Guild Wars 2

Is it possible to implement a chance to play for the “bad” (or lets say rather politically incorrect) side in areas where are some factions fighting?
For example, as a human character I would like to join the separatist rebellion agains charrs and free Ascalon. But I can’t since the game decides which is my side in the conflict.
I can imagine to see the charrs as enemy characters, and use separatist camps as bases instead of charr camps, and maybe even have a chance to havoc pvp other players who would play for the charr side.
I believe this might add an interesting game experience.

Yeh its a shame the whole game is not one giant racial war where you get to pick sides. WvW included.

I’d kill all non-humans for sure.

Well it’s not much about races and non-humans. The other nonhumans did not assault and occupy human lands. And I don’t like charrs. They are way too much into a military parody, and they remind me of former Third Reich or former East block states from Cold war era, it was “almighty army first, people then”, too. I’m just allergic to this.
Just face it, charrs are war obsessed monsters who came and occupied human lands, murdering the original inhabitants on the way. And my character, who is a human, should support them and hear them boasting “killing these humans feels like the good old times” and “we killed thousands of them that was so good” etc., ? Just try some Ascalonian quests. It’s disgusting.

As a Sylvari, I’d like to have the chance to join the Nightmare Court.

Fext.3614:

Well it’s not much about races and non-humans. The other nonhumans did not assault and occupy human lands. And I don’t like charrs. They are way too much into a military parody, and they remind me of former Third Reich or former East block states from Cold war era, it was “almighty army first, people then”, too. I’m just allergic to this.
Just face it, charrs are war obsessed monsters who came and occupied human lands, murdering the original inhabitants on the way. And my character, who is a human, should support them and hear them boasting “killing these humans feels like the good old times” and “we killed thousands of them that was so good” etc., ? Just try some Ascalonian quests. It’s disgusting.

Where the heck did you get that characterization of Charr?

For one, the Charr only took back lands that originally belonged to them. Humans are in fact an alien and invasive species to Tyria. That is established lore.

Charr do not have a human outlook on life, because they aren’t human. They don’t glorify war so much as openly embrace it like an old friend. Because for them a battle is just a normal extension of their lives. For them life itself is a battle, and the only thing they can count on is their warband.

The references you refer to also get used a lot when Charr discuss the Flame Legion btw.

So instead of arguing about whether charr or humans are right, how about we umm—actually discuss the topic of the thread?
A number of my characters are, in my mind, villains. So yes, I would love to be able to play from a villain perspective.

You are playing the wrong game, Guild Wars is all about being the hero, always has been. If you want to be a villain then you are almost definitely going to have to look elsewhere.

I couldn’t agree more Fext.

That was ret-conned lore Basharic. Only made so they could add Charr as a playable furry race when they had originally made them out to be such perfectly horrible and hate-able enemies. They did so well with that in GW1 that I will never stop hating Charr for what they did to the humans. I wont forget how it really was.

I do wish personal story at least actually did give you real and meaningful choices rather than drag you along a preset story that some NPC ends up hi-jacking no matter what you choose. I wish there were racial tension-relevant ways to complete map exploration – ways you could explore a zone or at least get the eventually necessary Gift of Exploration, without having to help Charr or Asura or what-have-you, if they are the ones that rub your character the wrong way. What if you character finds walking, talking plants just too much to comprehend? Why force them through ‘their personal story’ as if that weren’t the case? There are so many other ways a character could complete things, like Fext said. Maybe you don’t want to help that Charr plan his meatober fest? Maybe you want to help ruin it instead? Maybe you think the Sylvari should sort out their nightmare court problems themselves and instead help some priory person study something interesting nearby? why have chore-hearts in the first place? Obviously most of that would be far to ridiculous to change now, but it would have been quite interesting if the dynamic world and personal story where pushed that far and left you feeling extremely unique with each character you make and play.

I guess it would be hard to implement. Imagine if you were able to join the Separatists, Flame Legion, Inquest, Sons of Svanir, Nightmare Court at character selection. Your story mode would have to be completely different.

Why not give the choice to our toons? I mean, now that the twig boy is out of the picture and we can have our stories back.

Not really. Just add it after the defeat of Zhaitain. Hell, it might encourage users to even touch the fight.

I guess it would be hard to implement. Imagine if you were able to join the Separatists, Flame Legion, Inquest, Sons of Svanir, Nightmare Court at character selection. Your story mode would have to be completely different.

Being treehearnes side kick and pressing 2 to kill zhaitan is more important than real choices.

Good to see people still crave the kinds of choices and personalized touch that table-top RPGs thrive on.

Basharic.1654:

Fext.3614:

Well it’s not much about races and non-humans. The other nonhumans did not assault and occupy human lands. And I don’t like charrs. They are way too much into a military parody, and they remind me of former Third Reich or former East block states from Cold war era, it was “almighty army first, people then”, too. I’m just allergic to this.
Just face it, charrs are war obsessed monsters who came and occupied human lands, murdering the original inhabitants on the way. And my character, who is a human, should support them and hear them boasting “killing these humans feels like the good old times” and “we killed thousands of them that was so good” etc., ? Just try some Ascalonian quests. It’s disgusting.

Where the heck did you get that characterization of Charr?

For one, the Charr only took back lands that originally belonged to them. Humans are in fact an alien and invasive species to Tyria. That is established lore.

Charr do not have a human outlook on life, because they aren’t human. They don’t glorify war so much as openly embrace it like an old friend. Because for them a battle is just a normal extension of their lives. For them life itself is a battle, and the only thing they can count on is their warband.

The references you refer to also get used a lot when Charr discuss the Flame Legion btw.

Oh my. No, they did not. The charr never owned Kryta or Orr, yet stormed it for the intent purpose of wiping out all the humans. As you state, humans were alien species, the last to arrive in Tyria. They took Ascalon along with Orr and Kryta to have some land, and made it into a peaceful paradise inside the walls. I’m tired of people justifying the murder of innocents with “oh this one part was a tiny part of their land so it’s ok.”

And Charr society is much like that of the spartans, which was considered wrong by most of the world. Respected, but wrong. The only truth is how much retconning Anet had to do to make the charr seem even remotely not-evil.

you can try LOTRO, and fight for Saruman….

they have Player vs Monster Player……

They can’t even write proper good guy storylines and you demand bad guy storylines from them? Please stop, it will only hurt you.

If you want ro play as the bad side, try playing a game called “Spec Ops: the Line” and see if you still prefer to always do the morally wrong decisions in all games.

Oh yea I allways wanted to joing the nightmare court and my main Mesmer allways should have been a villain. But noooooo my dream has been destoryed right after helping Logan (or how this kitten is called – you know – Mr. I run away).

Inquest, Aetherblade, Nightmare Court, beautiful places indeed. Would be funny if there would be stuff like “destroy the Fire shaman” and for your flame legion charr it’s “defend the fire shaman” :O

To reflect on the “race” thing: my actual preferences are Asura > Sylvari > Norn > Human > Charr. So not it has nothing to do with racism or human superiority. Why I dislike charr I already said. And their ugly structures are really something which does NOT belong to Ascalon.

About the main storyline: nothing really prevents you from reasoning with any faction you like and make them a part of the antidragon coalition. Well the problem might be with Svanir, iirc they kind of worship the dragon. Anyway possibility to have some other characters as the coalition leaders would be nice, too.
It might be even the main character. You don’t have to follow somebody’s order, your staff members would give you options… easy.

Pie Flavor.1647:

If you want ro play as the bad side, try playing a game called “Spec Ops: the Line” and see if you still prefer to always do the morally wrong decisions in all games.

Not the point, mate. The problem is that in my opinion the charr are the bad siude and Separatists are oppresed freedom fighters who want to free their homes from totalitarian military empire. Anyway there is a lot of games where you can play a bad side, even mmos, like SWTOR where you can go both light and dark side.
But I want to have similar choice in this game and it really should not be a technical problem. And after all it would add the faction PVP dimension which I kind of anticipated. Well the game is called Guild Wars, remember?

azizul.8469:

you can try LOTRO, and fight for Saruman….

they have Player vs Monster Player……

I remember this! One of the more original takes on PvP I’ve seen, and you had to raise your original character high enough to get there.

If we did this on GW2, I’d totes be an Aetherblade. CROWD CONTROL FOR DAYS.

…>_<

Rauderi.8706:

If we did this on GW2, I’d totes be an Aetherblade. CROWD CONTROL FOR DAYS.

I think it would be great if they rather give people some faction specific skills upon joining. That LOTRO way was (or is) just an clever idea how to make PVE more challenging, it’s not the typical PVP. Might be a great idea to collect data from the players playing for monsters actions and improve the AI accordingly.

Eh, sorry, wrong game.
This is the lands of kittens and unicorns.
Keep moving.

Fext.3614:

Rauderi.8706:

If we did this on GW2, I’d totes be an Aetherblade. CROWD CONTROL FOR DAYS.

I think it would be great if they rather give people some faction specific skills upon joining. That LOTRO way was (or is) just an clever idea how to make PVE more challenging, it’s not the typical PVP. Might be a great idea to collect data from the players playing for monsters actions and improve the AI accordingly.

You would never hear the end of it from the PVE purists who’d complain that it is too hard or that PVP doesn’t belong in their game.

problem is that, if you fight for the separatists, you would be fighting yourself. See who is right and who is wrong in the war 250 years ago isnt really the issue. The issue is you got big powerful dragons to fight, and you need the char forces to help do it. The separatists in the lore are still randomly attacking charr and anyone associated with them, which is a problem for the war on the dragons, they are messing up their food supply, supply chains, assasinating unification figures etc.

So essentially joining there side would be something you would have to do to the exclusion of all pact activity and dragon fighting.

While it might be interesting if you could do that, youd also have to be an enemy to players, so essentially pvp in open world. Its a pretty big change in focus to turn it into an open world pvp game.

To this effect, I kind of wish tonics were more than just aesthetic. Knavish tonic should temporarily align you with the bandits, or using a beast tonic align with the beasts/etc, kind of like when you have to disguise and infiltrate in some missions.

Yes, I want to team up with Canach instead of this group of kittens in the living story.

I would like to see players in PVE randomly chosen as a boss wondering around the map similar to Lunatic inquisition .

Maybe only when in LS that required server co-operation like Attack on Lion arch.Player controlled boss can use WP but will be spawned away in an out of sight location. So he can farm AFK players.Players killed by boss get sent to jail and boot out of map after certain time in the jail.

Boss player can give up midway if he got overwhelmed by player and let AI take over.

Pretty much like left4dead VS mode.

The point of the game is that your character wants to unite the entire land and all the races. That’s why no matter where you are the character is put to the side which is dominant over that area for example the charr vs the separatists or however it’s spelled. Changing that feature WOULD be nice but it would break the storyline completely and re-doing a storyline wouldn’t be easy.

Immortal.8542:

The point of the game is that your character wants to unite the entire land and all the races.

Speak for yourself. Mine wants to unite all the champ bags in one inventory.

I appreciate the notion and that works fine in a single-player game. It makes me think of the old days of RTS games when you played a side campaign and that side won and had its ending. Starcraft brought the twist on that to weaving all the sides into one story.

An online game tends to be more homogenized in its content. Though as someone else pointed out, being able to be a ‘bad guy’ in PvP would be a fun notion. I always liked that innovation on LOTRO’s part.

Perhaps a future wrinkle to WvW will let you be ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ i.e. let you be a Pirate/Inquest/Flame Legion/Nightmare-Toxic/Svanir member, and possibly earn some armor or other skins to use in your Wardrobe as rewards for doing that.

Immortal.8542:

The point of the game is that your character wants to unite the entire land and all the races.

For me it’s not a contradiction. My necromancer wouldn’t mind uniting all Tyrian races under his iron fist as a Emperor of Tyria
Although my asuran Mesmer would try to blow all that up while ironically my sylvari Thieve would be only one interested in fighting dragons and saving world :P

I understand the game-design reasons for it, but I do think it’s amusing that my Asuran immediately takes sides in the Charr-Human “separatists = bandits” question.

Didn’t you know there is no victory when being the bad guy. Just imagine if you could help koopa capture the princess and defeat mario. Then what? Would you feel like you won? For me its just not nearly as satisfactory as a story of heroism. Helping those from the bad guys that just want to oppress and destroy.

Kiyoki Yamata.7986:

Didn’t you know there is no victory when being the bad guy. Just imagine if you could help koopa capture the princess and defeat mario. Then what? Would you feel like you won? For me its just not nearly as satisfactory as a story of heroism. Helping those from the bad guys that just want to oppress and destroy.

Well, yeah. And thats the very reason I want to decide for myself which side is good, and therefore support the anti-charr rebelion in Ascalon. Because, unlike the devs, I feel that charr are bad military freaks and the land belongs to humans.