Curse

Lady Lozza · Sep 23, 2006, 10:45 PM // 22:45

I honestly disagree with people saying the Dervish nerf has made them useless. I've played through most of the weekend with both a paragon and a dervish and not had any problem with either class. The Dervish was great with the right enchantments, certainly you had to watch yourself carefully, but I rarely ran out of energy and rarely died.

Silent Coyote · Sep 23, 2006, 10:56 PM // 22:56

My only complaint is the locked gates, they were the bit I hated most about factions and I'm really not looking forward to having them in nightfall again

. If there going to stay then please I beg of you anet make them account based not character based, else I wont be playing through nightfall more than once.

Other than that I really like it, the missions/quests were some of the best yet (really liked that trial bit, though is it possible to end it with more points than the oposition? - i got owned, was something like 8-15 by the end). Skill rewards for quests would be nice. The pacing was just fine as far as lvling is concerened.

Basically from what I've seen, take out the locked gates and nightfall >= prophecies (I didn't like factions).

JMFD · Sep 23, 2006, 10:57 PM // 22:57

Good things:

Heroes
Skills - the ability to set skills from those unlocked gives pve-centric players a reason to spend faction

Also allows cross-campaign skillsets I ws concerned was not going to be there.

Controls - Took a little getting used to, I generally leave them alone after entering combat and focus on my own skill bar, getting blood ritual on demand is nice though, and ordering to cancel rez and get fighting is good.

AI - not too terrible, just dont give them maintained enchantments, interupts ftw!

Sunspear
Liked the idea of titles based on quest completion in general, may need a little nerfing for KOABD purposes.

Prettiness Factor
Pretty! But my low-end machine (I ahve 2 gw-capable pcs) can't run it on anything but lowest settings anymore

Paragons
Enough said, apart from their armour appearence, very nice.

Skills
My ele and monk are very happy with new skills to claim. My ranger and rit were ambivelent.

Bad things

Armour
The elementalist armour makes me want to cry, you wear more with underwear! I find it a little offensive that I have to show quite so much to play an ele. Alternative armour skin solved it a little (Yes, I am a chick playing a female avatar)

Lag!
Plagued by lag!

Dervishes
Confusing, rather underpowered, and another mellee type with no armour means my monk will cry (especially with them stripping their own enchants)

Omega X · Sep 23, 2006, 11:00 PM // 23:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by beta man

i played nightfall only for a while mainly because i hated the desert sandy and dry environment and prefer the snowy land of shiverpeaks and the greens of pre-searing.

There was tons of jungle and a swamp if you kept with the primary quests.

Sephiroth Istari · Sep 23, 2006, 11:50 PM // 23:50

Because of lg I could not fully experience the greatness of Nightfall, but I think it is a very intense and thorough game yet I wish the damn tutorial was skippable or moved faster.

**cosyfiep** · Sep 24, 2006, 02:25 AM // 02:25

hm, seeing as I am making the decision whether or not to buy nightfall based on this preview.....
I will divide this up into parts.

creation
some of the new faces and hair styles are horrible....I like the ones for the dervish, but not for the monk, paragon or ele (like the hair for the ele--face=bad), havent made the other characters yet....will do that later to see what horrible things they have ---ok just did it, oh welll---wont be making many new characters in nightfall so I guess this one doesnt really matter anyways right?

armor
hm, if this is all there is there will be no reason to save up stuff for my previous characters----only the ele and mesmer even remotely inspire me there.

skills
nothing impressive there either.

map, skins, et all
hm, outside of the horrible cobra stuff, most is pretty appealing....like the map---more open than the slums of cantha, more like the jungle area everyone (but me) avoided in chpater 1....

new professions
dervish.....nope dont like it, but then again dont like the warrior either; liked the armor and hair styles
paragon....hm, like the ranged weapon, but reminds me of a glorified ranger. (which I might add I have as my 2ndary and no troll ungent

). dont like the hair or faces---who came up with those???

pets-----like the flamingo but looks just like a moa in pink. will have to wait for the others to see if they are worth changing my reef lurker for.

music
trying to not listen to it.....gets repetitive, but then again, thats how I find most of the music for guildwars...

content.
so far, hm, grinding away at the sunspear points is getting old, and I can see how doing this with multiple characters would be something to avoid, however, it does replace the factions so ...., well

, still not happy with it. the quests are ok, not toooo many fed ex....though I still havent gotten a dang chunk of drake-----, will have to grind for some of these as well.

heros
hm, like that we can pick more of their stuff, however; I still cant get ANY necro 2ndary for my koss---and no new skills either, hm.....and the drop rate for swords ---do they drop? I have cobra staves up the wazoo!

so ..... I like to sit on the fence still for this one, however; I will probably get nightfall just because my husband wants us to so we can do new stuff together (he is bored of factions since all 4 of his characters are finished and his sin isnt going to tyria to cap 2ndary skills)....I however, started a new canthan monk a fortnight ago and still need to cap skills....so I have stuff to do (and my mesmer still wants to get 15kcantha armor but she is poor---needs to farm for more loot)......

so whether I am happy or not, I guess I will buy it----though this is probably the last one since the screen is getting tooo busy and having to manage heros and their armor/weapons/skills will get overwhelming with 8 characters x4 heros---------just tooo much for me to find it a relaxing game.

overall review (1-10) 6....enough new stuff to at least play it for a while, but too much extra work to want to do it with all my characters. (but I want to play an ele----I like the new hair style I have....and the dervish got some nice hair styles too....one looks just like mine! ---long and scrunchied)........
will wait and see.

Dixie Lady · Sep 24, 2006, 02:27 AM // 02:27

Oh pleaseeeese, give the female necro some better hair styles. One of them looks like she stuck her finger in an electrical outlet

The Proph. necro had some cute styles offered.The armour isn't as good as factions and prohp. It looks like wings sticking thru my cape.
Other than that and confusion over ''where are the missions?" I love the game as I already posted earlier.

unmatchedfury · Sep 24, 2006, 03:32 AM // 03:32

[QUOTE=Minus Sign]

1. No matter how abundant the money, some people prefer to quest for their skills. Translation: when the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO are we going to get the skill reward system back? We had three different ways to get most skills in GWP. More player options ftw?

QUOTE]

i liek buying my skills. No need to go questing all over crteation when you can pick what you wnat right in town each too his own though.

Loved nightfall, I really am intersted in teh deverish. His play style siuts mine very well. He charges up enchants and sotres tehm on himself to use as Ammo" Meanign that he is capible of long sustained aoe burst and durability.

Aeon_Enceladus · Sep 24, 2006, 04:17 AM // 04:17

I find Nightfall just as good, or better than Prophecies. There was one thing I loved about that game, and that was the HUGE map, and slow leveling. If there's anything about an MMO that I'd like, it's taking time to level up.

I find Hero's pretty useful, but mainly when you're dead, OR you don't want to risk dying. That's just because, in combat, you prob won't have time to concentrate on TWO or THREE characters' skills, or movement. And I can only imagine the combat will get tougher.

I think the Dervish is brilliant. They deal high damage, but like the assassin, need to know when to pull off. I remember at the start of Factions, people CURSED assassins, because there were too many, and too little knew how to play it 'right'. Best part about Dervish is that, loosing enchantments BENEFITS you.

I haven't played Paragons yet =)

The landscape is just great too

Finally, I think the new armor looks great too, for most professions

CANT WAIT to see 15k armor for the professions

Thallandor · Sep 24, 2006, 05:52 AM // 05:52

/just finished last night

Overall i think the content are great.

While playing through it, the wide open spaces and the sunspear rank mechanics gave the game a overall MMOish feeling which imo was great.

Some of the locked gates were a bit annoying but overall was fine since we could explore most of the area around it. I love exploring and there was lots of places to go and see on the Island which was great. I hated the pass model of having a quest marker in the other end of the portal zone with 1001 mobs in the way in Factions, its always nice to be given a choice not to fight and aviod mobs if one wished to in wider areas.

The voice acting with lip syn was very well done this time round.

The level of progression wasnt rushed like Factions but wasnt too slow with the blessings from the sunspear scouts, and the quest generally kept things interesting even at low levels.

The environment was well designed, its really exciting to be able to see a giant structure in the far distance and slowly make your way towards it to discovery a new town/city. Really liked all the areas eg. First city with the Smashing stone and fire traps. While playing through it gave me the immersion of playing in a Indiana Jones moives with the structures and Cosirars slaying.

Other components like skills, skins and pets i understand will be further expanded upon so i wont comment on them but overall, some of the skills combos were quite deadly.

I give the Nightfall Prevent Event content ratings: 9.5/10 and will be getting both the pre release bonus pack with CE, no regrets this time round.

Edit: i forgot to add, the story was great, i was actually interested enough to keep reading all the text the NPCs said and followed the story structure which made things more interesting. The new necro minons are sooooo cute <3

The limited facial selection, locked gates and buyings skills instead of questing for them were the only things that i feel against Nightfall so far from the preview.

Absolute Destiny · Sep 24, 2006, 06:34 AM // 06:34

/just finished giving up trying to finish

Okay, while this is fresh in my mind:

Major Likes:
1) Scout blessings: Loooved being able to do what amount to pseudo-quests that allow you to easily build up XP and your Sunspear rank.

2) Sunspear ranking/battle commendations: Wow, getting something besides XP and dropped items as rewards is great, especially with the presence of swarms of enemies (when you have a blessing).

3) Durvish profession: YESS! Loved this profession. A profession that actually requires you to position yourself in such a way as to maximize damage (ie, in the fray for AoE attacks/skills), and yet require you to keep an eye on your status to make sure you don't die in the process. Well done, Anet! SCYTHES PWN!

4) Tutorial mission: I've heard a lot of people complaining about it, but to me it's worth the time (plus it allows you to start the game-proper with 2000 XP under your belt already.)

5) Overall look: Seems like all the game colors are much deeper than in Prophecies. Also like the new armors and weapons.

6) Moneymaking: dang..I had over 1,000g before I hit level 10! Seems reeeeally easy to make mucho dinero, which may be in part due to the lack of skill rewards for quests.

7) Heroes/henchmen/battle AI: MUCH better than prophecies, especially considering the control elements. The control took me a little while to deal with, but it helps when you want to strategically retreat.

8) Paragon profession: takes the shout mechanic and greatly expands it. Being able to give your whole party the ability to burn,etc, is HUGE.

Dislikes:
1) Mission dialogue: There should seriously be a way to turn off those little dialogue boxes that come up during missions or just before quests, because I actually died once unable to see cause the damned thing was in my way (when I clicked it off, I died.)

2) Fast leveling: didn't experience this myself, but seeing people on the "newbie" island who were already level 20, and had only been playing for a few hours, showed me that someone had been exploiting those scout blessings a leeettle too much. Also haven't yet seen a battle end with "0 XP" gain.

3) related to 2, Enemies in the "newbie" area are too big!: In Prophecies, you weren't seeing enemies over level 10 until at LEAST post-searing, and even then you had to be almost to Kryta to see anything over level 9 (a generalization, there are most likely exceptions). This was my same beef with Prophecies: If you're going to power up enemies to an obscene level, the player should have the ability to at LEAST reach the same level as the most difficult enemy creature that exists in swarms. Hopefully the Hero element will compensate...

Overall, I like it.
But I still won't be buying it till it's been out for at least six months...

Fr_3_aK · Sep 24, 2006, 07:23 AM // 07:23

Not happy that i couldnt try any elite forms in pvE...

Hero system is OK.

New all in one K window annoying. I need to see more skills at once.

Hero skill window and item window should be unified. Too many windows to do the 1 job...

Where's the option to save a pvE build? I wanna swap it up in 1 click.

Dervish main profession attribute got nerfed too much. Needs more health per enchantment. 1.5 or 2?

Story was a bit boring. Just a rip of the Diablo2 desert... not sure if im looking forward to it too much.

Conclusion:
Not buying pre-order and waiting to see how the game turns out from other people before i buy full version. If at all

Dixie Lady · Sep 24, 2006, 11:41 AM // 11:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Absolute Destiny

/:

Dislikes:
1) Mission dialogue: There should seriously be a way to turn off those little dialogue boxes that come up during missions or just before quests, because I actually died once unable to see cause the damned thing was in my way (when I clicked it off, I died.)

You can turn that off. Options, interface, uncheck the dialog boxes. You can move things around on the game 'desktop' there.

Ninna · Sep 24, 2006, 12:31 PM // 12:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fr_3_aK

New all in one K window annoying. I need to see more skills at once.

Where's the option to save a pvE build? I wanna swap it up in 1 click.

ANET announced templates would *not* be available for preview - gotta wait

the K window is large,
but you do have many filters to display the skill list by type, profession, energy cost etc --- helps greatly for skill navigation

I dont see how they could improve it without more windows (no thanks)

Thundro · Sep 24, 2006, 01:07 PM // 13:07

Just like the Factions Preview Weekend I decieded to make a monk to increase my chances on getting a party...Man, was I wrong. All those heroes make me weak. The real blow came when I got my first monk hero. It had more skills then I did, including elites, all due to the fact that I have all those skills unlocked.

If I had known I would have made an ele, they do the dmg

.

Dixie Lady · Sep 24, 2006, 01:14 PM // 13:14

That is what I have been wondering. Monk is my favorite to play. Will the heroes do away with the need for 'real' monks?
What heroes will a monk have?
My hero monk had all my elite skills etc but really did not do a good job of healing the party.
Do different professions get different heroes? Is there a list somewhere?

ibex333 · Sep 24, 2006, 02:19 PM // 14:19

I admit it:

I didnt get very far in the Nightfall preview event.
However, from waht I have seen so far, I cant understand why some people are praising Anet for a job well done and saying that Nightfall rocks.

1)The heroes seem cool at the first look, - not so when you look deeper into the whole picture.
The AI is terrible since the heroes are not using their skills the way players would expect. A warrior using Heal Sig under Frenzy? I dont know about you, but that makes me raise an eyebrow.
Some people said that it was the player that was foolish to use both of the above skills on a hero. I beg to differ. A player can use whatever skills he wants, and it's is NOT foolish to use frenzy as long as you are being SMART about it, and SMART is not the word I can say when it comes to the Hero AI.

2)The new weapons are lame and uninspired beyound any words. I expected something like this, but I did not expect it to be this bad. If you dont have creativity, host one more of those weapon contests so that people can design something that looks good FOR A CHANGE.
The biggest dissapointment to me are the swords. Most look like crooked gray blobs of metal. There's one that is a crenellated sword from Factions that was altered and crooked to look uglier.
The only one that looks half-way decent is that flaming one, and even that is not that cool looking.
Same goes for the axes.
At least some staves and foci look good - so that's nice.
Some shields and spears look ok - mabe because they are new?
Every single bow I saw sucked big time. The only bow that looks interesting is the "caged" bow.

3)Like I said, I didnt get far, but the monsters I seen so far look lame as lame can be. Something of a crossbreed of a flower and a snake.... Then we have flying turnips that shoot lightning.... Oh boy....
Mabe I'm missing something? Mabe this expantion was designed for people that are no older than 15? If that is the case, I guess GW is over for me.

4)Most armors are ugly except the female ele and the male warrior.
I personally think it was pretty lame to reskin the 15k kurzik. Seriously how creative is taking a skin and coloring it white with a few minor changes?
Is this what people are paying $40 for??

Mabe the quests are good at least...

Now... some of you will come in and say that I'm being too negative and it's too early to judge anything. Well, let me tell you this. Factions hasnt changed much since it's preview, Profecies hasnt either. I bet the pattern wont change in the case of Nightfall.

In the end I'll say this:
12-15 year old kiddies who like doing long pointless quests and scream YAY! at the sight of a poorly reskinned armor or a weapon might find this coming expantion appealing.

Serious gamesrs over 20 with an eye toward beauty and creativity might have to look elsewhere.
I HONESTLY HOPE THAT I'M WRONG, and EVERYTHING I JUST SAID TURNS OUT TO BE FALSE WHEN NIGHTFALL COMES OUT.

FalconDance · Sep 24, 2006, 03:06 PM // 15:06

Third impression

:

Hench/Hero AI: every bit as useless as it has always been. Advanced Idiocy at its finest. The monk hero, just like Alesia, secretly wishes to be a tank and rushes into the fray no matter how you have him set. Koss' AI isn't bad, I guess. At least in defensive mode, he doesn't run around aggro'ing everything in sight.

Hairstyles/faces: As I mentioned before, Elona is Home of the Cornrows. I really don't have a problem with that if there were other decent non-cornrow styles to choose from! (Altho my monk had a cute little poofy piggytail style). I did like a couple of the others: the feathery 'do of the necro was gorgeous in dark auburn and the ele 'fro-tail was interesting. The face graphics in character creation were horrid unless you went to the lightest skintones. Otherwise, there seemed to be a lot of facial irregularities. Granted, this isn't important when you're actually playing since you're usually looking at the back of your avatar's head, but it is rather off-putting when trying new looks. I did like the selection of skintones, though.

Armor: I didn't try all the professions (there's still today!

) *Ele: the Sunspear armor is beautiful and Anet definitely has the dangly mesh down now! The beadwork moves perfectly. *The necro Istani armor = radical! Love it. My Canthan necro will definitely get a set of that eventually! *Monk - what the heck were they thinking? The Istani looks like rags wrapped around the poor girl - fugly at best. *Ranger: the Istani armor is ugly -- why would the only dyable bits be the 'leopard' skin, not the leather? Does that really make sense? The ranger Sunspear armor isn't bad at all, but a little off somehow, still. *Warrior armor is ok. *Mesmer seems ho-hum, but will check the Sunspear version today. *Paragon: rates right up there with the female dance - fugly and omg, what the hell were they thinking? Definitely a yawner (the armor, not the dance)

Scenery: gorgeous, expansive (especially after the claustrophobic Kaineng)

Skills: a few new ones intrigued me enough to plan to try them when NF comes out for real

Quests: loved some of the 'inside jokes', others were beyond me as a member of the old-fogies club

. I must've missed something somewhere, because try as I may, I could not successfully beat Signs and Portents at lvl 9 with same lvl henches/heros. It ended up being a game-stopper for me since I couldn't get through those damned mobs of lvl 8 whatever-the-hell-they-are (not the boga--the other things that resemble the carp and their cronies) that have much better AC, regen and damage than I do (and I wasn't even playing a caster!).

Collectors: LOVE the way the U map now has them marked and what they collect. Hopefully, the missing collectors will be fixed by the time NF is released.

Enemies: Ok. Some are crazy-hard at similar level. I don't expect to be able to steamroll through a map, but I'd like to have at least a decent chance at victory! (see above comment in "quests"). The Harpy Mothers are insanely difficult, too, in my opinion, for a lvl 9 or so. Like the carp-things, they swarm - and that's not good for a heroic-adventurer-wanna-be. Maybe it's just that they're so upset at your killing their hatchlings that gives them the edge

.

Pets: My ranger broke down and charmed a flamingo, secretly thinking "how lame". But it was hilarious watching the silly thing!

Missions: Only did the very first one. Timed missions SUCK, in my opinion, especially if you like to explore and plan strategy. Did it in 3 minutes and only got "well, ok, you can go on with the base reward". WTH? It was a piece of cake, but what does it take to get at least a C on that grade card?

Will I get NF when it's released? Three of us play in my house and that gets expensive really quickly. The pre-release isn't available anywhere (not even Amazon unless I want to pay $15 + shipping) separately. While NF is beautiful and I look forward to the continuing game, personally I'm not as excited as with Factions (though I don't like the way faction farming has changed the game dynamics). I'd like to see the bugs worked out better first (which I know Anet is doing even as I type).

We will get it --- maybe for Yule.

**cosyfiep** · Sep 24, 2006, 06:28 PM // 18:28

ok, things are starting to make sense now.....I am using a trial account so I have NO skills unlocked (minus a very few they gave me)....so when I go to play the real nightfall.....I have NO warrior, so I have unlocked NO warrior skills-----so koss will have NO skills minus the gimmes.....that SUCKS! will NOT be using that hero ......ok, my impression is going down of this hero system.

Nevin · Sep 24, 2006, 06:39 PM // 18:39

I love the new level of creativity. At one point you get to dress up in disguise as corsairs, and in an other instance you're put on trial and have to convince a jury that your accusations are true. It surpasses Prophecy quality.