Idea for WvW, tell me if it would work

cali59

I don't know if anyone else has already had this idea.  I checked a few pages back in the suggestions area of GW2Guru but didn't see it and a google search didn't turn up anything either.

 

Anyway.  One of the complaints I've seen on this board repeatedly is that WvW has mirrored races and you're just fighting red vs blue vs whatever the third color is.  This puts the Mists in the awkward position of being "the Mists" where we're fighting for the gods' amusement or whatever because it makes no "real world" sense for what is happening to be happening.

What if you could apply phasing to enemy players in WvW?  We know all players have the same hitbox so there's no advantage to making an Asura vs a Norn.  And there's no racial abilities in PVP.

What if you could make each enemy faction look like an enemy faction?  For example, Stone Summit Dwarves and Undead.  Or a new race.  Or Tengu.  Whatever.

Each faction would still see themselves as themselves, but each enemy faction would appear like a true enemy.    Yes, it creates all kinds of new lore problems I haven't worked on solving yet.  You'd still need recognizable armor for determining class on sight, and the Engineer would mean it would still need to be set in modern times.   Are the Stone Summit even still around?

Whether it's still in The Mists or not I don't know, but it no longer feels like it HAS to be.  It could be justified like WoW's Alterac Valley is, it's a battle for territory between the dwarves and the orcs, not in some proto reality.

What do you think?

 

edit:  One downside I can already see is that it can detract away from the competitive aspect of it, like how our server is ranked against other servers (this would still happen for the sake of balancing the sides, but seems like it wouldn't feel like a direct competition against other players if the players look like true enemy factions).  They were also talking about how they expect rivalries to form like with pro sports teams even though they only play them a few times a year.  Again, I don't know if people will pay attention to players like "oh it's that server with that annoying Charr ranger, I hope I can kill him" when that guy looks like some random undead.

SteeJanz

I personally agree more with your downside.  I have no problem with fighting the same races over and over.  I think it would be easier to build the rivalries with the other servers as well.   I want people from the competing servers to know that it's that freaking Norn warrior Stee Janz kicking me in the teeth again.  Of course a more accurate description will probably be: "Ah man, not Stee Janz again.  It's getting old vitrually kicking this guy in the groin over and over again."  Either way I will annoy them. 

 

Fion

I think when Anet was first putting down the rules for what this game is all about, early on they decided that they did not want to go the Factions route, where the player base is split up into groups, seperated by race, with no real meaning to it.

If you've never played an MMOG without any factions you may not know how intense the PvP can get in them. In games like WoW, there is really no rivalry (outside of Blizzcon). For most players who PvP, you kill the elf or the orc because.. they are an elf or an orc. With non-faction games where your fighting the same classes and races, (or even ones with factions but the same classes/races), it comes down to guilds and servers. Trust me, within a few months there will be some SERIOUS rivalries between the servers and also between guilds on those servers (and even guilds on the same server, as they compete to take the most keeps or resources, etc.)

I see where you are coming from but I think adding factions to differentiate your enemies is just a bad idea. Once you see just how competitive non-faction based PvP can be, you'll see why that is.

To add, I'm not so sure in WvWvW that armor will be tinted red, blue, etc for each server, like it is in 5v5 PvP. Instead I suspect it will be something less in your face, but still very easy to tell who is the enemy. Perhaps the color of their name tag. Something simple but obvious.

And don't worry about 'ranked' servers. Anet has stated specifically that WvWvW is more casual and thus there won't be ranked servers and there won't be perfect balance. If one server has twice the population of the other two, they won't try and cut down the number of people on that server that can join WvWvW at any one time, they'll just leave it up to the other two to ally against the large one, etc.

I can see how you might think that the individual rivalries won't exist in WvWvW like they might in 5v5. But that doesn't mean there won't be rivaliries. Just wait and see, and trust me the rivalries and the fighting (and even the RP) will be even better simply 'because' the game doesn't force you into a some arbitrary faction system.

korent1991

I think it'll be awesome to FINALLY not have faction pvp. It's really frustrating that if I want to go to another factions city to check it out I gotta make a new character and level it. So this way I can go wherver I want and do whatever I want. There's again simple meaning of the PVP, you fight for the glory of your server and your guild. Where in other games you fight just because they are the other faction. And also it brings a lot of options to customize this pvp battles, there could be clan wars even? There's an idea which just popped out, since the same faction has many clans why couldn't there be some clans fighting agains clans of other races (like, humans vs charr) and somehting happens which triggers other races to join charr or humans and fight along their side because of their long history and after a weak peace being shattered they start another war. Gives me a lot of ideas what could be done and what could trigger big competition among the players, guilds and servers.

cali59

Originally posted by Fion

I think when Anet was first putting down the rules for what this game is all about, early on they decided that they did not want to go the Factions route, where the player base is split up into groups, seperated by race, with no real meaning to it.

If you've never played an MMOG without any factions you may not know how intense the PvP can get in them. In games like WoW, there is really no rivalry (outside of Blizzcon). For most players who PvP, you kill the elf or the orc because.. they are an elf or an orc. With non-faction games where your fighting the same classes and races, (or even ones with factions but the same classes/races), it comes down to guilds and servers. Trust me, within a few months there will be some SERIOUS rivalries between the servers and also between guilds on those servers (and even guilds on the same server, as they compete to take the most keeps or resources, etc.)

I see where you are coming from but I think adding factions to differentiate your enemies is just a bad idea. Once you see just how competitive non-faction based PvP can be, you'll see why that is.

To add, I'm not so sure in WvWvW that armor will be tinted red, blue, etc for each server, like it is in 5v5 PvP. Instead I suspect it will be something less in your face, but still very easy to tell who is the enemy. Perhaps the color of their name tag. Something simple but obvious.

And don't worry about 'ranked' servers. Anet has stated specifically that WvWvW is more casual and thus there won't be ranked servers and there won't be perfect balance. If one server has twice the population of the other two, they won't try and cut down the number of people on that server that can join WvWvW at any one time, they'll just leave it up to the other two to ally against the large one, etc.

I can see how you might think that the individual rivalries won't exist in WvWvW like they might in 5v5. But that doesn't mean there won't be rivaliries. Just wait and see, and trust me the rivalries and the fighting (and even the RP) will be even better simply 'because' the game doesn't force you into a some arbitrary faction system.

 I appreciate your position, I'm on board with the idea of people fighting just for the sake of competition.  I just thought it was an idea worth discussing is all.

Servers are ranked though, which is why the battles last two weeks.  At the end of the time, your server gets paired up against new servers of similar strength.  http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_versus_World  There will still be imbalances from week to week (requiring smaller servers to ally against the bigger one) but they won't be enormous imbalances.  The game will also be fresher because you might be the big server one week and the small one the next.

Shroom_Mage

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Originally posted by cali59
Again, I don't know if people will pay attention to players like "oh it's that server with that annoying Charr ranger, I hope I can kill him" when that guy looks like some random undead.

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What if he looked like an undead charr?

Maybe one enemy team look like ghosts and the other look like... skeletons or something, I don't know. Or something more creative, but still their own races, like dragonbranded or something.