Curse

Galatea · Jul 03, 2005, 05:40 AM // 05:40

The idea of "fictional factions" was brought up by PieXags in this thread, and I decided to elaborate on it here in the suggestions forum..

Present Day
Our current WaW system involves Korea, Europe, and America. As expected, when two teams are faced opposite each other, they taunt each other. However, many people have noticed racism increasing in the game, with comments being made that some find unacceptable.

Suggestion: Fictional Factions
Rather than have Korea VS Europe VS America, allow characters to fight, representing fictional areas of the Guild Wars world. PvE characters could "register" in cities, choosing a faction to represent when they play in Competitive PvP. Pre-made PvP characters could select the faction they wish to represent when creating their character.

The factions could either represent regions of the Guild Wars World (Ascalon, Kryta, Orr), or perhaps the Old Gods in the Guild Wars Lore (Dwayna, Balthazar, etc.).

All players would still continue playing on servers based on country, as it is now. If a Korean team representing "Faction A" wins the favor for their faction, then all Koreans, Europeans, and Americans who had registered under that faction would have access to UW/Fisure.

Flaws, etc.
This is just an idea, so of course it will have its share of pros and cons.

One flaw I see deals with players of different factions, but play on the same server (based in the same country). This means not every American will have access to UW/Fissure when other Americans do. What happens if you are in a party with majority of the faction that holds favor, and say, a Monk who represents a different faction? Does this mean that the party can not enter UW/Fissure (until they boot the Monk)? And what about guilds - will every member be forced to register under the same faction? It seems to make sense that guild members would represent and fight for the same cause.

PieXags · Jul 03, 2005, 07:20 AM // 07:20

For the record, it wasn't just my idea. I saw the idea tossed around in these forums by a few people, and I just thought of RYL and other games with different races and things like that.

Basically, I'm sure we've all noticed, this "worlds at war" system is encouraging rascism and other nasty things between the people in European, Korean, and American servers. Every time I go into the tombs I see koreans insulting us "yankees", americans insulting the koreans, and many obscenities being tossed about.

This wouldn't be a problem normally except all three of these are regions in the real world which actually brings up a problem.

If there were say, 3 different races, tribes, or "factions", in the game that people joined, then it wouldn't allow for such things in PvP, or at least decrease the amount of crap we see dramatically.

It would also encourage people from all different regions of the world to work together and support eachother being in the same faction.

Also it would please those Europeans who notice a lack of favor of the God's towards them.

I just think it would be a lot better, and language barriers wouldn't really be a problem. I've spoken with Koreans and Europeans of other languages I found in international districts, and it was interesting to see each of us you know, using what little of the other peoples language we knew and what not. Was pretty neat.

I think if anything fictional regions would encourage unity, not rascism. And I think it would also be cool because the battle for the HoH would remain strong through ALL times of the day. There wouldn't be any "Alright, 3:00am, we american's definately have it.

" sort of thing, because there'd be people from each region up same as the others, so the battle would always be going. Then we'd see how we can really use our skill day in and day out. Not controlling it with no competition.

--------------------------------

I see no flaws other than difficulties in implementation. As of right now I assume they have different servers for different regions of the world and what not or something like that. This might mean lag for them.

But I have an idea.

Say you want to party from someone in another faction, fine, there are "public" districts were people from all factions can party, similar to the districts of each region now.

And whenever someone has the favor of the God's, they can go to their "faction" districts. Say in the temple of ages there are the public ones for everyday use, and then 8 districts for each faction...? And when you wanted to go to the UW, you could just go and connect to the districts of your faction and enter the UW/Fissure as always.

This would be difficult to implement though I'd imagine already having this system in place, but I really think it would benefit us as a whole.

shady_knife · Jul 03, 2005, 12:24 PM // 12:24

sounds good, but it there is the launguage barrier. how to fix that?

bioxeed · Jul 03, 2005, 10:36 PM // 22:36

the language barrier isn't as big as you think. I've played with/against koreans and euros in other online games and while you might not be able to discuss ultra-high level tactics you can still work things out ok.

DrSLUGFly · Jul 04, 2005, 01:59 AM // 01:59

racism=bad
ideas=good
slug=not enough time for worthy comment, coming back later

edit=back from class now. Time now for a fuller more thought out comment.

The racism thing is very real. Although I at first believed the few optimists that said RL racism translates into the game and not vice-versa, after just a few GvG and Tomb of Kings matches I can see quite clearly how untrue this is.

GW presents the opportunity for ignorant (meant in the most non-insulting connotation possible) people to cultivate their own racism, especially vs. Koreans where the skill is obviously higher and the insults/taunts can often go unanswered.

People who are already racist, of course, will translate this racism into the game and even into general everyday talk. I show a new character to a friend in game and his first response was "wtf, you're black!" This can't be avoided, people who are racist will be racist... but the encouragement of these attitudes can be avoided. Anet would never think if introducing a system where characters who are black get a plus to life and a minus to energy... or anything that draws a line between skin tones, so why do it between nationalities?

People who are not already racist can and will learn racism from this game. Many people who play are young and agree or not, like or not, the younger people are the more malleable their values are. Vs Koreans: contempt for skill, Vs Euros: contempt for weakness, Vs Americans: contempt for arrogance.

As I said before, the nation vs. nation system is too deeply worked into the system to change it, but if a several month long program were introduced to shift it from nation vs. nation to Old GW Gods (balthazaar, grenth, etc) then it could be changed with little notice or complaint... but it would have to be a slow program, a series of small changes that shifts the importance away from server vs server and into faction vs faction.

DarrenJasper · Jul 04, 2005, 05:05 AM // 05:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrSLUGFly

People who are not already racist can and will learn racism from this game. Many people who play are young and agree or not, like or not, the younger people are the more malleable their values are. Vs Koreans: contempt for skill, Vs Euros: contempt for weakness, Vs Americans: contempt for arrogance.

This is the same bullcrap reasoning that Washington has been trying to pass off to strangle the video game industry. No child grows up in a vacuum - where are their parents to teach them that racism is wrong?

DrSLUGFly · Jul 04, 2005, 05:17 AM // 05:17

This is true Darren, but somebody else on a related thread said "removing racism and ignorance needs to start in real life"

Everyone is going to say "it's not my problem" or "it's worse somewhere else" but it is our problem and there is no "somewhere else"... Of course video games are not the cause of violence, racism, anti-social behavior, etc. But they certainly aren't arbitrary or irrelevent... And being fully interactive they pose an entirely different problem from that of racism and violence on TV, in fact a more serious problem since this media has direct feedback and can never be 100% monitored for quality and/or hate-mongering.