Curse

Sientir · Mar 28, 2006, 12:54 AM // 00:54

Likes:
- Alliance Battles. Oh, and smiting is a good way to kill minions. >.>
- Alliance Battles. Really addictive.
- Alliance Battles, incase you missed the first two. <.<

Dislikes:
- The very plentiful skill points and other starting resources. </sarcasm> I'd very much so have liked to try out new skills, but the ~19 or so skill points one would have from leveling to 20 are absent, which was annoying. Also, by the time one can get to such armor (drok's level), one usually has some gold and other resources. Kinda limited that way, but I don't forsee this as a likely problem when Factions is actually released: Xunlai ftw!
- Characters. What I mean by this is, I really like having a PvP char slot. Since I was using that, I kept recreating characters, both in RPG mode and PvP only ones. It's hard to want to explore a lot and what not with one character when it is only going to get deleted anyway. /shrug
- As someone said earlier, precursor information is absent.
- Probably the largest problem: Quiters in Alliance Battles. You might be able to come back from being behind, EXCEPT that half of the team (average, I'd guess), quits as soon as we are obviously losing. Sure, things COULD be turned around IF the people would STAY. gar.

Overall, the things I disliked (exception of quiters) will most likely not be an issue once the game is released. 2 more character slots will remove the character problem, we'll get a character leveling progression, etc. I got quite addicted to Alliance Battles, and I am going to miss being able to play them until the game is actually released.

As to those who have a hard to seeing in Kurzick territory, I fortunately do not share this problem. Perhaps you have too much ambient light or something. I don't know, but it could be your moniter settings. Either way, you won't be able to see until the game is available.

hidden_agenda · Mar 28, 2006, 01:05 AM // 01:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sientir

As to those who have a hard to seeing in Kurzick territory, I fortunately do not share this problem. Perhaps you have too much ambient light or something. I don't know, but it could be your moniter settings. Either way, you won't be able to see until the game is available.

I actually spent some time fiddling with this, I tried everything from increasing my LCD brightness to max as well as running driver utilities to adjust the gamma correction output on my video card. Problem is that if the ambient lighting is increased, the entire scene gets washed out.

I can see all other areas fine, so it really is just the design there. My guess is that some of us older gamers have eyes that have difficulty adapting to the high-contrast design of both bright areas and shadowy areas. (i.e. it takes longer for our eyes to adjust). So if we stare at a bright area for a while, and then go to the merchant (who is in a shadowy area), we suddenly end up seeing nothing but the name.

Illisheim · Mar 28, 2006, 01:21 AM // 01:21

loved tha assassin, ruled the warrior in in pvp, and made quick kills of casters,
The ritulests were weak, skills were not well balanced, had a hard time deleating mobs had to use the second of the necro to survive,

dont like the factions of one side or the other, needs better missions to explore the map, quests had me running back and forth too many times, the rewards were good, but skill quests would have been nice

max gladius · Mar 28, 2006, 01:55 AM // 01:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by SirShadowrunner

Things I liked are :
-Ass. armor from armorer was very cool.
-like new weapons and shields
-new henchies, the blood necro with the pet was great.
-Ass. skills were alot fun,
-Played very well, Ai was good.

Things I did not like :
-to dark, hard to see in alot of places.
-environment does not look impressive enough.
-not Asianed themed enough, where is the Samurai armor
and asian themed weapons.

Overall did not have enough time to play and see everything, should be
a good sequel, that is the way I see it at the moment.

Your last comment sums up why u didnt like it...

Enviroment was awsome once u got out a bit, kurzick side was very dark, think it just went to suite the "ninja dark side" theme....
loved the graphics and details (cept for when u click on someone they had a crazy hairline and such)
The weaponry was very very asian themed...
and i think the blood necro was the "pet" looked like an armadilo

Didnt like:
During mission (protecting 3 trees) didnt like the person talking in the middle of the screen during battle, very annoying....

Everyone needs to keep in mind THAT WAS A PEEK OF WHAT IS TO COME!!!!

Alot of these postings makes me wish that GW could find out who posts what up here and ban ppl for excesive whining....

And why is noone complaining about not having green items instantly and no use of storage? come on... lets here some MORE really stupid comments... most ppl compaining are complaining about other players, their attitudes, actions, and thier comments, not about the actual game play...

But i think the AI on the henches could use alittle tweeking, but then again, they r henches, yet are still better then some players...

Llednar · Mar 28, 2006, 03:02 AM // 03:02

Likes
-Ritualist
-12vs12
-The new PvP EQUIPMENT (+HP armor is a blessing from God)
-PvE Content looks to be interesting

Dislikes
-New Skills...repeats and the new ones are....MEH...the ele skills were the
worst...Lightning Hammer may look cool but it does the SAME damage as light
orb...40dmg from Fire Magic other than flare is not okay...Lava Arrows...
-Underpowered Assassins
-12vs12 Spies
-PvE INSANELY hard to aquire...forking over tons of stuff for amor and having
NO skill points ontop of long loading screens...Im in broadband and they still
took forever.

Cresint · Mar 28, 2006, 03:13 AM // 03:13

Whoever said that the assasins are a bad class couldn't be more wrong. They obviously didn't give themselves enough time to see what they can do. Coming in to this weekend i thought the assasins were going to be bad too because i didn't like them from the last preview event. But now i'd have to say they're my second, maybe even tied for first favorite class. They have so many ridiculously good skill it's.....well......ridiculous!

Another thing, I think the henchies are way better than before. They seem to be way more intelligent. I also love the variety of henchies you can get. It's really cool.

Although as others have said, the most annoying part is fighting in 12v12 battles and having people leave. If only there was a way to make them stay, that'd be nice.

Another negative i've found is that although the enviornments are detailed and just plain cool, i really hope they add different areas too. It's going to get pretty dull if the only 2 places we have to explore are the jade sea and petrified forest. But that's just me.

Lastly, the male assasin's dance rocks!

Izzy IzIz · Mar 28, 2006, 03:14 AM // 03:14

liked
-as always, i liked the art, especially the forests
-it was very very exciting to get new skills and armor
-the fact that pve on the kurzick side was so dificult was fun

disliked
- i really don't like having to kill mamals, or an animals. i would like all monsters to be monsters, made of elements or concepts or nitemairs or un dead or 2 dimentional simplistically bad people.
- i dont like the whole idea of factions, of institutional us vs them, its sour, no actually rotten, its nationalism, its gross. very un sporting.
-the barbydoll shapes and look of the charicters is at best boring. i would like much more variety in the charicters aperence.

Raven_Scythe · Mar 28, 2006, 03:52 AM // 03:52

Liked:
-Assassin: Dishing out a barrage of attacks and teleporting out of the way. Fav skills: Viper's Defence, Death Blossom.
-Ritualist/Necro combos (either Rt/N or N/Rt)
-Flesh Golem Elite Necro Summon. Its reusable corpse is a great idea.
-Competitive Battles (Fort Aspenwood, Jade Quarry). A much welcomed twist on PvP. The principle of controlling key points on the map rather than just killing each other gives a lot of variety.
-Area Art: The Jade in the Luxon area is fantastic. The Gothic Architecture of the Kurzick turf is remniscent of the Pre-Searing Catacombs, which was a favorite highlight of mine.

Disliked:
-Balance: Luxon areas were much easier than the Kurzick's. As a result there were more Luxon players. Even as a Luxon-sider, I had to fight on the side of the Kurzicks just to get into competitive battles (the timer kept resetting because there was no Kurzick opposition) and NO, I did not act as a spy/traitor. I fought hard and won.
-Uniform look of one faction's armour. I preferred each set having a distinct look. Not automatically revealing your faction to other players would be a plus.
-Alliance Control over elite missions. Small alliances will have a hard time getting control for themselves. I din't get to try them.

Xaniera · Mar 28, 2006, 07:39 AM // 07:39

I'll start off with wondering why everything had to take so long to load? In that time I could run downstairs, make a sandwich, eat the sandwich, clean up after myself, and come back with a soda for the last 2%. On Comcast high-speed. Ouch.

However, I forgot all about load times once the playing started. Tried the ritualist first, but wasn't amazed at much. Some people considered them to be the best of all 8 professions, but I guess we all have our own opinions. Assassin next, had some trouble at first, but once i got the hang of it they were great. Managed to tame the Black Moa bird from the Beak of Darkness quest, (which was rather lame, but funny. "It squawked in his ear, and he fainted, right then and there!") who became my constant companion throughout the rest of the preview.

Had some great experiences in the new 12 vs 12 alliance battles, (with my bird of course) with the exception of 2 things, which I think could be improved upon. #1 was the load time from the outpost to the PvP battlefield. It caused some players to not enter the game until fighting had already started. Maybe it could have you load everything for the battle when you enter the outpost? #2 was the player leaving. Rage quitting is the ultimate sin in PvP, but you shouldn't punish the leaver's team members for it. At the very least i would substitute a henchman for the leaving player, but allowing players to join the battle late in place of that henchman would be better.

One last thing to complain about: the glitches found when shadow stepping. I think what happens is the assassins walk backward about 10 steps after shadow stepping, whether there is walkable ground behind them or not. This leaves your character up in the air, down under ground, or somewhere else they shouldn't be. The only current remedy is to die and re-spawn. In keeping with glitches like that, maybe a "die and re-spawn" function in the menu bar. All the same death penalties would apply, as well as the wait to re-spawn. In PvP the other team would get a point. (If in the battle rules points are awarded for kills.) I think that having an extra 15% DP or you opposing team having 1 more point would be preferable to being stuck in the middle of a bridge that appears to have been built around your waist.

Overall, I liked the preview, almost cried when it was over, (not really) and can't wait for the real thing.

Strange Brew · Mar 28, 2006, 07:43 AM // 07:43

overall loved factions !

scenery mostly pretty good although kurzikc areas a little too dark

didn't like the new faces - not expressive enough - looked like plastic shop dummies

hated - new hairstyles - still soooo 80s , please either get classical or modern

loved the 12x12 battles although i was cheesed off by the number of ppl dropping out just because one side or other started losing. I agree voluntary leaving should be punished (ban sounds good to me).

Raziel665 · Mar 28, 2006, 09:20 AM // 09:20

Really like the new area's and skills. While I was really looking forward to making a Ritualist since the PvP weekend, I ended up suing my PvP slot and deleting my Warrior to make a new PvP and RP Necromancer, didnt try a Ritualist for more then 5 minutes.

12v12 Was pretty cool too, easy to get in.

What I didnt like, is people complaining about useless stuff, like how the interface sucks, you can mod it. Or lack of skill points, come on, its a pre-view weekend where to put you in the middle of the game.

And yes, Kurzick side was pretty dark, even more when you get even the slightest bit of sun in your screen.

Also, what I fear might happen, since I'm going Kurzick, will I still get to see the Jade Sae, or do I have to change sides for that?

Lun-Sei · Mar 28, 2006, 10:36 AM // 10:36

Well, from what I could see of that beta weekend,

I LIKED:

- the new henchies (expecially the tengu!)
- the black moa (I can't wait to get one!)
- the ritualist's charm
- the new armour for the elementalist
- the new music themes

I DISLIKED:

- the fact that the new henchies are waaaaay exagerate... why don't they even put visir Khilbron as an henchman since they're at it
- the male ritualist's faces look AWFUL!!!!!!!!!!
- the female ritualist's boobs make me laugh
- the asian look for the old professions is awful (all males look just dorky, again)

funbun · Mar 28, 2006, 01:41 PM // 13:41

What Owned:

12v12: I like that you chose 4 and the conputer chooses the other three teams. That makes it a lot easier to find players and such.
The civil war. I have a storyline for all my characters. My monk is Half Cathan and half Ascalon. But she was raised as an Ascalon. After Prophecies she want to find out more about her mother's ppl. I thought of that like 10 months ago, and Guild Wars delivered, that's cool.
More Henchies! The old Henchies weren't diverse enough. I know the AI isn't that good yet, but Anet can fix that.

What Sucked:

The random PvP missions like Jade Quarry. It took too long to start the mission. You sit there for 10 or 20 minutes sometimes watching the counter reset to 0:30 time after time.
Too many Assassins. I think Sins will be like the Warrior when Phrophecies came out: there were too many warriors back then, and you couldn't build a decent group because thier were too many tanks. It took many moons for ppl to start branching out into other classes.
Kurzicks were too depressing. Brighten it up a it, plz.

BlueBlazer · Mar 28, 2006, 04:52 PM // 16:52

Likes:
Alliance battles are fun, fun and more fun (especially if you can take out the base defenders

).

There's choices for Luxon/Kurzick faction gains: from either PvP or PvE questing.

Dislikes:
But it's also the faction gains feature that I do not find that appealing. That is because for an alliance maintain a territory, it only encourages more faction farming.

People will be like spending hours and hours just farming factions alone and not really enjoy the other features included in Factions due to fear of losing out to other alliances.

Both of the above mentioned dislikes only points to one thing: gearing GW into becoming more like a grinding MMORPG (like WoW) which I'm quite sure isn't what GW is all about. Isn't one of the main objectives of GW in the beginnning meant to be different from the stereotype grinding-based MMORPG that's abundant nowadays?

And yes, quitters (may it be rage-quitters or sabatouers) in Alliance Battles is an extremely severe issue and should be addressed before the official release of Factions. What would happen if ALL players from the losing side quit before the winning side gains 500 points?

Mai · Mar 28, 2006, 05:45 PM // 17:45

Likes

12 vs 12 Alliance Battles (Solution needs to be found to punish leavers)

More Variety in henchies

All the new styles of armors

Scenery and the major differences between kurz land (Petrified Forest) and lux territory (Jade Sea)

All the new elites/skills (Not duplicates I mean legit new ones) for all profs.
Hair styles/faces for females!

Dislikes

Anet not providing enough skillpoints or a UAS feature just for the weekend to give us a little more freedom in terms of builds that we're able to use and play with (Was very disappointed)

Leavers/Quitters in Alliance Battles

Lack of any sort of distinct look in terms of armor between kurz and lux armors. I.E My kurz faction armor looks the same as a lux faction monk with the same outfit >:l

Lack of any sort of real "story missions" that we are all used to. (Probably just wasn't implented in beta but still kind of disppointed)

Lack of a sort of variety in a faction environment (I mean Kurz was pretty much all black and dark or lux was way too green and bright, I don't want to stare at these 2 colors for the whole time! Give me some variety!)

Jade quarry like missions not letting me form any type of party (Sorry but I like some sort of control over who I group with)

Lonk · Mar 28, 2006, 06:01 PM // 18:01

Myself, I really liked everything I saw in the preview except a few minor things.

I didn't like:

Quitters

How amazingly dark it was in Kurzick land

The fact Kurzicks seem to be some messed up combo of hippies, goths, religion nuts, and rich people

How much harder Kurzick questing was compared to Luxons (I'm guessing this was only for the preview, but still I found it annoying)

Also a minor gripe about people who think Minion Masters are overpowered now, you need to understand you can only have one flesh golem per necro, and honestly they die faster than you'd think considering thier size and level (though there was a lack of verata's sacrifice this weekend so that might change things)

I will agree, even as a necro player, that I think Vampiric Horrors might be a little cheap if you amass a large enough mob of them, and if things like Barbs increases the hp stealing/damage.

Miles Vor · Mar 28, 2006, 07:34 PM // 19:34

First of all I'm a ranger in Prophecies.
Second, I like soloing quests.
I tried to join the Kurzik (or what are called) and right from the beginning I had much problems to even reach the first outpost: I had to charm a tiger (using it to stop enemies) and equip evasive stance to succeed (I tried it 2 times).
If this is supposed to be the start of the game, what newbies will think?
For me, apart from technical aspect (audio, video, smoothness, ecc), this game needs human party from the beginning to succeed and I dont like party.
I think I will not buy the game, and I'm very sorry for this.

Mordakai · Mar 28, 2006, 09:09 PM // 21:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Miles Vor

First of all I'm a ranger in Prophecies.
Second, I like soloing quests.
I tried to join the Kurzik (or what are called) and right from the beginning I had much problems to even reach the first outpost: I had to charm a tiger (using it to stop enemies) and equip evasive stance to succeed (I tried it 2 times).
If this is supposed to be the start of the game, what newbies will think?
For me, apart from technical aspect (audio, video, smoothness, ecc), this game needs human party from the beginning to succeed and I dont like party.
I think I will not buy the game, and I'm very sorry for this.

Ummm, I don't think you should be upset you couldn't solo the level 20 content of Factions...

This is NOT the start of the game - you're level 20. The start of the game will have a pre-searing level 1 training area.

You don't need a human party, you can do it with henchies. (esp as a Ranger, pulling mobs apart).

I do agree, though, that this was probably not the best way to introduce the game to new players. I have a friend who just gave up on the Factions preview, and played the 10 hour Prophecy trial instead (I gave him my pre-order key for that).

Quote:

Originally Posted by funbun

What Sucked:

The random PvP missions like Jade Quarry. It took too long to start the mission. You sit there for 10 or 20 minutes sometimes watching the counter reset to 0:30 time after time.
Kurzicks were too depressing. Brighten it up a it, plz.

I think the PvP missions will have less wait time once more people are playing.

And for a bunch of artists, the Kurzicks are certainly drab

Go Luxons!

xcutioner · Mar 28, 2006, 10:42 PM // 22:42

I was able to clock in ~70k xp over the weekend, using all my balts faction points, building it back up and spending it. I unlocked 17 elites, a few random skills, and some of the unlockable items, like runes, weapon mods.

With basically 0 in balts faction points yesterday I was back to being stuck once again at 10k in a few hours playing hoh.

Only thing I disliked was on monday, I couldn't play factions anymore!

Enix · Mar 28, 2006, 10:44 PM // 22:44

Likes:
-Luxon side is nice to look at - like a presearing oriental theme
-Varirety of hechmen was nice for questing
-New MM skills were moderately entertaining
-Necs are further beefed in AoE/Multi-target skills (further replacing eles for real AoE/Spike damage... bad?)
-Rits perform can "alternitive" healing... sometimes
-PvE Enemies were more challenging

Dislikes Specific to this Event:
-Quitters in PvP
-Inability to try new armor
-Downloads while entering a PvP arena - You should download everthing as components of the rally point or town adjacent to explorable areas, not as a seperate map.
-End of FPE was anti-climactic (stayed up till 3am for a dragon... wow)
-EoE (edge of extinction) bombs in Alliance battles (needed to null super MM's though)
-If Guild Leader didnt have a free slot, you could not chose an Alliance. Would have been nice to have an ambasidor in the guild hall.
-People cheating the system (somehow?) and exporing things back to Tyria? (saw some stuff for sale)

Dislikes in General:
-Chicken Henchman wont break off attack when you need to run.
-Flesh of my Flesh + Sac = MM Exploit in Alliance Battles (You can get tons of minions before the map starts)
-More skills that do practically the same thing!
-Little point to Assasin primary other than "coolness" factor - critical hits +2 energy dosent kick in often enough (any other char with 4 pips of energy regen would be just, if not more effective because of the higher base energy - IW M/A?)
-Assasins's skills effectivly shut down by Ageis, Weapon of Warding, or other dodging skills
-Rit's Spirits are stupidly easy to kill. They are only effective as a "suprise" 5 second boost in healing before they are killed again.
-What the crap is the deal with spawning power? Needs more POWER! LvL 30 spirits or something, not level 10.
-Kurzic area looks like crap. Reminds me of the deadest parts of Rin, only more confusing and dull with a psudo gothic theme.
-Kurzic area map is hard to path out because it is so dark.
-Game dosent seem to follow any logical order. I never even found the missions, which I wanted to play.
-Forces you to pay homage to some mighty Factions leader guild to be able to access certain areas. I like our guild size and we wont be able to gain control of areas or will have to end up paying another guild to add us in (you know it's going to happen).
-FAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRR to PvP oriented for the tastes of myself and my guildmates.
-STUPIDEST PART OF THE GAME HERE: WHEN YOU HOLD ASHES AS A RIT, ALL PVE AGGRO FOCUSES ON YOU, AND YOU CANT DIRECT HENCHMEN TO ATTACK. Just screw the gear trick and the book trick and the Oro trick - those are exploits anyways.

I was so unimpressed with this preview that I am seriously doubting the purchase of future installments of Guild Wars. There is no real reason to make an expansion geared toward strict PvPers because GW already has a strong PvP base and skill balance. I was hoping to see more of a "story" and I am a bit disapointed in what I saw in the preview.