Curse

Omega X · Sep 25, 2006, 05:48 AM // 05:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by arcanemacabre

Pretty much agree, except for the Hero feature. I don't think it's explained early enough how to command Koss and what the flags mean. Though I think Factions had a pretty nice training area, was pretty impressed with that.

There was a quest Tutorial for that. You must have skipped a green exclamation point.

TheWatcher · Sep 25, 2006, 07:59 AM // 07:59

Agreed also on every point but still I feel I must repeat n times: what an amazing expansion. When they announced afrikan/egyptian based settings I had already a good feeling about this but now... Hat off.
Colours, monsters, cities and quests and the masters quests all is so finely setup you forget the small missing things here and there.
And this is only a preview event, compared to GWP BWE I... wow!
I can only cross my fingers and say that these funny quests promise also a good story line. Not a cheap one like the GWF.
I have a strong feeling that the 2 new classes need a few touches.

Thom · Sep 25, 2006, 11:08 AM // 11:08

I was going to start a thread like this. As a mostly pvper, I actually played guild wars as a RPG this weekend. The pacing was great and the explorable areas were really fresh. The team finally used some of the game mechanics into an interesting story. Examples:

1)Instancing cooperative missions. Prophecies had huge areas of the map as "mission areas" which were totally unused except for the missions which were largely linear and boring. Factions put gates on mission areas, but let you in afterwards. Nightfall included at least missions in normal explorable areas with a unique set of missions NPCs and areas.

2)Instancing allows for puzzles, disguises and other plot driven sillyness which makes a story more interesting. Sinking ship to annoying ghosts that steal your stone tablet... that's the kind of thing that makes instancing great, but hasn't been exploited.

3)A real dungeon! GW has put teaser caves in all of the noob areas (catacombs in pre-searing), but a dungeon with traps and undead is classically amusing. Respawning undead also seems somewhat new to guild wars. It may be cheesy, but we all still remember Mario Bros. fondly.

4) Quests and missions are largely integrated. Quests seem more like mini missions and missions seem like extended quests. The game seems to finally flow naturally.

5) Titles are being employed in naturally in game play. All good RPGs have some point where they tell you: come back once you have more experience. Having that type of moment in guild wars was the moment I realized Anet was going in a better direction.

6) Equipping and levelling up your entire team of heros provides more to do for those of us who really only want to focus on the story one time through. There is just more to choices as to budget allocation, which means more interesting decisions for players.

7) Skill lists actually reacted to what is considered useful in PvP. After a fairly weak list in Factions and 2 fairly horrible classes, neither new class seems particularly flawed at this point and many of the skills seem like they'd get PvP consideration. Some skills enter the realm of bizzarely unuseful (Judges Intervention, Frenzied Defense), but even those made me laugh.

Dixie Lady · Sep 25, 2006, 11:40 AM // 11:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Psyks

I

No matter how much new stuff A.Net put in it will never be a new game, prophecies was the first, 90% of the things that make you go 'WOW' in GW happen in prophecies, they may have been improved since but it isn't the same. I have always found Factions got a bit of tough judgement due to people not realising this.

I bought Factions first and really liked it although I hated the slum areas. By the time I got to the end (hated the Jade sea area) I was getting bored and looking around for another game. I tried Prophecies and yes it was 'wow!!!!!!!' from the first minute. I doubt I could ever love a game as much as Prophecies. The beautiful New England fall look and feel and the wind blowing in the Shiverpeaks.. love it. My point is that Factions was not a step down or a let down to me because it followed Proph. since I did Factions first. It just is not as good. I did not get the wow feeling with NF about the environment but I sure did with the heroes!

Aphraelyn · Sep 25, 2006, 12:18 PM // 12:18

Yeah, I loved Prophecies and Factions wasn't too bad but it just....wasn't a new game anymore, if you know what I mean. Sorta like...you know how everything works and every new thing that pop up isn't just WOW anymore.

But Nightfall really was WOW when I saw most of the stuff and its gonna be awesome =P

2 Thumbs Up ANet =P

Gli · Sep 25, 2006, 12:31 PM // 12:31

I'll keep it short because much of what I think of Nightfall has been stated here already.

Nightfall restored my faith in ANet. Loved it so far.

malek the wise · Oct 16, 2006, 11:09 AM // 11:09

/agreed on all. CE will be mine the 27th

. This game will make me rich, I got GWF and GWP on the 2nd yr after it was made, so I couldn't grab anything before it was all nerfed. Sanctum runs stopped working for me after the first week after that major nerf, no golds were dropping save for a few exceptions of gothic dual axe that only paid back my key fee and I was not doing well with solo farming. In factions I realized over 10 solos with level
15s and got rich(no one to sell to, but I got some rare skins and a perfect or two) not many max damages though...oh well, it's quite easy to get perfect sundering and fortitudes and rare dyes in NF. Eventually it will all become nerfed so I must act quickly and get all the items and wait for everyone to realize the rare skin value and such.

Lawnmower · Oct 16, 2006, 08:49 PM // 20:49

I just think we as a community need to spread more words about how good NF is. I would hate having people dismiss NF because they maybe didnt enjoyed Factions as much

GedLongbow · Oct 17, 2006, 12:10 AM // 00:10

How do ya even know ya like NF, that was a preview, a bunch can change in a month, besides, watdya have against prophecies

i can understand factions tho

xBakox · Oct 17, 2006, 12:53 AM // 00:53

Quote:

How do ya even know ya like NF, that was a preview, a bunch can change in a month, besides, watdya have against prophecies i can understand factions tho

Maybe he should change the title for people who cant read posts very well? Perhaps it should be "Why I like Nightfall more than GWP and GWF from the Preview event" But if you read the posts its quite obvious.

Honestly I like the way NIghtfall is going from the preview. Each mission had its own unique thing that made you remember it. The first one I liked very much despite its simplicity. I mean, fighting corsairs taking over a village and then catapulting their ships is awesome. Also, the puzzles and corsair costumes were awesome as well.

The zones were way better as well. Even the more tightly packed swamplands seemed more open, with more ways to go and more cool things to see in them. For example, going through the one zone in between the Diggings and Champions Dawn (cant remember the name of it) was such a cool experience because you could go south to the beach and mines and fight harpies or follow the path through the middle of it and come across a Sunspear camp or go a more northern route. But you could always cut though the general "routes", unlike the defined carved paths of Ascalon, or even more supposedly open areas like Kryta.

Anyways, I agree with everything the OP said as well.

OlMurraniKasale · Oct 17, 2006, 01:05 AM // 01:05

The hero flag system is dirt easy. Plant your flag, henchies/heroes go/stay there. I had a lot of fun with that first village when you were placed high atop the monument and you had to order your henchies to run to places using flags/attack, etc.

Nightfall definitely answers why I've been playing GW for so long - love the scenery, though I do think that pre-Searing is by far the most impressive scenery so far.

Little things like sand blowing, lions roaring in the background and the sky darkening as you progress will make it VERY nice!

Good job A-Net. Now, all you have to do is actually get it started on time. Let's not repeat the PvE Event start fiasco.

Franco · Oct 17, 2006, 11:06 AM // 11:06

pfft Prophecies ftw,

Lord Sarevok · Oct 17, 2006, 09:25 PM // 21:25

Nightfall improves upon both Factions and Prophecies in many ways. I'll just outline some of them.

They hired a D&D RPG guy to handle the story. I think we've seen evidence in the beta event that it will be better than the first two, by a lot. The quests were varied, some of them were actually non trivial. Props for the trial quest and which heir to choose quest for variety.

A simple thing like adding the sunspear points via killing random monsters that you'd kill anyway to get from point A to point B is a welcome addition.

Missions being located in outposts that aren't just mission towns. But you have to have the right quest to be able to do the mission.

Heroes, obviously. This changes a lot. You want to PUG, but XYZ character can't be found. Bring a hero or two. They also are far superior to henchmen. Also giving a purpose for unlocks in PvE was a side effect of heroes. A neat way to link them. You can only give heroes stuff you've unlocked. Though I thinking making Koss a Dragon Slash warrior at lv 1 was perhaps a bit much.

The new skills from the beta events actually look good compared to many of the Factions skills which were subpar. Most PvP builds use almost nothing from Factions, Nightfall skills look much more promising.

strcpy · Oct 18, 2006, 09:10 AM // 09:10

If Nightfall is only half as good as the preview it will beat Factions hands down. If it keeps that level of goodness it will give Prophecies a run for its money. Plus I'm looking forward to a Dervish with the new heroes and hench AI in a run through prophecies

I constantly felt restricted in Factions. I like to explore quite a bit, didn't really feel restricted in Nightfall's preview. I don't mind the gates so much - I think there are ways of doing them where they make sense (and I understand removing things like Drok's runs even though I used them). I just hated being told I couldn't go someplace, well, just because (in reality because the game designers felt I shouldn't be there yet). If there is a reason why that makes sense and doesn't feel restrictive then great. On my first time in Maguuma Jungle I explored a little too much and found out some of the story before actually completing the quest (talk about confusing when the Shining Mantle suddenly treat me like a friend and I reply talking bad about my enemy the White Mantle), there should have been some way to block me that didn't make me feel cheated. Nightfall seems to have done just that in the preview. That experience was jarring enough I still remember it well over a year later.

Ahh, well. I can't say I will like it more than prophecies. For one thing I will have to wait and see how the mainland goes. I would say I was not a big fan of most of Factions being level 20 content - I liked the slower progression of Prophecies. It gave me a bigger sense of advancement and lots of places to play with soloing areas after hitting level 20. On the bright side the "noob isle" is large enough I *think* that will eleminate that feeling. But that is minor and will need to wait for the release.

Over all I am MUCH more excited over this than Factions. I, personally, think A-net has done a good job in the past - over all I liked Factions quite a bit even though my griping seems to say I didn't (remember, that's talking about stuff I didn't like without listing my likes). As such I think Nightfall should either equal or nearly equal prophecies which has been one of my favorite games of all times (and I go back to green Hercules graphics and text based games - while my opinion may not hold much weight to others, for myself that is saying a lot).

RuPee · Oct 18, 2006, 11:16 PM // 23:16

agreed with every point. very nice post.

if NF lives up to what i experienced during the preview, then im sold.

unmatchedfury · Oct 19, 2006, 03:07 AM // 03:07

the main thing I'm looking forward to is the heros. I like the idea. Skill unlocks are going to seperate new guys from the older ones, the templates and variabilty of your hencies will help you get 2 man gruops with guildies, and you'll be a big help too noobies in places like, the shing jea islands. you'll now be able to "run" people through missions using supior heros and things like that.

I'm really going to love taking my heros back into cantha and prophicies jsut to explore and finish up random quests.

Sable Phoenix · Oct 19, 2006, 06:55 PM // 18:55

Isn't this a bit premature?

Seems like it's far too early to be making a claim like this. After you've finished Nightfall would be more appropriate. Quite frankly, Nightfall has a lot to live up to if it's going to equal Prophecies, much less surpass it, and after the disappointment that was Factions, it would seem reasonable to reserve judgement on it until you've actually played it.

Lawnmower · Oct 19, 2006, 07:46 PM // 19:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sable Phoenix

Isn't this a bit premature?

Seems like it's far too early to be making a claim like this. After you've finished Nightfall would be more appropriate. Quite frankly, Nightfall has a lot to live up to if it's going to equal Prophecies, much less surpass it, and after the disappointment that was Factions, it would seem reasonable to reserve judgement on it until you've actually played it.

story, dialouge, voice acting, enemies, art, music, graphics, balance, quests, missions, new features, skills, cities/outposts, and so on... everything I experienced in does 14 hours with NF was better than my entire time with GWP.

Honestly.

In GWNF, I have already covered my way through a temple full of traps in a crazy like maze. I have already infiltrated the enemy in disguise along with my team.

PvP is the only thing I have not seen yet. the new professions and the heroes add a hole new layer of depth I did not thought possible.

So in conclusion.. yeah.

I would rather take the preview over entire GWP, if we look at PvE only. And im dead serious about that.

GWP is just a total joke in comparrison, as far as presentation and story goes. I feel like a jerk for suggesting that they should remove the cut scenes a while back.. I didnt thought they would improve. But they did. They actually did it. I feel like that for the first time, that a freakin company has listened honestly to their players request.

Snowman · Oct 20, 2006, 11:03 AM // 11:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Franco

pfft Prophecies ftw,

While I agree its a bit early to be giving Nightfall its due's, I really dont agree with Prophecies being the best.

I played it through once with one character, thought it was good but I enjoyed othergames much more (Never winter nights)..

when playing through with a second character it was hard to be motivated and rushed through as much as I could..

Third character, totally lost the will to live, the only reason why I even bother to ascend him was to get him to factions.

Factions however I have played through will all characters and thoroughly enoyed it, I like the fact that its shorter, I liked the 16 team missions, like the challenges of the the challenge missions and the pve/pvp of fort aspen..

I hold out alot of hopes for Nightfall!.. I think it will enhance all chapters of Guildwars and agree with the good points made by the OP, but im certain there will be opposite and equal reactions once the game is out..