NF vs Factions vs Proph, 4 months later

When NF first came out, I loved it--thought the story was better than Factions by far, and it was faster than Prophecies, so it seemed like the perfect chapter. But after having played through it with 2 characters, I am finding myself with very little interest in playing through with additional characters, even if it means missing good elites. I guess that what I'm saying that NF was a better story to play through the first time than Factions, but I'm finding that if I'm going to play through a story for the N>1th time, Factions I'd rather replacy Factions. Over time, my opinion on Factions in general has improved. Anyone else noticing this?

I think that maybe the Factions team had the right idea with the emphasis on PvP aspects as the way to make a game continue to be enjoyable after playing through the first time (c.f. all the posts about GW "dying"). Unfortunately, I think that the incentives the developers put in to encourage players to try PvP were not as effective as expected. Maybe it wasn't clear enough how much faction could be had PvPing' I sure wish I had known how much faster I could gain my 10,000 faction playing AB instead of grinding in all those side quests in the Echovald! Thus, to my surprise, although I am very much primarily a PVE player, I am hoping that Chapter 4 builds on the PVP elements rather than just adding another storyline to the universe...

The first week I played I loved NF. After I realized I had to grind to progress, an even greater grind than Factions, I was turned off.
Prophecies, i feel is the best. Althought you grind to level 20, you do so as you progress through the story.
In factions, you hit a point and have to get the faction to continue.
Although, collecting the faction via AB is fun, it's still forcing me to do something I may not have done otherwise.
In Nightfall, there are two or three points, in which grind is required.
The game is less enjoyable if you are forced to grind.
I am not big on sidequests, unless there is a reward, skill or hero.
Items or gold, not interested.
So forcing me to do sidequests and clear areas (bounty hunts) to move forward in the game is annoying, especially with your 2nd or 3rd character through the game.
I like the progression, speed and story, of Prophecies. Slow grind while leveling up and building the story, instead of the forced farming/grinding in NF and Factions.

i love all three chapters, i like them all the same. for some reason though, prophecies has very little replay value. if i do play prophecies with a factions/nightfall characters i just get a run to iron mines of malodune and play from there. i find that factions has extremley good replay value and ive taken all 5 or my pve characters through it. i guess i like it because i can power level my low levels on kaineng center quests (2000-3000 exp each) and they are all very very easy. ive taken 4 of 5 characters through nightfall and im currently working on my newly made nerco, who will be through in a week or two.

I still make characters in Prophecies. GG

The only reason I make characters outside of Tyria is because that class isn't available.

Yes, my opinion on factions has improved, too. Upon nightfall release it was nightfall > factions > prophecies, but now clearly factions > nightfall > prophecies.

Factions brought many new ideas to the game. Some good, some so and so. Only the competetive missions are weird. They feel like there was something else planned with them, an idea that somehow got dropped.
On the other hand, nightfall brought as only real addition the herosystem. It's great, I love it, it even improves the experience when going back to prophecies or factions, but it's the only real feature that's worth noting.

i agree w/ the OP. i took 5 chars thru prophecies and factions. towards the end, i just passed tyria by running. i got really sick of the repetition. factions was tolerable b/c even tho it wasn't especially fun, it was short.

nf will be impossible for me to go thru w/ 5-6 chars. i don't have that kinda dedication. and plus there's so little reason to go thru that kinda grind anymore w/ the (almost) complete equality of pvp and pve chars. the only reason for pveing at all anymore is for weapon and armor skins and titles. i'm satisfied w/ gaining titles on one char only. and if i want a certain nf armor, i'll just push that character thru for armor and ignore the rest for the chapter. that means if i limit myself to 1 vanity armor per chapter i'll push 3 chars max thru. even that seems like it's going to be a herculean effort b/c of chapter length.

1 title char
1 new profession char
1 vanity armor char

From my point of view: Nightfall > Prophecies > Factions

Of course prophecies was the first, prophecies is the essence of the game, but i really don't enjoy playing in tyria as i enjoy playing in elona or cantha. As is logicall, factions made improvements over prophecies, it was a very good stand alone game, not so good in comparison with prophecies, but with some changes, some things could be better, some becomed better with nightfall. The game is always in evolution, and each new campaign will have better improvements than the olders one, but besides of improvements, we must consider the "fun factor", which one do you enjoy more?

Pre-searing is finally the best start area in the 3 campaigns, i think there's no doubt about that, is a great place. But the problem is that what in factions and nightfall is a short walk of 2-3 missions to reach max level, in prophecies is more than half of the map... the dessert can be equivalent to kaineng or kourna, south shiverpeaks to desolation or echovald/jade sea, and ring of fire can be equivalent to raisu/torment (torment is harder than raisu & ring of fire although). So for me there's no fun leveling up, the true fun for me is playing in lvl20 through any kind of high-end mission, in that sense... nightfall has much more to offer than prophecies or factions... the whole torment, domain of anguish...

Another point we can only study in the comparison between factions and nightfall are the challenge missions... nightfall missions are better from my point of view, the one with the corsairs is more fun than dragon's throat, anyway dragon's is a very good one. Pac-man shalahja is "the challenge"... is the best one, if you are bored you can really have a good time inside there. The shadow nexus is a real challenge, 4-man team in a high-end area, is just a new concept and a way to improve your skill bar even in pve. Compared to altrum, zo shivros, amatz basin or aurios mines i still think the 3 nightfall challenge mission win.

summing up:
prophecies:
- slow level evolution
- Open map
- no requeriments to do missions
factions:
- fast level evolution
- closed map
- need to do quests even to get in towns. those 10.000 factions to continue are silly.
nightfall:
- mid level evolution
- partially open map
- need to do quests to do missions.

I have to admit that I've been playing factions a lot lately and it's pretty ok.
I have 2 characters throught NF and all my characters have been through tyria but the last two weeks have been playing factions with my ele.... yeah it's not bad at all...

well when i go to ngihtfall most of the main towns have atleast two districts all but kamadan with about 7. i think nf maybe more interesting due to the free chests things because u can gain alot just by going through with them.

PvP is the endgame. It was originally designed that way.

Beware the trolls.....

<pats Grimm on the head> .... of course it was. Whatever you say....

I still like proph. the best out of all of them. Factions was the worst, farming faction and everything else got old pretty fast. I'm still happy with NF, even though the sunspear points are useless.

PvP was designed as the endgame. At launch, there were only 2 PvE endgame areas, and they were conditional on your region's PvP prowess in the old tombs. ANet have realised this hasn't worked so well, and so added in Sorrow's Furnace, new Tombs PvE. The factions elite missions ended up being restricted by a PvE farming competition, and NF is open to anyone that has ground through the PvE campaign. So there are PvE endgame options now, but there weren't always.

I find myself playing Prophecies/Factions with my only made Elona character.
I have 9 characters and 2 accounts, all 8 have completed the game in Prophecies and Factions, but none of them has gone further than Sunspear Sanctuary.
I like all 3 chapters but don't feel like to take them all to the end of NF! If I could endure the factions farming in Factions I couldn't do that again with sunspears/lightbringers points!

Well at the end of the day in my humble opinion Prophecies is the best of all 3! No closed gates, no compulsory grinding, better variety of scenary, skills rewards and better drops! I have had enough of Elona daggers and 7 gold coins drops from level 24 foes!

I really, really, really...... did I say really? Hope chapter 4 will be similar to Prophecies, no close gates/doors, skills rewards for quests and most of all no grinding. If not, well that will be my last game, I'll be buying from Anet.




PS. I must add, for clarity that I'm mostly a PvE player.

I'm a new player, I started at Nightfall release. IMO Factions > Nightfall > Prophecies, although I wish Nightfall had a Sorrow's Furnace type area

Since the beginning I loved Factions and Prophecies so no my feelings haven't changed.

Factions = Prophecies > Nightfall

What was good about Nightfall was the new features like heroes.

No, I don't feel the same way as the OP. I've taken 5 Characters through Prophecies, and am working on a sixth. I've also taken 1 through Nightfall and am working on 3 others. I took 1 character through factions and I will never put myself through that again. For me it goes like this:

Nightfall > Prophecies (but not by much) >>>> factions.

Prophecies > Factions > Nightfall


I'm taking a monk thru prophecies at the moment and do you know what , there is more community there (even with less players) than Nightfall could dare to dream.

Hopefully heroes will not be in chapter 4, Let's get back to working together people.

I "grew up" in factions. I make all my chars there and play the campaign many times. Nightfall. Played through it once. But id rather import a char from factions: the startup is kinda slower. Prophecies. Even though i got it seccond, i finally got to playing it. Its great, but after getting one char through everything, its better to get a run and go to factions to level.

I posted my entire critique here, to check it out. It's not on GWguru, but it loads faster than this forum so it's cooler :P

Anyway, in a nutshell:
Prophecies: Utter CRAP.
Factions: Decent at first, but if you keep re-creating PvE characters on it, it'll get very old very fast. (I suggest making one rit or asn, stick with one, and maybe one other core class and STAY WITH THAT.)
Nightfall: I love it by an insane amount. Has a better replayability value and lovely designed armor.

for more elaboration, check my link.
edit: Damn, i think you have to be a member to view. Nevermind.

Full post:
On Prophecies:
I know this is the favorite of most people, but I must say it is aweful. I am usually good with keeping up with storylines, but the Proph one makes no sense.
First, you're in Pre-searing ascalon. You do quests for kids, actors, and princes. A hostile army comes alone and bombs the place. So far, so good. A generic "fall of the empire" template storyline. Unoriginal, but decent and popular.
So now you're in post-searing Ascalon, apparently your mission as a band of heros is to stop the invasion (or at least postpone is some more?) Kill as many charr as you can, and perhaps even save ascalon.

So far, so good.

Then this is where the game loses me. After the discovery of stormbringer, you make your way into the shiverpeaks and end up getting all in the dwarves business. I fail to realize why. You muddle through their little civil war to gain passage to kryta (even those there's plenty of water underneath it all. It would have been as simple as getting a boat ride from ascalon to kryta.) rorik dies, and you make your way to Kryta. Suddenly you're taking orders from a fanatical religious group called the White mantle, for some reason that escapes me. Suddenly, they turn evil (yay for killing innocents?) you escape, and BAM suddenly the undead want to kill you as well, for a reason that escaped me as well.

WHAT THE HELL?

Somehow I did make it to the desert, again I have no idea what I'm doing there, only to ascend for some reason. And that's as far as I've gone in prophecies. I never want to make a prophecies character again due to the nonsense and complete boredom the campaign gives me.

On Factions
I was extremely excited when I got this. The storyline is most definately a lot more original, but the entire thing is obviously PvP based, as one could get to level 11-15 in a day of gameplay. I honestly don't think Factions is good for new players, even during the tutorial, I bet most of them chat with party members rather than paying attention. As the game pins you against level 8's and 11's in almost no time. (The leveling speed in prophecies to me is a tad slow, but I think it was too speedy in factions. Call me picky.) Which I don't think is healthy for new players, it may even discourage them, "omg level 11's already! I'm only level 7!"

all in all, the storyline is decent and it flowed throughout the whole game. In prophecies the main enemy shifted way too much for me to keep up. Charr? no wait, the stone summit! damnit no, it's the mantle! CRAP NOW THE UNDEAD? At least in Factions you knew who the enemy was the entire time. Shiro. although the lack in enemy diversity wasn't that great.

On Nightfall
I do believe, they finally know what they're doing.
The storyline flows, a central enemy is established while still giving you plenty of side-enemies to worry about. The storyline is a political war-time debate that everyone of all ages can relate to. Are you, as a sunspear, working for the greater good? Or have you just taken orders from a mad leader who wants a war? It's hard to tell, which I think is brilliant.
Although the question shifts quickly when you discover the famous Warmarshal Varesh want's to, uh, for lack of a better way of saying it, end the world in this event called "Nightfall" And thus revealing the source of the expansion title.
Short, simple, to the point. Awesome storyline.

Nightfall also introduced heros, which are henchmen on crack. Which is good, mind you. Each player/party member can equip 3 heros each of their choice, which are generally unlocked as you progress through the storyline. you can equip weapons of your choice, customize their skill bar, edit their attributes, and install runes into their armor. You cannot change their actual armor, but it does improve as the heros level. You can order them around making them attack, guard, or avoid combat altogether. You can order them and the heros to stop and stay in a certain area, too, untill you cancel the order. BRILLIANCE?

Let me take a second to comment on the armor that nightfall gives. In prophecies, the armor was relatively bland, and only the best looking armor went to the high levels who are deep into the island of fire and farm a hundred ectos a day or something. And in factions, you had a couple more creative types, but you were stuck with one style or another throughout most of the same (That much I didn't like.) In nightfall, you almost WANT to end the game with starter-styled armor. The armor is just beautifully crafted. Sadly, there is only two types again but that doesn't matter much as the armor is wonderfully created.

The nightfall storyline is so innovative and fast paced, that I've progressed farther in the NF campaign in a week or two than I have in any others over the course of 6 months.

I hope they take the best of all worlds and put it into Chapter4. Prophecies with their slow and easy pace for learning, nightfall with the leveling speed (Heros would be nice but I'm not worried about them too much) and nightfall again for their perfect storyline.