Guild Wars 2

Before some of you come in here gun blazing, let’s be civilize and have an intelligent debate.

I am for GW and GW2 on the PS4 for these reasons:

Competitors
Larger Population
Cost Effective
Cross Platform Play (Possibility)

Competitors:

As you may have heard recently. Games like Star Trek Online and Tera are heading to PS4. Back in the days before PS4 was a thing, many of us opted for GW2 over Tera because Arena Net makes good game and games doesn’t cost us an arm and a leg to play. They had always had fun in mind when creating their greatest and latest. I personally believe that ANet may be dropping out of the (Space Race) so to speak when they’re not opting-in to the console entertainment.

Populations:

The world wide population on PSN is approximately 72 million. Which is a pretty descent size. The reason for console population increasing is that many developers out there opt for console first then PC due to my upcoming point below (cost). FFXIV made it cross platform compatible, meaning that players on PS3/PS4 can play with players on PC. It’s probably the only reason why it’s still alive today for a subscription based MMORPG.

Cost Effective:

Many of you might claim that PC has better graphics, that is true but at what cost? Many of you had probably spent as much kitten,200 USD on an NVIDIA TITAN X… but truly, GW2 isn’t a graphic intensive game. You can get by with an NVIDIA GTX 780 (What I have, run smoother on their 64-bit client). The PS4 has a modified version of the ATi Radeon HD 7870, which is an equivalent of NVIDIA GTX 600 series. If you’re going to build a brand new PC it will cost you roughly around $3000 USD with top tier specs. $1500 USD for an average spec. A PS4 will cost you $399 USD and it’s bundled with at least 2 renounce games now. Which means that you have extra to spend on more games or a long subscription to PSN ($50 USD/Year) where it gives you at least 2 free games a month and you get to vote on which. Console is great if you want to save up money to purchase other things like the sport car that you always wanted or a down payment for a house.

Cross Platform:

Give the design of GW and GW2, it seems like the UI was design in such a way that it had console exportation in mind. It’s also not a game like WoW or SWTOR where your UI is cluttered with skills and inventory items. The PS4 controller can handle 80% of the functionality.

The Option button on the PS4 controller can bring up an over UI similar to pressing Esc on your keyboard.

Clicking on the touch pad on the controller can cycle through the UI on the screen, like hero menu, pvp, wvw, etc.
Once you cycle to the chat box, you can press Triangle to bring up the on screen keyboard or simply start typing if you have kittenB keyboard hooked up. Press X to submit the text or Enter.

Tapping on the touch pad 2x or Right Joystick click can ping the map of your current location.
Tapping on the touch pad 1x acts as left click on mouse.
Moving your finger/thumb on the touch pad will enable mouse mode, to click on menu or draw on map.

Left Joystick click can toggle auto-run.

Left/Rightdigital button can cycle through friendlies.
Up/Down digital button can cycle through enemies.

The Triangle button can open the world map.
The Square button can act as interact/talk or even bring up menu of other player to add them as friend, mute, party, etc.
The X button can act as jump.
The Circle button can act as Esc/Cancel.

When holding down the L2 trigger, it can act as Weapon Skill set.
L2 + Square (Weapon Skill 1)
L2 + X (Weapon Skill 2)
L2 + Triangle (Weapon Skill 3)
L2 + Circle (Weapon Skill 4)
L2 + R1 (Weapon Skill 5)

Holding L2 + holding any weapon skill button will activate and set auto-attack on it.

L2 + L1 (Profession Mechanical Skill 1)
L2 + Left Digital (Profession Mechanical Skill 2)
L2 + Down Digital (Profession Mechanical Skill 3)
L2 + Up Digital (Profession Mechanical Skill 4)
L2 + Right Digital (Profession Mechanical Skill 5)

When holding down the R2 trigger, it can act as Healing, Utility, Elite Skill Set.

R2 + Square (Healing Skill)
R2 + X (Utility Skill 1)
R2 + Triangle (Utility Skill 2)
R2 + Circle (Utility Skill 3)
R2 + L1 (Elite Skill)

Since PS4 no longer use an ARM processor which makes games development on the PS3/PS2/PS1 a living nightmare, it now uses an x86 architecture, similar to what PC uses. There shouldn’t be too much difficulties in getting the game to PS4. After all, they only need to create a new launcher than the GW.exe / GW2.exe and reuse the GW.DAT or the GW2.DAT file where all the game information are contained to make this happen on PS4. They will have to use the PS4 screenshot instead. They could add proximity/party/raid voIP support or just by utilizing the PS Party system.

I believe it could be done. Whether ANet wants to accomplish this challenge or not is entirely up to them. I have also attached the requirement for PC/MAC version of the game.

Here are the System Requirements for PC/Mac:

Windows® Minimum System Requirements
Windows® XP Service Pack 3 or better
Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3 OR AMD Athlon 64 X2, or better
2 GB RAM
NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI X1800, Intel HD 3000, or better (256 MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)
35 GB available HDD space
Broadband Internet connection
Keyboard and mouse

Mac Beta Minimum System Requirements
Mac OS®X 10.8.X or later
Intel® Core™ i5 or better
4 GB Ram or better
NVIDIA® GeForce® 320M, ATI Radeon™ HD 6630M, Intel HD 3000 or better
35 GB available HDD space
Broadband Internet connection
Keyboard and mouse

More people buying the game and gems = more profits.

So if going for consoles can do that, seems like a smart move. Depending of how they think at long term it could beneffit the game in all plataforms, if they get the money and think in mantain or expand their audience, then they could go for a bigger budget, beyond the mantain and ship on the new console expanding.

The only problem i see its that this game started really well but has the worst quantity-quality realese cadence in practically all the mid and bug budget mmos…, either they shipped really small chunks in litle time (adding up they were small fro the time they toke) or something of realtive good size in too long periods.

Plus HoT that was so small in content (features are no excuse because the core game has more new features and systems implemented).

In other words either they didnt get a good budget for their sucess or are very underproductive.

In case 1, a console sucess probably will not increase, in case 2 budget will probably have an impact, way smaller than in a more productive enviroment, but and improvement.

Still , for bussiness its a good idea.

The CPU in the PS4 has extremely weak single thread performance.

GW2 would run very poorly on a console without a major engine overhaul.

From what I’ve seen, console gamers and MMO gamers seem to want very different things from their games – I’m sure there is some overlap but I doubt there is enough.

72 Million may seem like a lot, but there are Billions of PCs. Not all of them run Windows, not all of them are gaming capable but the potential customer base is still at least an order of magnitude larger than the PS4 customer base.

If you want to run an MMO on a console, you need to design it from the ground up with that in mind. That means content updates, performance, DLC, cross platform capabilities, control constraints – everything. Trying to shoehorn a mature PC game into the latest console would be an expensive disaster and a likely breach of fiduciary duty.

From what I’ve heard the major problem for an MMO, and especially GW2, being released on a console is having to get the releases approved.

Every single patch has to be approved by Sony, and the developers have to pay to have them approved. And that process can take anywhere from a few days to over a week, so it slows down the speed of releases.

My other MMO (Elder Scrolls Online) was released on PS4 and Xbox 1 but they only release a patch to consoles once a month, and big releases once per quarter. And those are always released a few weeks after they come out on PC. (Amusingly console players say this is because PC is the priority for the developers and consoles are nothing but an afterthought and PC players say it’s because they’re glorified beta testers to make sure it’s perfect for the consoles since that’s the priority.)

I suppose if GW2 was released on consoles they could group patches together so there’s less to get approved, but I don’t imagine that would be popular with console players.

1. Those controls would be way too complicated for its own good. I would take one look at those controls and then I would quit forever.

2. As already stated, a major engine overhaul would be required.

3. It’s not very cost efficient to have to pay a console network fee every few months. Ultimately it would cost more to play GW2 on the console than on the computer.

Anet would also have to implement ingame voice chat because there’s no way console users would hookup or use a keyboard in most instances. Maybe this would be a plus

We have been over this many times over the last 4 years, it’s simple. There is no point to it.

1. Having to code a patch for 2 different systems, then make them work together. Having to wait for the patches to drop on both systems meaning possibly even longer gaps between updates. If something go’s wrong like it did this week, a fix for one may not work for the other.

2. The out lay for staff to work on it. Not to mention, the game is not optimised for the PC all that well, how would a console handle it? I mean you need a meaty PC to run it with everything on max and get good fps. A console would probably have to have reduced visuals.

3. Would also belay any content for the current live game as they would need to halt the game development to make sure everything syncs up and no patches between now and then add bugs that would brake the game on the console.

4. We really don’t need this game on a PS4 or any other console.