Sail the 7 seas

Guild Wars needs another part... where is a giant ocean with lost islands, shark infested waters, and pirates!! Arg!! Yeah since they have ships at the docks why can't we just sail off in them, kinda like a party boat!!! They should have guild ships where a guild can just sail out and fight other guilds on the sea!

--Guilds come together buy a ship, sail off, explore, fight, fish, explore some more, fight other guilds in massive sea battles

I think this would just be a pimp thing to do!! lol

This has been suggested before, and most people seem to think it's not a good idea because with instant travel, Guild Wars doesn't "need" ships. I'm of the opinion that even if they aren't needed to get around, the reason to have ships is because ships are fun. There are probably a million creative ways to implement them and make them fit with the game.

Just to do a bit of brainstorming... Allow guilds to buy a ship which, once purchased, would be visible just off the coast of the guild house island, and could be reached using the map, just as with the guild house. When on board your ship, you'll appear to be at sea, with waves rolling by and such. There could be options to purchase add-ons to make your ship look more interesting (just as you'll hopefully be able to do with your guild house eventually) and, perhaps, the option to challenge other guilds to some sort of ship vs. ship GvG, where you try to board the other team's vessel and take it over before they take over yours.

And how about some fun, frivolous mini-games? Maybe an "explore" option, that would put the ship in "sailing" mode and cause you to continuously hit random encounters with hostile creatures such as sea serpents, sirens and mermaids. I can imagine having tons of fun running around the ship, firing at sea hags and krakens as they try to climb on deck or whallop the crew with tentacles. Maybe there'd even be ways to find island locations, with PvE content or hidden PvP areas.

I can already see people rolling their eyes at this, but it's not really all that far-fetched, and would certainly be fun. Guild Wars hasn't been released yet and isn't ready for this sort of thing at the moment, but it's definately something that I think would be graet to see in an expansion.

The only thing that's required is that everyone get their heads out of the mud and think outside the MMORPG box. Things like ships don't have to be time-wasting, useless travel methods where you sit around and do nothing while waiting to get somewhere. They can be a lot of fun. Guild Wars is all about adventure, and I'd love to adventure GW style on the high seas just as much as on land.

how about naval battles with archers fireballs and catapults. not travel but more like a new arena.

The problem with actual "naval battles" is that it would mean that you have to have some way to directly control the ship, which begins to get away from the original Guild Wars design. I don't think the idea should be to turn Guild Wars into something it's not, but to include sailing in a way that adds to the core Guild Wars gameplay experience without actually altering it too much.

If you have a ship that more or less sails itself automatically (perhaps with an NPC at the helm), with your crew hitting monster encounters along the way, you've got high seas adventure without having to control anything other than your character. I think things like this could be great fun, as long as they weren't incredibly long and there are a lot of things you could add to make them interesting and diverse without being tedious.

Many, many years ago.. I was an avid player of Ultima Online. Perhaps one of my fondest memories was getting my very own ship, which I dubbed the Borghal Rantipole. I sailed around aimlessly, as one with a sense of direction as bad as mine is often wont to do. After the changes to fishing were made (to introduce sunken treasure maps) I spent a good deal of time doing that as well... because there's something oddly cathartic about searching for coordinates at sea while avoding Water Elementals and Sea Dragons. Maybe my secret calling in life is to be a cartographer, who knows.

Anyway, nostalgia aside.. because of the way instancing works, because of the way traveling works.. ships don't strike me as feasible as a means of transportation.. but i'd really like to see them involved in a mission somehow. Even if it is, as already mentioned, a 'riding the rails' kind of scenario.

But you cant tele to a town first time, so a ship to get there?

I think the trick with ships in Guild Wars would be to do what's been done in every other area of the game: Distill all of this to its bare essence. Implement as many of the fun parts as possible and try to leave the tedious bits out. Focus on ships as a means of fun, action and adventure, rather than a means of travel.

My whole idea in a nutshell: Once purchased, the ship is accesible using the map or by boarding from your guild island. There could be a helmsman NPC that offers quests. When a quest is accepted, the ship takes off "on rails" and your party fends off monsters along the way. When you reach your destination, it's marked on the map just as any other town or outpost would be, and you can travel there using the map from then on. Various NPC's and events could unlock new ship quests for you, allowing you to travel to and unlock new islands, which would in turn have their own quests on them. When not questing, you'd still appear to be sailing while on the ship, which would make it possible to simply hang out and chat at sea, without being disturbed by monsters. The helmsman could also offer to let you "go exploring" which would simply have you encountering and fending off random groups of monsters.

This isn't perfect, I know, but I think it illustrates my point. There are ways to do this sort of thing without resorting to conventional MMORPG ideas.

Lunar it sounds good to me. The guild versus guild to board each other's ships is a great idea for that part of the game. Yea the whole NPC captain sailing on rails idea works. The only drawback I could see is botting. It would be very easy to bot/farm using this. As a game enhancement of the fun and play it sure sounds great though.

wow this idea got better and better!! ok keep going it sounds good!

I wanted to make a thread about Ships and possible ways to implement them into the game, But that search button brang me up this. So instead of a new thread, Let's bring up an older one.

How do you think this could work?

Well, I'm not really for the adventuring in it, But the GvG idea sounds amazing.
8v8, With the main objective being to try to board the enemy ship and kill it's crew. Then, To take plunder from it and bring it to your own ship, And then escape. Regular respawn times like other GvG's.... 2 minutes, in the basement of the ship, where the plunder would be located.

We could also make it possible to control the ship, which would require a number of people. We could row it, Maybe by having 4 people in the basement using the oars by clicking on them, waiting for them to make a revolution, then click again, rinse, repeat. This could be similar to how a catapult works.
Of course, the more people doing it, the higher the speed. A cannon could alos easily be made, and used as a catapult. A cannon would be manned by 1 person. I wouldn't think they could be aimed, unless you move your ship accordingly. To move, there could be thingy you push(Run into) to steer the ship left and right, that will hang in the center if not being used. If you push it towards one side, it turns the opposite way. Another person could be getting things to board the enemny ship, For example some planks, or a rope.

I'm gonna try to make a few pictures to help explain this, but I only have MSPaint so... Yeah.

What do you think? Ideas?

Update: Here's the really badly done picture.. 'Scuse me ...

What would be cool is if you could do some "ship" missions in the pve. You join a crew to explore some island. Along the way your ship is attacked by pirates. The ships collide and deck to deck fighting starts. When reaching the island you can continue your adventures there.

Just make it a mission or a PVP mission of some sort. Ship direction doesn't need to be player directed.

Teams are randomly made. One team boards the ship, one team defends. Pirates vs Non-Pirates.

Finally, people can go YARRRRR and not look stupid. Can it get better then that without summoning Rodgort? I think not!

The one thing that really stands out to me as flawed with this idea, is that adding player controlled ships, like it seems most of you want (correct me if I'm wrong), seems like it would be an entirely different game than guildwars. I mean, firing cannons broadside at another encircling galleon, and boarding the opposing ship with your scallywag crew does sound entertaining, don't get me wrong....But, as much as I'd like to play pirate, it really wouldn't be Guildwars.

On the other hand, including ships into a mission....now that'd be more interesting. Either it could just be a the method by which you travelled to a lost island, or perhaps, a scripted voyage, on which you'd partake in fending off a series of opposing crews as they try to board your ship. That'd be more like the Guildwars we are all waiting to love, now wouldn't it?

That's pretty much what I'm thinking. If players were allowed to control the ship, I'd think it would begin to get complicated. That would be a very serious addition to Guild Wars gameplay, which would mean all sorts of balancing and re-balancing. Plus, the more something alters or adds to core gameplay, the less of a chance there is that it'll ever be implemented or even considered. Again, I think the idea should just be to implement ships in a way that lets you have them in the game, without really altering the way GW works.

I don't see why this doesn't correlate to GW, why it wouldn't fit, Or why it doesn't seem like GuildWars. I mean, Guild Wars are about warring. I believe the place in time that GuildWars is set, according to our history, did have alot of boats, and they were used to wage war.(Other reasons too, But they don't fit the warring genre.)

Yes, being able to control ships would fit thematically, but it doesn't gel with GW's core gameplay.

At the moment, you control a single character in combat. Controlling a large vessel full of charaters, all fighting independantly, would throw a wrench in the works. A ship would, out of necessity, move in completely different ways than a player character would and have a very different set of actions available. An entire "ship combat" system would have to be implemented, balanced extensively, tested and re-tested.

Don't get me wrong, naval combat that's entirely player controlled is a cool idea. I just don't think it's something that was meant to be in Guild Wars. For my part, I simply want ships in the game to have ships in the game. I want my character to be able to set off to sea and have adventures there, because having adventures at sea is fun. The best chance any of us have of seeing something like this, is by suggesting ways to implement it that fit within GW's original framework. The moment we start talking about adding things that make enormous changes to the core gameplay, we hurt its chances of ever being considered.

I like this idea alot. Controlling the ships seems a bit much, but having a GVG/PVP battles on a ship is a neat concept.

That would be cool if your guild could buy a boat and sail off into the open sea. Like, a 8 person party could hop on a boat and sail for an hour around to the different islands and slay shit, and find stuff. Maybe fight some sea monstars yarr! THERE BE AN EXPANSION ON THE STARBOARD SIDE YARR!

I Havent Played Beore But That Sounds Really Cool Like The Ships I Fly On In Starwars Galaxies

You Could Have Cannons And An Archer On The Top Of The Mast And Have A Bunch Of Warriors In The Bottom To Come Up And Attack The Boarders And I Think It Would Be Kinda Cool To Be A Pilot Of A Ship And You Could Have All Kinds Of Ships That You Would Beable To Customize It And Have Huge Fleets Of Ships Controlled By Other Guild Members And Have Small Boarding Ships And You Could Shoot The Crap Out Of Sea Monsters And Pirates And You Could Board The Ship And Take It Over And Loot Everything Or Just Sail To Islands And Explore

I envision one or several Mission/Quests that would be simmilar to Dunes of Despair & Thunderhead Keep, where you battle to protect the ghost at the altar or defend a king in his fort.

The Mission is about having passage on a ship, together with some NPC that runs it. The ships route is predetermined , and the players are mostly on the ship (simmilar to the fort). Sometimes the ship will be in trouble (ship battles or game mechanics that needs to be activated).
In the Ship battles you would have fight to protect the Helmsman/captain (a npc that steers the ship)

Enemies for the ship mission would include, large sea creatures (giant Squid), Sea Bandits/ Bandit Water, White Mantels?, lizardmen/sea scales, Sea Dragons

With short stops at islands, curios sea/landmarks and drifting abondoned ships.

After some time the ship will reach its intended destination (Bonus?) or gets shipwrecked at an unfamiliar beach, reef (normal end?)- (I always wanted a mission with more outcomes than one that transports the party thus too two diffrent sites depeding if they did bonus or not)

Have Navel Missions, where you are on ships, defeating wave of enemies who boraded your ship, firing off catapults to destory other ships, and eventurally lead to a show down with a giant Kraken.

Of couse, one won't actually get to control the ship. Everything will be scrippted, where like a Disney Joyride, all the pass will be rigged to a track. Of couse, moving ships, or vehicles, tend to be troublsome in alot of MMO. (bugs and holes) Hopefully GW can be better.

I don't really see the need of personal control ships. GW is not really a boat game. Play Windwaker if you want such thing.

ya i guess you wouldnt need to steer it but it would be cool

I dont like the idea of Pirates. They'd be too easy to kill if you were an assassin. Ninjas ALWAYS beat pirates.

You've got to be kidding. Pirates are so much cooler than ninjas. Sharkey the pirate would kick any ninja's butt. I can't believe they're making an assassin without making the corresponding pirate to battle this out in the arenas!

YOU LIE! realultimatepower.net clearly explains how ninjas are better than pirates. Did you know ninjas are mammals?

I Know Id Rather Have Pirates Then Ninjas

WELL NINJAS ARE COOL TOO BUT SOME SCURVEY PIRATES WOULD BE COOL TOO

There's a new pirate MMORPG coming out soon, Pirates of the Burning Sea. Looks pretty cool.

http://www.flyinglab.com/pirates/index.php

well I Don't know if this was brought up... I was thinking they could make it where you have to buy the ship like someone said but make it like a personal instance not a guild thing.

Maybe make some extra henchman just for the ship that you can recruit instead of the normal...Stefan probably gets sea sick anyway.

I think the best thing to do would be to create treasure maps that drop out of chests or off bosses. You make it where you have to have a ship to use the treasure map. There's a few docks but I think the best place to leave from would be like Amnoon Oasis. The ship can get attacked on the way the hired captain of the ship could get lost...make random events that could possibly happen and then have a small instanced dungeon. That eventually leads to a chest that drops a few things and doesn't require a key.