Im actually fine with the nameless enemy thing... However, like has been said before, I would like to see some sort of "Rival" system. Where you can mark an enemy(s) as your rival and then you can see them later with a little symbol or something... and the the person you marked would know that you have marked them. That way you can still have the fun little rivalries but maintain the anonymity.
I can see why remaining anonymous in WvW is important.. especially when names will (as far as is known now) be cross server and players have the ability to vist other servers at any time.
"Don't mistake a fun game for a good game... Checkers is fun to play but its not exactly the highest point of gaming design... and definatly not worth $60 plus $15 a month"
I'm not a fan of the nameless policy at all. I would very much like to see the name of who i am fighting: see who just totally outplayed me, get the aha-moment "oh i fought that person in an epic battle yesterday, I need to stay on top of my game", and just generally recognizing enemy players by name while out on the battlefield, etc.
At least they should make it an option to toggle it on/off - preferably keybindable so one can toggle it during massive battles.
No thanks. What you're suggesting will likely create some bad blood amongst the playerbase, with gankers harrassing specific targets. The fact that you can see the Guild's [tags] is good enough. That way maybe even some "Guild Wars" will come about.
There will be "bad blood" between players regardless. Now entire server populations will participate in ridiculing the oppossing fractions who suffered an agonizing defeat in the last WvW. Guilds will be taking turns at naming calling and daily rivalries will be the main dish on servers and even cross-servers.
Humans are creative like that...
My experience and those of thousands of others who played RvR games such as WAR and DAoC suggests exactly the opposite.
Since you all have the same name to enemies, create a guild of all mesmers of the same race and appearance. Same height, same face, same hair, same armor, same dyes, everything.
Imagine seeing a massive army of the same guy charging down a hill. If you have 10 of them, that will look like 40.
I almost feel like there should have been an elite skill to do something like this. "Illusionary Army" it could have been called.
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
Originally posted by freston As you are well aware of, while fighting in WvW you wont be able to see the name of the character opposing you (you can in structured pvp, at least it shows in the videos). Youll be able to see "green invader" , "red invader" or whatever. The rationale for this is that it captures more the feeling of a mass battle in which you fight a horde of faceless enemy soldiers, as opposed to the more ritualized, duelistic nature of structured pvp, in which individual reputation plays a large part. Server turnover and the fact that you wont face the same enemies again in a possibly months is another argument used to justify this. No problem for me. Fighting an enemy with no name does add a certain warlike feeling to the whole situation, but i suspect there maybe another reason of a more technical nature. If you remove names, you remove the necessity to correctly depict your enemy. If we are going to have 500 people dishing it out in the same instance, one of the limiting factors could be the amount of data your internet connection can handle (this is just especulation on my part). Perhaps the blonde piggytailed female norn thief with red armor you are fighting is a norn and a thief,.....and male , dressed in green and with an enormous beard. Perhaps your internet is only transmiting ...norn... thief...armed with bow and your pc is randomly generating the rest. It could save for a lot of data transmission and perhaps make those battle possibles without too much lag and it could explain the necessity of not allowing you to identify the player. Please bear with me, this is just speculation and i have no technical savvy, so this could well be a load of BS, but i find the idea intriguing. It it were true, i wouldnt mind it too much if it made the whole thing work more smoothly.
Um, back to the OP...
That is a really smart idea actually. I don't think it is why they chose not to show names, but if they can get better instancing of models by sharing resources and displaying a lot of the players with the same model instead of excessive detail, that would help a ton with lag. A lot of the lag with pvp in mmos is actually graphical difficulty of dealing with all of the customized models from each players character. This is especially true on medium or low range systems. If this optimization isn't something they have thought of yet, it would be a great thing to implement. And their faceless enemy concept lends itself well to it. It could be something that you can toggle, or if your system can handle all the detail you can turn it on.
Since you all have the same name to enemies, create a guild of all mesmers of the same race and appearance. Same height, same face, same hair, same armor, same dyes, everything.
Imagine seeing a massive army of the same guy charging down a hill. If you have 10 of them, that will look like 40.
I almost feel like there should have been an elite skill to do something like this. "Illusionary Army" it could have been called.
While I truly hope you are right, I also hope you'll pardon me when I say I'm not convinced.
DAOC, I have never played so I'll refrain from commenting on the maturity of the playerbase, but I do believe I'm right when saying the game was never main-stream with a lot of concurrent players?
WAR quickly suffered from a mass exodus and to this day is struggling to keep afloat.
My point being that, with a smaller playerbase maturity seems to prevail. GW2 on the other hand is a different beast entirely in terms of hype and mass appeal. It will attract a lot of players from different MMOs, your perfect melting pot for douchebaggery.
Whether it turns out I'm wrong (fingers crossed) or right, is irrelevant to the fact that I pray Anet will implement an optional nameplate system.
While I agree that not showing the enemy in detail would be a huge performance boost (i.e. they are all wearing class based Opposing Team armour on random Race/Gender toons), I don't see how not showing names factors into this... as in you could still transmit and show the names over a generic model.
I suspect however that they are going for more of a team effort feel in WvW, as in they don't want people running off and fighting their own personal vendettas, or gank squads going after certain enemies... as lets face it, that isn't exactly going to help the overall war effort. Also I think the whole 'faceless' enemy thing has a lot to do with it.
Not a biggie to me but I would like to see their names. To keep an eye out for the really killer players and give respect where its due.
I can see why they don't though.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
While I truly hope you are right, I also hope you'll pardon me when I say I'm not convinced.
DAOC, I have never played so I'll refrain from commenting on the maturity of the playerbase, but I do believe I'm right when saying the game was never main-stream with a lot of concurrent players?
WAR quickly suffered from a mass exodus and to this day is struggling to keep afloat.
My point being that, with a smaller playerbase maturity seems to prevail. GW2 on the other hand is a different beast entirely in terms of hype and mass appeal. It will attract a lot of players from different MMOs, your perfect melting pot for douchebaggery.
Whether it turns out I'm wrong (fingers crossed) or right, is irrelevant to the fact that I pray Anet will implement an optional nameplate system.
It has nothing to do with maturity of the players... or what the total population of the game is - the players there are pretty much the same folks as in other mmos. No, the WAR players were not magical aristorcratic elves theeing and thouing at each other. They were just folks, exactly the same on average as what I've seen in WoW. It's just when the game really has this "War" feeling a certain sense of "honor" emerges. I'm not joking.
If you have clearly defined rules and a sense of permanence, respect appears spontaneously. I've seen it happen time and time again. It is exactly the anonimity and "anything goes" ruleset which breeds griefing and abuse. Remember, game rules determine general player behavior, not the other way around. If you have a game which doesn't punish an even actively rewards asshat behavior due to poorly thought-out design, then this is exactly what happens. We've seen it with PvE in games like WoW where people abuse you if you try to help them out in the open world.. not because they are "evil" but just because bad mechanics reward this kind of selfish and rude behavior.
So, imo these overprotective limitations in communicating with your enemy in faction-based PvP games are really counterproductive. It's much easier to be an asshat if you're being anonymous and see your enemy as a nameless blob (as we can see on internet forums everywhere).
But I might be theorizing too much. From my experience, in RvR you tend to have much more respect for your enemies than for your allies. "Awesome play, Destros! You really caught us with that counterattack there! Great fun! We'll get you next time! /turns around... And you lousy Order buggers! I told you we should post scouts! Look at Destros! Why can't we coordinate like that, you bunch of morons! One more fiasco like that and I'm rerolling on their side!" It's a completely different feeling from FFA PvP games or cross server BGs. It's similar to the way sports teams respect each other - a matter of chivalry, really.
I am fairly certain that the original reason that DAoC went with anonymous enemies was to trick people into forgetting they were PvPing at all. It was felt that if they could convince certain players that they were still fighting NPCs then they could entice traditionaly non-PvPers into PvP.
I am fairly certain that the original reason that DAoC went with anonymous enemies was to trick people into forgetting they were PvPing at all. It was felt that if they could convince certain players that they were still fighting NPCs then they could entice traditionaly non-PvPers into PvP.
Frankly, it worked for me.
I was just coming here to say that. It's even in the AMA explanation about removing names.
They want to pull in people who ordinarily would shy from PvP (I am one of those people). One of the things that enabled me to get into RvR in Warhammer and have a blast was that the player character models looked pretty much like the NPCs I'd been fighting, so I didn't feel as intimidated when I was out there killing the other realm. So I'm here to say, things like this worked for me too!
Removing the ability to see names (but still see guild tags - I didn't see that mentioned but you are still representing your guild and it is very visible) will get people PvPing who wouldn't ordinarily go there.
On the other side of things, removing names won't keep those who love to PvP from PvPing, because they love to PvP.
While I truly hope you are right, I also hope you'll pardon me when I say I'm not convinced.
DAOC, I have never played so I'll refrain from commenting on the maturity of the playerbase, but I do believe I'm right when saying the game was never main-stream with a lot of concurrent players?
WAR quickly suffered from a mass exodus and to this day is struggling to keep afloat.
My point being that, with a smaller playerbase maturity seems to prevail. GW2 on the other hand is a different beast entirely in terms of hype and mass appeal. It will attract a lot of players from different MMOs, your perfect melting pot for douchebaggery.
Whether it turns out I'm wrong (fingers crossed) or right, is irrelevant to the fact that I pray Anet will implement an optional nameplate system.
DAOC was big in its' time (not as large as EQ ) at its' peak in 2003/4 it had 300K subs and server caps of 3.5K people - with most servers running queues in the evening (just after Shrouded Isles launch up to Trials launch) It still had its fair share of douchebags. Thankfully they had to uswe third party sites though since one thing Mythic did right was not having their own message boards!
worked in DAoC..and it will work here, if you have beef you can step up a match and WvW will not be like the other PvP, where battles will be much more thought out.
Part of it is lag. Part of it they wont actually say. Its an easy fix to try and keep harassment down. If WOW has shown us one thing. A large playerbase is prone to terrible communities. In a game where server pride will make a diffrence I can just see a ton of alts on other servers griefing people. Hell I suck at pvp but something like that would keep me out of WvWvW before dieing alot would.
Originally posted by DannyGlover can you mark targets with icons over their heads?
bumping my own query since i haven't been able to find an answer to this.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
Originally posted by Pilnkplonk If you have clearly defined rules and a sense of permanence, respect appears spontaneously. I've seen it happen time and time again. It is exactly the anonimity and "anything goes" ruleset which breeds griefing and abuse. Remember, game rules determine general player behavior, not the other way around. If you have a game which doesn't punish an even actively rewards asshat behavior due to poorly thought-out design, then this is exactly what happens. We've seen it with PvE in games like WoW where people abuse you if you try to help them out in the open world.. not because they are "evil" but just because bad mechanics reward this kind of selfish and rude behavior.
This is very true. However, I think this might have been their intention. They want you to hate the other teams. They want you to kill them indiscriminately. They want you to show no mercy. When they can't see your name, no one is going to hesitate. They want it to be war.
Originally posted by DannyGlover can you mark targets with icons over their heads?
Yes, I think you can. I know you can call targets, and I think I saw a video where a target appeared over an enemies head. I don't know what video it was, though.
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
Finally, I would be able to sit in the bushes and wait for my prey! Great
Oh no .. you'll still probably have Red Invader Over your head like a big "I'm over here, come kill me" sign lol
Actually Mazut can do just that with the Ranger. Just hit "Camoflage" and you'll be stealthed, indefinitely, until you move.
As for the " Invader" nameplates, I doubt it has anything to do with lag. Heck, they allow you to see everyone (in the immediate vicinity) on the map, so I doubt showing someone's name would mean a thing. Apaprt from the "faceless enemy" reason, I think the other reason ArenaNet did this was to prevent people from opposing servers, meeting up and finding someway to exploit the system. No idea how it can be exploited though. Can't really kill trade, because then you'll have to keep repairing armour.
Every detail adds lag, that is why texture rich games like Lineage can be very laggy if you dont have a good computer. STart adding up all the detailed armor, all the different colors, the name plates, huge combat animations...ect..ect..
It all adds up, thats probably why GW2 decided to go with a "generic" look for WvWvW, and I have no doubt many PvP players will embrace it, because we want quality gameplay, not eye candy or realism.
Having both would be nice, but its just not doable with todays technology.
Originally posted by DannyGlover can you mark targets with icons over their heads?
bumping my own query since i haven't been able to find an answer to this.
Yes you can, as shown in this video. Party leader can hit "Ctrl+T" to mark a target and anyone else can then hit "T" to auto-switch to that target.
ah ok thanks for the info. so I take it you cannot mark multiple targets like in wow, rift,tor etc? or can you mark ctrl+T,y,u,i etc?
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
In answer to people who have asked why would you have to remove name plates if the appearance of your enemy is being randomly generated:
Because if you could see the name theres a chance youd remember that the same Death From Above tht killed you 2 days ago was a girl on friday and now is a man, spoiling the effect.
bumping my own query since i haven't been able to find an answer to this.
Yes you can, as shown in this video. Party leader can hit "Ctrl+T" to mark a target and anyone else can then hit "T" to auto-switch to that target.
ah ok thanks for the info. so I take it you cannot mark multiple targets like in wow, rift,tor etc? or can you mark ctrl+T,y,u,i etc?
I don't think we have information on that. Calling the target as shown above is something we had in GW1 so I'm not surprised to see it here. GW1, however, did not have the kind of multiple target marking you refer to as pulls are generally handled by drawing on the minimap, or calling skills.
My guess would be that this is the system that will be ported to GW2, if the above video and the fact that map-pinging is back is any indication.
Comments
Shame you can not see the names. Its basic to any online pvp or shooter.
Reason is simple - bragging rights
Im actually fine with the nameless enemy thing... However, like has been said before, I would like to see some sort of "Rival" system. Where you can mark an enemy(s) as your rival and then you can see them later with a little symbol or something... and the the person you marked would know that you have marked them. That way you can still have the fun little rivalries but maintain the anonymity.
I can see why remaining anonymous in WvW is important.. especially when names will (as far as is known now) be cross server and players have the ability to vist other servers at any time.
"Don't mistake a fun game for a good game... Checkers is fun to play but its not exactly the highest point of gaming design... and definatly not worth $60 plus $15 a month"
My experience and those of thousands of others who played RvR games such as WAR and DAoC suggests exactly the opposite.
Something I just considered...
Since you all have the same name to enemies, create a guild of all mesmers of the same race and appearance. Same height, same face, same hair, same armor, same dyes, everything.
Imagine seeing a massive army of the same guy charging down a hill. If you have 10 of them, that will look like 40.
I almost feel like there should have been an elite skill to do something like this. "Illusionary Army" it could have been called.
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
Um, back to the OP...
That is a really smart idea actually. I don't think it is why they chose not to show names, but if they can get better instancing of models by sharing resources and displaying a lot of the players with the same model instead of excessive detail, that would help a ton with lag. A lot of the lag with pvp in mmos is actually graphical difficulty of dealing with all of the customized models from each players character. This is especially true on medium or low range systems. If this optimization isn't something they have thought of yet, it would be a great thing to implement. And their faceless enemy concept lends itself well to it. It could be something that you can toggle, or if your system can handle all the detail you can turn it on.
I really like the way you think!
While I truly hope you are right, I also hope you'll pardon me when I say I'm not convinced.
DAOC, I have never played so I'll refrain from commenting on the maturity of the playerbase, but I do believe I'm right when saying the game was never main-stream with a lot of concurrent players?
WAR quickly suffered from a mass exodus and to this day is struggling to keep afloat.
My point being that, with a smaller playerbase maturity seems to prevail. GW2 on the other hand is a different beast entirely in terms of hype and mass appeal. It will attract a lot of players from different MMOs, your perfect melting pot for douchebaggery.
Whether it turns out I'm wrong (fingers crossed) or right, is irrelevant to the fact that I pray Anet will implement an optional nameplate system.
* Waves at Pushkina *
Wait... are you saying that I can be a "green invader" from another "world?" This will be fun.
'We've come for your resources, human.'
While I agree that not showing the enemy in detail would be a huge performance boost (i.e. they are all wearing class based Opposing Team armour on random Race/Gender toons), I don't see how not showing names factors into this... as in you could still transmit and show the names over a generic model.
I suspect however that they are going for more of a team effort feel in WvW, as in they don't want people running off and fighting their own personal vendettas, or gank squads going after certain enemies... as lets face it, that isn't exactly going to help the overall war effort. Also I think the whole 'faceless' enemy thing has a lot to do with it.
Not a biggie to me but I would like to see their names. To keep an eye out for the really killer players and give respect where its due.
I can see why they don't though.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
It has nothing to do with maturity of the players... or what the total population of the game is - the players there are pretty much the same folks as in other mmos. No, the WAR players were not magical aristorcratic elves theeing and thouing at each other. They were just folks, exactly the same on average as what I've seen in WoW. It's just when the game really has this "War" feeling a certain sense of "honor" emerges. I'm not joking.
If you have clearly defined rules and a sense of permanence, respect appears spontaneously. I've seen it happen time and time again. It is exactly the anonimity and "anything goes" ruleset which breeds griefing and abuse. Remember, game rules determine general player behavior, not the other way around. If you have a game which doesn't punish an even actively rewards asshat behavior due to poorly thought-out design, then this is exactly what happens. We've seen it with PvE in games like WoW where people abuse you if you try to help them out in the open world.. not because they are "evil" but just because bad mechanics reward this kind of selfish and rude behavior.
So, imo these overprotective limitations in communicating with your enemy in faction-based PvP games are really counterproductive. It's much easier to be an asshat if you're being anonymous and see your enemy as a nameless blob (as we can see on internet forums everywhere).
But I might be theorizing too much. From my experience, in RvR you tend to have much more respect for your enemies than for your allies. "Awesome play, Destros! You really caught us with that counterattack there! Great fun! We'll get you next time! /turns around... And you lousy Order buggers! I told you we should post scouts! Look at Destros! Why can't we coordinate like that, you bunch of morons! One more fiasco like that and I'm rerolling on their side!" It's a completely different feeling from FFA PvP games or cross server BGs. It's similar to the way sports teams respect each other - a matter of chivalry, really.
I may be mis-remembering things but...
I am fairly certain that the original reason that DAoC went with anonymous enemies was to trick people into forgetting they were PvPing at all. It was felt that if they could convince certain players that they were still fighting NPCs then they could entice traditionaly non-PvPers into PvP.
Frankly, it worked for me.
I was just coming here to say that. It's even in the AMA explanation about removing names.
They want to pull in people who ordinarily would shy from PvP (I am one of those people). One of the things that enabled me to get into RvR in Warhammer and have a blast was that the player character models looked pretty much like the NPCs I'd been fighting, so I didn't feel as intimidated when I was out there killing the other realm. So I'm here to say, things like this worked for me too!
Removing the ability to see names (but still see guild tags - I didn't see that mentioned but you are still representing your guild and it is very visible) will get people PvPing who wouldn't ordinarily go there.
On the other side of things, removing names won't keep those who love to PvP from PvPing, because they love to PvP.
DAOC was big in its' time (not as large as EQ ) at its' peak in 2003/4 it had 300K subs and server caps of 3.5K people - with most servers running queues in the evening (just after Shrouded Isles launch up to Trials launch) It still had its fair share of douchebags. Thankfully they had to uswe third party sites though since one thing Mythic did right was not having their own message boards!
I'll have to admit, that i was disappointed seeing this. I would rather see names instead of "invaders". They might as well be NPCs.
worked in DAoC..and it will work here, if you have beef you can step up a match and WvW will not be like the other PvP, where battles will be much more thought out.
Part of it is lag. Part of it they wont actually say. Its an easy fix to try and keep harassment down. If WOW has shown us one thing. A large playerbase is prone to terrible communities. In a game where server pride will make a diffrence I can just see a ton of alts on other servers griefing people. Hell I suck at pvp but something like that would keep me out of WvWvW before dieing alot would.
bumping my own query since i haven't been able to find an answer to this.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
This is very true. However, I think this might have been their intention. They want you to hate the other teams. They want you to kill them indiscriminately. They want you to show no mercy. When they can't see your name, no one is going to hesitate. They want it to be war.
Yes, I think you can. I know you can call targets, and I think I saw a video where a target appeared over an enemies head. I don't know what video it was, though.
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
Yes you can, as shown in this video. Party leader can hit "Ctrl+T" to mark a target and anyone else can then hit "T" to auto-switch to that target.
Every detail adds lag, that is why texture rich games like Lineage can be very laggy if you dont have a good computer. STart adding up all the detailed armor, all the different colors, the name plates, huge combat animations...ect..ect..
It all adds up, thats probably why GW2 decided to go with a "generic" look for WvWvW, and I have no doubt many PvP players will embrace it, because we want quality gameplay, not eye candy or realism.
Having both would be nice, but its just not doable with todays technology.
individual and/or team skill and reputation is where it belongs - gvg, arenas and so on.
WvW however...
there isnt much point in seeing enemy names actually.
some people are forgetting that one of the 'worlds' will probably be asian one.
does it help to see one guy with SAKLDJQWLDKJWQ nickname and another with MVDNLVDLSFDSF ?
it certainly doesnt.
as long as you can distinguish class its all good.
customized visual appearance is ok as well. it would really break immersion to see 10 identical rangers running at you.
seeing personalized capes is fair enough as well.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
In answer to people who have asked why would you have to remove name plates if the appearance of your enemy is being randomly generated:
Because if you could see the name theres a chance youd remember that the same Death From Above tht killed you 2 days ago was a girl on friday and now is a man, spoiling the effect.
I don't think we have information on that. Calling the target as shown above is something we had in GW1 so I'm not surprised to see it here. GW1, however, did not have the kind of multiple target marking you refer to as pulls are generally handled by drawing on the minimap, or calling skills.
My guess would be that this is the system that will be ported to GW2, if the above video and the fact that map-pinging is back is any indication.