Curse

Verkinix · Oct 29, 2006, 05:36 PM // 17:36

Ok, so I've been playing Nightfall since about an hour before official release. That was a pleasant surprise as I had received my copy earlier thursday afternoon, so it was taunting me from afar (in a good way). With the new systems added, there was more then enough to keep me busy until that golden time when Nightfall would grace us with its presence.

So finally Nightfall releases (about 1am CDT) and I quickly create my elonian Warrior, Paragon, and Dervish from a much bigger and more enjoyable selection of faces, hairstyles, and colors then were seen in the preview event. Such a pleasant surprise, yet my Paragon ended up looking exactly the same (everyone has their pref). After which, I jumped on my main character who was holding my first celestial sigil for buying one of the new guild halls. Each was more lustrious and grand then the previous. Finally I come to the one to my liking. The Isle of Solitude... Breathtaking doesnt do it justice. The immense colors are overwhelming, the art styles and map layout enhance the enjoyment of simply running around and getting different views, and of course my favorite, the magic carpet bridge... Floating there, in mid air, swaying in the wind, with a scenic view that silently speaks tomes. Many from my alliance have come to visit the isle, and all have been impressed.

Now, into Elona herself. I made it clear to myself that my Warrior and Paragon were to go for the survivor titles, so I've been playing quite slowly to, not only be careful, but to enjoy the lush scenery that I find more grand then both Tyria and Cantha. One of the first things I noticed within the tutorial area, was how much easier it was to map! My main char has 100% cantha explorer and 87% tyria explorer, so I've become an expert at mapping. The map of elona reveals itself without needing to exactly scrape the edges perfectly, which will make getting the elonian explorer much more enjoyable.

After much exploring of the tutorial area, I move on through the story into the first town. A quaint little town, hussling and bussling with new paragons and dervishes looking to make it in the new grand world of elona. Throw in a mix of the other 6 classes as well as a few high level characters from other campaigns there to cheer on the newbies and you have a very crowded, yet full of life area. From here there are a few little quests to get your feet wet and you move on to the first story arch mission. One of the easiest missions in all of guildwars, it takes about 3-5 minutes to complete and it's reward system is a mixture of prophecies and factions. It uses the bonus quest system of prophecies and the master level system of factions for a greater depth of enjoyment for the new fighters of elonia.

Now, of course there are movie cinematics, but with a very nice enhancement from the other two campaigns. In nightfall, the characters mouths move and simulate speech quite well. This makes the story much more enjoyable to watch.

After getting aquainted with the story, we move into combat training for an expansion of our current skills. After which, we have a nice full set of skills to use in the upcoming explorable areas. Before that, however, we must enter the main city of Kamadan. With the release of nightfall, also came the release of the halloween weekend, so Kamadan was decorated in great detail to celebrate halloween. Within this fairly large, yet organized, city is a whole slew of quests and missions to allow the new fighters to get right into the action and earn some serious cash, xp, and sunspear points.

Sunspear points? What're those, one might ask. Simply, they are points that gain you a the Sunspear title series, but they also serve the purpose of unlocking higher level things throughout the story progression. Things like the +30 attribute points are obtained by certain levels of the title. So, how do you get these points, one might ask? Many can be obtained through missions that give 5-20 points depending on the mission, but many more can be obtained by talking to the sunspear scouts that stand near the resurrection points. They give these buffs that allow us to gain 1 point per <type of creature> that we kill within that instance of the zone. Once we leave, the buff disappears, but can be obtained again next time we enter the area by talking to the scouts. These are stackable with different types of creatures, from plants, to bugs, to skales, etc...

As for the quests themselves, most are pretty straight foreward: Go here, kill this, obtain that, etc... On "noob island", they are pretty simple, but get much tougher as the story progresses. There are these new types of quests found in the explorable areas that say "Difficulty: Master" in red letters. I have found these to range from fairly simple to immensely diffcult depending on the level of the character. Most require a party of <insert cheesy 70s superhero music here> Heroes!

Ahh yes, the heroes. Such a wonderful (and much needed) addition to the world of guildwars. Almost completely customizeable, controllable, and enjoyable are these forces of good. Willing to go into battle while you sit on the sidelines and watch without any complaints or second thoughts. As the storyline progresses, they gain experience and level with your character. This adds a nice depth of artificial companionship, much the way the rangers pets level with them. As they progress, they gain attributes points just like our regular character and the secondary profession can be changed to any we have access to within guildwars. The skill selection they have to choose from depends on the skills of which are unlocked on our account. I have very few warrior skills, but many elementalist skills, so my warrior hero does some basic things that warriors do, but my elementalist is decked out in the latest and greatest in fire aoe technology. Now, the heroes armor is fixed, but their weapons can be changed. My heroes warrior has a gold fiery dragon sword from tyria and a high level shield that looks perfect for his girth. My monk wields a totem axe and an off hand healing icon that suits his abilities well. There is one problem with a monk having a melee weapon. One big problem. He likes to join in the front line action when he's not healing. Simple remedy, turn him to passive! Now he doesnt fight at all, runs away if attacked, and will still heal like our lives depend on it! Controls like these have made henchmen and heroes alike quite useful and enjoyable with the release of nightfall. Additionally, we can choose to turn off some skills so that they only work if we tell them to work. The AI wont activate that skill, but we are able to click on that skill to use it (such as rez! <does a little dance> no more rez'ing right as the party is about to wipe!). And of course, templates can be saved and loaded so that skill sets and attributes can quickly be loaded. This is a guildwars wide trait introduced with the release of nightfall. It works quite well for heroes, however. I was able to use my MM build for my necromancer hero, and let me say, the AI does a decent job at controlling minions. I still have to micro manage the AI necro a little bit or he wont keep the minions alive if we are moving because he is trying to keep up. Simple enough remedy, use the way point feature. Yes, we can now set way points for each of our 3 equipped heroes as well as for the party of henchies that accompany us. The henchie AI has been vastly improved guildwars wide as has the AI of most enemies in the game. Many now run away and regenerate while others will keep attacking if they think they can win or run if they know they will lose.

These are small things that the community has been asking for, for a long time and Anet has delivered nicely. On that note, I want to give an enthusiastic "Whoo!" to the new dye and weapon mod system. It is now possible to preview how an item will look once it is changed before applying the enhancement. The dye system alone is simply fun to play with. To see different combinations on different armor and weapon sets. These new systems have made guildwars a much more fun place. I do hope Anet continues to produce wonderful enhancements like this in the future.

Finally, the needs improvement section. For everything good, there must be a bad, but in this case, the good far out weight the bad imo. We have alot more titles now then with the release of factions, but they are getting a little over cluttered in the list. My survivor title and sunspear title are an entire scroll away from eachother with having the "universal" titles in between. An improvement would be to have a sectional window (ie guild window has closeable parts) to close the general titles and only display the ones that apply to that character. That way I could see my survivor, explorer and sunspear titles on the same window without having to expand the window half way down the screen. That's a pretty minor fix. The only other gripe I can think of (and this might only be temporary for the release/halloween weekend) is the current economy system in the NPCs. These runes keep popping like Vitae and Paragon Major Spear, but when you go to request a quote, they suddenly disappear. This is both confusing and annoying. Other times, the trader wont sell anything (like the minor rune of vigor) and wont buy one from myself. Other things are inflating in price and making it tough for people without alot of money to obtain. Again, this may only be temporary for the events that are going on as there are alot more people playing then in past weeks. One final thing that doesnt really bother me, but I've heard alot of complains on, is the way many favorable farming spots have been "nerfed". IMO I think its great. Minimize the the effectiveness of the "bots" while increasing the rareness and novelty of certain loot. Most people I've talked to say they have no way of making money now. I disagree. There are plenty of ways to make money in game. Most are straight foreward like doing quests, others are more creative like "running" other players from place to place, still others involve farming to a much lesser extent then before. It is still possible with the right builds to farm groups (say trolls), but it takes longer. So instead of making 3k an hour, you make 2k an hour. That is still more then enough to afford even some of the most elite things in the game (ie 60k armor set). I personally am glad farming will be less prominent. Now maybe people will actually play the game as intended.

So, that was my first impressions of Nightfall and the new GW content. Please feel free to add to this and correct anything I may have incorrect. Give us your first impressions, but try not to be too specific about quests and missions (aside from the first one that I wrote about as that is pretty general and most people have gone through it). Avoid spoilers as much as possible.

Thanks

Network · Oct 29, 2006, 05:43 PM // 17:43

Nightfall is fun!

Martian · Oct 29, 2006, 05:53 PM // 17:53

That's what he said.

Blackhawk · Oct 29, 2006, 05:56 PM // 17:56

Makes Factions look an even bigger pile of crap

Ondo · Oct 29, 2006, 06:40 PM // 18:40

My first impressions. This game ROCKS! I love the new terrian, the new creatures, the new armors, the new everything. I started a Paragon, and am taking my time with her and loving every minute of it.
I brought my Warrior from Cantha over, but have not done anyting with her yet, other than get her Hero's.
I also brought my Necro over from Tyria. She was a MM but has now been changed to a Full curse necro. Her newly aquired necro Hero is the MM now. And he does one heck of a job! I have gone to the Consulate Docks with her and picked up the Sunspear 1k armor for her. I wish now that she got the Nightfall Paragon CE dance. That outfit better suits where that dance came from! After that I took her back over to Tyria, with her new heros and went to the Ice Caves of Sorrows Mission. My one monk will be a Mo/N and I wanted to cap an Elite for her to use. I thought I would try to get what I needed and use my heros plus a couple other henchies just to be safe. It was a blast! Koss went from level 2 to 5 and we didn't go far into the mission to get the elite. Just killing the Pinesoul and Ice Imps in the begining was enough xp for Koss to get a level gain! The one question I had was, will they need to get infused if we use them over in the Tyrian area? And will their armor show the Infused status when we do? Will probably do that tonight and see.
The Consulate Docks mission was interesting to say the least! I did fail it, but it was my first time and my Heros where not full 20s. So now I am mapping the island and leveling my heros before I go back to it.
I was going to add a complaint/fixes area but I am afraid I would go off into a rant about all the whiners out there. Anet is doing the best they can at getting the broken things fixed. And that's where I will end this. I really enjoyed your write up well thought out, and written!

Sai of Winter · Oct 29, 2006, 06:57 PM // 18:57

I've finally completed the game and my impression of Nightfall is that it's amazing! The story was great, cinematics were improved as well as the acting. The acting is much better than previous chapters. The game is surprisingly easy, henched through the whole thing, but it took longer. I think it might be faster with a full team of players. All in all, I love this game.

Verkinix · Oct 30, 2006, 10:51 PM // 22:51

Wow, so many great replies and thanks for the complement Ondo. Nightfall has only gotten better since I posted this and made it further in elona. Feel free to keep posting your first impressions of Nightfall.

/3 cheers for Anet!

Komerad · Oct 31, 2006, 12:12 AM // 00:12

What follows is my personal opinion :

To me guildwars now lost the last spark of freedom the original offered.
Better then factions...? that aint hard.
Better then prophecies...? Let's say its much closer to factions

I'm playing for a couple of hours now and still on starters island.

Now it might be me but it looks like in nightfall you don't have to do every single quest you might find under any given rock befor you can proceed...
Guildwars nf became as linear as super mario bros.
The only freedom left = when you play it, howmuch you play it, how you spend your gold, and last but not least : the order of doing 'side'quests

Good thing that last one is left.
Bad thing that they aren't seal sidequests anymore as they have to be done to proceed.

The Pocky Alchemist · Nov 01, 2006, 05:43 PM // 17:43

Nice writeup, Verkinix. Still debating whether I should jingle some coins on this one... and thanks for that piece on the Hero system, I didn't get a good grasp of it during the beta.

Good to hear the story is strong, even if Komerad says it can choke you to death, haha.

You mentioned running, Verk. Does that mean they activated running again? Not like Cantha, where you have to play through the towns and outposts if you want to get somewhere?

...Speaking of Cantha, how's the EXP on the quests/missions? Are they going to give us +3000 for planting three seeds again?

Oh a GW forum · Nov 01, 2006, 07:46 PM // 19:46

Some of the missions were great, especially being wurms and Tihket Orchard. Very nice relief from "move from point a to point b. Take item 1 from point b to point c. Kill boss a" ect... that the rest of the missions in the game consist of.

Heros were very useful.

Armor art seems to be pretty much crap though. Aside from warrior and ranger primeval, nothing really compares to most of the art in factions and prophecies, imo.

Insignias are lame.

Blade_Wolf · Nov 01, 2006, 07:55 PM // 19:55

I really enjoy Nightfall, now cutscenes are more fun to watch instead of being boring. the voice acting is a little better and the lips move, so now i won't really care if someone doesn't skip a cutscene when i'm in a group. another thing i like about nightfall is the promotion/sunspear rank, since most of the time i have a hard time of getting all the other titles (currently i'm working on drunkard) i find it easy that when you start the game you have a title track right away. Heroes are also a good edition now i don't have to travel with other people that whine and complain and ask when the missions over, or why they didn't get that green drop. and henchmen emotes are funny.
Now to compare Nightfall to the other 2 games, I personally like them all equally. I like prophecies cause its more of a challenge to level up, I like factions for faction farming and cause its way easy to make money. I found it annoying in prophecies in which its diffcult to make lots of money really fast, some of you may disagree but we all have our own game experiance. Factions, well its not really a bad thing but it was way to easy to get to lvl 20. They all have their ups and downs. But I Think Anet really did a good job with Nightfall!

Narutoscryed · Nov 01, 2006, 10:07 PM // 22:07

nightfall the game really kicks butt.... the updates that are associated with the game are what is ruining alota peoples opinions of the game. and future anet games.

hidden_agenda · Nov 01, 2006, 11:07 PM // 23:07

I've only just gotten to the Sunspear Sanctuary, so I'm obviously quite a bit behind many others. This is, in part, because I decided to take it easy this time and smell the flowers. I try to enjoy the scenery and explore the maps in full before I move on.

However, base on the stuff that I've seen so far, I must say that Anet has done an outstanding job. CONGRATS!!

The graphics update is very nice. I really enjoy the story / quests so far. The fact that the background story + the quests + the missions all hook well together makes an enormous difference. The result is a far superior immersion for the player than the previous two campaigns. So KUDOS to Anet for an outstanding RPG.

Diablo™ · Nov 01, 2006, 11:30 PM // 23:30

Nothing but love from me...

Kid Divinity · Nov 02, 2006, 12:02 AM // 00:02

I just got off noob island and this game is already running circles around Factions.

I liked the Factions missions... they just weren't plentiful enough.