Guild Wars 2

The story of Guild Wars began as the gods invoked Serpents, mythical creatures that had the power to shape the world. This fact could be used as a plot for a new Guild Wars 2 feature, where, trough the Eye of the Serpent, you shape your own story. So, here is how it could take place:

When accessing this feature in-game, an editor window is oppened. The developpers make avabile for you, depending on the period, a pack of assets, as well as some tasks you should complete. For the best stories, the developpers give marks for Voice acting, Level design etc. If your story is good enough, it could get a chance to be adapted in the Game World. The assets packs are not avabile forever. They are made avabile in editor to allow players complete a certain task. For example, developpers want to test community creativity by making avabile assets for making zone x. The plsyers start to build it, trying to follow developpers guide.(tips for how should it look). In the end, the best is selected, and get a chance of being adapted.
For cinematics, the editor could have three main timelines: one on which you put expression blocks(anger,fear), other mimics(hands gestures), and other lipsinc. All thesr merge together.
The editor could be benefic for game and comunity because: 1.It could create masterpices. Look at Nehrim. 2. The bound between developpers and players would tighten even more. 3. There will be more voices in voice acting. 4. It will be fun to controll a Serpent, and in the same time edit the lands.

Dude – I think I don’t need to tell you how much work that would be and how out of touch it is with GW2s Gamedesign, but you may want to check out Everquest Next – could be the game you want Guildwars to become.

Never going to happen you don’t understand how such complex software works.

But if the editing capabilities would be limited to a private instance, where you could invite your friends? Will this be easyer to implement?

No.

Actually they stated during a Livestream that translating even just the PvP-Editor for the masses would equal developing an entire new game.

So, No it will never happen nor is there a reason to do so.
GW2 never advertised any kind of editor – and also this stuff would make GW2 a different game – not a better game, a different one.

You’re right. If an editor was planned, then the entire game should have been coded from the very beginning to support that. Also, Arena.Net never advertised such a thing. Probably we would see this in the MMOs launching this year….

I think everyone is now longing for a sandbox MMO with ingame editing tools and without any kind of vertical progression, levels, classes and all that bull.

Guild Wars 2 had its chance with their home instance and horizontal progression, personal story and manifesto, but blew it and chose to become a “WoW without monthly fees”. Fortunately, there will be plenty of other MMOs out next year..

Shakkara.2641:

I think everyone is now longing for a sandbox MMO with ingame editing tools and without any kind of vertical progression, levels, classes and all that bull.
.

So…. Minecraft?

Shakkara.2641:

I think everyone is now longing for a sandbox MMO with ingame editing tools and without any kind of vertical progression, levels, classes and all that bull.

There is one, it’s called second life.

About editor: I think there could be an alternative: Guild Wars 2 Mobile. This has never been done, altough Anet planned a mobile SDK release for streaming gameplay. So, instead of using an in-game editor, the comunity could use some existing editors, such as UDK or Unity. I think that if the hype is big enough, a PvP version of GW2 mobile could be created. In that case, creating custom arenas would be possible. To get a similar graphic to the original game, the edges of the textures could be smoothed.(at least, that I read in a game review).

An interesting idea that comes with a few problems.

1) Tools aren’t developed for this.
2) The player effort would be huge.
3) The one winner would discourage participation. (I’m less likely to win, I won’t play. )

I have found on youtube a video on this topic. Still, I think that what I wrote above is the best approach for a community project(if there would be ever such a thing),, because of obvious reasons.(compared to that video)

If the project remains oppened, every player could add something, a mesh, a line iof code etc. I think that firstly, the game should work on local Wi-fi, with transfering progression file. In this way, it won’t be so overwhelming. I saw some tutorials with Unity on Youtube, on which the creator of the tutorial had GW2 icon on desktop, so there might be some guis more experienced that could help less experienced ones.

Even more, codes could be reused. For example when capturing a point, in that place, there could be a cylinder used as a triggerer, with a script on it that gives points to your team on capturing. This script can be set on any invisible collider/capture point on that map/other maps. Also, if Mecanym system is used, animatiions from a human character could be easily transfered to a Norn or Sylvari. Only with the Char there are some problems, because for it there must be some custom walking animations.

Ryan.9387:

3) The one winner would discourage participation. (I’m less likely to win, I won’t play. )

It would discourage quality participation. There would be no shortage of crap.

Think talent shows.

tolunart.2095:

Shakkara.2641:

I think everyone is now longing for a sandbox MMO with ingame editing tools and without any kind of vertical progression, levels, classes and all that bull.
.

So…. Minecraft?

No… not really.

More like Ultima Online, Wurm Online or Graal, but with modern game mechanics, high end graphics, and a polished UI. Oh wait, that’s something that’s going to come soon. Everquest Next.

I got an idea how to solve this. Firstly, the community working on this project will be splited in three: developper players, testing players and normal players. The developper players are actually developping the game, making meshes, coding scripts etc. After a game version is finished, they give it to testing players"guild". The testing players test the game and see if game ballance is ok and there is no exploit. If everything is fine, then they post the tested version on a site and this is the semi-official version. Normal players actually play the game, by downloading the tested version. If the testing players realise that the version that developper players version has issues, they ask them to solve. The testing players"guild" should be made of players you can trust. Eventually, when the online version is out, they maintain the server. A version already tested can also be put again on the table of developper players for further work. In this way, the game would be correct.

Well the main problem I see is this:

Normally the developers make the game and the players pay for it and are happy playing it. But with Guild Wars 2, many of the players are unhappy and actually get the feeling that they can do a better job than the real devs (if this is correct or not is irrelevant, the perception is there).

mahri.8410:

I got an idea how to solve this. Firstly, the community working on this project will be splited in three: developper players, testing players and normal players. The developper players are actually developping the game, making meshes, coding scripts etc. After a game version is finished, they give it to testing players"guild". The testing players test the game and see if game ballance is ok and there is no exploit. If everything is fine, then they post the tested version on a site and this is the semi-official version. Normal players actually play the game, by downloading the tested version. If the testing players realise that the version that developper players version has issues, they ask them to solve. The testing players"guild" should be made of players you can trust. Eventually, when the online version is out, they maintain the server. A version already tested can also be put again on the table of developper players for further work. In this way, the game would be correct.

I don’t always see things… but when I do… it’s what you did there.

Shakkara.2641:

Well the main problem I see is this:

Normally the developers make the game and the players pay for it and are happy playing it. But with any game, many of the players on the official forums are unhappy and actually have the arrogance that they can do a better job than the real devs (even though in nearly all cases this is horribly incorrect).

Fixed that for ya.

There is no arrogance in this. It was purely just an idea. I never stated that idea that players could do a better job than real devs. They could make something fun to play, as a tribute to the game they like. It is not even a remake.

Hey, it’s a neat idea. There are actually a ton of neat ideas… unfortunately, they tend to fail the practicality element, like this one does. This is an idea that a game needs to be built around, both in terms of coding and in philosophy… not something that you hope to implement into something existing.

chemiclord.3978:

Shakkara.2641:

Well the main problem I see is this:

Normally the developers make the game and the players pay for it and are happy playing it. But with any game, many of the players on the official forums are unhappy and actually have the arrogance that they can do a better job than the real devs (even though in nearly all cases this is horribly incorrect).

Fixed that for ya.

Well, in many cases you are correct, but there are two things you didn’t consider:
1) There are actually real game designers playing other games too, who can give an educated opinion on the state of the game
2) It could be that the current Guild Wars 2 game designers aren’t exactly doing a very good job

In the case of 2, most of that is subjective of course, as with any art it is subject to taste and individual preference. But game design skill can also be measured by some other ways, in particular by the way a designer foresees the consequences of a change.

The way ascended items were implemented is something that is almost univerally hated amongst the player base. If we ignore the whole horizontal vs vertical debate, which is a matter of preference, we can actually rationally and objectively state that ascended items in their current form are bad because:

• It made Jewelcrafting obsolete with the introduction of ascended jewelry
• It required another 100 crafting levels that are only tied into this content and serve no secondary purpose
• Rely on mundane resources with poor internal balance due to differing quantity requirements that are not adjusted to supply and demand at all (they have these metrics and either not looked at them or interpreted the data incorrectly)
• Rely on timegating instead of proper balancing of faucets and drains
• Made large parts of existing content obsolete or much less desirable (Dungeon armor, many other special exotic items), which cost a lot of manhours of the art team to create
• It can only be acquired through one way, frustrating people with different playstyles

Some of these things are obvious to many players too. Why aren’t they obvious to any dev and why did this stuff pass QA?

Worst of all, the devs that reply to the community discussion thread do not acknowledge their errors and thus do not draw any lessons from their mistake.

This is just one example, but there are quite a few more. So no wonder that the players here have plenty of valid reasons to throw rotten tomatoes at the game designers currently in charge of this show.

No… YOU didn’t like how Ascended weapons were implemented. Neither did I, really. But those are my (and your opinions). You do not speak for me or the community. Stop pretending you do. You speak for yourself and yourself alone.

The forums =/= community, no matter how much you want to believe it is. And I hate to say it 9/10 of the ideas presented on these forums are terrible. Of the 10% that have merit, a good half of them are impractical for one reason or another.

I wonder how many official forums you frequent other than this one. Because Arena.net is actually one of the most engaging companies out there. Activision, Ubisoft, Bioware, Blizzard… by and large, developers avoid their official forums like the plague.

When they legitimately think they’ve dropped the ball, they HAVE owned up to it (like the whole brushback over the Flamekissed Armor).

They don’t address the other “errors” because they don’t think they are errors. Arena.net doesn’t agree with you, and no amount of whining is going to change their mind if they don’t think they are in the wrong.

So… now what? If you’re at an impasse with the developers… what do you do?

chemiclord.3978:

No… YOU didn’t like how Ascended weapons were implemented. Neither did I, really. But those are my (and your opinions). You do not speak for me or the community. Stop pretending you do. You speak for yourself and yourself alone.

Like I said, the success of their implementation can be measured by objective, measurable game design criteria. And those tell they failed. So it’s a fact.

chemiclord.3978:

The forums =/= community, no matter how much you want to believe it is. And I hate to say it 9/10 of the ideas presented on these forums are terrible. Of the 10% that have merit, a good half of them are impractical for one reason or another.

Totally agree with that. But 90% of the people haven’t gotten a clue about game design. And to be totally honest, 90% of the people calling themselves game designers haven’t got a clue either. It’s pretty shocking when you’re actually in that world and you see how many of them can’t even do a bit of complex math, but that’s a different discussion.

chemiclord.3978:

I wonder how many official forums you frequent other than this one. Because Arena.net is actually one of the most engaging companies out there. Activision, Ubisoft, Bioware, Blizzard… by and large, developers avoid their official forums like the plague.

Plenty. And I can assure you, many of those companies actually read the forums and do things with the feedback. They just don’t post much, mostly for the reason above, that 90% of the “suggestions” are pretty terrible.

chemiclord.3978:

They don’t address the other “errors” because they don’t think they are errors.

That’s a very big problem, isn’kitten

chemiclord.3978:

Arena.net doesn’t agree with you, and no amount of whining is going to change their mind if they don’t think they are in the wrong.

Well, forum whining actually does have an effect, it just takes time. The other thing that has an effect is the metrics: if many players just quit or stop purchasing stuff, they will be forced to change. Especially when these two things are combined.

The last time I and other key players ‘whined’ for years, this happened:
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/2672
It just took 2 years for the devs to arrive to this conclusion. And EVE was a much better game after that. In fact, all the suggestions I had made and documented for the devs during the 5 years before that, have been implemented into the game now.

It is possible, it just takes time.
Players have much more influence than you think.

There are still some problems:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/88709-guild-wars-2-fan-made-unity-community-game-questions/

Is this way safe? Don’t want trouble. I stated there that I am thinking, not actually planning.