Massively OP- “had been prototyping a possible Guild Wars 3”

[FrigginPaco.4178]

@"Ashantara.8731" said:My opinion exactly, and surely that of the majority of loyal players. GW2 has so much more to offer, potential that has not been tapped yet. Plus, there is no point in creating a successor as long as the core problems have not been resolved.

Generally speaking, I agree with your statement. However, it's been 7 years since launch and I'm tired of saying to myself every single year "Oh man! Look at all this shiny ~potential~ this game has!" instead of actually achieving that potential. When will it finally go beyond just being "that one game that's supposed to be different," to actually being as great as I and others envision it to be?

If anything has been made clear to me by this point, it's that there are some crazy management issues happening that have stopped, or stuttered, or stalled, orotherwise come up... or developer resources have been taken and moved to project something or other sequel or not, then shifted to the point where every release seems barely enough to slake my thirst at this point. I'm presently taking a break from Guild Wars because it's as if I'm not doing anything in the game anyway.

Inb4 I get asked: I'm visiting here because I care about the community and the game, but I just think that it's important to know that there are problems that people are experiencing with the game that are so frustrating that I feel like throwing my hands up until the next story update comes out because I can't even do World versus World to distract me anymore. I'm always here, but KITTEN! Open the faucet Anet! Turn the trickle of content into a torrent!

[Ashantara.8731]

@"FrigginPaco.4178" said:However, it's been 7 years since launch and I'm tired of saying to myself every single year "Oh man! Look at all this shiny ~potential~ this game has!" instead of actually achieving that potential. When will it finally go beyond just being "that one game that's supposed to be different," to actually being as great as I and others envision it to be?

:+1: I agree. That's what I meant when I said they need to solve all the issues GW2 has before anyone dares talking about a sequel, because - as stated in the article - those issues, which are caused by how the game is being handled by the devs, will only transfer into any new product.

[Vyrulisse.1246]

@Ashantara.8731 said:My opinion exactly, and surely that of the majority of loyal players. GW2 has so much more to offer, potential that has not been tapped yet. Plus, there is no point in creating a successor as long as the core problems have not been resolved.

We all said the same things back in GW1 and Anet dropped it at its peak. Expect the same with 2 sooner rather than later and it will be just as much of a gut punch now as it was then.

[Dawdler.8521]

I am mostly surprised people are surprised.

Prototyping for GW3 should have started before GW2 was even released.

[Harper.4173]

I'll throw my thoughts into the mix.

Making a new game would be very difficult - it would require not only a new engine but also new content. A lot of new content. Migrating the GW2 population to GW3 would mean that you'd have to live up to people's expectations in terms of amounts of "things to do" or content.GW2 has been going on 7 years now and it has a lot of content that people can experience - you can do a lot of things if you want to keep yourself busy in the game. The reason most of us aren't doing it is because we've already done it, but there are a LOT (I'd wager a majority) of players in the community that haven't even done half of it.

If you want to migrate most players doing GW2 now to GW3 you'd have to have a LOT of content in order to keep them going and staying on your new game. I doubt Anet has the capacity to build this much content and keep true to their no-grind ideology.There's also the issue of amount of skins - in a cosmetically driven game it'll be very hard to build a complete skin inventory from scratch once more. I still believe GW2 would have done much better in terms of skins if they hadn't shot themselves in the leg with the non-humanoid races (Charr and Asura).

Will we see a GW3? Maybe, but I doubt it would be what I'd want from the game, the tone of GW2 has shifted so much from when it first came out to what it is now that it's hardly the same game anymore. I'm a fan of the first game, I'm a fan of some parts of the second game ( combat system is really well done in terms of fluidity and flow) but I doubt the third game would be close enough to what I like to make me stay (looking at you poorly written story, characters, and butchered lore).

[zealex.9410]

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@"FrigginPaco.4178" said:However, it's been 7 years since launch and I'm tired of saying to myself every single year "Oh man! Look at all this shiny ~potential~ this game has!" instead of actually achieving that potential. When will it finally go beyond just being "that one game that's supposed to be different," to

actually

being as great as I and others envision it to be?

:+1: I agree. That's what I meant when I said they need to solve all the issues GW2 has before anyone dares talking about a sequel, because - as stated in the article - those issues, which are caused by how the game is being handled by the devs, will only transfer into any new product.

No necessarily, the devs might know they want to redo certain systems of the game but not doing so for various reasons, like the game having 7 years of shit build on top of said systems, resources needed vs resources ncsoft will provide for a 7 yo game etc.

Telling them they should fix all the peoblems of gw2 before moving on to 3 is asking them to stick with the game for another 7 or so years which may come at the expense of the company.

Plus one of the big problems of gw2 is its engine, it would simply make more sense to solve that with a new game rather than trying to fix it here.

[Dante.1763]

@zealex.9410 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@"FrigginPaco.4178" said:However, it's been 7 years since launch and I'm tired of saying to myself every single year "Oh man! Look at all this shiny ~potential~ this game has!" instead of actually achieving that potential. When will it finally go beyond just being "that one game that's supposed to be different," to

actually

being as great as I and others envision it to be?

:+1: I agree. That's what I meant when I said they need to solve all the issues GW2 has before anyone dares talking about a sequel, because - as stated in the article - those issues, which are caused by how the game is being handled by the devs, will only transfer into any new product.

No necessarily, the devs might know they want to redo certain systems of the game but not doing so for various reasons, like the game having 7 years of kitten build on top of said systems, resources needed vs resources ncsoft will provide for a 7 yo game etc.

Telling them they should fix all the peoblems of gw2 before moving on to 3 is asking them to stick with the game for another 7 or so years which may come at the expense of the company.

Plus one of the big problems of gw2 is its engine, it would simply make more sense to solve that with a new game rather than trying to fix it here.

They would still use the same engine. GW2s engine is a modified GW1 engine(Most companys do the same thing, FO4 and FO76 and Skyrim are all using a heavily modified engine that started as the Morrowind engine. There are bugs present in all those games that appeared in Morrowind., its cheaper and saves them tons of time.). And the issues she mentioned may not even be things that have to do with the games design, but rather dev decisions at the top on how the game should be.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Forty Keks.9620 said:

@"Swagger.1459" said:Just wanted to share...

https://massivelyop.com/2019/10/15/flameseeker-chronicles-is-it-time-for-guild-wars-3/

of course, the NCsoft overlords said no, what a surprise.Frankly, if i were NCsoft and heard that Anet is planning to kill their only cash cow (and

my

only cash cow in the West) because they intend to risk a continuation, and that they made thhose plans without consulting me first, i'd be annoyed and disinclined to agree as well.

Seriously, a lot of the troubles from last years (including us geetting no expansion now) is a direct result of siphoning off resources to those other projects. And frankly, of all things they could have been working on, GW3 is probably the worst option. It would have been far better to work on something that would not conflict with their only income source - a single player game, or even a brand new IP. Going for a project that would kill gw2 the moment it got leaked, well before we would even know if it might be a success or not would be suicidal. And having to siphon off so many resources for it that it directly negatively impacted the development of the only income source long before that new project was even fit to be announced was even more doubtful idea.

[Ayrilana.1396]

@zealex.9410 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Was there ever any evidence that they were working on GW3?

anet wont come out and tell u unless they had to but some outlets with good track record havw come out to share information they've got.

You mean Kotaku? Lol

Every outlet refers to that article.

Pmuch, they have released multiple hit articles with information on internal development of games and moreq and pmuch all of them are regarded very highly.

And yet this article was highly speculative based solely on an “anonymous source”. Let’s also not forget that highly biased article from a year ago when they fired two employees. Oh and that “well researched” article earlier this year about a word which may or may not have been in a song in Smash Bros.

I can also talk about all the hit pieces on bungies, ea, activision blizzard etc.

Speculation is for us to do, they simply get sources and publish based on them.

Except they lack sources. They're the ones also speculating too.

[Cranky wo Coffee.5914]

@wrathmagik.3518 said:

@SinisterSlay.6973 said:As a developer. Watching anet developments and bugs gives me a pretty good idea of the state of the code in the game.

It must be an utter disaster. They can't even figure out why story instances crash during cut scenes. That means they have little to no tracking or logs. And they have no idea what to even try to fix it, which tells me it's old legacy code that all the surviving developers are scared to touch.They have hilarious bugs like breaking the Mount position on the beatle because they added a new blc? How can those things be related?They have no ability to force an automatic reconnect on disconnect, really? I've got games from 1998 that had this figured out.They can't even make dyeable backpacks because it's too much work? What's wrong with them?It seems the game code is barely hanging on and takes enormous work for any change.That's a sign of eminent failure. And anet layed off the teams trying to fix the problem with a new game.

Where are you getting all this? How do you know they can't make dyeable backpacks? How do you know they can't figure out crashes?

And I hate to rain on your theory but those other employees left to make a new studio (manaworks) and a MOBILE game. They were not working on a new MMO engine or gw3.

1. Why haven't they made their gem store backpacks dyeable if they can do it? They make glider wings dyeable but the matching wing backpack is not dyeable?

2. The forums and Dev chat/ Live streams are littered with comments from Devs about spaghetti code, even in the lasted about templates they mention inventory code being too scary to touch.

   @wrathmagik.3518 said:

   @Acheron.4731 said:In its current state I just don't see GW2 going very far any longer.It may continue to 'run' but I just don't see it growing/improving. New mechanic, sure. New mini-event, no problem. New map extension, ofc. But improve as a game overall? Unlikely.AT BEST, even IF an expansion announced...it would take too long to push that out, some people would come back for the elite specs but then I think the game has ran its course. One more good expansion could have propelled it forward a few more years BUT, as-is, nah, ppl are just gonna keep trickling out as they are now.I understand why some people are still optimistic about GW2, it really is/was a good game but its no different than your favorite tv show. By season 6 or season 7 it just kinda becomes predictable, you want to still love it, you want to keep watching, but eventually you just stop tuning in.

   Yah this game is is so dead that the over the 50 Labrynth groups in the LFG i can't get into any of them because all the maps are full.

I don't think this game is dead but it is dying. Sure the population spikes back up a little during holiday/ special events but then dies right back off. I'm sure they will continue as long as it profitable and by looks of the new stuff in the gem shop it will be for a long time. It would seem that you don't want to hear negativity and are ignoring reality.

[videoboy.4162]

From a story perspective, I think it's far too early for a GW3. However, I agree with a lot of other people that have mentioned the engine and code. They need to invest in some more highly skilled employees and release a new version of GW2 with much better infrastructure. Something that doesn't (by their own comments) prevent them from more easily building, releasing, and maintaining content.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

Everyone who says there should be a GW3 because GW2 "has problems" have yet to state any issues GW2 has that can't be fixed or improved on that would require a GW3.

[sephiroth.4217]

@zealex.9410 said:

@DeadlySynz.3471 said:

Now if Anet did the smart thing and focused on PvP and WvW like they initially did upon release, this game would likely still be bustling with activity.

According to who? I dot buy that the smart thing would be to focus on pvp and wvw and let pve suffer their current fate, esp when ff14 is doing the opposite and its seeing massive success.

Its a common thing to know I believe..

PvE updates is a PvE update, requires time and money to make. Players then rush through 6 months of work in a day and go back to other games.

due to the nature of PvP and WvW, it has new updates or content everytime you play because its different every time. its a renewable source of content on autopilot therefor those players stay much longer.

The best times for this game was when PvE was hard linked into the WvW community. Players would finish PvE content and wait for new content in the mists. I guess it could ve viewed as a waiting room.

With no focus or desire to keep those areas of the game up to scratch, players flock to other games and this in turn diminishes the population of those game modes and the rest of the game.

This game was built with 3 game modes sustaining each other... neglecting 2 of them will ultimately effect the 3rd being PvE.

example:A lot of useful stats for WvW are acquired in PvE on those new maps too but if theres no focus on WvW endgame then theres no reason to swap out the zerker stats you can buy off the trading post. no reason to grind = less people.

[Substance E.4852]

@"Eloc Freidon.5692" said:Everyone who says there should be a GW3 because GW2 "has problems" have yet to state any issues GW2 has that can't be fixed or improved on that would require a GW3.

They almost always revolve around the extremely poorly optimized game engine which isn't even a problem anymore with modern tech (no you shouldn't need 2019 gear to get 60fps stable in a 7 year old mmo but w/e)

They think remaking gw2 from the ground up, over years, spending millions on it, will be worth it for better fps on their budget gaming laptop

Nuking Gw2 simply to move on to a better performing version of the game would likely bankrupt the company. Especially when you consider that nearly no one who made either Gw1 or Gw2 from a technical or directional standpoint is even still with the company.

Even MO has left.

[Vanthian.9267]

@"wrathmagik.3518" said:Yah this game is is so dead that the over the 50 Labrynth groups in the LFG i can't get into any of them because all the maps are full.

Well considering the map has a cap of 25 people (source: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mad_King%27s_Labyrinth) you are barely looking at 1,250 people with your statement. Even for a "free to play" mmo that is extremely low during prime hours and low for off hours. It is currently at ~36 (both festival tab and open world squad groups) which is during what people consider prime time (~0-4 hours after reset). That is honestly laughable low.

Back around the second Halloween (2013) there were literal hundreds of these zones open on the newly released "LFG" tool. Mind you, this is AFTER the massive drop in the player population from the Ascended debacle they pulled.

To the topic, they should not make a Guild Wars 3 because they killed the franchise with awful recants of lore and just overall bad management in Guild Wars 2.

[KryTiKaL.3125]

@zealex.9410 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@"FrigginPaco.4178" said:However, it's been 7 years since launch and I'm tired of saying to myself every single year "Oh man! Look at all this shiny ~potential~ this game has!" instead of actually achieving that potential. When will it finally go beyond just being "that one game that's supposed to be different," to

actually

being as great as I and others envision it to be?

:+1: I agree. That's what I meant when I said they need to solve all the issues GW2 has before anyone dares talking about a sequel, because - as stated in the article - those issues, which are caused by how the game is being handled by the devs, will only transfer into any new product.

No necessarily, the devs might know they want to redo certain systems of the game but not doing so for various reasons, like the game having 7 years of kitten build on top of said systems, resources needed vs resources ncsoft will provide for a 7 yo game etc.

Telling them they should fix all the peoblems of gw2 before moving on to 3 is asking them to stick with the game for another 7 or so years which may come at the expense of the company.

Plus one of the big problems of gw2 is its engine, it would simply make more sense to solve that with a new game rather than trying to fix it here.

I don't like this method of thinking. The fact that its a 7 year old game or that it would be too much work, over too long of a time, would hurt the game I find is false.

Look at Warframe as an example. It is of similar age to GW2, having been in early beta stages in 2012, "releasing" in 2013 and in 2019 it doesn't even remotely look or feel like the game it was back then. The amount of iterative changes they have made to the game over the years, along with reworking systems and adding new content has caused it to evolve to a state that makes it something other games of its type are compared to. They've overhauled movement, combat, upgrade systems, added more upgrade systems, more progression methods, reworked several warframes (with more reworks to come), overhauled their daily Alert system into an entirely new system altogether, improved their new player experience (with more of that to come), and will soon be adding space flight to the game.

I don't want to hear the excuse made for the ANet devs or by the ANet devs that its just "too much". This is their job. This is part of their passion in video games. Show it because right now...barely anyone is seeing it.

[Ashantara.8731]

@Dante.1763 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said::+1: I agree. That's what I meant when I said they need to solve all the issues GW2 has before anyone dares talking about a sequel, because - as stated in the article - those issues, which are caused by how the game is being handled by the devs, will only transfer into any new product.

No necessarily, the devs might know they want to redo certain systems of the game but not doing so for various reasons, like the game having 7 years of kitten build on top of said systems, [...][...] And the issues she mentioned may not even be things that have to do with the games design, but rather dev decisions at the top on how the game should be.

Exactly, Dante. Everyone who took the time to read through the article will understand that this is not all about the engine but the general choices being made still, even after players complaining and providing insight into the state of the game from a gamer's perspective (expansions, balancing, PvP, WvW, and what not - so many topics being discussed).

Do I hope that, if we ever get a GW3, it will be more like GW1 regarding its great skill and combat system, its exciting professions and dual-class system, its unique PvP and its general game mechanics (apart from the limitation of movement such as the lack of jumping and swimming)? Sure. But it is clear to me that such drastical changes cannot be applied to the system of GW2, and it would be foolish to ask for it.

[FrigginPaco.4178]

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@"FrigginPaco.4178" said:However, it's been 7 years since launch and I'm tired of saying to myself every single year "Oh man! Look at all this shiny ~potential~ this game has!" instead of actually achieving that potential. When will it finally go beyond just being "that one game that's supposed to be different," to

actually

being as great as I and others envision it to be?

:+1: I agree. That's what I meant when I said they need to solve all the issues GW2 has before anyone dares talking about a sequel, because - as stated in the article - those issues, which are caused by how the game is being handled by the devs, will only transfer into any new product.

No necessarily, the devs might know they want to redo certain systems of the game but not doing so for various reasons, like the game having 7 years of kitten build on top of said systems, resources needed vs resources ncsoft will provide for a 7 yo game etc.

Telling them they should fix all the peoblems of gw2 before moving on to 3 is asking them to stick with the game for another 7 or so years which may come at the expense of the company.

Plus one of the big problems of gw2 is its engine, it would simply make more sense to solve that with a new game rather than trying to fix it here.

I don't like this method of thinking. The fact that its a 7 year old game or that it would be too much work, over too long of a time, would hurt the game I find is false.

I definitely agree, they keep finding ways to implement things they previously didn't think they could implement, mounts being a very big chunk of that example however there are others.

Look at Warframe as an example. It is of similar age to GW2, having been in early beta stages in 2012, "releasing" in 2013 and in 2019 it doesn't even remotely look or feel like the game it was back then. The amount of iterative changes they have made to the game over the years, along with reworking systems and adding new content has caused it to evolve to a state that makes it something other games of its type are compared to. They've overhauled movement, combat, upgrade systems, added more upgrade systems, more progression methods, reworked several warframes (with more reworks to come), overhauled their daily Alert system into an entirely new system altogether, improved their new player experience (with more of that to come), and will soon be adding space flight to the game.

This idea right here, above anything else that anyone is discussing is without a doubt the single most important concept for Guild Wars 2 future. They have sent out many different parameters at the start of the game in 2012, and have had to shift on almost everything that they originally thought they had to do. I remember when they didn't want to do still splitting, but the game simply could not handle all of the skills being balanced for all of the game modes without any issue. Impossible, naive, and frankly lazy and possibly even foolish. It's to the point now where it feels like they refuse to even acknowledge the concept that their original design philosophy is out of date and shouldn't bother to change it. It's not a sign of weakness to acknowledge that you have to change your plan, it's adapt and survive, or stagnate and be left behind.

I don't want to hear the excuse made for the ANet devs or by the ANet devs that its just "too much". This is their job. This is part of their passion in video games. Show it because right now...barely anyone is seeing it.

In short, massive yes here.

[Yargesh.4965]

Funny people.Anet is wasting our money working on useless mobile games! Fire incompetent management!Oh no we could have had gw1 with jumping plus direct x 20 plus everything else we whined about.Bring back the old management!

[Knighthonor.4061]

@Yargesh.4965 said:Funny people.Anet is wasting our money working on useless mobile games! Fire incompetent management!Oh no we could have had gw1 with jumping plus direct x 20 plus everything else we whined about.Bring back the old management!

GW1 wont stand as a modern day MMO. it wasnt a MMO. it was a CORPG like Diablo.

[Yargesh.4965]

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Yargesh.4965 said:Funny people.Anet is wasting our money working on useless mobile games! Fire incompetent management!Oh no we could have had gw1 with jumping plus direct x 20 plus everything else we whined about.Bring back the old management!

GW1 wont stand as a modern day MMO. it wasnt a MMO. it was a CORPG like Diablo.

I am aware. I personally thought it was a horrible game, just didn't spend my life on its forums telling everyone.

[Vancho.8750]

New MMOs are hard to put their foot in the door these days, it seems that the way to go is doing a relaunch or brand it as such in the marketing, which should create large enough buzz to compete with the rest big MMO studios . So for that to happen they will have to do is optimize their engine and make tools for easier access to every part of the game and on top of that they will have to put content that puts other MMOs to shame, this would require NCSOFT to direct their other studios to help Arenanet, this is all to make the brand pop out and be talked about, the problem is that i don't think NCSOFT would bother since they don't seem to care about their IP brands at all and are more inclined to get scraps and milk the cash cow till it dies.

[Xar.6279]

Some GW2 remake would help. They could rewrite it (to make game code easier to modify) and also think about everything again. What worked in this game and what not. And do it all properly this time.It would be some kind of GW 2.5 so players wouldn't lose their progress. And they could do PvP, PvE and WvW properly this time. And support every game mode enough, without delays. And maybe try to go with reworked PvP into esports again.

FF14 did something like that and it worked.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

The best we can hope for is an engine rebuild that still uses the same game world. But even if they did that, don't expect them to go back and fix old content, they won't even do that for the new features introduced in the expansions and that's on the same engine.

The game is wildly different in LS4/5 than it was at release, I feel kind of bad for new players TBH.

[Ashantara.8731]

@Xar.6279 said:Some GW2 remake would help. They could rewrite it (to make game code easier to modify) and also think about everything again. What worked in this game and what not. And do it all properly this time.It would be some kind of GW 2.5 so players wouldn't lose their progress. And they could do PvP, PvE and WvW properly this time. And support every game mode enough, without delays. And maybe try to go with reworked PvP into esports again.

FF14 did something like that and it worked.

Nah, I'd rather have them start from scratch and do it right this time. Use the GW1 system for skills, professions, dual-classing, and the great PvP it had. Also, go back to using proper language and not make it sound like a dumb cartoon for kids. And go back to having a decent art style that doesn't mix several non-compatible styles, genres and eras merely to please everyone.

But for now, let's focus on GW2 instead of a game that will likely never see the light of day.