Taking one for the community.

According to ArenaNets business plan it's one expansion pack every 6th month. We apparently only got factions so late because of more people were being needed on seperate teams.

So it also has been talked about that Factions was made by a bunch of new guys and a new team, and Chapter 3 is being made by the "core" GW team.


Wouldn't it be awesome if, after Chapter 3 was released by the end of this year, ArenaNet would dedicate one entire year to fixing the mediocre aspects of GW, Factions and chapter 3. 2007 Will offer tons of new technology like Vista and DirectX10.

Making a game with one year of development, is simply insane. Most good games take at least 3-4 years these days. Shouldn't ArenaNet slow down or change to a different business model, because I think GW needs more and better trading, end game content, loot, grouping and social mechanics.

Honestly I think they should go back and re-write the entire story. So many people think GW(from my own perspective) is a joke because it's being marked as an RPG and yet it has a story weaker than Pokemon:-D


Dont you think so? so instead of releasing small expenssive updates upon failure upon failure they should combine the factions and core GW team to sorely dedicate a year or something to fix the serious problems, and then go back and make GW.???

WRONG

we got Factions so late because they cant make one year of development in a shorter time.

the 6 month release is done by staggered teams.

Factions was started on release of GW and took 1 year with release on the 1 year anniversary.

chapter 3 was started oct/nov of 05 and will be out in oct/nov 06 WITH A FULL YEAR OF DEVELOPMENT.

with the release of Factions the other team has started work on chapter 4 with a 2nd anniversary release date of April 28 07 with 1 full year of work.

get it now?

The game doesnt take 3-4 years because the graphics engine, AI, animation, etc are already created.

All thats being made is new models/textures/quests/maps.

I dont think going back and rewriting the story is a smart thing to do.

It would effectively kill what story there is. You cant make a revision so easily on something you already built on top of. The best they can do is make expansions with better storylines.

They aren't making a game in a year - the core engine is already made. They are taking a year to add content, create new stories, quests, maps, skills etc. That seems perfectly doable in a year - however they probably need to call the expansions, because as a standalone game, Factions doesn't deliver the same quanity that Phrophices and really - its all high end content, which suggests the intent is that one has Phrophices as well.

That's not quite right either.

We got Factions late because they took time out to do Sorrow's Furnace.

We probably would have gotten Factions that Christmas.

anet should...
1: fire their skill designer from faction. They were 90% clueless.
2: remove politics from the PvE. let pvp fuel its own ego in other ways.
3: learn to put traders in place to regulate the market. ( ie mod merchants. )
4: fix all the aoe skills that are effected by trigger to be more a burst dmg effect or lower enegy cost. some skills are just a 25energy enemy run button.
(ie fire,and smites. )

5: nerf the ritualist. anything that can be a bonder, healer, heavy spiker and tank in one is to powerful. i have a ritualist and even playing as one I say they are to over powered.

they shouldslow down if all those games are gonna be like factions, cause then they get pretty boring, and quickly, so they should take their time and make a good one, that's for sure!

You sure? I had heard that the Sorrow's Furnace maps were done 6 months or so before they were actually released; but were delayed so they could tie in their release to DirectSong. Of course that could be incorrect info, but I've heard it from many people.

I agree with the OP that they should have one team combined, and take the time to make a game right. Obviously Factions has many more complaints attached to it than Chapter 1 did, because of the short development time of Factions.

sorry but wrong as SF had notning to do with it.

GAILE GRAY

I have to agree that going back and fixing some more core issues with the game should be more of a priority before, during, after ch. 3 (any issues with prophecies should not be ignored either.. storage, economy for example).. I really am dissapointed with several aspects of GW which could have been improved on, but are taking a very long time which MANY other games have solved without needing 2 expansions to get it done. Not that the game is bad, it's just that there is always room for improvement. Hopefully Anet will fix some issues that were even present in prophecies because the longer it takes, the less people will put up with waiting.

With 1 year of development, they can do a lot, but I think the factions team really should have been working with the prophecies team closer because it looks like factions dissapoints with bugs that should have already been avoided from prophecies bugs.

I agree with you on the need for more end-game content. There should be more areas specifically for experienced lvl 20 players. There should also be better drops in areas like that to actually encourage people to go there.

And the story lines are rather weak. The story lines are rather clumsy and there are some spots that seem like there was something left out. Sometimes it feels like I'm reading a sentence where the author forgot to include the verb; there are just some spots where it seems like something is missing.

Hopefully, Chapter 3 will be better since it will be developed by the same team that did Prophecies.

I think Arena Net should take as long on Campaign Three as is needed for it to be done. Don't feel obligated to deliver a game every six months. Us gamers are willing to cut a company a lot of slack for missed release dates as long as the end product is spectacular. What we are not so fond of is rushed games full of significant design and implementation problems. As you can see from the feedback on GWF, your standard to beat is not any other game like Oblivion or WoW. Your standard is Prophecies. That is the level of quality we have come to expect from Arena Net.

Every 6th months is needed to keep my attention, as well as the attention of most of the community.

If they took another year off to "Update" or whatever you are complaining about...I would probably get bored and quit playing....If I came back or not would depend on what I found to do with my time.

(And standard development time is more like 9 months, they hire so many people they can make a game much quicker now...unless you are talking about in-depth games or games with long betas [betas are usually reserved for games that will be recieving a lot of updates ie WoW or GW. These games usually work on a 2 year cycle...but 1 year with twice as many people would yield better results {Technology is still new by time the game is released}])

I don't believe they ever gave us a reason why it was 1 year before the second chapter.

But I know its been in their business plan ever since I can remember, 1 year until the second chapter, and then a new chapter every 6 months.

Prophecies held me for a year.
Factions is losing me after one month.
I doubt I'll be around for C3 simply because of all the bugs that will never be fixed.

In the meantime, I'll try to make the best of what I paid for.
My advice to A.Net?
Take your time.
Hire a writer.
Beta test and debug BEFORE you try to sell your game.
Add some simple yet overdue features that are essential before throwing new things at us.

<sarcasm>I so love the amount of programmers on these forums that know exactly what it takes to do things.</sarcasm>

Beat_Go_Stick: until you can do better writing, keep your opinion to yourself, beat testing and debugging was done, but there is only so much you can actually do, players are way more inventive and when you pack 100000 of them into a single game, I guarentee they'll do things the coders / testers never thought about. As for the features you speak of, they are being worked on even as I type this, storage improvements, henchmen/pet improvments, auction improvements, etc. None of these are tied to a specific version of the game as such EVERYONE will get them when they are done. As for not being around for Ch3, works for me. Personally, I'm really enjoying Factions, bugs included because I know just what programming is like, I do it for a living.

In case your too thick to realize, we're allowed to post our opinions here, so i dont see your reasoning for the personal attacks on him.
I guess the new forum rule according to dargon is
No stating your opinion unless your a programmer! because heck since we're not programmers our opinions dont count.

right?

That would be singularly stupid, 90% of player will not have DX10 graphics cards or Vista by next year.

Nonsense, most games do not develop their own engines anyway. The only other business model available would be a monthly subscription and in that case Anet will very likely lose a sizeable amount of players.
More and better trading of what? Uberitems? All that your suggestions will do is turn GW into a WoW clone.

Anet never claimed it was an RPG, rewriting the story...you are joking, I hope?

Basically, you want GW not to be GW but another game. A rather odd suggestion, if you ask me. I dont consider Factions very expensive compared to other games and what they call expansions nor do I consider it too small.

true true same here. i think ther should make more c3 like prophecies and make the game play so good that it holds over. also i think they should have a sering in c3 because i enjoyed the moa bird trick,jk jk, but i do think they shoul keep things legit and put out 1 proffesion per expanshion because proffesions will be hard to think of in the 6th or 7th chapter

I worry about six months being too quick. I was barely beginning to tire of Prophecies (played about a year) and worry that new chapters too soon will keep me from fully enjoying the old one.

and he (Dargon) is equally able to post his opinion of people who have no idea of what they are talking about.

works for me.

/double signed what Dargon said

the story is ALREADY a question mark wrapped in a conundrum covered in WTF-sauce, and you want to mess with it MORE? YOU'RE SICK! SICK SICK SICK!

Also, I do not want new technology to be implemented. Let it stay the way it is, it's already laggy on my comp. NO MORE NEW TECH.

From what I read/seen on other forums, about the new chapters being release.

Is that there will be(are) two teams(or more) working on each chapter(s).
Example...Team A works on chapter 2(Faction), 4, 6, 8, ect...
Team B works on chapter 3, 5, 7, 9, etc...

This from my understanding, gives each team 1 year to make each chapter.
Plus add a team that takes cares of the chapters when they end up online, updates, & bug fixes.

Now if it was just one team, then I can understand a chapter taking over a year. I mean think of it you have 55(or more) staff members, why not split them into two teams(or more).

Just showing my support for Dargon's comments, most of the complainers on this forum seem to think they could wave a magic wand and make GW just how they want it...lol.

/triple signed for what Dargon said

Aside from being a bit smaller than Prophecies, I don't understand what people dislike about Factions.

If they create a Faction-sized block of content every 6 months, and simultaneously improve things like the trade system for no extra charge, I'll be perfectly happy.

Is that not a weak sort of premise to make a retail game on then and then let it cost 50 US Dollars?

If it's not a sequel, but just an extension should it not just have been 20 Dollars or something?

I understand that making games is a business but this sort of raping-the-customers is worse than whatever SOE or EA has done to their fanbases?


First of all, it was just an example. Secondly, I would very much like to borrow your time machine.



No I don't think so. I didn't enjoy WoW so that would be pretty silly. Why couldn't they just do what they are going to do at Flagship Studios with their hellgate?

They are going around and saying: "okay you can buy these little pieces. You want acces to Ritualist and all the skills? fine. Pay us 3-5 Dollars! You want the new lvl 20 campaign? fine pay 10 Dollars. You want Alliance Battles? fine pay us 5 Dollars". Or something like that... Oblivion is doing it that way.

And in many Korean games they have other alternative business models so I don't see were you are coming from.


http://www.guildwars.com/gameplay/synopsis/

There are pretty much hundreds of interviews were Anet has called GW an RPG.

And rewritting the story? No I was not joking. Obviously based on these and other fan forums most people have a serious problem with it and for some of us it ruins allot of the experience. Maybe they could just remove the story so we didn't had to deal with it?


I was just boggled by it. I love Factions but im surprised how little time they took to actually make an effort out of it. There is barely an hour of music spanning across the campaign, and all dialouge and NPCs looks and feels exactly the same.


Just because a game runs on the same engine it does not mean it can not be improved. Grand Theft auto 3, Vice City and San Andreas all ran on the same renderware engine, and they all had massive improvements over each other.



So my entire point was.

GW = 5 Years in the making.

GWF = 1 year in the making.

Which does the community love? It's a pretty obvious answer, and it stands clear that while the games were priced exactly the same you didn't got as much as you paid for as the first time, even though you would expect a company to improve over it's intial flaws.


It reminds me of EA pushing out bad Harry Potter, James Bond and Lord of the Rings games every year and getting suckers to buy it, because they simply like the brand.

I like Factions but it has created so many new problems and many people seem more negative and hateful. It's like the entire game took a step backwards and the players are spread. People are dissapointed because they thought Factions would be much bigger.

Engine, and AI and all that might have already made but when you are paying full price for a game, any gamer would expect improvements in certain areas?


I guess my main grip is just the story. I really thought ArenaNet would listen to the players and say; "wow. They really don't care or enjoy being or learning about our world. we must do something to improve this!" But in reality it was like NPCs and all that was just rushed in like 5 minutes.

And now they already want Nightfall out. Why not trying to save some face and combine the teams and make an effort to satisfy some of the valid and constructive critisism?

If they want us to buy these 50 Dollars expansions for the next 10 years is it not fair that they try and make an effort to improve the core game in areas like grouping and trading and stuff?:8

the latest official count was 110 (and growing)

the engine is in place , has already been upgraded to DX9 ability, and other improvements to the engine will be made.

a very large animation/artwork library to draw on (and growing) that does not have to be redone from scratch.

cuts down the time dramatically and you still get a full game.

people are not happy with an aspect so they are willing to change it.

improvements are on the way and you can wait for reviews of chapter 3 before buying it.

I will just beg to the fact that they will try to improve;

-story
-trading
-grouping(LFG)
-Chat and socialising. its impossible to communicate! Even gamespot said it in their review

thats all I dont need more areas personally. im already lvl 20 and there is enough skills for 10 more years. just wish they would focus on quality over quntaty.

Doing what? Charging this and that for new little add-ons to the game? When I bought it, the game came with a construction program so I could make my own new content and new content can not only be found on their main page but can also be found on fan sites. For free!

Oh and Oblivion is a single player game where GW is a MMORPG.

people are more than welcome to their opinions, but expressing 'how easy it would be to...' when you actually don't have an idea isn't an opinion, it's making assumptions without having a ounce of knowledge with regards to what your assumptions relate to. I have very little experience with regards to repairing a car, but I look at a mechanic doing his job and I go boy that looks easy. Now lets say your transmission breaks, how do you think the mechanic is going to feel when you tell him, that's such an easy job, why wasn't it done yesterday? You don't know what exactly is involved in replacing the transmission, so how the hell can you know that it's an easy thing to do?

I seriously thought that every chapters is made by the same dev team and memebers. So chapter 3 will be back those original developer team from the first game?

I program for a living.

Would it be OK if I complain that there are several issues with the design and implementation of Factions that could have benefited from six more months of development and testing?

Does my profession make my comment more valid?

No.

I seriously doubt everyone inside Anet missed the issues that have been raised post release. My suspicion is that the objectors were steamrolled over in the push to release, as happens all the time.

Let us not ignore the long arm of Marketing.

Lord, I hope you're not getting too excited about Vista!!! Anyyone who deals regularly with Microsoft knows that that will be a slow train wreck coming (lol)....

WHAT A WONDERFUL TWIST

i am not a professional mechanic but on two occassions i have (on different cars)

removed the engine and stripped it down to bare parts for machining on one weekend

took said parts to the machine shop for reconditioning/replacement

picked up all the parts on the way home from work next friday

reassemble (tons of plastigauge cant have it so tight it squeeks) over the weekend

drive new engine to work on monday.

you wouldnt believe how much i saved.

also tranny (stick only), brakes, etc

In agreement to Sweetest. This is a game forum where players come to voice themselves. Now prior to Dargon's rather rude post assuming many don't know anything about programming so they have no say, the posts were about release dates and what is determining GW release dates. Why so late with factions and why so soon for the others? Knowing about programming or doing it for a living (assuming your not lying) has nothing to do with it. It doesn't make you superior in any way and it doesn't make you any more knowledgable on the subject of the thread (unless you are working for anet on GW). Sure you have to finish the programming before the game can be released but no two games require the same amount of programming. On top of that there are many other factors that will influence a games release date. Size of the team working on it, number of teams, when they started, resources like technology and money for just a few examples. So unless you work for anet you knowing anything about programming is erelavent.

Just because someone doesn't do it for a living doesn't mean they don't know anything about it either. I don't use weapons for a living I only fix them but I have been out on the firing ranges and have seen some soldiers who I thought would end up hurting themself or someone else. They were trained on using it and it is their job to use it but by the looks of some I can tell that they never touched a weapon prior to joining the military. I've been hunting since I was 12 and am very comfortable handling weapons. Rifles or shotguns; single shot, semi-auto or automatic the finess may change but the basic handling is the same. These soldiers use them for a living but I could still teach them a thing or two.

I'm not a programmer but I am pretty sure I have the right to comment on the game if I damn well choose to. And yes, I am worried about the chapter turn-around time. A year is not long enough. In my opinion Factions proves this.

Maybe thats why it is taking so long for the things which people actually want in the game (Auction House, Prophecies armour upgrader, better storage) to come around ?

amen......I wish they would hold out and fix more stuff rather than making sure they get our money in a timely fashion (and for the car analogy---I am getting tired of having parts recalled and my car spending more time IN the shop than ON the street with me driving it.....if they had fixed the problems BEFORE they sold the model then I would not be as miffed).

Please take more time with the next chapter, and dont be in a rush just to get it on the shelves (or not in the case of CE this time 'round).........

please reread your answers before handing in your tests, ok?

complete dribble

Factions was started as soon as chapter one was released and got one full year of work which took so long (one whole year)

clear so far?......good

chapter 3 was started 6 months after the release of GW (oct/nov 05) and is having a release date 6 months after Factions BUT WITH A WHOLE YEARS WORK ON IT.

it took a full year to get the second chapter out but the staggered release with 2 teams allows a 6 month release window and a full year of work on each.

Ditto. I've said before that I don't need new skills or new professions. Just give me more stuff to do with my existing characters. For PvE, give me new areas to explore with engaging quests and missions. I don't PvP, so I'll let a PvPer say what they want.

As for being a programmer, etc., it doesn't matter if you're a programmer or not. You paid $50 for the game--you can comment on it. What's important is whether gamers are satisfied with the end product. When I buy something, I don't give a flying crap how it was produced, nor should I have to. If I bought an oven and a burner didn't work, I wouldn't say, "Well, I don't make ovens so I can't complain." That's silly. To comment on the game, you just have to be a gamer who bought the darn thing.