Guild Wars 2

Dear Anet,

Now that we are going to have actual guild wars (guild pvp) like in Guild Wars 1, please bring back:
– a hard mode for map exploration and dungeons
– vanquish missions for the maps
– elite zones (like Sorrow’s furnace, Underworld, Urgoz’s warren, …)

Some achievements and/or titles for soloing some instantiated group events (eg. Lupicus in Arah, etc) would be nice too.

Thank you!

And how are they going to implement Hard mode and Vanquish in a game where the maps are open world and enemies respawn?

Yeah, I’ve already made a topic about this a while ago. The discussion ended up being: Although a lot of people like the idea, it would be weird to do it without instances.

-I’d love to see a hardmode for the dungeons.

-We can’t vanquish an area right now without areas becoming instanced, so maybe if we had a hardmode option all areas would turn into instances? Idk.

-I’d love to have elite zones (UW, FOW, SF, Urgoz, etc.)

My 3 cents.

There will be no GvG GW1 style, why do you think there will be?

Putting 2 and 2 together here.

I heard that one of the reasons why Anet implemented mega-servers were beacuse of two things:
-Reducing strain on servers (fewer versions of maps need to be made and maintained- rather than many low population shards, there will be few high population shards)
-Keeping the maps well populated (increasing player satisfaction).

If instanced vanquishing areas were introduced, this work would be undone.

It made sense in GW1 as all maps were instances anyway. Also, from what I’ve heard, mob roaming AI is very different in GW1 and GW2, it would be very difficult to implement because of this (GW1 had groups of mobs roaming, GW2 have lots of singular mobs roaming).

Crimson Clouds.4853:

Putting 2 and 2 together here.

I heard that one of the reasons why Anet implemented mega-servers were beacuse of two things:
-Reducing strain on servers (fewer versions of maps need to be made and maintained- rather than many low population shards, there will be few high population shards)
-Keeping the maps well populated (increasing player satisfaction).

If instanced vanquishing areas were introduced, this work would be undone.

It made sense in GW1 as all maps were instances anyway. Also, from what I’ve heard, mob roaming AI is very different in GW1 and GW2, it would be very difficult to implement because of this (GW1 had groups of mobs roaming, GW2 have lots of singular mobs roaming).

I was thinking of doing it with map instances of course. I mean, we are already doing it with the season 2 of the living story and the whole personal story anyway! Maybe it doesn’t have to be done on the entire maps but by chunks?

Many.8419:

There will be no GvG GW1 style, why do you think there will be?

“Gather supply to hire soldiers. Battle for control of heroes. Man the trebuchet to defend your stronghold, and storm the enemy gates to defeat the guild lord! Use our new guild team feature to team up and battle to the top of the leaderboards. Stronghold offers an entirely new way to play competitive PvP in Guild Wars 2!”

I thought this is what they were talking about.

lordkrall.7241:

And how are they going to implement Hard mode and Vanquish in a game where the maps are open world and enemies respawn?

And how do they implement the personal story?

Yunjii Sun.3512:

Many.8419:

There will be no GvG GW1 style, why do you think there will be?

“Gather supply to hire soldiers. Battle for control of heroes. Man the trebuchet to defend your stronghold, and storm the enemy gates to defeat the guild lord! Use our new guild team feature to team up and battle to the top of the leaderboards. Stronghold offers an entirely new way to play competitive PvP in Guild Wars 2!”

I thought this is what they were talking about.

This will be more like MOBA games with guild ladder, nothing more, not even close to gvg in gw1.

Yunjii Sun.3512:

Many.8419:

There will be no GvG GW1 style, why do you think there will be?

“Gather supply to hire soldiers. Battle for control of heroes. Man the trebuchet to defend your stronghold, and storm the enemy gates to defeat the guild lord! Use our new guild team feature to team up and battle to the top of the leaderboards. Stronghold offers an entirely new way to play competitive PvP in Guild Wars 2!”

I thought this is what they were talking about.

Apparently Stronghold will also be 5v5, far from real “GvG”. This is because Stronghold will be in the normal rotation of PvP maps, which all are 5v5. Of course, there still is the option to make enter PvP with a party full of guild members. Not sure if it’s still possible to make an 8v8 custom arena, too.

I seem to remember a GvG CDI thread. Who knows if GvG is coming in HoT, but I doubt it will be in the form of Stronghold. GvG might be something announced in the future, before release.

Yunjii Sun.3512:

lordkrall.7241:

And how are they going to implement Hard mode and Vanquish in a game where the maps are open world and enemies respawn?

And how do they implement the personal story?

PS instances are small and easy to balance on top of megaservers, entire instanced maps for 1-6 players would not be so small.
If you want “hard” mode, go farm Orr in blues…

Many.8419:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

Many.8419:

There will be no GvG GW1 style, why do you think there will be?

“Gather supply to hire soldiers. Battle for control of heroes. Man the trebuchet to defend your stronghold, and storm the enemy gates to defeat the guild lord! Use our new guild team feature to team up and battle to the top of the leaderboards. Stronghold offers an entirely new way to play competitive PvP in Guild Wars 2!”

I thought this is what they were talking about.

This will be more like MOBA games with guild ladder, nothing more, not even close to gvg in gw1.

:(

Dasenthal.6520:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

lordkrall.7241:

And how are they going to implement Hard mode and Vanquish in a game where the maps are open world and enemies respawn?

And how do they implement the personal story?

PS instances are small and easy to balance on top of megaservers, entire instanced maps for 1-6 players would not be so small.
If you want “hard” mode, go farm Orr in blues…

Well, again, maybe they could split the maps, like for missions.

With a good minion master build you can farm orr in blue without problem… Hard mode is not about farming or about stuff. It is about fun and about having another way to play. It is also about horizontal scaling instead of vertical scaling (== you don’t get more powerful; only the challenge increases)

Yunjii Sun.3512:

Crimson Clouds.4853:

Putting 2 and 2 together here.

I heard that one of the reasons why Anet implemented mega-servers were beacuse of two things:
-Reducing strain on servers (fewer versions of maps need to be made and maintained- rather than many low population shards, there will be few high population shards)
-Keeping the maps well populated (increasing player satisfaction).

If instanced vanquishing areas were introduced, this work would be undone.

It made sense in GW1 as all maps were instances anyway. Also, from what I’ve heard, mob roaming AI is very different in GW1 and GW2, it would be very difficult to implement because of this (GW1 had groups of mobs roaming, GW2 have lots of singular mobs roaming).

I was thinking of doing it with map instances of course. I mean, we are already doing it with the season 2 of the living story and the whole personal story anyway! Maybe it doesn’t have to be done on the entire maps but by chunks?

There is quite a difference in supporting small, short instances such as PS/LS and area vanquishes. I seem to remember that GW1 vanquishes (for normal sized areas) would take 1-2 hours to clear. From what I understand, GW2 maps are significantly larger and have more foes and more spread out. Vanquishing a map would take much longer than in GW1: this means more server space will have to be dedicated to instances than in GW1 too. Server space costs money!

Another huge factor is that GW2 has a Z axis, meaning that there is even more area for foes to inhabit. It would be easy to miss foes on top of vistas, JPs or in caves.

Also, remember than GW1 had foes marked out on the radar as red dots? This made vanquishing large areas substantially easier because you wouldn’t miss out on mobs. Without this feature in GW2, expect vanquishing to be frustrating and laborious.

Your suggestion of having small areas to vanquish would be good. I think the most fitting areas for Vanquishing are dungeon instances. Party members could interact with a challenge mote at the start (just after picking a path) which would start an event in the dungeon e.g. “Foes Vanquished: 23 out of 112” with one of those orange fill bars. Once all foes have been killed, you get a jiggly chest that contains some rare loot and possibly dungeon tokens. The amount of loot depends on how many foes are in that instance.

Dungeons tend to be quite linear- it would be less easy to miss foes in there.

I would also assume that it is within A-net’s power to be able to host more dungeon instances fairly easily for what they are. They must be less of a “server drain” than whole map shards.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

Crimson Clouds.4853:

Putting 2 and 2 together here.

I heard that one of the reasons why Anet implemented mega-servers were beacuse of two things:
-Reducing strain on servers (fewer versions of maps need to be made and maintained- rather than many low population shards, there will be few high population shards)
-Keeping the maps well populated (increasing player satisfaction).

If instanced vanquishing areas were introduced, this work would be undone.

It made sense in GW1 as all maps were instances anyway. Also, from what I’ve heard, mob roaming AI is very different in GW1 and GW2, it would be very difficult to implement because of this (GW1 had groups of mobs roaming, GW2 have lots of singular mobs roaming).

I was thinking of doing it with map instances of course. I mean, we are already doing it with the season 2 of the living story and the whole personal story anyway! Maybe it doesn’t have to be done on the entire maps but by chunks?

There is quite a difference in supporting small, short instances such as PS/LS and area vanquishes. I seem to remember that GW1 vanquishes (for normal sized areas) would take 1-2 hours to clear. From what I understand, GW2 maps are significantly larger and have more foes and more spread out. Vanquishing a map would take much longer than in GW1: this means more server space will have to be dedicated to instances than in GW1 too. Server space costs money!

Another huge factor is that GW2 has a Z axis, meaning that there is even more area for foes to inhabit. It would be easy to miss foes on top of vistas, JPs or in caves.

Also, remember than GW1 had foes marked out on the radar as red dots? This made vanquishing large areas substantially easier because you wouldn’t miss out on mobs. Without this feature in GW2, expect vanquishing to be frustrating and laborious.

Your suggestion of having small areas to vanquish would be good. I think the most fitting areas for Vanquishing are dungeon instances. Party members could interact with a challenge mote at the start (just after picking a path) which would start an event in the dungeon e.g. “Foes Vanquished: 23 out of 112” with one of those orange fill bars. Once all foes have been killed, you get a jiggly chest that contains some rare loot and possibly dungeon tokens. The amount of loot depends on how many foes are in that instance.

Dungeons tend to be quite linear- it would be less easy to miss foes in there.

I would also assume that it is within A-net’s power to be able to host more dungeon instances fairly easily for what they are. They must be less of a “server drain” than whole map shards.

This is why I started my post with “Dear Anet” actually: I mean if I could send them an email, I totally would!

I’m not talking about bringing everything back like it was in their previous game, but I believe that the very same company that had such good ideas before should be able to find out something that would satisfy both the servers constraints and their long time fans.

The most important here is to tell them that we remember what they did before and that we would be pleased by something as good.