A.net and modders

One simple question, could A.net cooperate with modders?

Many games have an active modder community, and recently even in GW some players have created a textmod that allows to change textures for armors maps and so on, although those changes are visible only on the client that uses texmod.

Anyway, those modders proved they're able to improve or anyway change some graphical features of the game.


The idea came to me when I posted in the glitch thread the bug I found when I bought a male monk vabbian armor, that is this:



Well, I'm not expert in computer graphic, so I don't know if this is something related to inherent limitation of the graphic engine, or simply a bugged texture.

In the latter case, I think that A.net will never correct those glitches.

Probably they committed the work to some developers, those devs delivered the product with some bugs here and there, and now A.net is employing them on other activities, like the developing of GW2.

A.net will probably address some extremely serious bugs in the existing games, but they will never come back and correct some minor glitches.
I can understand this, developers are a high cost and they want to spend resources only on the future games, which is understandable from a business perspective.

But here the community of modders could give a great help.
A.net could receive and test some graphic improvements from modders, and incorporate them in the game.

They could also make modding contests, which would be much better than the "design a weapon" ones.



Probably it's possible to have also other ideas about the advantage of an active community of modders, but a main final question rises:

Is A.net really interested in supporting the existing games, even with the help of active players and modders?
Or do they want their playerbase to lose any interest in the current games, forget them and concentrate only on GW2?

Interesting thoughts. There are a lot of armours with bugs, and if modders fix them it would be great if the devs applied these texture changes in game...

sounds like a great idea.

but most of us know that A.net will say know or better yet totaly ignore this

That screenshot is really small, and it's hard to see what glitch you are referring to, since I'm not too familiar with that set. I would suggest a larger image.

I haven't seen any glitches in armors that are due to textures alone. More often than not, it's an issue of clipping - which is 3D, and not something texmod and photoshop can solve for you. I'd love to see some examples of "before" and "after" that were already taken care of by modders, however. It may give everyone a better idea of exactly what they're discussing.

Also:

Is that really necessary? If you are losing interest in the current game, I can make a pretty safe guess that the reason is larger than minor graphical glitches. All this negativity I'm hearing lately about Anet "ignoring," "forgetting," or "abandoning" the current game is really unfounded.

its not unfounded it is the fact that gw could be soo much better if a little work and a few minor upgrades like a hair stylist and updating old skills and a market place, making HOM account based instead of ch and updating old arenas and areas to be eather have use again or to bring up to the standard of the other games like adding inscriptions to tyrian weapons would be awesome and if these changes were made i for one think a lot more of the fan base would play (note it was just a list of things that i see in these forms as thing that could be changed.)

and you'll be a lot better if you learn to use punctuation. at least, more understandable.

You listing things that you think would improve the current game doesn't change the fact that your previous question was unfounded, sorry. Unfounded means it has little to no fact to it. "Do they want the playerbase to lose interest?" was a pretty silly and unnecessary thing to drag into this discussion.

Anyway, how about that larger screenshots and some before and afters?

the legs are whats bugged.

I thought as much too, but I'd prefer to actually see that in detail. And if it is a matter of 3D clipping, as I suspect, I'd really like to know how any modder is going to go about fixing it.

That is correct. I've not seen a straight up texture issue yet; they all involve more than simple "skins."

I agree. Here's a bit I thought I'd share on this: Some of us have been playing Guild Wars for a long, long time. For many, we've been playing this game longer than any other game we've ever owned; sometimes by a factor of 1000% or more. Over time, the small stuff may get magnified in your mind and you may get irritated with exceptionally small matters. For despite how it may seem to you, in the overall scope of things a graphical glitch in a piece of armor really is a small matter. Does it affect gameplay? No. Does it influence balance? No again. Does it affect your ability to achieve all that you can achieve in the game? Absolutely not.

I would say that sometimes, it's not a bad idea to make a change. Go back to one of the older campaigns, or start a new character, or tackle Hard Mode, or set a new goal in the form of a title, the acquisition of a new armor set, the completion of a collection of items. And sometimes, it's not a bad idea to even take a break, if that's right for you.

Guild Wars is a game that you can play for a while, then set aside, then come back to later. You aren't paying a monthly fee, and you know we'll still be here, waiting for you, when you want to come back. Some players have shared with me that they stopped playing completely, feeling they'd only come back for a holiday, but when they came back to the holiday event, they found they really craved playing again, and their enthusiasm for the game was recharged. Sometimes they step away to play another game, and come back, with interest renewed.

When people say "This problem is going to drive me away from the game," obviously we are (I am) concerned. That's not a good thing. But we really do have to look at the overall picture, and consider how easily and how practically we can address one person's pet peeve, another person's must-be-fixed, and a third person's issue that no other player has felt was even worth noting. I ask you to do a little self appraisal, and consider the big picture, as we must. I hope that you can trust us to fairly appraise player concerns, to take care of those things that are major, and to do our best to handle non-critical concerns, too. However, when we determine that something as a matter into which we should not and cannot invest time, I do hope that you'll understand that this is the way it has to be, for the good of the game and the health of the franchise.

I think Community Relations Manager is one who relays information from and to the developers and one who builds a relationship with the community...so that doesn't necessarily mean reporting bug problems and graphical errors...


It's like a blender. You don't necessarily use it to blend stuff all the time. You can dice and slice and whatever else blenders do...

I have a feeling that that's a bad analogy...

Well, this is the point I wanted to be discussed.

Everyone is well aware that A.net is as quickest as possible to address major bugs and balance issues, as well as providing events and fun suprises to the playerbase.

Of course for budget problems, it's impossible to address every single minor glitch in game. This would require an amount of effort from A.net resources, which is not economically sustainable.

And this is the reason of my proposal.

So far, A.net approach has been more or less this:

"This is our game, we put a lot of effort in it, and we'll do what is possible with our resources to improve things that we deem necessary. This is the best we can do, don't ask us for something we can't reasonably do."


I would like to know is A.net could change this paradigm, and open to the community of gamers and modders to address for example some minor bugs or glitches, on which A.net cannot invest resources for economical reasons that everyone understands.

It's a significant change.
Could this change of approach be viable and compatible with A.net policies and business model?
This is the main question.

And this question is strictly related to the future of GW1.
In my opinion, the community could give a significant contribution to support the current games, leaving A.net free to use their resources on other new (and profitable) projects.

And this is the meaning of the conclusion of my opening post, to know if A.net is interested in having a supportive community for GW1, or they consider this possibility as something to be avoided, because they want their playerbase to move on other products.

Here it is:





It's a glitch that happens when you switch from close to distance view. I'm not an expert, but I think the game uses a different set of textures, and with the distance view you have some holes in the trousers.
Well I think it's a pity that such beautifully designed set shows this flaw that even cheaper and ugly sets don't have.

Anyway, if you check the bug thread, there are many other minor issues found by players, and I don't think that A.net is willing to put their own resources to work on those minor and not critical problems.

This glitch is very insignificant considered alone, but when I found several others in the bug thread, I started thinking if there could be a different approach from A.net to address such minor issues.


I'm a rather casual player, but I've been playing since release and still I think I have done only a minimal part of what GW1 offers.
This game still has a huge content to me. That's why I would like to see it supported in the future.
My opinion (as I explained in my answer to G. Gray) is that the community could play a significant role in helping A.net to support the current GW1 games.
Of course, if A.net is interested in this and doesn't see it as a potential "threat" for the success of their future products.

How do you propose to fix 3D clipping, however? Do you really expect to get your hands on Anet's models or source files? There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that this will happen - this isn't an open-source game by any means, and I personally don't want it to go in that direction. The community is very large, and Anet certainly won't have the resources to check all contributions for quality, test them, and find the time to implement something if it will truly work. It's not as simple as a community member making a fix and Anet going "Great, we'll take it!"

You present the case for modders, but you still haven't explained to me how exactly they are going to tackle 3D issues.

well i for one think its sad on anets part that they haven't fixed all of the 3d clipping by now. its been what 2+ years sense the game came out and theres still this kind of bug in there game.

There are worse clipping problems in WoW.

Well I'm not expert in this subject ... is the problem I showed 3D clipping or bugged texture? Consider that this (and others I've seen like hair disappearing for some warrior hairstyles) are visible when you switch from close view to distance view.
Would like a clarification about this.

Nice to see that some players feel themselves entitled to speak on behalf of A.net ... well it's a RPG anyway, so everyone is free to choose his own role

It's 3D clipping, not 2D texture related.

Players never get tired of playing the same game over and over again of the likes of StarFleet/Klingon Academy,StarFleet Command 1 in single player,StarFleet Command 2 Empires at War/Orion Pirates as well as StarFleetCommand 3.Then there is Armanda, Elite Force and Bridge Commander.Why do you ask is that no new trek game is slated untill 2009 or 10 if Star Trek Online does come out if scheduled.There were some other that were console and one by Bethsedasoftworks was flop being ported over to PC.The big reason these games live on is because of the great modding communties behind them.

What GW need sometime is an injection of new blood maybe some new scripts that make the game what it is.What about Anet and the modder though would you let the game be modded like RTS games?What makes GW so dry is that having more than 1 char going through the game more than once is pretty tiring or those thatare rerolling.It would be nice to have more than say one story line.

GW is currently a relatively hack-proof game. Opening it up to modders would be akin to cracking the lid of pandoras box. Yes most modders would not take advantage of the oportunity but some would and it would be difficult for Anet to go over every little proposed mod in detail before approving or denying it.

If new toons, titles, builds, pvp, mission, quests, dungeons, elite zones and just hanging with friends is not enough for you to stay interested in GW maybe it really is time to walk away, for a short while, and let yourself explore some other game or activity. Then come back and see just how much this game contains after youve forgten the exact location of every boss, the perfect skill to kill him and where to go to find that next quest.

Games like GW are the rare example of when forgetfullness is a great means of increasing enjoyment.

Unless GW introduces something like the Ryzom Ring, I don't see modders doing anything successful with it. And frankly, modding communities have a ton more crap in them than something well done and beautiful. I'd rather GW not be tarnished with that crap at all.