GW1 PvP remastered - the only way forward?

TL;DR GW1 was made for competitive play, GW2 wasn't. It was successful at establishing a scene, something GW2 couldn't do even though Anet kept pouring money into it. It's time to stop knocking on the wrong door and get PvP out of its lowest low of the franchise.

So we all know how Anet's attempt at GW2 esport ended: with countless memes and eventually terminating their partnership with ESL. After all the things Anet got wrong there, there's still one thing they were absolutely right about, and that's the growing audience of e-sport and the money that comes with it.

It wasn't a bad idea, but the circumstances were far from ideal. They got "greedy", although that may not be the best way to put it. They tried doing everything with GW2 - provide a super casual PvE experience, balance around a competitive 5v5 scene, offer 50v50 PvP encounters using PvE gear and a mix of PvE/PvP balance, and the list goes on and on. It's not hard to see why this was never going to work.

For PvP to succeed it needs better foundations and Anet has to give it proper attention, which will never happen as PvP is just a fraction of GW2 and not even the most popular one. There is, however, a way out. GW1. Unlike GW2, that game was made with competitive PvP in mind from the start and is still more fit to be an esport than GW2.

To sum it up:

• This'd obviously allow Anet to give PvP balance the attention it needs without screwing over PvE. GW2 combat is becoming more and more unsuitable for not just competitive PvP, but PvP in general with each major patch.
• GW1 is easier to get into and spectate. This is a big one. 8 skills for every player is very reasonable and makes the combat much less spammy than the 20 skills of GW2 (30+ in some cases like FB). Much easier to learn as a new player or follow as a spectator/shoutcaster, not to mention it has cast bars and a combat log with tooltips instead of demanding everyone to memorize 200+ animations just to not get blown up in seconds.
• Gamemode variety, instead of "Conquest or go find another game". Conquest in every single game I've played in the past is one of the least favorite modes of the community, it's certainly not doing GW2 any favors, but the combat system can't really support anything else without major restrictions. From casual to competitive, small 4v4 to 12v12, deathmatch through siege, it had something for everyone.
• Ingame observer mode for top tier matches, something that's for some reason impossible to do for GW2.
• Already managed to establish a fairly sizeable scene in the past, it's a tested product.

I'm probably missing some but you get the point.

What's in it for Anet?

• A way to regain lost players or grow their playerbase in new ways without making decisions that could negatively impact GW2.
• A real shot at esport.
• Maybe test a new game engine? This one is getting old but investing into a new one for GW2 right now would be a heavy investment by all means. A new game could make that investment more worthwhile.
• $$

Why a remastered one?

Well there are some things they'd need to correct on the way, it's not a perfect game either, and not many new people would invest time into something released in 2005. It needs some fresh breath.

But it's old!

Sure, some may think it's "outdated" compared to GW2. It's just different. MOBAs are basically just a mod of an old RTS game and it's still the biggest thing in esports in 2017, so who are we to judge. Some QoL changes could make it a lot smoother without changing the combat.

I think this is something worth pursuing. GW2 PvP is on life support and the combat is in a dire need of overhaul which will never happen, or if it happens it'll be based on PvE which is even worse for us.

The question is will arenanet let go of their pride and admit they don't have the resources to make it enjoyable.

I wonder if anyone would miss pvp If it just disappeared.

good post, but I feel there's an alternative solution. it's a lot cheaper and less complex, and honestly it's what I would do if I was in charge. I'll lay it out step by step.

1. let the PvP team make balance changes with splits, and roll out patches at different times to the PvE patches.

2. appoint a community representative/leader from the PvP team. I'm thinking this would be Ben, as he talks the community the most. alternatively you could hire Jebro to do the communication aspect.

3. gather up, say four ex-pro players. personally I would choose Chaith, Phantaram, Sind, and Helseth. invite these players to participate in a monthly balance podcast (streamed thru twitch, a la teatime).

4. give the ex-pros a week or so to prepare a hypothetical balance change list. let them talk to their audience and other community members about this. then have the ex-pros and the PvP teams representative discuss the changes live over twitch. with the goal being to end up with a rough balance patch at the end of the stream.

5. clean up the balance patch, and roll it out within a week of the stream.

6. repeat every 1-2 months as needed.

I honestly think this would sort balance out within a few months, and do huge things to improve community attitude. adding new gamemodes, like 2v2 or GvG could come later. but I feel the way to go is to utilise the talent and tools we have to fix the gammode we have before moving on to new content.

just my 2c

@choovanski.5462 said:

I wanted to put in the pic of Fry saying "shut up and take my money" but I'm too lazy.

(Speaking of money though, its often said that "there's no money in pvp" but its also put about that between 10-40% of people pvp but does pvp get between 10-40% of the revenue?)

@troops.8276 said:

@choovanski.5462 said:

Oh there is plenty of money and demand for PvP. The devs. are just don't want to deal with that market. GW2's PvE is the laziest money maker in the MMO genre even compared to some F2P/P2W type MMOs. So by going on this new road ANet is on. ANet is allowed to make soo much money for nothing more. Then giving MMORPG reject players a place, to put their heads down and call home.

It's no wonder ANet doesn't care about losing the not so casual players. Those players are high maintenance, and the super casual spam 1 to win players requires like no work to maintain. You just have to put some glowy things on the microtransaction store and they'll berserk with their wallets.

Gw2 pvp is better than gw1.

@Reaper Alim.4176 said:

@troops.8276 said:

@choovanski.5462 said:

A P4C hypercasual mobile game might be where they go next.

@troops.8276 said:

@Reaper Alim.4176 said:

@troops.8276 said:

@choovanski.5462 said:

Funny that you bring this up, Anet's actually working on a mobile game.

@Crinn.7864 said:Gw2 pvp is better than gw1.

You must be out of your mind.

If GW1 were made 5 years later when twitch/streaming became a thing, competitive GW1 pvp would easily overtake Dota/LoL as the most popular MOBA ish esport in the world.

@choovanski.5462 said:good post, but I feel there's an alternative solution. it's a lot cheaper and less complex, and honestly it's what I would do if I was in charge. I'll lay it out step by step.

2. appoint a community representative/leader from the PvP team. I'm thinking this would be Ben, as he talks the community the most. alternatively you could hire Jebro to do the communication aspect.

3. gather up, say four ex-pro players. personally I would choose Chaith, Phantaram, Sind, and Helseth. invite these players to participate in a monthly balance podcast (streamed thru twitch, a la teatime).

4. give the ex-pros a week or so to prepare a hypothetical balance change list. let them talk to their audience and other community members about this. then have the ex-pros and the PvP teams representative discuss the changes live over twitch. with the goal being to end up with a rough balance patch at the end of the stream.

I honestly think this would sort balance out within a few months, and do huge things to improve community attitude. adding new gamemodes, like 2v2 or GvG could come later. but I feel the way to go is to utilise the talent and tools we have to fix the gammode we have before moving on to new content.

I'm sorry but this made me laugh so hard. does this imaginary world you live in, operate on lollipops, candy-canes and unicorns?

GW1 also had the most advanced spectator mode that was basically a wet dream for shoutcasters, being able to freely tap into anyone's PoV and skill bar usage on the fly.

@Crinn.7864 said:Gw2 pvp is better than gw1.

LOl you're kidding right?

double post

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684

you’re being too vague w your post, it’s basically meaningless

if i were to guess i would have to assume you are implying these ex-pro players wouldn’t participate unless they were paid to do so. hence the operating on candy canes comment. if so, i would argue that Chaith’s balance patch wishlists (which he posts often), & Helseth’s mirage analysis video show that these players are absolutely keen to contribute to the game for free. however i would have no issue w them being financially compensated, but ultimately its up to anet.

but like, as i said i really don’t know what you mean. maybe you think having the pvp team being able to make balance changes, & using top players to inform balance decisions is a bad idea? i really doubt you think that though, because only an absolute moron would think that.

if it’s that anet doesn’t care about pvp, so posting suggestions is a waste of time- yeah i know that’s probably the case. but i got a bit of hope in me, so i’d still like to imagine the current situation can be turned around.

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@choovanski.5462 said:good post, but I feel there's an alternative solution. it's a lot cheaper and less complex, and honestly it's what I would do if I was in charge. I'll lay it out step by step.

2. appoint a community representative/leader from the PvP team. I'm thinking this would be Ben, as he talks the community the most. alternatively you could hire Jebro to do the communication aspect.

3. gather up, say four ex-pro players. personally I would choose Chaith, Phantaram, Sind, and Helseth. invite these players to participate in a monthly balance podcast (streamed thru twitch, a la teatime).

4. give the ex-pros a week or so to prepare a hypothetical balance change list. let them talk to their audience and other community members about this. then have the ex-pros and the PvP teams representative discuss the changes live over twitch. with the goal being to end up with a rough balance patch at the end of the stream.

I honestly think this would sort balance out within a few months, and do huge things to improve community attitude. adding new gamemodes, like 2v2 or GvG could come later. but I feel the way to go is to utilise the talent and tools we have to fix the gammode we have before moving on to new content.

No it'd only be after a business decision by Anet to start putting more resources towards a facet of gaming that takes a fair market share in the hope of increasing profitability. Maybe to counter the up-coming pvp based mmo(ish) titles hopefully to release over the next few years and other more direct competitors in the mmorpg market. They will be thinking about their place and share of the market. That'd be point 1.Points 2,3 and 4 could be taken, I'd have thought, from the advertising budget as it does rather fit in with that methodology. It'd be small change really in the grand scheme of things and it's amazing what people will do for "it'll look great on your cv/think of the prestige" if nothing else. Though as hard as it might be to believe, sometimes people do actually go out of their way to help just because they want to. Crazy right.

But like the vast majority of everything on forums a lot of it just wishful thinking really. You must know that. I thought everyone knew that, even my grannys dog knows that.

@choovanski.5462 said:good post, but I feel there's an alternative solution. it's a lot cheaper and less complex, and honestly it's what I would do if I was in charge. I'll lay it out step by step.

1. let the PvP team make balance changes with splits, and roll out patches at different times to the PvE patches.

2. appoint a community representative/leader from the PvP team. I'm thinking this would be Ben, as he talks the community the most. alternatively you could hire Jebro to do the communication aspect.

3. gather up, say four ex-pro players. personally I would choose Chaith, Phantaram, Sind, and Helseth. invite these players to participate in a monthly balance podcast (streamed thru twitch, a la teatime).

4. give the ex-pros a week or so to prepare a hypothetical balance change list. let them talk to their audience and other community members about this. then have the ex-pros and the PvP teams representative discuss the changes live over twitch. with the goal being to end up with a rough balance patch at the end of the stream.

5. clean up the balance patch, and roll it out within a week of the stream.

6. repeat every 1-2 months as needed.

I honestly think this would sort balance out within a few months, and do huge things to improve community attitude. adding new gamemodes, like 2v2 or GvG could come later. but I feel the way to go is to utilise the talent and tools we have to fix the gammode we have before moving on to new content.

just my 2c

I like this idea

@shadowpass.4236 said:

@choovanski.5462 said:good post, but I feel there's an alternative solution. it's a lot cheaper and less complex, and honestly it's what I would do if I was in charge.

thanks dude.

it’s always seemed like the obvious thing to do to me. we have a really skilled and passionate playerbase, who really want to see the game flourish. anet really should take advantage of that. a twitch balance podcast would completely change the playerbases attitude too, it would be so transformative.

i’ve also got a whole guild queue gameplan that i’d roll out too. it’s a little complex, but i think combined with my balance suggestion it would be amazing. it’s all about building community, attracting new players to pvp & meaningful rewards. if any of y’all are keen i can type it out.

I've been saying this for about a year now. Only way to save the guild wars franchise is to do a HD remaster where you can jump and all in GW!. Sadly pvp is a fail in gw2 so it's a pure pve game. Where as to gw1 was pvp and pve. The skill tree selection was unmatched. It was just fun...

Does anyone still play GW1? Why not just go back and play it?

@choovanski.5462 said:good post, but I feel there's an alternative solution. it's a lot cheaper and less complex, and honestly it's what I would do if I was in charge. I'll lay it out step by step.

1. let the PvP team make balance changes with splits, and roll out patches at different times to the PvE patches.

2. appoint a community representative/leader from the PvP team. I'm thinking this would be Ben, as he talks the community the most. alternatively you could hire Jebro to do the communication aspect.

3. gather up, say four ex-pro players. personally I would choose Chaith, Phantaram, Sind, and Helseth. invite these players to participate in a monthly balance podcast (streamed thru twitch, a la teatime).

4. give the ex-pros a week or so to prepare a hypothetical balance change list. let them talk to their audience and other community members about this. then have the ex-pros and the PvP teams representative discuss the changes live over twitch. with the goal being to end up with a rough balance patch at the end of the stream.

5. clean up the balance patch, and roll it out within a week of the stream.

6. repeat every 1-2 months as needed.

I honestly think this would sort balance out within a few months, and do huge things to improve community attitude. adding new gamemodes, like 2v2 or GvG could come later. but I feel the way to go is to utilise the talent and tools we have to fix the gammode we have before moving on to new content.

just my 2c

GW2 """pros""" don't know any better than anyone else about how to make a good video game. In fact, most of them know far less about what makes a game good exactly because they play meta GW2. Phantaram wants moredamage on weaver sword autoattacks (Ohhh, really creative and game-changing). Anyone caught wanting to buff GW2 autos should be disqualified from balance suggestions. Helseth made this big complaint post about how mirage was bad during the beta which basically amounted to "change all this; it's bad." He didn't give any real suggestions because it's "not his job," which is true, but it also goes to show you how even the pros don't know any better than anet especially if all they want are arbitrary buffs and just play whatever anet puts out.

If you want reality, you have to understand that the state of GW2's own outdated engine is in horrid, spaghetti tatters. Too many people have had their heads permanently caved in on one side by bad balance decisions and poor fundamental design. There is no going back for GW2. The game is too shallow to support more than 4 unique roles, and yet anet decided to add 9th class at some point because "we wanted to have a 3rd soldier armor class to even things out." ????? Is that a reason to design a supposedly functional role in a game???

I remember when people talked about weapon swap being a second gw1 skill bar. That could have been game-changing, but unfortunately, weapon swap in gw2 just means "the other part of my dps rotation." Stealth was never necessary. Remember when all gw1 teleport skills had a 0.75s aftercast implemented because without it, people exploded targets instantly from spell range (kind of like how everybody does now)? I bet you don't.

The point of all this is that if GW2 is ever going to become a good video game (especially one that has remotely ANY sort of potential as a fun, competitive PvP scene), it has to completely change. So much has to be ripped out that it would just be better off as GW3 (because everyone brain-damaged by GW2's design conventions would complain when they lose their cancer).

I kind of wish someone would just hack a copy of retail GW1 into a private server format and then go crazy with modding. GW2, after all, is just a modded GW1. Maybe someone else could just do it right.

@Foxraging.1269 said:Does anyone still play GW1? Why not just go back and play it?

I know that several of the PvP arenas were so dead that it was impossible to get a game as of a few years ago. Balance patches are no longer being implemented.

@Foxraging.1269 said:Does anyone still play GW1? Why not just go back and play it?

People still play it but there aren't enough people left to keep more than 1-2 gamemodes going. Last balance patch was 5 years ago and there's no carrot on a stick because most people already have all the rewards they cared about, not to mention not many enw players are coming in. It's obviously not the same without Anet's support.

But for the record the last monthly tournament had about the same participation numbers as the GW2 EU mAT, which says a lot about both games.

@Aza.2105 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:Gw2 pvp is better than gw1.

Well the combat is much much much better than gw1. Its the only reason why the few and proud log in to play gw2 pvp.

Release a remaster and graphic rehaul of gw1 on the gw2 engine using vulkan/molten ....... throw a big sale on steam..... profit.If Blizz can swallow their pride with Star craft 2 and release a remaster of Starcraft 1 so can Anet