Way of the Celestial Dragon

Let's set the scene; a small island off of mainland Cantha. There resides a seven level pagoda - let's call it the Temple of the Celestial Dragon (and a "thank you", Bruce).

And the purpose of said Temple? To pit your character against others in a comp controlled pvp; one on one elimination in order to prove your character the best (or luckiest) and get to a unique, end chest reward. Perhaps here you could get a random celestial minipet from the total collection of twelve. On top maybe a perfect, inscribable celestial weapon or shield. I'd probably also have a unique outpost where you have a few perks, maybe lockpicks / fireworks at a discount or the chance to have a Suun's outfit. Maybe an everlasting Suun summoning stone that summons a kick-ass assassin.

This is how I would envisage it:

An entry cost of one, gold zoin. Each level has half the number of combatants as the previous, lower level. So for seven levels we have:

Level ---------- Fighters ---------- Winners
7 2 1
6 4 2
5 8 4
4 16 8
3 32 16
2 64 32
1 128 64

You create whatever build you want, runes, weapons, armor, etc and then your character gets put into a pool of other characters and the servers select batches of 128 (perhaps a few are old friends, like Togo or Mhenlo, Suun, et al). These are then pitted against each other but the servers resolve the battle, you don't actually fight. Some will perhaps hate this aspect but I like it. We already have pvp in the game. Let's have something a little different - another facet. The computer controls you - just like the doppelganger. So the servers play through each of the seven rounds, resolving all the fights until one character remains the victorious champion.

Maybe here we could be a bit more creative. Say you want to use a 55 monk. You could define some meta rules (perhaps) like "prioritise protective spirit above all else". Don't use skill three unless you've used skill one. Maybe this is too complicated and tantamount to asking for a full-blown API (application programmer's interface). Maybe keep it simple and let ANet's Doppleganger code handle it all (I pity the fool that puts down a bunch of redundant spirits or useless enchants, I pity that fool!).

Perhaps the battles are stored for a period of time, maybe a week and you can watch these tournaments and see how your character got on, what builds are more resilient and effective against everything else. We could have some fun here, maybe Dhuum would be the referee, saying "fight!" at the beginning of each battle. Maybe Norgu or Shing Jea Sam does the commentary, "Are you reeeeaaaaaddddyyy to Rumble?!". Get Luke Yeoryios in on this for some outstanding and creative design. Gwen in a skimpy outfit holding up score cards - are you feeling it yet?

It's like Axelrod's Prisoner's Dilemma (a book about strategies being pitted against each other in a simple game, feel free to look it up).

I think it would be a great addition to the game. Pay a gold zoin, come back the next morning after ANet has resolved the tournament and log on and watch your character in action and see where it all went wrong

Let me get this right: A single-player pvp format that's not really even pvp?
Would you face any other players other than yourself?

/notsigned
-First off, this sounds like the Norn Championship Tournament on an extremely bloated scale.
-Secondly, despite this arena's unpredictability, who's to say it wouldn't become farm-able using a few standard meta builds(and inflate the games economy moreso than it already is?)?
For farming, see: SPIRITSPAMSPIRITSPAMSPIRITSPAM+Enchantment removal+Cripple.
-Thirdly, I wouldn't mind the AI controlling characters, but your not doing any work besides loading a meta-build, or at least a build that would've became the next "highest-probability to win in this arena" build (see below for expansion on this)
-Fourthly, is it even worth the time and effort of the rewards? Oh wait, no time OR effort is really put into this. You sit back and do nothing for a while (even if you obs matches, it'll be a waste of time if the only thing that went wrong was the AI reaction time). We might as well be playing Travian, or something of the like (where simply waiting progresses the game)
-Fifthly, I hardly agree with the rewards. Regarding the discounted items, NPC items should ALWAYS be at a fixed price: Creating random outposts with cheaper items than normal will hurt the game as a whole over time by allowing players to purchase cheaper items from one store and selling to a player population for more. These things are meant to be obtained by PLAYING THE GAME. Not WATCHING IT (or by spamming BUYBUYBUYBUY at merchant, and going to an earlier outpost going, WTSWTSWTSWTSWTSWTS)
-Lastly, the only point I agree slightly with you: Celestial Minipets. I doubt GW will last a full 12 years (maybe even 13 :P as there were originally 13 signs of the zodiac), to present all the miniature forms. It'd be nice if they found a quick way to implement them, but this idea of yours is far too massive.

Even IF there are players who are put up against yourself, in the end, it will just become a format of pvp where only a few builds dominate all. (since all you're doing is manipulating the AI and you're more concerned about the normally-PvE foes you'd be facing. You're not taking into account positioning/movement, reaction time, skill usage (even by giving the AI a general set of guidelines, who's not to say you'll place those spirits in a Fire Storm?),etc...

In the end this attempted "PvP" format will just become another PvE-garbage farm to help others who can't get money do it by means of simply being lazy: Gold Z-Coin+Farming build= bots with spam entry=
IMMA GONNA BE RICH MAN NOW!!!.

Most of PvE already entails standing there while the AI facerolls for you. Do we really need another useless derivative of this?

I see no appeal in sitting there while the computer controls your character for you. Too much would need to be implemented for something so completely pointless...

Interesting format if it was:
A) You actually played the character
B) You faced human opponents.

The way you have it set up now it only serves as a money generator mixed with a format for testing gimmick builds vs. various meta builds.

The only reason anymore in the game to not be financially well off is spending all your money on z-keys, lockpicks, and maybe cap sigs if you haven't maxed out on those yet.

/notsigned and someone close this thread, it makes my head hurt to contemplate it.

MAKE THIS PvP AND YOU HAVE SOMETHING GOOD!!!!

Ya, PvP would make it better. I'm in favor of it, and would like to see something that's like this. But the rewards may need to be reworked and there should be skill restrictions. (To stop meta builds from being used, something like the codex )

It'd be better to have something like the Norn Fighting Tournament,but where you control 2 heroes (with a few varied preset builds per class) and fight against waves of random enemies (like Zaishen Challenge, only not as gimmicky). As the waves go on you recieve random debuffs (like -20 armour vs physical or elemental) that change per wave and/or your opposition revives moral boost stat increasements Number of waves you survive the more lewts you get.

That said this is all highly unnecessary and I don't see the point in wasting resources on it. I was just pointing out ways to stop your idea sucking.

It sounds like botting :/

Although it would require a lot of resources , I'd rather have resources wasted on a thing similar to this than on costumes or useless HM quests giving 50k xp though....

Idea in itself is correct , but a few things make it terrible :
- Gold zcoin entry : after a few days , there will be noone joining...
- IA controlling : why not , but considering the way Heroes and mobs react , fights would just turn into pure luck ( " WTF , he doesn't cancel frenzy " , " WTS hedoesn't use divine intervention " , etc.....)
- obvious imbalances : melee vs casters ftl... We got to the finals , arg i am warrior he is bsurger , gg.....


If i could say something , implementing Hero Battles back would be easier...

That is the appeal. It brings yet another facet to the game. We have PvE, we have PvP. This is something a little different from both. You don't have to like it, 80% of players don't have to like it. If the player base is in the millions and 10% .. 20% of people like to occasionally spend the odd, gold coin and enter, could that still not make the idea a success?

So what? It's whatever build you care to enter against everyone else's choice of build. It is not the same, fixed set of builds that you get pitched against over and over as in the Norn Tournament. Furthermore you are not controlling your character, as you have to in the Norn Tournament, so please don't compare it too closely with the Norn Tournament.

Do you really believe this? I take your point that a select few builds might dominate and you're absolutely right that spiritspam could well become one of them. Quick solution to that is to use pvp version of spirit cast times. You want your shadowsong or disenchantment down, feel free but get ready for that 3..5 second cast time (whatever it is). Surely we have enough interrupts to cause some problems for such builds. Let's say you are right though, and from my own experience in Guild Wars I bet you are. We all know the power of the ridiculous perma sin nonsense that split the community or the absurdity of SoS farming builds. Let's say one or a few builds completely dominated the temple. First off, everyone can use them if they so choose. So my spirit spammer is now going up against yours. You won't make a fortune farming this because everyone will very quickly jump on the gimmicky build bandwagon. One hundred people using the same few builds vs a few mavericks that try and be original; you're still looking at one chance in over a hundred to win.

Finally, if this were to be the case then surely that is a problem for ANet. It shows their weakness in skill balancing / class balancing and maybe they should use something like this as part of the development process. Maybe they should consider employing some experts in A.I. and artificial biology. Maybe they don't really care because they still manage to create a fun game, in spite of the imperfections between the classes. Maybe it doesn't really matter that much and it can still be fun.

Based on the low chance of winning, does it matter that there is not much work there. You do need to pay an entry cost. It would be so easy to limit entry to one time per day per account.

Oh I am so sorry for introducing another idea into the game. Mate, it's almost like a lottery, buy your ticket, enter your build and see what happens. Why you need to be so heavy in your detailed hatchet job of my idea strikes me as unnecessary.

That is fine, no problem with your criticism there. I was just throwing some ideas out there. I have no problem with having to pay full price for lockpicks, anything else. I was just making a set of suggestions for possible prizes. I don't need my idea to be accepted in whole and fully accept any tweaks, recommendations and criticisms.

Far too massive? Why use this as an argument? Who cares how massive it is (if it even is massive). It's an idea. I'm sure if they can introduce holiday quests (snowball dominance) they could sit down and implement this without any real problem.

Then maybe they need to take another look at their A.I. or maybe not. It's not a heavy duty, let's all sneer at the pseudo pvp format idea. It was supposed to be a light-hearted, spend a gold zoin, enter a build, lottery. If the prizes were disproportionate to the effort involved then it's so easy to rebalance them. Instead of getting the celestial minipet have a 5% chance of getting it. Let's say all winners do get one. The market will soon adjust to being flooded with celestials. Does it really matter that much? Plus, the computer is controlling _both_ of us. I no longer have the unfair advantage as you do against the doppelganger. I can't manipulate the A.I. because you can also do the same.

A PvE garbage farm?. We've covered that now, tnx. You won't make a fortune from this, I've explained that above. I never set out to try and find a way of making a quick buck from this. What I did do is try and introduce something original into the game. Surely Guild Wars was / is crying out for new ideas.

I'm gonna be a rich man now!!! Really? As soon as you see a bandwagon it's already too late to get on. If this did prove to be some kind of farming nirvana don't you think everyone would pile in? Whatever prize you got out would soon crash to zero in value.

All the ideas I put in. Norgu on mic with "ready to rumble", Gwen in a skimpy outfit holding up score cards, possible celestial minipets as a reward, whole new angle for a light hearted fighting system, cool name for the temple and you come along and distill from that, that I somehow hope to introduce a get rich quick scheme and become a rich man as a result.

Could it not be the case that I love the game and just wish to see it become so much better than it is?

Your move

Why thank you :P I guess I'll take the stand...

10-20% is a nice, small change. It could potentially divert a lot of traffic from SC outposts (see ToA, DoA). Unfortunately, the player base is about 1-2 million and it can be projected that the population becoming more-than halved at the release of GW2 (for obvious reasons), taking that person count down to ~750k players range. That reduces your projected ~10-20% to a measly x<20000 players (about how much you get MAX on a crappy F2P Chinese/Korean MMO). Counting on that each of these players plays in a different time-zone, you'd probably end up with an outpost filled with the amount of players in CA, American - English District 1 on a non-Z-mission day (See ToPK AED1 for a PvE comparison). ToPK has completely gone out the window (Ecto farm nerf as well as crappy greens). CA is mostly a joke, an *occasional* challenge to the well-rounded PvP player, as well as the only way ANet could replace TA in a still semi-competent format (if that).

My point is, if it only sees the *occasional* success as the above areas, it would hardly be worth the time and energy being put into. ANet should build things the community as a whole wishes to have. However, I'm not calling this idea completely obsolete. If after the release of GW2 (when community-requested content may be the only updates ever done in GW again), the community begs/spams email requests/posts on every forum board on every guild-wars forum for this idea to happen, then maybe it would be worth putting it in. Until then, ANet needs to feed to keep the larger population going (sadly, as smaller causes are usually the only ones worth fighting for).


People don't play to lose. NPC's in this tournament such as Togo, Suun would generally have to run the same builds for ANet's convenience. I have nothing against controlling your own character (I was a big fan of that one Megaman: Battle Network game where all you do is choose chips and let the AI do work for you), but unfortunately, the "same, fixed set" builds have the highest probability of winning. Maverick builds can generally counter 1-2 of these "same, fixed set" builds, but over-specialization on anti-meta will ultimately result in failure as they will fall short where metas are stronger.



See the first sentence in the above response.

Showing weakness in skill balancing? OH NOEZ. You wouldn't be the first. Most of the population ignores it/doesn't care for it, as it can be more exploited and used as an advantage than stopped being used altogether. Making AI output more efficient could also require the use of a different game engine as well, so if you're not satisfied, go find another game.

Yes. It still can be fun. But is it worth the fun? (Will you make a profit? Will you make new friends?......)



Yeah, paying an entry cost would be nothing to older/more-experienced players. Limiting entry would annoy players who want to experiment with builds, and make this whole idea see very little traffic... also, I need to state it again: People don't play to lose.


I strike you down because I find it un-epic to my tastes as well as un-original due to its similarities of pre-existing ideas found in games I have already played as well as this game in itself. Some of those pre-existing ideas I found were great, and should be carried on in other games. Unfortunately, some of those great ideas are of select taste and were in very unpopular games. At the moment, I am generally trying to stand from my understanding of what could be most "improving" of the community at the moment. I don't find your idea very "improving" of the community, as it limits human-human interaction (axed by ANet with 7 heroes; Embark was the ironic implement that came with it. (You can play by yourself now! Oh and that update that we should have implemented before we ever invented heroes is here too!). No community growth can be seen through your idea (unless the general population likes to send PM's to the foes they obs'd saying: GG); your idea is mostly a boon to the economic side of GW.



Okay. Cool.



Yeah... but Snowball Dominance is that small event that comes once every so often that makes players want to play GW again. What your suggesting is a non-occasional, permanently-standing idea. If it's going to last forever, make it an idea that'll do the same.


Light-hearted? Uhuh. This idea, like all ideas, is quickly made heavy-hearted by a troll (hang out in the PvP outposts more often... you'll get quite a few of those...).
I don't really mind the rewards, now that you made it more reasonable, nor do I mind the AI.... but having to face your own build (while both characters are controlled by AI) and losing would be pretty stupid...

Yeah, and if were not making a quick buck, how do you expect this to improve the game? It's definitely NOT community-oriented (AI vs. AI). Surely it has to improve the economy in some fashion or another? (at least Oppressor weapons helped boost the economy somewhat with the release of WiK).

Like I was mentioning with original ideas earlier, I've seen this idea in other games before. Other somewhat-unpopular games.


Yep. See Ecto farming.

ANet would have to re-hire to get new vocals in the game (going back to Blacklight Studios and re-recording for a lot of money, if they want the same voice actors). Generally, you would get all the voice-recording work done BEFORE the release of a game.

The idea sounds cool how you epic-ize other heroes. But just isn't needed. Heroes already speak by coming with cool quotes from great literature/TV shows/movies that's fun to relate with (if you've seen them), and all of their quotes come from something worth reading/seeing/listening to (oh and in cutscenes as well). Their armor is pretty nice, and they speak quite often, which can give somewhat a feeling of them being "there" in one's own adventure.

I radicalized your idea because everything dwindles (at end-game) to "how can I make a profit" extremely fast?(especially now with HoM) Even most well-experienced players do until they have enough money to purchase all the content in the game. What you're suggesting, then, is an idea for peeps who have seen/purchased all content in the game and are tired of the game due to overplaying (something that they can just casually chillax on).

I'm sorry to shoot you down, but everyone has to love the game; not just a few individuals here and there.

OK, I'll take another shot at you, if I may:

This would not have taken anyone out of anywhere. It was just a quick "pop into the outpost, submit your payment and your build and then wait for the server to resolve your battle". Few minutes of work and then back you go to DoA, ToA, whatever else it is you wish to do. Plus, if this is distracting a lot of people from these outposts to come play at the temple is that not a sign that they would prefer it? What kind of argument is that?

You can't please all the people, all the time. We could easily keep the majority of the community going by giving them a stream of ideas, some of which were not wildly popular by still enjoyed by a reasonable, niche subset of players. I don't think we should shoot an idea down based on the effort to implement it because we don't really know how much effort that would take. Leave that side of the argument out because it's out of our hands.

Sure, but if we all play safe and use the most robust build then we end up with 1 chance in 128 of winning. If the initial cost is reasonable (and what are we spending our zoins on these days, I've got 4 equipment packs already) then it's basically a lottery with a decent prize at the end. What about all those runs people did in order to have a remote chance of a minipet polar bear. People will endure ridiculous grinding in order to get a rare minipet. My idea requires little input, is something a little different (surely that can only be a good thing?) and you might win a decent prize at the end (that even you like the sound of )

I thought that was your observation. You concluded that a few, gimmicky builds would dominate. I agreed that yes, this might well be the case but said it didn't really matter because it was a basically a light hearted lottery.

I introduced the "one run per day" rule to counter your claim that it would turn into a get rich scheme. the whole "farming, get rich scheme" is invalid anyway because you can easily set the initial cost and the chance of winning to balance the prize at the end (and the market will do so anyway).

Come on, let's be having you. Get onboard with it. You liked it in Megaman and found some of those pre-exisiting ideas in other games great. Come on, this isn't in Guild Wars yet. Sure, Norn arena is kind of the same but this is different enough to make it worthy of inclusion. You shot it down originally because you were having a bad day; girlfriend problems, whatever, I understand. Now maybe you need to stick to your guns because your ego is on the line. Let's stop these silly arguments and pedantic details. Come on, live dangerously, get onboard with it. Let's get this bad boy implemented and then go from there, kick some more ideas around. Let's put out a war cry and turn Guild Wars around from the rather tired game it's become. To hell with helping the community and the needs of the community. Help the community by becoming a lone wolf, trust your emotions, walk on the wild side.

GW's community has gone down the drain since NF. It's as much as a single-player game as it ever will be, and the few multi-player functions left are usually in the hands of over-zealous elitists who like to know other players have a sense of what they are doing.

An AI vs. AI arena will be a virtual dump and great for laughs. Does the idea sound cool? Kind of. Improving/Moving the game in a new direction? Not really. Practical? Absolutely not.

...My conclusion on those ideas from other games, which ultimately define your idea:
Did I find them addicting? Yes.
Did I find them fun? 50% of the time.
Did I find them good? No.

OK, thanks for taking the time to get back to me with your thoughts.

If a thread doesn't exist yet, why don't we create one about where we feel it went wrong in Guild Wars and whether GW2 was a good idea and necessary or if ANet perhaps could have / should have stuck with GW and evolved it rather than abandoning it in favour of a sequel.

I have some opinions on this and would love to share them with you and the rest of the community so why don't we have a sensible debate about it?

If no one else wants to take the plunge I'll start another post soonish but would rather someone else did cos everything I start seems to get shot down in flames

Designing builds to have them be run by an AI and pitted against other AI builds sounds really lame to me. If you removed the AI and put players in there instead, you'd have a 1v1 arena, which has no merit in this game to begin with. Additionally, with all of the AI commands you're asking to have available, you're essentially asking for an even stronger control over the AI than is currently available to players through heroes. With the more advanced your control over your AI gets, the more sense it makes to just put a player in that position instead of the AI.