Curse

CKaz · Jul 25, 2006, 05:58 PM // 17:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Beat_Go_Stick

I'm not lazy, I just don't want to be annoyed while playing Guild Wars. I don't think that's too much to ask for or unreasonable reasoning on my part. The locked gates have completely halted my gameplay at Nahpui.....and I think it's a shame.

QFT

I made a survival monk, my 5th character after some deletions and reconsiderations. Started in Cantha, went to Prophecies. Got the first title but it's over now - but I wasn't keying on titles 2 and 3 anyways, if it happened, great

. My point?

I can't stomach pre-sear or ascalon anymore, Cantha gets you going quickly [But had I WANTED a story and growth, Shing Jea is rather lame/short]. Pop over to LA, got myself to ToA and Fishermans, Sanctum, *BAM* I'm at the Desert. Some might run Drok here but already have KC armor and I want secondaries. Why didn't I do Cantha even after I lost further survivor? I *really* didn't care to do Mayhem, VSquare, Nahpui, Takanai to get Senjii. Capping too of course, got ascended, got WoH and the Dragon Lair caps as appropriate and in Drok. Now I can veer off and hit Snake, GF, SF etc w/o being forced into channels again. Yeah if I want Ring of Fire I have to go through a little more mission work but a lot more has been opened up.

On the flipside Cantha there's all sorts of roadblocks all over. Yeah I liked the story the first time well enough (even with the bugs and glitches and the Oracle taking two different forms... jarring gaff

) second ok... 3-4-5? Just like elsewhere in this thread, I don't need to be forced into some tight paths.

Take it this way - 10k faction friends both sides to keep moving? Thankfully after the first time through for the next step I got *3* of my characters through on the next sets of 10k faction a side. Yeah so I had a bunch waiting at the 'gate', farming away ftw. Another reason why I don't see my monk moving far along Cantha anytime soon, beyond the 'regular' gated path.

Gotta like being friends too and still dealing with NPCs not talking to you but that's another poor decision a bit OT

Quote:

Originally Posted by Beat_Go_Stick

Another person who just accuses people of whining.

Yeah it happens a lot. Have constructive critiscm, suggest things, try to open some eyes, and they come out of the woodwork. It's a game, the goal should be fun to play within different playstyles. I won't have my monk available for any guildy/friend anytime soon deep into Cantha. c'est la vie I suppose, but why such the hurdles? They already made it tough to run with in some cases no less than 3 groups of pop-up (I had a warden, oni, luxon pop-up in kurzick territory lol.... yeah it didn't go well) along with some crazy patrols and #s in general.

Just seems they went a bit crazy - maybe they felt too much chp1 was getting run but that's more because people moved on and the way you have to re-aquire stuff in chp1. chp2 they make you buy all your skills anyways

CrazyMrLeo · Jul 25, 2006, 10:04 PM // 22:04

Up until this post, I had been lurking, but I figured now would be a good time to register and give my opinion.

I strongly dislike the idea of locked doors.

I have not been playing Guild Wars for long. I only have Prophecies, so I have had no direct encounter with locked gates. Still, if they work the way I understand they do, (sealing off outposts and missions until you beat all the missions prior to them) I cannot say the idea has too much appeal to me.

I love exploration. It's tremendous fun. I go out with a group of henchies, and just wander around the map, finding little areas I've never been too, outposts I didn't know existed, and connections to other maps. The most fun I've had so far was when I decided to go out on a little adventure, after beating one of the quests in Iron Horse Mine. I saw that there were paths leading out further into the zone, so I figured that it was a good time to see what was down them. It was neat. I saw the scenery, encountered some mysterious levers, beat the crap out of some dwarves, and had a good time in general. And then, after fighting my way through the zone, I came upon the door to Anvil Rock. I had come this far already, so I figured I would give it a shot.

When I stepped out into Anvil Rock for the first time, I encountered this beautiful zone that was unlike anything I had seen previously in the game. Big open paths, giant fields of snow, huge mountains. I was awe-struck. It was then that I knew that Guild Wars was an absolute keeper. The feeling of discovering an area I hadn't been told by the game to go to was unmatched. I just got that feeling of exploration and discovery that so many MMORPGs try to capture but few actually manage. Sure, the zone was a little too high level for me at that point, but that just made it all the more exciting. The battles were hard-fought and desperate, and sometimes I had to run like hell from groups that were too tough for me to beat. It was exhilarating, far more so than any mission I had done before that.

I came upon Ice Tooth Cave, a little outpost which was almost empty, and seemed to serve no purpose besides being there. Then I wandered south, climbed this cool winding path up a mountain, and found myself at Frost Gate, a mission ahead of where I was "supposed" to be. Finding those places by myself, without the game giving me a little hint on the map, was far more fun and rewarding than playing through Borlis Pass and getting there automatically would have been. And if I had come to either of those outposts and the game told me that I had to beat some mission all the way back in Traveler's Vale, it would have been frustrating, and would have totally spoiled the sense of immersion.

I didn't skip Borlis Pass because I was lazy or it was too hard or because I had done it on a previous character. In reality, I hadn't even tried it yet. I just found a path while doing a quest and wanted to follow it. I felt like doing something else instead of sticking to the beaten path and doing the mission, and enjoyed the fact that the game gave me the freedom to do so. And when I did finally end up in Frost Gate, I decided to map back to Borlis Pass and beat it, because I didn't want to play the game out of order, or leave that mission unbeaten.

I understand a lot of people on this forum hate runners. However, locked doors don't just lock out the people that have been carried to new zones, they also lock out the people who worked hard, explored the game, and found it themselves before the plot took them there. Haven't they earned it just as much as the people who have done missions? They play the game at their own pace, just like you play at yours, and that's one of the many things that makes Guild Wars so different and so much more fun than its rivals. Locked doors can only subtract from that freedom, and less freedom means less fun.

mega_jamie · Jul 26, 2006, 01:21 AM // 01:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sir Mad

/NOT SIGNED

If you don't wanna play the game, don't play it.

Sometimes people just want to get into the interesting stuff, and skip the hundreds of boring Fed-Ex / Kill 5 xxx missions that pop up. Factions was tediously boring at some points, with all it's Fed-Ex missions and what not, after my first id certainly like to have been able tog et straight out of the city as I hated the FPS lag I got in there, especially when spells started flying.

//Signed.

POssibly something like NPCs at gates saying "Normally we wouldn't let you pass, but XXXXXX (chara u have finished game with) vouched for you, and so you may pass"

I mean I dunno about you guys, but I have 10K Kurzick faction saved up for my account bcause I hated the faction questing bits and repeating it, any new charas skip thatr bit out almost now.

And to agree with the above poster, I love to explore, see whats going around, byt the end of factions I had given up on that, whats the point in going to x location, when its probably blocked off, and no point heading west, when the story will take u that way if u can, its boring!

I remember getting to my first locked gate, and being told I cudnt pass, it was such a minor place, being on Shing Jea Island, but I knew I would experience it alot more, and even tho it was like 8am, the end of the first hour of factions 24hr pre-release, i knew i was in for a bad time with these locked gates.

IMO they simply ruin the game

AJM · Jul 26, 2006, 02:11 AM // 02:11

Now, I loathe runners, hate them with a passion, but I have to agree that the gates need to go. I hate having to repeat quests to continue the game as much as I hate runners. I'd rather ANet find a different way to make runners' lives miserable. Like making it so you CAN'T do a mission until you've done the mission that's supposed to come before it. That would be good.

I don't really have a problem repeating missions, just boring-ass quests.

Crimson Ashwood · Jul 26, 2006, 02:29 AM // 02:29

Keep the locked doors. Locked doors seperates the men from the boys, if your character hasn't completed the story, then you can't be wearing the end game armor. It makes total and perfect sense to me to prevent players from "running to the 15k armor guy" / last few missions.

I like that locked doors creates a population in all the towns along the way too, well, mostly. Imagine if there were no locked doors in factions? How many MORE towns would be empty? I'd wager a lot more...

/NOT SIGNED

Sir Mad · Jul 26, 2006, 10:19 AM // 10:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by AJM

Now, I loathe runners, hate them with a passion, but I have to agree that the gates need to go. I hate having to repeat quests to continue the game as much as I hate runners. I'd rather ANet find a different way to make runners' lives miserable. Like making it so you CAN'T do a mission until you've done the mission that's supposed to come before it.

How that?

***press Enter mission***

*One of the players of your team has been badly ran and cannot enter the mission*
*Are you sure you want to continue?*

***Press No***

Leader: aiight, who didn't do the last mission?
Leader: anyone?
Leader: Bah, let's go.

***press Enter mission***

*One of the players of your team has been badly ran and cannot enter the mission*
*Are you sure you want to continue?*

***Press Yes***

Leader: aww that was the monk.

WasAGuest · Jul 26, 2006, 01:01 PM // 13:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sir Mad

How that?

***press Enter mission***

*One of the players of your team has been badly ran and cannot enter the mission*
*Are you sure you want to continue?*

***Press No***

Leader: aiight, who didn't do the last mission?
Leader: anyone?
Leader: Bah, let's go.

***press Enter mission***

*One of the players of your team has been badly ran and cannot enter the mission*
*Are you sure you want to continue?*

***Press Yes***

Leader: aww that was the monk.

This made me laugh. The system could be made very easily using NPCs to start the mission rather than just hit the "Enter Mission" button. The system itself could be made to make sure each person has completed the previous mission by having X Primary quest active.

An NPC could also be made to act as a "I'm ready" so that each person in the group must click them before the leader can select "enter mission".

Merchants could also be made to see what missions you have completed before selling end game armor or "the next level" of armor.

So still, there is yet a good reason to have the locked gates in place other than to annoy, destroy imersion and generally lengthen a way to short game (a design flaw and not something the players should suffer for).