Curse

mazza558 · Feb 10, 2008, 01:04 PM // 13:04

[WARNING, LONG POST!]

I think you could argue that, after all the new content in the form of new chapters, GW:EN, etc, the time of Prophecies was easily the best, for several reasons:

1. No Wiki -With the arrival of Guildwiki, and later, the official Wiki, the fun seems to have drained out of playing. All the mystery is gone. Why explore an area for a quest when the wikis both give you maps of the area with the best possible route for the quest? PvXwiki made the situation even worse, promoting build elitism and preventing people from desigining their own builds. Template codes were both a good and bad addition, as now you could save all your builds and swap them with ease. The problem with this is that new players can simply request a "good warrior build plz", and not really thinking themselves. I'm not entirely blaming the wikis - after all, you can simply not look at them and discover everything yourself. However, this leads on to the next problem...

2. No Repetition - Sure, you can ignore the wikis, but in the later chapters, like Factions and Nightfall, and especially GW:EN, the sheer number of enemies is insane. These enemies are easy to kill, but it takes a painfully long time to cut through them all, even with a very good group. This means that you no longer are focused on the environment, but simply where the next popup will appear, or whether you'll run into a patrol or overaggro. This is a real shame as GW:EN has some of the most beautiful environments in any of the chapters. Think of Arbor Bay - the cavern in the top part of it was stunning, but I only noticed it by the end of the path. It's fun to explore, but these chapters present so many obstacles to exploration that you just don't bother - instead focusing on the Primary Quests. Prophecies only had these annoying areas in Post-searing Ascalon and in some parts of the crystal desert.

3. Open-ended and vast explorables - Yes, the explorables in all chapters are essentially the same size, but the sheer number of enemies in them (see above) means that they are no longer vast, but tiny areas which feel very claustrophobic. Nightfall handled this very well, with areas of wilderness with few enemies and a proper sense of scale. Prophecies has plenty of wonderfully free explorables which actually give you an urge to explore, to see "what's around that corner" without the fear of tons of enemies.

4. Storyline - Prophecies still feels like it has an epic storyline, with varied and interesting quests to go along with it. These quests are often interesting because they are not "fed-ex" quests, or quests which are simply variations on "kill x number of enemies". They expand the lore greatly and because you have the freedom to move properly in the explorables, they suddenly become fun. The actual storytelling of all the games are pretty good, but the presentation impedes your understanding of them. GW:EN also has plenty of new lore for us all, but we have to fight tooth and nail through hordes of enemies to find it out.

4. "Good" and "Bad" Grind - What I mean here is that some kinds of what you'd class as grind are good, such as a slower level progression, and some are bad, such as the allegiance titles, introduced in Factions, continued in Nightfall, and completely hammered into you in GW:EN. Both Factions and Nightfall require a small amount of boring grind to continue through the storyline (Factions has FFF, the fed-ex quests giving you small amounts of allegiance faction, and AB - Nightfall has Sunspear points, which, again, have boring quests or repeatedly killing enemies in order for you to progress). GW:EN has no compulsory grind to speak of, but to get your hands on the PvE skills with a rank that makes the skills useable, you need to complete the game and hand in a completed Book. Fair enough, you might say. What if you want skills from another title track? Do a few dungeons. Again, fair enough. In GW:EN, however, the grind is hidden in the form of long, repetitive dungeons packed with slow-to-kill enemies every inch. The primary quests would be fun if the situation wasn't the same above ground. "Good" grind comes in the form of playing through the game and levelling up/gaining a title WITHOUT thinking "Phew, only 154 enemies to kill and I have the title/level up" or "Once I complete this quest...blah blah". A player should NEVER be thinking this. They should be enjoying the quest right now. With prophecies, the fact that you were "nearly level 6" in presearing really never came into your mind as you carry a beehive over a bridge, explore an eerie and beautiful Catacombs (with, guess what, less enemies!), or exploring beyond the wall with a friend. As you slowly progressed past post-searing and into the northern shiverpeaks, you knew you were now level 12 and were pleased about it, but you were much more eager to find out what would happen next, or, even if replaying from the beginning, you might notice something that you didn't notice the first time.

___

Anyway, if you made it this far, thanks for reading!

Cacheelma · Feb 10, 2008, 01:30 PM // 13:30

I disagree.

1. Useful place that you can go to get some info about the game is a good thing to have. And let me tell you, the more popular the game is, the better this kind of sites for that game become. Build-elitism didn't arise because of the Wiki. Please, people can figure out by themselves which build works for a place. The wiki only helps people to get the right build without asking others OR trying to figure it out by themselves.

2. Repetitiveness in Prophecies is pretty much the same as other games.

3. What are you talking about? "Prophecies has plenty of wonderfully free explorables which actually give you an urge to explore, to see "what's around that corner" without the fear of tons of enemies." Where? Pre-searing? Last time I check, Snake Dance, Perdition Rock, Mineral Springs, Ice Floe, *insert any post-ascended area names here* are nothing close to "without the fear of tons of enemies". In fact, you can't really get anywhere in those areas without risking getting killed all the time.

4. "OMG Prince Rurik is dead! Now, let's leave his corpse there and go have some boat party in LA, shall we?" Good story indeed.

5. I don't view the drag-on tutorial of Prophecies as a good thing. Leveling in Guild Wars is a tutorial to the game. Spending 3/4 of your game time doing it is just wrong. I'd go play WoW if I want that. I agree about the Grind in other games. But not because other games' grind are worse, but because other games have "grind content" while Prophecies just doesn't have it, and PvP was supposed to be the end-game for you.

Or should I count the two elite areas, in which pve players had no other choice but to play them over and over and over and over? Isn't that the "worse" kind of grind?

Alex the Great · Feb 10, 2008, 01:42 PM // 13:42

some of the shiverpeaks areas are hard, but proph as nothing as hard as Urgoz, the deep, DoA, or somo of the dungeons.

I like exploring proph, it just seems biggers and more fun!

Quru · Feb 10, 2008, 01:48 PM // 13:48

I'd say that Sorrows Furnace is as hard as many dungeons at EOTN.

Eldin · Feb 10, 2008, 01:53 PM // 13:53

Yes, not only did Prophecies have a great story, but the areas were much more open and free.

In Kaineng City, you can't go 5 steps without some Am Fah coming out of nowhere or Afflicted.

Nightfall was kind of able to pull off the open spaces, somewhat, mainly in Istan. The Desolation had a ton of enemies - even though you had Junundus and they were easy to beat, if you think about the logic behind it "why are 50,000,000 Margonites all bunched up in this tiny area?" - makes no sense.

Unfortunately, GW:EN was crazy with enemies.

garethporlest18 · Feb 10, 2008, 01:59 PM // 13:59

Wiki is nice actually for armor and stuff like that. But I agree with you somewhat. Back in those days when the community didn't suck as bad and there were less people playing and THK was a betch with pugs. Good ol days.

Esan · Feb 10, 2008, 02:11 PM // 14:11

GuildWiki was largely responsible for making Guild Wars one of the most egalitarian online games in existence. For this, it should be lauded. Its spiritual successors are doing a fine job of keeping the ideal of good information freely available to all. The only reason to dislike it is if you want to be recognized for your knowledge of the game, which is a twisted ambition (games are not real life!) and you will one day thank GuildWiki and its ilk for disabusing you of it.

Balan Makki · Feb 10, 2008, 02:13 PM // 14:13

Well, speaking for myself, I find I'm replayng Factions and Nightfall the most. Prophecies being a close third

Jiub · Feb 10, 2008, 02:15 PM // 14:15

i totally agree. when i first started playing the game it was fun
nobody cared what build the monk had, they were just happy to have a monk.
i gave up playing GW for about six months because i couldnt get a party at all with my N/W because after telling people i was neither SS or MM they simply said "noob kick him" and that was it
factions made it even worse. getting to level 20 in afternoon of playing is just a waste of time
and i havent even played nightfall yet. i was so dissapointed with factions that i didnt buy it.
i did buy EOTN, and i love it. i disagree that it has too many enemies in, i find it quite easy to play far from boring.

Nor · Feb 10, 2008, 02:29 PM // 14:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jiub

i totally agree. when i first started playing the game it was fun
nobody cared what build the monk had, they were just happy to have a monk.
i gave up playing GW for about six months because i couldnt get a party at all with my N/W because after telling people i was neither SS or MM they simply said "noob kick him" and that was it
factions made it even worse. getting to level 20 in afternoon of playing is just a waste of time
and i havent even played nightfall yet. i was so dissapointed with factions that i didnt buy it.
i did buy EOTN, and i love it. i disagree that it has too many enemies in, i find it quite easy to play far from boring.

If you dont want to waste time getting killed in a mision you gotta have some usefull skills.

why is a waste of time on afternoon ? your not even saying why, and i think factions gives you alot of money from droppings. (factions is great, lots of indoors something new than proph lacked)

EOTN it is alot of fun , but omg this expantion DO really has ALOT of enemies around. (havent you done even the first misions "charr patrol" and "defend eye of the north?")

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with the gw wiki part i think its ok , make noobs catch up with pros faster and makes our casual game better (yes all of us arent that hardcore to spend ALOT of time studyng all the gw content)

CyberMesh0 · Feb 10, 2008, 02:35 PM // 14:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by mazza558

1. No Wiki

How many people still willfully ignore it/don't know it exists?

Quote:

2. No Repetition

The only area in EotN where this is terribly apparent is the Asuran storyline. Also, many of the quests lead you back through those areas multiple times, there's plenty of time to enjoy the scenery imo.

Quote:

3. Open-ended and vast explorables

Prophecies *sometimes* had this problem, and so did Factions. Nightfall has more open areas because deserts generally fit that description, but there are plenty of areas in Nightfall that are also clausterphobic. (Barbarous Shore anyone?) I think all four places had a fair balance of each.

Quote:

4. Storyline

Yes and no, in my opinion. Prophecies still had some fedex/kill X of Y quests, but it definitely had the lowest count of the four. As for the presentation, GW:EN answered this problem best with the introduction of the Scrying Pool. One for each chapter would be awesome.

Quote:

4. "Good" and "Bad" Grind

Again, yes and no. Factions allegiance is meant to be a long drawn-out thing, I'll agree- but especially now, that's a matter of 4 or 5 alliance battles and you're done with what you really *need* to do. Regarding Nightfall's, most of the sunspear "grinding" wasn't really grinding at all if you properly used the bounties every time you needed to be outside. I never hit a point where I needed to stop and backtrack for more points. Lightbringer wasn't even a necessary title in regards to gameplay. For EotN: as you said, you just need one book for one title. If you want the skills/max titles, just keep filling books. They aren't that terribly repetitive, especially if you only add one more title.

BodhiNightwind · Feb 10, 2008, 02:38 PM // 14:38

I got Prophecies a week before Factions came out. I got Factions and pretty much never looked back.

Factions was better than Prophecies and Nightfall introduced things that were better still. Though Cantha is still my favorite continent.

Pre-searing alone is enough to take Prophecies out of the running.

Also Prophecies just has this blah, bland, beige feel to it.

Quaker · Feb 10, 2008, 02:44 PM // 14:44

I'd have to agree with the OP. The most fun I've had in GW recently was taking a couple of new characters through pre-searing and simply exploring.
In fact, I'm actively looking for a new game to play which will give that old Prophecies feeling. More exploring, less mindless killing.
I fear that GW2 will be more like EotN than Prophecies - lots of stupid "kiddie" titles (party animal - what-everrr), lots of mindless killing, and 3 days to max your character.

Malice Black · Feb 10, 2008, 02:51 PM // 14:51

I'm kinda playing all 4 games at the same time. Helps keep things interesting.

But, I do have to agree, back in the old days things were more interesting. Some newer people won't understand this.

Shadowspawn X · Feb 10, 2008, 02:57 PM // 14:57

Interesting position on wiki, it has created a new breed of cut and paste GW player. People running bars without understanding the skills or synergy, however on the flip side it was convent to find that hard to find collector back when things like collectors actually meant something in the game (before Anet flooded the market with golds and made greens ridiculously easy to get you can't even leave and outpost in Factions or NF without tripping over a boss and having a green drop).GW incompetence in Prophesies on the other hand was at an all time high due to the running. People skipping huge portions off the game and running around FoW with 170 attribs was horrible.

You talk about the storyline in Prophesies like it was great. It wasn't, no one could follow it at the time, especially the ones who didn't do the side quests. It was poorly told and presented.Many players had no idea what was going on in the storyline after completing Prophesies two even three times. Not until they hired Jeff Grubb did the storytelling come up to par and the loose ends slowly get tied up.

As far as the explorable the campaigns are missing that back to back to back explorable like the falls, dry top, mineral springs, and snake dance. It was the remoteness of traveling though three explorable areas to get somewhere without encountering an outpost that added to the vastness not the number of enemies which i don't know why you complain about that Prophesies had plenty of enemies .

As far as the grind its been ok except for the rep grind in GWEN it was over the top and excessive. If they continue the trend of pve skills with massive grind they will lose many players because the grind has no entertainment value.

zwei2stein · Feb 10, 2008, 03:01 PM // 15:01

It is simple why.

Prophecies was visionary, born from possible distaste of traditional MMOs and designed to capture specific market share. It was deisgned to be so far from traditional MMO that people argue about whether its can be labeled as much.

It suceeded at that.

Further chapter were aimed at increasing market share, notably at catching attention of people who at first discarded GW because lack of grind/traditional character progression.

Devs also listened to much for QQ of "hardcore" people who end up been-there-done-it-all regardless of how much grinding they add to game.

Basically, game philosophy changed from being as far from traditional MMORPG as possible to being as close to traditional MMORPG as possible.

So if you bought GWs at begining because you liked it as game (and not because it was free), you are guaranteed to feel that first was best.

Sleeper Service · Feb 10, 2008, 03:03 PM // 15:03

why on earth does Wiki come into the equation?

Saying Wiki affects the game is like complaining that a movie sucks because you went and read all the spoilers, asked a bunch of people who went to see it to tell you in detail what happened and then (just to make sure you understood) downloaded it on divx only to watch the last 15 min of it.

its a choice.

to clarify, its like rating a game on its cheats.

bel unbreakable · Feb 10, 2008, 03:15 PM // 15:15

yep the original was the best i think it worked fine right up to the end where we were all ment to go pvp thats were it all went pear shaped

Sab · Feb 10, 2008, 03:22 PM // 15:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by mazza558

1. No Wiki -With the arrival of Guildwiki, and later, the official Wiki, the fun seems to have drained out of playing. All the mystery is gone. Why explore an area for a quest when the wikis both give you maps of the area with the best possible route for the quest? PvXwiki made the situation even worse, promoting build elitism and preventing people from desigining their own builds. Template codes were both a good and bad addition, as now you could save all your builds and swap them with ease. The problem with this is that new players can simply request a "good warrior build plz", and not really thinking themselves. I'm not entirely blaming the wikis - after all, you can simply not look at them and discover everything yourself. However, this leads on to the next problem...

If you're going to look up GWWiki, don't blame GWWiki for spoiling your fun.

As for PvXWiki, it's just a place where you can look up builds. If you want to make your own builds, go ahead. PvXWiki doesn't have all the decent builds, nor are the builds PvXWiki necessarily good. If someone's arguing that such and such a build is bad solely on the basis that it's not on PvXWiki, you can rest assured that person is mentally retarded. While I don't really like PvXWiki (the builds there are often wrong, or just bad, and it's infested with people who have no clue what they're talking about), you should stop blaming Wiki and see where the real problem lies.

And for skill pinging, you do realise that people have asked each other for builds before the feature was implemented right? They just typed out the skills manually.

MithranArkanere · Feb 10, 2008, 03:26 PM // 15:26

Prophecies had a great basis, but many mistakes:

- No going back to pre-Searing.
- No challenges.
- Mission and Bonus can be made separately.
- Can skip missions. You only talk-to-start like in Nightfall and EotN in the pre-Searing final mission. You don't need the previous primary quest to start a mission.
- Everything's too late. In factions it was too soon. Nightfall speed it's the best, 25% of the missions, then level 20 and ascend.
- Small parties. Parties of 8 people should have started from Lion's Arch. Pre-Searing should have been for 4 people, and Ascalon and Shiverpeaks for 6.
- Almost no skins. No prophecies-only skins since faction, when the prophecies skins urnet to be 'core'. They 'fixed' the problem by adding fake rarity with inherent modifiers, but they should fix that. Add more skins, prophecies-only skins and update the rates to inscribable.
- Horrible rewards. With a couple of exceptions, like the -50HP grim cesta, in Prophecies the quets give poor XP(or too much, but just XP and nothing else), almost no gold, items you may use only with your first character and then just discard them with the rest, and there are no skills for the New professions, so making those quests for a Ritualist/Assassin and a PAragon/Dervish it's almost a waste of time.
- No end-game map(Party at Droknar's Forge) with ending credits and fireworks, no end-game cinematic, nor end-game greens.
- Non-repeatable elite missions (titans) with puny rewards (just XP). They should have been repeatable, give less XP and a bit of gold.
- Too many single-type enemy groups. There are some armies, but most groups are composed entirely by one or two type of creature. A bunch of warrior trolls, and bunch of ranger spiders, a bunch of elementalist imps. In the rest of the campaigns it's more rare to find a group of enemies exactly the same, there is much more variety.

The best thing in Prophecies is Grenth's Footprint, and that was added later.

I hope Anet do not forget retroactivity again. If they find a better way to make things, they should update the entire game, this is one game after all, not 4 separate ones. You can't completely forget about and old campaign.