PVP quests, and other ideas from the NWN community

[Guardian Legend]

I find the PVE (RP) portion of GW to be very tedious, repetitive, and downright boring. I feel that the game is so easy that it essentially plays itself, with the player merely needing to press buttons over and over. The most difficult aspect of PVE, for me, is simply forming a party. The actual questing itself is a lifeless affair. So, I thought I'd bring some ideas over from my PVP Neverwinter Nights days. For those unaware, NWN lets players create "modules" using the Toolset to create new maps, gameplay modes, and so forth. The following are modules.

1) The Light Reborn

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view...Detail&id=3878

The Light Reborn – Rescue is part of the Hall of Fame “The Light Reborn” (TLR) series. Unlike the other modules in the TLR series “Rescue” is a multiplayer only module with a heavy emphasis on player vs. player. However, Rescue attempts to combine elements of Player vs. Player with elements of story based single player role playing modules. The end result is a module where you feel like you are part of the on going TLR saga, but the bad guys are played by real people.

At its core, TLR – Rescue is a attack/defend the castle mod. The followers of Samuel (aka the Light Team) have one day (about 2 hours real time) to gain enough experience through side quests to be able to assault the castle held by The Servants of Solanor (aka the Dark Team). They must get past the castle guards setup by the Dark Team, destroy the altars that are protecting the castle tower, then get past Bloodspeth the vampire to rescue Kaeri Rastin, the beautiful daughter of Duke Rastin.

The Dungeons and Dragons rules that NWN uses aren't balanced for PVP. And, NWN breaks the rules even more by incorrectly implementing a great deal of spells. So the Light Reborn can be a very frustrating process but still shines as a very unique way to play that I've never really seen elsewhere in gaming. Basically, you have the Light team.. which has a time limit to save the girl who is locked in the Dark team's castle jail cell. In order to become powerful enough to defeat the Dark team, you need to quickly do some side-quests that are spread around. So you not only fight the Dark team of players, but you also fight monsters for XP, disable traps, talk to NPCs and so forth. While you're doing this, the Dark team is trying to find and kill you, slowing your progress. After you've levelled up enough, you storm the castle. The Dark team can setup all sorts of traps and even tell their monster armies to defend certain areas. It's really quite something and if you have NWN, I recommend you try it out if only to see how the features play out.

I would love to see something like this in Guild Wars. Understandably, it would not have to be as advanced. Here are some thoughts.
-It could (and should) be part of the RP mode, not just PVP mode. In RP mode, each PVP quest should have a "Level Range" that forbids low or high powered players from participating. This keeps things fair.
-Currently, we have "cooperative missions". You load up 4-6 players and click Enter mission. My idea is that we should have competitive quests, where two separate parties agree to fight each other in the quest. Party Leader A forms his party, clicks Enter mission. Party Leader B forms his party, clicks enter mission. When there are two parties ready to go, they are sent to battle each other, in the same way that the Team Arena system works.
-Here's where things get interesting. Both sides start in different locations in the mission area and have different goals to achieve. There are NPCs to fight throughout the area. A cool example of this could be where one side is fighting for the White Mantle, and the other side is fighting for the Shining Blade. And White Mantle / Shining Blade NPCs are fighting each other too. The White Mantle side may be tasked with stealing a Shining Blade artifact, while the Blade side may simply need to prevent the artifact from being stolen for 15 minutes.
-At the end of the mission, which occurs when one side accomplishes all its goals, both sides are rewarded accordingly. I'd recommend not making the rewards significantly worse for the losing team, as that could potentially cause a lot of frustration, I think. The idea is just for everyone to have fun. To combine PVE and PVP into a unique game like in The Light Reborn.

Alternatively, you could make all of this only possible after the player has Ascended. That way you don't have to worry about Level Ranges.

2) Good vs Evil

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view...Detail&id=3340

Good vs Evil is an action-strategy module for Neverwinter Nights that puts one or more players in command of an army fighting in an epic battle between good and evil. Lead an army of humans, elves, dwarves, orcs or undead on any of three battlefields. Gather mana, secure shrines, summon and command AI troops, deploy artillery and rally soldiers to your banner as you lead your army to victory .. or ignominy.

Good vs Evil supports both co-operative and PvP - you can play with all the players in the same army fighting against the AI, or with players on both sides fighting against each other!

Good vs Evil is similar to a Real Time Strategy game, like Warcraft 3. Each team is trying to destroy the enemy altar to win the game. But, the altar is buried deep within enemy territory. Players can destroy and capture shrines, which serve as resource gathering posts. The more shrines your team has, the faster you gain mana, which is used to buy soldiers and catapults for your army. Once you've bought soldiers, you can talk to them and order them to defend or attack different areas. I believe you can have up to 100 units in the game world fighting it out. You can also use shrines to buy better equipment, potions, etc.

I would love to see this idea in Guild Wars too. When I play GW PVP, I already feel like I'm playing Warcraft 3 on a small, personal scale. If GW could have a resource gathering/territorial control PVP mode, I think people would really enjoy it. Currently, Guild Wars can easily appeal to both action gamers and RPG gamers. With a resource control mode, GW could appeal even more to RTS gamers! (I'm sure many already love GW.)

Some thoughts on how this could be done..
-Obelisks could serve as resource gathering nodes in this mode. You'd need to destroy and capture new ones to get more resources.
-What would resources do? Hmm. Well, one route could be where each Obelisk your team controls gives each team member 100 gold per minute. The more you control, the higher your income rate. (This gold is temporary, and only works inside this one battle.) Each player can then talk to a merchant to buy better equipment or whatever. Perhaps you could hire henchmen (soldiers) with your money too, just like an RTS. All this stuff would be temporary. You want to buy an awesome sword? Sure, but it's not going to be with you once the game ends.
-Another route is to not use resources, but just points, like in a certain mod of Call of Duty United Offensive. The more Obelisks you control, the more points your team is getting. And whichever team has the most points at the end of 10-15 minutes wins the game.

I *only* enjoy the PVP aspect of Guild Wars, and so I would like to see GW's PVP expand into more modes. We currently have CTF, King of the Hill, Team Deathmatch, and Round-based gameplay. Next I'd like to see Territorial Control, RTS-like play, and more.

[Jericho]

Competitive missions sound like a great idea to me, I think CoH was planning to do something like this with their expansion. I would love it, but as we all know the carebears would pitch a screaming, flailing poo-fest the instant they felt like their precious PvE experience was being tainted.

[Guardian Legend]

aw, but it would be completely optional for the PVE people. Besides, even if you lose, you would still get xp and gold. Just not as much as if you had won.