Guild Wars 2

Just a personal thought….but is it possible to add a system of factions that allow players to join different rival forces depending on their faiths? For instance you may choose to join the bandits if you’re human. You may join the flame region if you’re char. etc……you may even form an alliance with the kraits and fight against the Pact…..Essentially you’d have the chance to choose your side instead of being assigned one. I’m not sure about how to implement such a system as an intact content yet, but it’d surely be fun once being achieved.
(My main toon is a sylvari and I eagerly wanna join the Nightmare Court…..lol….please do let me XD)

GW2 is absolutely not fitted for a faction system, it would be almost impossible to build one and I doubt many people would want one as it would kill a number of core values to the game. As much as I love faction system (Vanguard being an example of how awesome it can be):

It cannot be done due to:
- obvious lore questions. Most “evil” factions with a few exceptions (Court of Nightmare is the only one I can think of) are more or less related to dragons, and the main story focuses on killing them. What if you joined bandits, that we now know are related to the White Mantle, related to Mursaats and possibly to Primordus (and even if not, you can stop at Mursaats and already see the absurdity)?

- obvious game conception: a faction system would mean binning the whole map and build a new one. If you’re with the bandits, how can you complete most maps in Kryta? ALL the maps would be concerned. It would really come down to scrapping the game

- obvious design choices: factions would imply wild PvP in a game where PvP and PvE are completely separate, where 70% of the players focus on PvE and don’t want to hear about PvP

I let only these 3 as they are the most obvious and self-sufficient.
Go to WvW, this is what is the closest to a faction system.

I’m all for a faction system. Maybe they could expand upon the Vigil, Priory and Order of Whispers in some way to make it work storywise.

jonG.8369:

I’m all for a faction system. Maybe they could expand upon the Vigil, Priory and Order of Whispers in some way to make it work storywise.

I could see having that be a thing, giving special quests and events for being a part of an order, or post-Pact (and actually doing the personal story o_O), having daily/weekly requests from the orders.

Conversely, a hard No on the “bweeheehee i’m evil” faction stuff. That can stay in the shadowy corner of questionable-RP party/whisper chat.

This game is simply not structured for it narratively or gameplay wise. They have a hard enough time pushing out pvE content under the assumption everyone is on the same team and can do it. Faction systems would require a multitude of other variations on missions, variations on maps, and most importantly do something Anet has designed the whole PvE game to never do: place players in competition with one another.

GW2 is very unique in that pvE design. Every time you see a player the only interactions they can have with you are positive. Help you kill mobs, help you res, lay down a field you can use, etc. They can’t steal your mobs, or your nodes, or anything else.

Adding a faction system would be antithetical to the way PvE works in this game. PvE is not designed as a competitive mode of play.

And turn your back on Destiny’s Edge, or whatever Destiny’s Edge 2.0 is called (Dragon’s watch i think was the front runner) … hell no.

If they allow factions, I hope they implement pvp for opposing factions so I can come hunt you down sylvari (just kidding)

Perhaps something like intra racial faction ?

Humans : Ministry, Shining Blade and Seraph
Charr: Iron, Blood and Ash Legion
Sylvari: Wardens, Tenders ( making stuff up here ) and Wanderers
Asura: Those 3 colleges they have
Norn: Wolfborn, (Beyond that I have no clue.) Hunters? Adventurers ?

Anyway, the idea is to have those factions inside each races for which you could do stuff, gain reputation, access to cool race appropriate gear ( yes even the charr ) etc…

Could be a cool new way of handling WvW teams, let’s be honest the server-based teams has not worked since the day they allowed free server transfers

There’s quite a few people in the www forums that feel the same way, a faction system might be preferable to what it is currently.

a faction system doesn’t necessarily need to even fit in with the narrative story of the main game. When you’re in eotm or www the three sides that face each other has nothing to do with lore and thats fine. But there are certainly ways to go about doing iteither way.

If.we are talking about PvP, I would love to see anet add a few dedicated servers for open world PvP similar to how it was done in star wars galaxies where a player had to type a /command in order to being attackable by the opposing faction or had to willingly entered a zone and was flagged. I miss the thrill of doing open world questing being flagged up and never knowing who you might run into.

Asclepios.4295:

GW2 is absolutely not fitted for a faction system

Yeah, totally not at all. Especially not 3 factions.

If they did – which they wont – add 3 factions in the game, I would recommend naming them Overgrowth, Frostreach and Badlands.

But that would be totally ridiculous, hahaha.

Because GW2 dont have 3 factions anywhere in the game, especially not with those names.

/Sarcasm overload

Asclepios.4295:

GW2 is absolutely not fitted for a faction system, it would be almost impossible to build one and I doubt many people would want one as it would kill a number of core values to the game. As much as I love faction system (Vanguard being an example of how awesome it can be):

It cannot be done due to:
- obvious lore questions. Most “evil” factions with a few exceptions (Court of Nightmare is the only one I can think of) are more or less related to dragons, and the main story focuses on killing them. What if you joined bandits, that we now know are related to the White Mantle, related to Mursaats and possibly to Primordus (and even if not, you can stop at Mursaats and already see the absurdity)?

- obvious game conception: a faction system would mean binning the whole map and build a new one. If you’re with the bandits, how can you complete most maps in Kryta? ALL the maps would be concerned. It would really come down to scrapping the game

- obvious design choices: factions would imply wild PvP in a game where PvP and PvE are completely separate, where 70% of the players focus on PvE and don’t want to hear about PvP

I let only these 3 as they are the most obvious and self-sufficient.
Go to WvW, this is what is the closest to a faction system.

Kurzick? Luxon?

Focusing on the OP’s suggestions, Anet made a conscious decision to keep player characters heroic, without any real “dark side” paths to take. If you join the Flame Legion, or whatever, that’s going to turn your relationship with most of the other characters in the game sideways in very severe ways. For example, if you’re a member of the Nightmare Court, you wouldn’t be allowed in the Grove anymore, which would be inconvenient, and you couldn’t sensibly do LS2, since the summit is held in the Grove.

Working around that would require either a ton of work, or a lot of “SSHH, you’re really a bad guy, but everyone treats you like a good guy because they don’t know, wink wink.” That kind of free path-choosing works in some games, but it’s just not part of GW2’s design.

With the Pact in the state that it is after HoT, I wouldn’t mind seeing an exploration of the rivalries between the different factions that make up the Pact.

More importantly, wouldn’t mind seeing your Order choice being important again. I don’t know how, but it would be nice.