember the 10 day trial?)

- Griefers, foul mouths, random spammers and insulters, profanity galore

- Alt accounts for scamming, getting even, annoying players

Yay. Let's do this.

Those, who are interested in the game are playing. Those who aren't, are not. Making the game free has never in the history of MMOs solved anything. It's a sign that game is put into hibernation before shutdown.

Could make the free-characters not able to carry any item or gold.

But still feel not a pretty idea, if they could play the whole game. (maybe only at limted spots) GW's first attraction is its single-player like RPG story, and if allow that to be free, than all thats left are gold farming and grinds, which devalue the game down to a typical MMO with level cap. So would say no...

I think Heros is good enough to do mission with... and a centralize PvE town area (see Lyra's thread) is good to gather people around too. And since most in game player don't give any good social interactions, I like to hang on the fourm more.

I personnally dont like this.... it would bring all the free people that cant buy games.. Most arent bad but then we get immature people (The word Runescapes keeps nudgeing me).

A better solution really would be combining Districts from different continents if the total population is less then x. Add some Basic commands like Go there, Attack that, etc and were set.

Lets see... "save" guild wars by bankrupting the company that makes it...

Edited by Faer: Let's keep the political nonsense out of this discussion, please.

/unsigned

~the free rat~

The idea is nothing new. It's already implemented in a huge number of the simpler more grinding type mmorpgs, especially those from the east. From what can be seen, any increase in sales is minimal. People who can afford or who would buy, will still buy. Those who can't or won't, most likely still won't. And given the business model of GW, it's a very risky venture.

Maybe it isn't a decrease in the number of players. Maybe those players are going elsewhere in the world - there are 3 continents now after all. If the growth in the number of players is lower than the growth in the number of possible outposts they could visit, then it's inevitable that on average, you will start to see fewer people in each outpost. To get the outposts filling up more, more people need to buy the game to increase the population density. From there on, it becomes a balancing act for ANet. The number of people they can entice into buying the game with marketing campaigns versus the server traffic that they're capable of supporting. And as a side note, some places are still extremely busy. Kaineng Centre in Cantha is a place that in my experience is definitely not lacking in human traffic. Even during the quieter times my 2Mb connection and fast PC still have trouble handling it.

actually, i think Anet should make a "free expansion" for people.
This "free expansion" will be the joint bone in linking all the different chapters together.

In this way, all different chapters ONLY accounts can get together and play (eg. guild friends), have a common trading town for all chapters.

Fow / UW should also be in this place. Who the hell thought of making replications so many times in different chapters.

Like Zin Ku corridor... no one is around there. Does this mean that those who are Factions Only accounts will be penalised for it?
Not to mention, absolute almost zero favor for other countries. Eg. Korea, Taiwan, Japan.

I think they should change the name of those places to a legendary country name ( like ff online), this will keep politics off the game. and 100k migrating fee. (eg. 100k gold to change server from america to korea, 100k to change back).

I hve friends across different continents, still feel pissed off that i cannot play together with them in fow / uw. this will also allow the chance for other continents to get to otherwise *unaccessible* contents

What about an ASSISTANCE title?

Dunno how you could impliment it but the idea is players gain points towards the title for helping others in lower missions. What I mean is, if a level twenty is in a mission Anet worked out was for say a level 15, they can earn points towards the title.

Or maybe the game can store how many times you've completed a mission and for each extra time you earn points. The number of points earn equates to your character level and the mission you completed (otherwise level 20s would just sit doing the early missions over and over and earning points). If a level 20 did Ruins of Surmia They'd earn less points for helping in Ring of Fire. It would be better if only level 20s can earn this title because if you can earn it as you play through, you could have it by the time you yourself finish the game, leaving no incentive to return and help others. Maybe as an added bonus you earn something for each stage of the title. Maybe access to new areas, new weapons, money ... etc. A good incentive for people to earn the title.

Like I said, not sure how you could impliment it correctly, any other ideas?

The main point of this would be to fill up these dead areas again, and help those that have just got Prophs or Factions etc and are sat in a mission area looking at the prospect of having to do it with Henchies, which we all know is virtually impossible with some missions.

Anyway, if we can elaborate on this, help Anet come up with a way to get people back into these ghost areas without costing them money (apart from coding the ideas) then we shoud do it, I say.

I've been trying to persuade my housemate to buy guildwars, at first he was like 'Oh no, RPG no way' etc but I gave him 2 trial keys and he liked the game and said he was going to buy it. 'WAS'. He never bought it and hasnt done in ages. I guess some people dont like it as much as I do.

As for the free idea, heres a suggestion:

Make Prophecies free up to lions arch, and make RA + Zaishen arenas free. Also, these characters playing the game for free can join guilds, but cannot visit the GH/parcticipate in GVG, and can only have 2 character slots. It would be like half of the first game for free, then if they like it and want to continue, they can buy the game.

How about a free trial like WoW has? You just D/L the client use the free trial key and you get a 14 day trial with full access

Okay, so my idea wasn't new, or great and has many flaws, but fortunately this is not what this threads about.

Another great idea previously mentioned is to make an expansion that uses the three current continents.

There is a fear that a fourth continent will spread the game thin and possibly collapse it. So imagine the fourth chapter was an exceptionally long campaign (possibly with 2 new professions introduced) where you travel across all three current continents accessing new areas, towns and quests.

This would disadvantage those who don't have all the current campaigns, but they could realease box set deals or something.

If you want to fill towns, there's only one solution.

$14.95 monthly fee.

In subscription games, people feel forced to play the game. So they have their characters parked AFK in towns. This will severly increase the number of characters online, and cities will be fuller. You will of course have much less players overall, even less will be interested into helping you and even less will be doing stuff, but cities will be much fuller.

As the saying goes: Be careful what you wish for.

I believe since the only real chance for old campaigns to get new content is part of a purchase, but I do not think that an expansion is necessary. If they release a new chapter, couldn't they just add new content to existing chapters through that purchase? I'm just thinking of small things, like a few quests per town (based around the "new" evil doer), a few more bosses strewn about with elite captures, etc., etc. Maybe even a new mission or two. But this content would only be available if the player had the area's original campaign and the new half-expansion, half-new content chapter. It might have to cost a little more to cover the additional development, though.

I have thought of some of the restrictions that would get casual players to still play the game but get the ones who want more to buy it:

-No greens droppable or usable
-No elites cappable or unlockable
-No elite missions like uw, fow, urgoz, etc
-No other armors then the standard 1.5k ones
-Less storage slots and storage can only contain 100k, a char only 20k
-Instead of 8 char slots 4
-Chance to drop good stuff like golds or rare materials way lower

I think those things are acceptable as a casual player can play without greens, 15k armor and elites (althought thts a little unfair in pvp). Because of that they also need less money so they dont need many golds or rare materials to drop, and also dont need as much storage. Casual players also just play casually so they dont need many slots and they wont spend theyr time in fow or uw or elite missions or whatever.

PS: if anet would really introduce such a thing (wich i highly highly doubt) i must admit that id sell my copies of guild wars and play the free version as i am a casual player.

2 words : no way

green items are amazing for people who cant afford perfect items and elite missions are fun for the guild and a good way to test builds out

The only Way I see this Recitifed, or solved is a Title for side Quests. Many Side Quests make you end up in random outposts I did not even know Existed untill a month after I finished the game the first time (Beetlerun *whistles*)

Title for quests seems perfect.

How about this:

1. Figure out how to generate id numbers on a plastic card and sell those cards at Video Game stores (much like phone cards).
2. Figure out how to generate id numbers in the PlayNCstore, so people with out credit cards can buy extra GW stuff on-line.
3. Figure out how to add an "update" button to the character log-in screen.
4. Figure out how to sell new hair, faces, races, tattoos, underwear and other cosmetic items, and add them to the character using new "update" button.
5. Make the above items also available as gifts (give you son an extra slot for the holiday, give your girlfriend's necro underwear for Valentines).

A-net has never fully exploited the ability to sell in-game items, and our desire to buy them. We overloaded the On-line Store the first weekend out with just extra slot purchases, I've bought 4 myself. And I would pay another $9.99 just to get rid of that disgusting black underwear my necro is stuck with. Another $9.99 to give her more hair options.

These are things that we have been asking for since GW went live, but they have been so busy with "every six months", that they have ignored what we really want. CUSTOMIZATION!!!!!

So basically turn Guild Wars into a RuneScape-esque game which entices with a free version, and then makes you pay to get the full version (except not iva subscription this time).

Well I don't like it, one major reason will be that you will open the game up to more botters, seeing that I've already used the example let's look at free to play RuneScape, botters everywhere.

I think the Guild Wars no-monthly-fee model is already a brilliant one.

With Nightfall, the cost of new campaigns has already dropped from Prophecies and Factions (as it should, because all of the technology and engines are already built), which can only help to draw more people in (which has worked as a selling point when trying to get my friends to pick up Nightfall).

I like Nevin's idea of the free-trial, since people will be much more inclined to buy into a game if they know that they like it in advance.

I don't really see making a watered down free version having all that many benefits.

I think the best way to keep towns full is to continue adding new content. However, this is not the business model that ArenaNet has taken. They have instead opted to push full-steam ahead adding new content that does not overlap with old areas. It's a great and successful model. While we might reminisce about how Ascalon City was packed to the brim back in the day, the fact is that these areas are still available to us... it's not as though they are locked away. It's still possible to take friends and henches and relive the glory days... as for the majority of ArenaNet's energy - it's being devoted to pushing forwards and not looking back, and I'm certainly happy with that. Kamadan is today's Ascalon.

This thread is about collecting ideas to bring more players and life to the game, not bashing my first (which I've come to realise is silly) idea.

I really like Vandal2k6's idea, and it sounds relatively easy to impliment.

I had an idea to add to this...

Charities:

What about charities added to the game (their head quaters could be a new outposts on each map). When you join a charity you become a volenteer. This means that when you do a quest you can choose (tick a box on the 'hero' window or something) to 'act as volenteer'. With this selected you gain no xp and get no drops apart from the shared gold (well im not so sure about no drops, but anyway), instead you get x amount of 'charity points' for each enemy you kill, where x = the enemies level.

Now the important bit, you can only selct the volenteer option when you have at least 1 human player in your party who is not acting as a volenteer and they have to have an active quest or be on a mission. You can only change your volenteer status when in an outpost. You are only rewarded the 'charity points' when they complete the mission or quest (when it says 'completed' beside the quest name). If you play with other volenteers, charity points are shared.

Obviously as Vandal suggested, titles are rewarded. But this would also be a good opportunity to reward PvP unlocks at the charity head quaters.

People will love to help eachother!

What do you think of the idea?

I have not yet heard a convincing explanation for why past towns need to be repopulated. Clearly, people are not visiting those towns because they no longer have any business there. For instance, what is the purpose of encouraging people who are playing Nightfall to return to Tyria? Guild Wars is driven by new content, and the playerbase will obviously continue to migrate towards newer areas.

This game is already free of monthly fees, how do you expect them to fund the bandwidth and hardware to support an extreme influx of freeloaders? How does that make those who paid near or upwards of $150 dollars to play the game? How do you think the paying players will feel about freeloaders slowing down loading and refresh in every town?

No matter how many people can play, the vacancy of old areas woln't be truely resolved. The reason they are empty is because there are few incentives to return after missions, bonuses and masters have been completed. That massive influx of players would go through all the same steps, and than abandon those previous missions as well because they are finished with it. The issue here is the lack of repeatative rewards for goal oriented instances (missions). The obvious remedy is to add some rewards to repeating missions, like skill unlocks, plain monitary, or credits simular to accomidations and such.

Forums should require a logic test before allowing people to share their opinions in public.........

Guild Wars is a 'Pay'n'Forget' online game.
So thi idea is to turn it into a 'Bang for the bucks' game.

This would only get bandwith leechers that would only play for free and never buy the game.

Giving time-limited trial keys is better that that. Let them play the full game. Make tham have half-made characters... there... unfinished... waiting for a real key to be added.

If they like the game and are a possible source of cash that would kep this going on, they'll buy the games, if theye where just to try thiat and get bored, and they would only play for free... they won't.

This is what should be made:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...98#post2279798

Or at least make sure they can read.......

Yes that's right, read my first point again. What is written at the start?

For people who are only buying Phrophecies now, they will be put off Guild Wars as it will appear that "no-one plays it". I know plenty of late-comers in real life who just got bored, of which lack of help was a major contributing factor.

When I was playing Factions, it didn't seem like a multi-player game in parts at all.

Having players in all parts of the game will only be in it's (and Anet's) best interests.

Yep, that too sounds like a great idea. How or if Anet can impliment these ideas we don't know but if we can give them some ideas that they think they can use in some form, then great.

The other advantage of these ideas (and this is for Anet itself) is that there would be more incentive for people to BUY the earlier campaigns. I wonder how many people have thought "nar, not enough people play these to make it worth while". If they thought they'd be in a busy place, with plenty of help then maybe they'd change their mind. This equates to more money for minimal work for Anet.

Reading this thread though, I get the impression most people are out to put down any ideas given. Of course if an idea doesn't seem viable, then it should be mentioned, then either adapted or dropped and move on to another. I read this on the Anet official page today ...

So if some of you are sat there thinking "there's no point in these threads, Anet have their own team for this kinda thing" then think again. You just never know if they pick up on an idea WE come up with.

New players that join a game late will always be left behind. It won't matter if the towns themselves are brimming with people.

Let's say, hypothetically, that Chapter 4 actually takes place back in Tyria, using the exact same towns that exist. The only difference is that people who are doing Chapter 4 get different quests and missions - but again, leaving from the same existing towns. This doesn't actually help the new players at all. Sure, there are many people in town, but they aren't doing the same things the new players are doing.

Again, GW is driven by new content. Experienced players continue to move on to later areas, and there's simply no incentive for them to go back and do what new players are doing. Any solution you propose would necessarily be temporary. Say you create a "help" title that earns points for going back and redoing missions with people that hadn't done them yet. People might flock back to Tyria for a little while, but once they've maxed the title they will all return to doing what they were originally doing. And if the title isn't even maxable, very few people will care.

In my opinion, the GW game model simply doesn't allow for any solution to this problem. Older players will always be playing the new content, whereas people who came late to the party will always be left behind.

Ok topic poster if Guild Wars is dying as you say explain this:


The general trend of ncsofts stock is down, but notice how there has been a steady (if bumby) increase in stock value since the release of Nighfall, of this i would base that Guild Wars is actually one of NCSofts stronger selling points.

Also the reason for stock decrease is not the poor sales of Guild Wars, Guild Wars is in fact one of the really strong selling points. The reason for the general decrease in NCSofts stock is the on-going money sink and likely to be vapour ware "Tabula Rasa" and the complete sales failure of Auto Assault wich was expected to do well but didn't.

Also for the third quarter of 2006 NCSofts profit was $18.7 million wich is a 2 percent increase when compared to quarter 2. Now since most of NCSofts sales (and revenues) still come from Lineage and Lineage 2 (together making up for 71% of NCSofts Q3 sales) Guild Wars is responsible for 14% of NCSofts Q3 sales.
NCSoft actually upped it's projections for earnings over the full fiscal year of 2006 based on the Q3 figures.
Now since sales and subscriptions on City of Heroes and City of Villains have been on a steady decline since Q1 of this year already we can safely presume that the increased revenue wasn't generated there. Also Chronicle 5 of Lineage 2 released fairly recently but L2 sales decreased significantly for quite some except for the release of chronicle 5 in september (L2 sales went up 22% from the previous quarter).

Now lets look at Guild Wars:
~350K new accounts created in Q3 2006 though sales went down by 31% from Q2 these figures do however not include Nightfall as the first figures for that will not be known with certainty before Q4 of 2006 (it released 27th oktober so you'll have no figures before Q4).
But still 350K new accounts tells you one thing the amount of people playing guild wars increased and 31% sales loss can be exlained by the release of Factions before that quarter wich will have boosted the sales figure to well higher then normal amounts, therby explaining the sales drop and also that number is far less intresting than the number of new accounts for the purpose of establishing if guild wars is dying or not.

Having already established that Nightfall release was not included in the figures of Q3 and that nobody expects the sale of lineage 1 & 2 to pickup and Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa being a continued strain on NCSofts recources the fact they still upped their expected annual earnings must mean they expect Guild Wars Nightfall to do really really well.

Having reviewed the facts i would have to say the claim "Guild Wars is Dying" to be dodgy/faulty at best if not outright untrue.
I would presume the low amounts of people in tyrian and canthan towns to be due to them being in Elona or people having switched from PvE to PvP.

I have to side with something like Arcane said. Remember when they implimented Sorrow's Furnance into the Southern Shiverpeaks? That was a lot of fun. Still is in my opinion. With three campaigns out, I think they have a very solid foundation to build on, and should use that time to fill in the gaps of the maps. What I mean is, throughout all three campaigns, there is an enormous portion that still is unexplorable to us. I think they should create more zones to fill in those spots.

Now, that's not to say create more towns, outposts, ect...that would just spread the playerbase even thinner. I'd like to see something like Sorrow's Furnance go up again, another zone with some side quests to a smaller, sub-plot that lets us learn more about the races then we knew before. Just like we learned more in-dept with the Deldrimor Dwarves in the moutains.

I don't think a new continent would be a good idea for the fourth chapter. I think Anet should work more with what they have first. Just my opinion though.

Again, it doesn't matter how many people are in a given town if they are all doing different things. Even if all 4 chapters of GW took place on the same continent, the newer players would be stuck doing their newbie content, and the veteran players would be playing the new content. It wouldn't matter whether they were all crammed into the same town or spread over 300 towns - they're all doing different things, so there is no player interaction between them.