Thoughts about GW3 [Merged]

[Geoff Fey.1035]

2 hours ago, Laughing Bat.1570 said:

. The biggest change was heroes (started in Nightfall but EotN added quite a few more), which meant pugs were far less common. It was never difficult to find people in main hub towns or finding an active guild before gw2's release.

When heroes were first introduced (2006) in Nightfall, you could only have 3. It wasn't until March 2011 that they removed the cap, approximately 6 months before release of GW2.

I would be okay with ANet adding Heroes (probably via Mastery) in GW2 for instanced content

Edited April 1 by Geoff Fey.1035
Removed wishlist ideas, not relevant to discussion

[Laughing Bat.1570]

1 hour ago, Geoff Fey.1035 said:

When heroes were first introduced (2006) in Nightfall, you could only have 3. It wasn't until March 2011 that they removed the cap, approximately 6 months before release of GW2.

Heroes impacted Pug availability many years before they increased the cap. Setups like Discordway killed a lot of pugs. The consensus was that Discordway plus 4 henchmen was generally better than taking the time to find a pug.

Edited April 1 by Laughing Bat.1570

[SloRules.3560]

3 hours ago, Zeperio.4853 said:

That is true, but who is going to chase those carrots?

Majority of the people I see who are commenting about GW3 have a negative feeling and reaction about it and most are saying they would quit Guild Wars enitrely.

Maybe new players will chase the carrots?

But be honest, if you are a new player hearing about a new MMO which its announcement alone made thousands of previous players quit the franchise entirely, would you be willing to spend your money buying that new MMO?

There's what? 10.000 people that are mad and most of them would jump to new game if it is good. How is that compared to 1.000.000+ players that would try new AAA mmo.

[Astralporing.1957]

31 minutes ago, SloRules.3560 said:

How is that compared to 1.000.000+ players that would try new AAA mmo.

So, please, do tell me how well those millions of players willing to try the new AAA MMO worked out for any of the new MMOs out there?

[SloRules.3560]

Just now, Astralporing.1957 said:

So, please, do tell me how well those millions of players willing to try the new AAA MMO worked out for any of the new MMOs out there?

There was what, 1 AAA western MMO released in last 10 years? It was New World and it was criticized a lot even before launch, yet people still tried it, despite knowing it was kitten. Make a good game and try to retain 10% of the players and you are already probably ahead of GW2.

[Leger.3724]

10 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

So, please, do tell me how well those millions of players willing to try the new AAA MMO worked out for any of the new MMOs out there?

It's always funny to read stuff, hear stuff like this.

One major reason the MMOs of today aren't succeeding is because so many stick with the complex formulas. So people try them out, it's nothing different. They go back to World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, Guild Wars, Elder Scrolls Online, Destiny 2 and so on because it's the complex systems they already know.

New World showed what's possible if you build an easily approachable combat system. Unfortunately for them they pivoted from a pvp survival game to pve MMO at last minute and the pve content was so bare, thin and repetitive the game collapsed. It was in a brand new, unique engine with problems including item duplications and gold duplications, the territory control system was bad and made the rich richer.

But you can look at Palworld, Valheim, V Rising, Minecraft. The desire for a multiplayer online experience in a massive open world is there. You can look at League of Legends, Call of Duty, DOTA 2, Valorant and others for the desire for pvp games. The one thing all these games have in common is they're simple and approachable in terms of combat. Can you say the same of GW2? No. WoW? No. FF14? No. ESO? No.

Edited April 1 by Leger.3724

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, SloRules.3560 said:

There's what? 10.000 people that are mad and most of them would jump to new game if it is good. How is that compared to 1.000.000+ players that would try new AAA mmo.

"Trying" mmo doesn't exactly matter as much as you're suggesting here, even massively hyped up ones can be walking corpse soon after the initial player spike.

37 minutes ago, SloRules.3560 said:

Make a good game and try to retain 10% of the players

Ah so that's what most mmo devs failed to think of. Just make it good and then just retain players. Now that the cat is out of the bag, we can expect seeing infinite number of extremely successful AAA mmorpgs.

Edited April 1 by Sobx.1758

[SloRules.3560]

33 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

"Trying" mmo doesn't exactly matter as much as you're suggesting here, even massively hyped up ones can be walking corpse soon after the initial player spike.

Ah so that's what most mmo devs failed to think of. Just make it good and then just retain players. Now that the cat is out of the bag, we can expect seeing infinite number of extremely successful AAA mmorpgs.

How many AAA western MMOs have actually failed in last 10 years?

[Sobx.1758]

Just now, SloRules.3560 said:

How many AAA western MMOs have actually failed in last 10 years?

Probably all of them, I'm not doing the counting for you.

[Cyninja.2954]

25 minutes ago, SloRules.3560 said:

How many AAA western MMOs have actually failed in last 10 years?

Let's expand the question: how many MMOs failed in the last 10 years? Answer: all of them. All.

Remind me: which MMO in the last 10 years is considered a success?

Edited April 1 by Cyninja.2954

[SloRules.3560]

4 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Let's expand the question: how many MMOs failed in the last 10 years? Answer: all of them. All.

Remind me: which MMO in the last 10 years is considered a success?

I asked how many proper MMOs were even released, well it was only New World for your information. Under that you have Lost Ark and Albion online which are isometric, but probably had the most work done on them after New World and are actually labeled MMOs. Other than that you have blatant cash grabs.

Before these 10 years you have ESO, FFXIV and GW2 with Wildstart probably the biggest game that failed in that time period, although i still wouldn't call it as big as those 3. Other than that you again get mediocrity.

Oh yeah Black Desert also has seen success released in 2016 in the west and 2014 in Korea.

[Cyninja.2954]

23 minutes ago, SloRules.3560 said:

I asked how many proper MMOs were even released, well it was only New World for your information. Under that you have Lost Ark and Albion online which are isometric, but probably had the most work done on them after New World and are actually labeled MMOs. Other than that you have blatant cash grabs.

Oh don't sell New World short though, given its budget was likely significantly higher than what NCSoft or Arenanet can invest.

Lost Ark is probably the only game which can be considered a success, and it's far less MMORPG than MMOARPG.

Albion is niche. Successful mostly but very niche and it took a while for it to carve out its place.

Quote

Before these 10 years you have ESO, FFXIV and GW2 with Wildstart probably the biggest game that failed in that time period, although i still wouldn't call it as big as those 3. Other than that you again get mediocrity.

Final Fantasy released as a HUGE disaster. It took years to remake and then even more years and 2 expansions to get to where it is at now. Square/Enix basically did what almost no other developer/publisher has ever done, given the Final Fantasy name was on the line: take a lot of money and try again.

ESO is size wise about the size of GW2 and mostly benefits of its cross platform nature.

Wildstar needs no mention, it's dead.

So if we take that into account, it's even more time since a successful MMO was launched in the west. That's called even higher risk.

Quote

Oh yeah Black Desert also has seen success released in 2016 in the west and 2014 in Korea.

BD has its niche. It's hardly a major success. It's also significantly pay to win, which would be questionable for a western release and double so for the audience of the Guild Wars IP which is even more price sensitive than the regular market.

Listen, we've all been there: get the hopes up for a new MMO, let the imagination run wild of how the next game will be better/perfect/amazing etc. The reality is: launching a MMORPG is very risky business, the vast majority fail and the ones that make it usually climb to their success over many years starting as niche titles at best. 

No MMO has EVER been a huge success on launch and the months after, except for WoW which remains the anomaly. Most took natural growth and lots of development.

That's what history of this market has shown and there is no reason to believe that this has or will change.

Edit: as far as how many released, you seem to be out of touch with the market. A lot have released, none of them had hundrds of millions of dollars budget, because no big studio is willing to take the risk. Among those with those budgets, most failed and among the smaller titles with lower budgets, most failed as well.

The big publishers literally did risk analysis and decided:"nope, we aren't doing it". That's why you didn't see more "proper" releases.

Edited April 1 by Cyninja.2954

[Cuks.8241]

If it's one thing we can be optimistic, if there even will be gw3 and it will actually be a primarily pc mmorg is that ArenaNet and NCSoft actually know how to make and sustain a mmo. Now if only this would mean mostly ArenaNet with focus on player and fun and not NCSoft's grindy and p2win style.

[Astralporing.1957]

7 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

If it's one thing we can be optimistic, if there even will be gw3 and it will actually be a primarily pc mmorg is that ArenaNet and NCSoft actually know how to make and sustain a mmo. Now if only this would mean mostly ArenaNet with focus on player and fun and not NCSoft's grindy and p2win style.

If you want to be optimistic about NCSoft's ability to do that to a new MMO, just look at Throne and Liberty.[/s]

[Artemis.8034]

8 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

No MMO has EVER been a huge success on launch and the months after, except for WoW which remains the anomaly. Most took natural growth and lots of development.

Do you ever wonder why? WoW launched in 2004 and its still the king. They found a formula that works to start with, then they adjusted that formula just enough over time to suit the changes in society. Keeping WoW relevant and fun. I dont expect people that never played wow long term to get it, but as a long term wow player of 12 years it was the most fun mmo experience on a massive scale i ever had. If wow had gw2s combat system it would be even better

[Cyninja.2954]

30 minutes ago, Artemis.8034 said:

Do you ever wonder why? WoW launched in 2004 and its still the king. They found a formula that works to start with, then they adjusted that formula just enough over time to suit the changes in society. Keeping WoW relevant and fun. I dont expect people that never played wow long term to get it, but as a long term wow player of 12 years it was the most fun mmo experience on a massive scale i ever had. If wow had gw2s combat system it would be even better

WoW was a culmination of right time, right change in development, right ideas, established IP, beloved developer studio, etc. 

Most MMORPG players of ages 30+ (so basically the majority of the player base for these types of games) have played WoW at some point in time.

As to a formula that works: the last 10 years would disagree with you given the state of the game now, but that's not a GW2 topic.

As far as launch, WoW launched with the same issues any other new MMO has: lack of content (zones above level 40 were empty in fact), massive server issues (getting free subscription days was a common thing in the first months and even year after launch as compensation for issues), bugs left and right and balance issues.

Edited April 2 by Cyninja.2954

[Astralporing.1957]

3 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

As far as launch, WoW launched with the same issues any other new MMO has: lack of content (zones above level 40 were empty in fact), massive server issues (getting free subscription days was a common thing in the first months and even year after launch as compensation for issues), bugs left and right and balance issues.

Indeed. And the reason why it didn't matter then, but matters now is the competition. WoW, when it launched, had practically none. Everyone that started later had to compete with WoW. And any other MMORPGs that managed to stay afload in that shrinking market.

WoW practically redefining the whole market for a long time, making a ton of its would be replacements basically its own poor quality clones (and making even the most succesful contenders use a lot of ideas that it introduced) definitely didn't help either.

That's, btw, the issue with MMORPG continuations. You can't just make a new WoW (or FFXIV, or GW2) following "the same, but better" approach. Not only you will likely fail at actually making it better where it matters (mostly because every player will see it differently, and what you might think you improved might be a downgrade for others), but even if you do, you will likely still not win with nostalgia factor. The players will feel like the game is "almost" the one they liked, and those small differences will keep putting them off. So, in order to truly have a chance of making a worthy sequel you'd have to do it significantly different, so it would no longer be seen as just a shadow of the original title. Except that means a lot of your original players might heavily dislike those changes, and you will have to hope they will bring enough new ones instead to be worth the whole effort. Which is a massive risk - one that is very unlikely to succeed.

Edited April 2 by Astralporing.1957

[Inssengrimm.7924]

This discussion on relevant MMORPGs is interesting.

I think what the successfull MMORPGs have in common, at least successful here in the west, is that they belong to pre-existent franchises.
WoW, has Warcraft: Blizzard was and still is huge.
FFXIV, well, FF is also massive.
ESO, well, TESO is massive too.
SWTOR, well well, almost died but went F2P, and StarWars is like omg huge.

GW2 to make it the "big five" is in comparison smaller than those 4 success histories, both in developing resources and as a franchise.
GW1 was huge yeah, and very clever to be B2P in a world full of subscription games like it was the early-mid 2000s. But still enough to let it's sequel to "hook" onto the playground of the big and cool kids.

Besides GW2 is sincerely cool on it's own terms, you can draw gameplay, system, even design philosophies on how those other 4 MMORPGs work: But there it comes GW2 and does stuff no one elses dares, and does them well enough to retain a lot of people. The virtues of GW2 are entirely their own, or hereditary from GW1, the main feature being horizontal progression - None other MMORPG has really pulled it out as this one, the anti-fomo MMORPG. 

Aside these 5 cases, all other MMORPGs of western origin are either failed, let alone scam, projects and/or have been incredibly miss managed (New World).

And MMORPGs from the east, well, XIV is one from japan: but they work for the juicy western market so much that Yoshida clearly stated that he made the team play WoW, he was a WoW player, he opened to what the MMORPGs of the western world were and i think is in that mixture of both worlds where XIV truly found its place among the big ones. And its rebirth story is just wayyy too cool to ignore, not even with all the money behind it would for example New World be able to do such a thing - After all New World is a New IP - XIV is a frigging roman numbered entry on the Final Fantasy franchise, it has actual HISTORY behind it.

Eastern MMORPG usually get hyped and then die without honor or glory in this side of the world, only surviving cuz they are F2P.
But i wouldn't put Black Desert among the top 5 like at all, and honestly they being doing the same game for decades now (anyone remembers the first trailers of Blade and Soul?!)

But hey, only one game could come to take on the unique virtues of GW2 that makes it not WoW, not XIV, not SWTOR, not ESO... And thats a GW3.
But the moment they deviate too much of what GW1 and 2 have set, it will fail miserably. 

Just for example, GW3 cannot allow itself to be a vertical progression MMORPG of the bunch.

[Cuks.8241]

10 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

If you want to be optimistic about NCSoft's ability to do that to a new MMO, just look at Throne and Liberty.[/s]

Thats why I wrote if it doesnt go the usual NCSoft Korean way. I dont know how succesfull T&L is but you have to look at it worldwide. They are mostly aiming at asian markets.

Like it or not NCSoft is one of the mmo giants, at least in the past, before wow they were the top dog. Lineage and to lesser extent L2 were one of the genre defining games and I think L1 had the largest player base of its time (globally).

Maybe they dont know how (or dont want) to make a game appealing to western markets and lately they missmanaged a few games. But Im sure they still have knowledge and assets that can be of great value to Anet.

I fully agree with @Inssengrimm.7924, your best bet is an established franchise and a big company behind it. Thats why I really only see Riot having a chance. And being Riot Im sure it would be also competitive which I like.

Anet and GW3 can only work if they again make something original and different. They did it in the past, twice so thete is hope imo. But if its more of the same, its probably doomed.

[Inssengrimm.7924]

3 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

I fully agree with @Inssengrimm.7924, your best bet is an established franchise and a big company behind it. Thats why I really only see Riot having a chance. And being Riot Im sure it would be also competitive which I like.

Anet and GW3 can only work if they again make something original and different. They did it in the past, twice so thete is hope imo. But if its more of the same, its probably doomed.

Then you don't fully agree xDDD
Its a tightrope to walk, if it's too new it will alienate existing players. If it's too similar it will also alienate existing players.

For me, personally, the must have are:

-Horizontal Progression. 100% must.
-Aesthetics. 100% must. For those dreaming of UE5 or stuff like that, that would doom completely the game. The waterpaint aesthetics of this game are unique and deviating to anything else (risky with NCsoft who LOVES to push graphics) would be saddening to say the least.
-Setting. 100% must. Tyria must continue: Be it in the far past or a near future, anything too extreme or anything new, like a whole new setting would be dooming too.
-Style. 100% must. In GW2 characters talk like almost real people, its a virtue in a genre plagued by long narrative exposition that i have characters than don't need a hundred hours of sad anime music and cutscenes to feel something for them: be it happy, sad or angry, or all the three with some characters (like we all love to hate Braham, i sometimes hate to love him too) 

Classes, weapons, character building, all those can see more changes.

In my view, the only true place in the game where "innovation" can make a real significant change is in quality of life options, performance, client and server-side things. The innards of the game. And even there, somethings i consider must haves.

The moment i don't get my "send to storage" button i will literally sue demand Anet/NCsoft for war crimes or something.

[Balsa.3951]

9 minutes ago, Inssengrimm.7924 said:

Then you don't fully agree xDDD
Its a tightrope to walk, if it's too new it will alienate existing players. If it's too similar it will also alienate existing players.

For me, personally, the must have are:

-Horizontal Progression. 100% must.
-Aesthetics. 100% must. For those dreaming of UE5 or stuff like that, that would doom completely the game. The waterpaint aesthetics of this game are unique and deviating to anything else (risky with NCsoft who LOVES to push graphics) would be saddening to say the least.
-Setting. 100% must. Tyria must continue: Be it in the far past or a near future, anything too extreme or anything new, like a whole new setting would be dooming too.
-Style. 100% must. In GW2 characters talk like almost real people, its a virtue in a genre plagued by long narrative exposition that i have characters than don't need a hundred hours of sad anime music and cutscenes to feel something for them: be it happy, sad or angry, or all the three with some characters (like we all love to hate Braham, i sometimes hate to love him too) 

Classes, weapons, character building, all those can see more changes.

In my view, the only true place in the game where "innovation" can make a real significant change is in quality of life options, performance, client and server-side things. The innards of the game. And even there, somethings i consider must haves.

The moment i don't get my "send to storage" button i will literally sue demand Anet/NCsoft for war crimes or something.

and the salvage all button 😛

i almost once quit  gw2 bcs my finger started feeling not good at all.

[Cuks.8241]

3 minutes ago, Inssengrimm.7924 said:

Then you don't fully agree xDDD
Its a tightrope to walk, if it's too new it will alienate existing players. If it's too similar it will also alienate existing players.

For me, personally, the must have are:

-Horizontal Progression. 100% must.
-Aesthetics. 100% must. For those dreaming of UE5 or stuff like that, that would doom completely the game. The waterpaint aesthetics of this game are unique and deviating to anything else (risky with NCsoft who LOVES to push graphics) would be saddening to say the least.
-Setting. 100% must. Tyria must continue: Be it in the far past or a near future, anything too extreme or anything new, like a whole new setting would be dooming too.
-Style. 100% must. In GW2 characters talk like almost real people, its a virtue in a genre plagued by long narrative exposition that i have characters than don't need a hundred hours of sad anime music and cutscenes to feel something for them: be it happy, sad or angry, or all the three with some characters (like we all love to hate Braham, i sometimes hate to love him too) 

Classes, weapons, character building, all those can see more changes.

In my view, the only true place in the game where "innovation" can make a real significant change is in quality of life options, performance, client and server-side things. The innards of the game. And even there, somethings i consider must haves.

The moment i don't get my "send to storage" button i will literally sue demand Anet/NCsoft for war crimes or something.

Well agree with the mmo market analysis, I guess not with the potential direction of gw3 😁

Gw2.5 might work. But I think a completely different direction might do it also. Just dont call it gw3 then. Gw:something. It could work in paralel to gw2.

For example gw2 and gw1 had great pvp systems but competitive modes just dont go along with gw2's casual pve. Perhaps next gw game could be pvp centric. Ever played Planetside (2)? Its a mmofps thats basically wvw in space and its succesfull on its own (actually need to install it again, just saw it was greatly expanded since the last time I played). You dislocate pvp from pve side and run them separately and you get rid of all the problems that come with joint systems and different playerbase expectations.

[Ashantara.8731]

On 4/1/2024 at 6:11 PM, Geoff Fey.1035 said:

When heroes were first introduced (2006) in Nightfall, you could only have 3. It wasn't until March 2011 that they removed the cap, approximately 6 months before release of GW2.

I stopped playing GW1 sometime in 2010, and I remember roaming Tyria with a group of 7 Heroes accompanying my player character. Hmm... Is the Wiki entry on this correct?

[Drax.7308]

I have 0 hope for GW3 , arenanet has waisted the time to get on the top ,how many years they were the best combat sistem mmo on the market? How many years they were the best mount sistem mmo? The time has gone

Wow steal the mount sistem and now many other MMOs are starting to have very good combat sistem , what arenanet has done in all those years they waisted?

90% boring stories

where's the fun? 

The 10% 

pvp miserable unbalance patches 

cuple of new maps 

maybe 2 good meta events

2 raids bises

2 fractals

arenanet waisted their time

GW2 is aut of fun things to do all GW2 content it's almost dead ,fractals : dungeons, raids and strikes have problem and all they do is:   IF DOES NOT WORK IT'S LEFT BEHIND

WHAT ARENANET HAS LEARN ALL THIS YEAR'S?

I would say Nothing they keep doing the same thing over and over ,THE ONLY REASON TO ARENANET TO JUMP TO GW3 IT BICOSE ITS GONA BE A SUBSCRIPTION GAME

I HAVE NO HOPE FOR GW2 AND I HAVE NO HOPE FOR GW3 

[Cyninja.2954]

24 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

I stopped playing GW1 sometime in 2010, and I remember roaming Tyria with a group of 7 Heroes accompanying my player character. Hmm... Is the Wiki entry on this correct?

You are both correct with nuances.

Heroes, the completely customizable party memebers, were indeed limited to 3 until March of 2011 (Prior to the March 3, 2011 update, each character was limited to adding three heroes to their party. - https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hero). What you are thinking of was Heroes and Henchman parties.

The issue at hand though: being able to solo most/all content and the deterioration of group necessity is untouched by this distinction. Even with only 3 heroes, a solo player was able to clear most content. Two players with 3 heros each were able to clear all content. The 7 hero system later on merely made this even more solo friendly, ditching the second player all together.

That's when GW1 turned from a corpg to a pure solo player game.

Edited April 2 by Cyninja.2954