What if there was "friendly fire"

It used to be in the game.

It isn't anymore.

Take a guess why.

If there were friendly fire it would be bad.
As others have mentioned, players grief enough as it is, can you imagine the "I won't heal you if you don't do as I say" situation taken further?

"I'll d'shot you..."
"I'll MS your butt..."
"I'll <insert threat here>..."

I think OP mentioned purely AOE effects.

It wouldn't change a thing. Barbs + Orders + Physicals would still rock PvE big time. They would rock harder as foes would do part of killing themselves.

In a way you already have friendly fire (i don't anybody said it):

Summit Giant Herder has the giant stomp skill which will also knock down his own allies...That in a way is a friendly fire skill...

(I love it when it hits an enemy necro just as he is trying to animate )

simple. they start nuking you, you use [skill]Pain Inverter[/skill], you both die

Ok, general teamkill = bad. Agreed.

Mesmer skill:

Textual Deviant-Elite Hex, 10e, 1/4 cast, 25rec. for 1..11 seconds, all spells that target a foe, now target 1 random nearby ally.

game over :P

Would minions attack people of their own party when friendly fire is enabled?

One of the things i like most in GW is it's relative resistance to griefing. Exept for leeching, deliberately not rezzing to get a drop and the now removed forced zoning out of perma pre, it's all very nice.

If you give griefers an obvious tool, they will kill the public side of the game in a couple of days.

Just go back to Diablo2 and smell the ashes.

i think that Pve would somewhat be impossible to do
just imagine
any nuking has to be done very carefully or just not and ele's won't be used anymore
high end pve would be impossible
cuz with ursan you'll KD your teammates with the AoE and weaken them but with a tank and nukers the mission can't be done either cuz the nukers will nuke the tank to hell

same like lobbing a flash nade in a room in CSS
you'll pwn both sides

It would have almost no effect on the game. Players rarely group up anymore except to PvP.

hero AI is dumb
they'll just nuke you without noticing you're dying

If there was friendly fire I'd be mad. I hate when Charr and other monsters cast AOE on us enough, if a party member casts one and wipes us all out with his own spell that game would be horribly unbalanced. And I can't count the number of times I've tried to click an enemy and clicked an ally instead...Plus if someone got mad at someone else in a bad PUG they'd just try to kill them off. No way would it work and it shouldn't be implemented.

That part made me sad. Not that it isnt true.

Funny about heroes though. They would indeed merrily AoE you to death. Themselves as well. Pretty much conclusive that friendly fire = bad.

Bad idea .

inferno ouch
or whirling defenses under rspike attack
rt spirits / minnions attacking our own team hahaha

lol it's a planty of choices how to autopwn ourselves.

It would be very funny to see both the monster group and the person group kill eachother with some close range AOE skills.
it would be sooo funny for few mins.

I could kill vekk yippie!!

OR Gadd! =O
god i hate that little bastard with his [iron mist]

In Oblivion, one good tactic is to keep a melee enemy positioned between you and a ranged/magic enemy because there IS friendly fire of all sorts: melee weapons, magic effects, arrows, etc. Either the ranged enemy will hang back, or they'll try to blow through their buddy anyway to get at you.

In fact, I was in the Arena last night and kept a melee enemy between me and her teammate who was firing arrows, and her teammate helped me kill her by trying to pick me off when I came clear, only to have the teammate run in front of the incoming arrow.

It's a very neat tactical effect and adds a lot to combat. As others have said, however, online gamers are mental midgets and it probably wouldn't work out very well...

Also, in before pics of Gwen butchering entire towns in beta.

Friendly fire would be mayhem, there's many cases in which I would happily murder my entire team (think RA for example ), some people just got no manners . I would kill allies in AB for flashing their moose . Plz anet implement it for a week and then take it out again, I wouldn't wanna miss it for the world.

LOL yeah, in PvE there's some folks I would kill too, like alesia, or DANIKA lol.
Not to forget Rurik, no more leeroying for you.
Togo getting stuck? OFF WITH HIS HEAD!