Playable Ememy Faction

[Nox Magnus.9268]

So this is my first post to the GW2 forums, and I am sure this has been thrown out before but here goes..

 

I think it would be cool to add five additional races to the game, that were in direct conflict to the current five races. They could, for the most part, still be in opposition to the Dragons, but they could serve as a set of alternative protagonist allowing for a different perspective to be shown for our current races.

 

A good example would be the Centars, currently used primarily as an antagonist for the human race. The Centars could very easily be painted in a different light.

 

“Tyria’s original tenets, living within and with balance to nature. Until the Human gods brought a vile scourge upon them, forcing them into conflict and being pushed out of their ancestral lands. Now they are noble warriors, fighting to retake what is theirs and to bring balance back to nature. “

 

There are plenty of races this could be done with, they could all have they same classes, and for the most part it would just be a difference in most of the PvE map quest.

 

I think that the Centars, the Dreg, the, Tengu, the Kodan and the Wardens would be interesting races to consider. They each have developed cultures and sufficient populations that it would be interesting to learn more about them, and to see their stories.

(I know that currently the Wardens were exclusive to Cantha, but given the lore that Cantha chased out all non-human races in a xenophobic panic, it's plausible that some of them could of found refuge in Kryta or Elona.)

 

Anyways, I will be interested in any feed back.

[Danikat.8537]

It's an interesting idea, and definitely a great opportunity to get more lore and a different perspective on Tyria but I'm not sure how it would work in practice.

 

Would people playing as an enemy race be on the same maps we have now? And if so would that mean current friendly NPCs are their enemies, and enemy NPCs are their friends? What about players? Would someone playing a human be able to attack someone playing as a centaur? I imagine that would be very unpopular since one thing a lot of people like about GW2 is there is no PvP in PvE maps. These characters would also need an entirely separate story since they'd be unable to join in with the one we have, and presumably they'd need at least one town of their own...possibly one per race since a lot of the ones you listed aren't friendly to each other either.

 

So it would be a lot of work, almost an expansion in it's own right. Which doesn't mean it can't happen or even that it shouldn't happen. But we have to consider the fact that while a team of Anet's staff are working on this they can't work on other things, so it would slow down the rate we get new content for our existing characters. Personally I'd consider that a fair trade-off, but I'm not sure everyone else would.

 

One possibly compromise is to do something like GW1's Bonus Mission Pack - have short storylines where you're changed into one of these creatures and get to play through a story about them, then when you've finished you're back to your normal character and can carry on with doing everything else, but of course you can re-play the story any time you like.

 

Incidentally two of the races you listed - the Tengu and the Kodan - aren't enemies exactly. They're mostly neutral and some of them have chosen to work with the Pact in the past. I've always suspected both were planned as possible new races in the future because they've also got homelands in Tyria big enough for at least a city and a starter zone and a lot of lore which is currently under-used in the game. But I don't know if that is the case, and if so whether that idea was abandoned because it got to be too much work to give them their own story to tie into the main one.

[Shaogin.2679]

What would be the benefit to this? The game as it is has no way of making this work, and there is No need at all for an enemy player faction.

[Thereon.5219]

Sure it would always be neat to see more perspectives but such things would require too much work and would end up with a watered down story. It essentially doubles the workload as they now have to create 2 separate stories for each faction where in the end they are doing essentially the same thing different ways.

 

Then what do they do with expansions or stories which might be pertinent to one faction but not the other? Force both factions to be Interested? This is a problem in WoW a lot of people dislike because they are forced to make up unrealistic or unbelievable reasons factions get involved in events. Think of the whole palawa joko arc, what reason would centaurs have to go halfway across the world to deal with palawan joko? None, so they would be forced to create separate content which is unrealisticly possible do to workload or make up some unbelievable reason why centaurs should care.

[Dante.1763]

Gonna have to say no to this, Anet went out of their way to make all the races that are playable in GW2 work together because thats what kind of game they wanted, they dont want the players to be pitted against each other in PVE thankfully, and if thats what you want may i suggest playing other games that already do this.

[Dirk Jan.9534]

Norn and Human vs plants, cats and rats, but only on 1 or 2 Maps, and because they believe in a different solution to a common problem, both with the same outcome in the end. A bit like what we had going with the Kurzicks vs Luxons.