GW:EN Sneak Peak: They Got One Right?

I expend a lot of energy criticizing the makers of Guild Wars. For the things they've done. For the things they've failed to do. Partly because, as I always have, I want the game to be as close to perfection as it can possibly be. Partly because it turns out to be a lot easier to point out a flaw than to suggest a solution. Let alone praise a success. Well, if I can, I'd like to point out one case out of the many where the developers have gotten something wonderfully right. I don't do it nearly enough but that's only because they do it so often.

What I'm talking about in this case is an NPC I stumbled upon while browsing through the Great Temple of Balthazar, Tolkano. For those who haven't been playing the game since, oh, July or so, he's the Tournament Rewards vendor. To play in the automated tournaments you need tokens, which you can buy from Tolkano for 1k Faction a piece (I believe you need 5 for GvG. I could care less how many you need for Hero Battles but I suspect it's significantly less.). More importantly, when you play you earn tournament points which you can redeem at Tolkano for cash and prizes. Well, mostly prizes.

You can buy Golden Flames (consumables providing you with 3k Faction) which you can presumably trade. But more importantly, you can buy new skins for your armor and weapons with your hard earned points.

Since this, aesthetic, non-functional, rewards for PvP play, is something that I've been pounding the table about for years now, let me just say it's about time. This is the sort of thing which can be used to draw players into the PvP scene. A way of marking out prestige and importance for those who diligently play. A carrot to those who don't.

But, here's the maddening thing about the makers of Guild Wars. And the real reason I criticize so much. They come up with a concept so right, so pure and wonderful and amazingly transformative that it's hard to imagine the game without it. And then they go and muck up the execution. It's like they create a beautiful painting working for days, for months, to get the shading just right on the Ross-like trees, and then an hour before they're due to exhibit they take a can of paint and splash it all over the canvas. So close and yet so far.

Because, of course, there are a few problems with this rewards system. The first, is rather quibbling of me, but it's that these rewards are restricted to those who participate in the tournaments. From speaking to some of my hardcore PvP friends, the general consensus is that the tournaments are awful and not really worth the time. But even if they were, they're not something that novice players, players new to the PvP scene are going to be able to compete at. These nifty skins for armor and cool-looking items aren't just a way of rewarding the faithful. They're a way of luring the uninitiated in. Of hooking the, of getting them to say “just one more match, just one more fight, and I'll have my nifty geegaw to impress everyone with.” By tying the rewards to success in the tournaments, you've put them out of the reach of most of the people playing the game. Which is why I'd rather these rewards were tied to straight faction rather than tournament rewards but, at a minimum, there should be brackets of cheaply and quickly obtained upgrades. More tiers, in other words. The high-end stuff, the most desirably skins, keep those available only to players who live and die by the daily tournaments, sure, but there should be some items that are easily within reach of those just dipping a toe in – those quick rewards, those early carrots, will push them to go farther than they might have otherwise.

The second is much more fundamental. And that's that the rewards aren't unlocked, they're created. As I understand it when you pick a reward it skins an item already in your inventory. You can fiddle around with that item, say, if you have a Celestial Axe you can create a Celestial Axe of Fortitude. But if you delete that character or switch to another one, you can't recreate it again. Not without spending more points. Same for armor. It's tied to the character rather than the account. Unbelievable. Just so foolishly counterintuitive when PvP characters should be disposable, picked up and dropped with ease. Spending your points at Tolkano should unlock those new skins and looks for you to use not only with that character but any future one, however much you like. These are PvP only items which can't be traded or sold, after all, if that's the worry (Although I did have someone tell me there's some trick you can do with equiping your heroes, who are constant for any of your PvP characters and using that to swap over your fancy weapons. Either way, you still can't take those weapons and sell them to someone not on your account.).

It's just mindbottling how they can finally put in such an elegant, simple system that makes the game so much better. And then fuck it up so completely.