March 14 - Gamespy Article

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/guild-wars-.../695508p1.html

-Talks a bit about controling towns and outpost
-Confirms 12 vs 12 PvP

Sounds great. As long as there aren't scorpion looking things popping out of the ground every ten steps like Prophecies, I'm sure I'll enjoy Factions quite a bit.

12vs12 Niiice.

If there are ANY kind of scorpion in Factions I will demand my money back.

That is one creature they RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO WAAAAAY too often.

So... does this mean only 12vs12 pvp for control of cities? Or for missions? Cause I want to see some massive battles for towns... not lame 8vs8 stuff.

heh, according to CGW, no scorpions, but you'll learn to hate the assassin mobs that have replaced them

Lmao!!!

IMO, the worst part of Prophecy was that section (in Maguuma?) where Scarabs came from underground, AND spiders came from above. You could be walking around, no blips in site, then BAM be totally surrounded.

"Game over man, Game over!" -from Aliens

Assassin mobs aren't bloody Devourers. That's enough for me.

And yes, Jungle ambushes sucked much ass. Expect more of same in Factions with all the ninja-style freaks crawling around. If they don't come popping out the woodwork with depressing regularity, I will be disappointed.


...



And now, it is Rant Mode Time.

Alright, I did NOT hear Gamespy say that the best skills were in alliance-specific elite missions. I did not. I absolutely refuse to believe Anet would further its betrayal of the little man by not allowing goddamned skill caps to be evenly distributed. And yes, this time there is confirmation that Elite missions are only for the top-end alliances, not simply the controlling faction. If these Elite missions contain skill caps, then less than one percent of the playing population of the game will be able to obtain them. Not to mention that even the hard-assed ub3r l33t alliances will only get caps from the towns they specifically control, which will number only one or, maybe, two of the twenty or so available. One would have to not only shift one's allegiance between factions to get all the skills, one would also have to carefully regulate one's internal reputation so as to change the city they control and thus unlock new Elite missions for themselves.

This, I refuse to believe of Anet. They could not possibly be that colossally, blindingly, unwaveringly stupid.

I do have a horrible suspicion about the state of the game come Factions though...

Controlling alliance member: "Running Elite mission, 20k per person."
Joe Schmoe off the street: Damnit damnit DAMNIT! I don't want to pay twenty grand to play a single lousy mission just once, but I can't play it at all if I don't so...

ArenaNet, you are foul, despiccable and unworthy of my respect and possibly my continued support if you go through with this. You claim to create games for casual gamers? Well, not even the hardest-ass hardcore player could keep up with this untenable system. You will destroy the heart of this game and only the already ridiculously rich/arrogant ultra-elite PvP Guilds will benefit, while more than ninety-nine percent of your player base is Red Engine Go-ed straight in the ass. You think you'll lose players over the slots issue? No way. You have not seen angry until you see what will happen when the knowledge of this towering injustice sinks into players.

I would love to join one of these Guilds and become the best player I can be, but you know what guys? I can't. Because I already have to be the best player I can be to join any Guild worth joining. And now you punish me, and heavily, for it. Well ya know what?

Red Engine Go you too.

Well, I don't think that will happen, and based on how you read the Gamespy article I don't think that's what they meant either. They said, that's where the best skills will be dropped. So you can translate that a number of ways. 1) There will be bosses down there with elites to be capped (which, in campaign 1 there are skills that can be capped from more than one boss, so..) or 2) that's where the most experienced players will drop their mad skillz owning the elite mission (which is more the angle I think they meant when saying it). Keep in mind too, this reviewer wasn't sure if there would be a preview event of the game, so his credibility is a little shaky already to me.

I agree though, if that is what Anet decides to do it will be a colossally bad idea, enough to make me stay away until they fix in an update due to abnormal amounts of player complaints. At least they do listen to players though, so, we'll see.

This whole alliance thing really has me scratching my head. I just don't see how it will work fairly. I also haven't really seen a reasonable explanation of it, or how just what kind of rewards belong to elite missions. In the current campaign I am okay not doing TOPK or SF if I don't want to. Yeah, that's were some of the best drops are (and Underworld too) but I don't need those items to play the game. Skills and access to towns I absolutely do need. So as a casual gamer, am I gonna get screwed if I don't belong to an all-powerful alliance? I don't get it, and I feel that Anet hasn't really offered a good explanation yet either. Oh well, wait and see I guess.

Yeah, I'm a little confused myself as to how a certain faction controlling a city or mission area will benefit that faction. Maybe they have some sort of morale boost if they own that particular territory that a mission is in or if they own a city and the opposing faction has to pay a certain tax when they purchase something.


Also, does anyone know for sure if you can change factions or if you choose your one faction and thats all she wrote.

You're right, you did not. You saw them speculating about where the best skills would be. Gamespy. Speculating. I think this is a very clear case of them not knowing what they're talking about. At all. The guy writing the article almost certainly does not play the game outside of the previews, and has to review a ton of MMOs. He applied the typical MMO formula to his speculation - special area = special skills, right? Despite A.Net's blunders in this area before, they've learned from their mistakes. I'd speculate that whatever special things await in those elite zones, they won't be exclusive elite skill caps. See the current 'elite' areas, the Fissure of Woe and the Underworld, for some idea of what's likely in store there.


Yeah, I saw that, and I'm really skeptical of that system if it's true. *IF* this is true, that only a controlling *alliance* can access a challenge mission, and *IF* there are 20 cities with elite missions, and *IF* a given alliance only controls one city, and *IF* each alliance has the full 10 guilds, and *IF* each of those guilds was filled to the brim with 100 members, that gives a total of 20,000 people access to these 'elite' missions. Under a best case scenario. With over a million copies of the game sold, and very likely even more with Factions coming out, that's less than 2% of the population with access to even a single 'elite' mission. If you thought the favor system was bad (and yes, I think the favor system is pretty freaking bad) you haven't seen anything yet.

I simply cannot imagine a system like that remaining in place for long if those zones are supposed to be the best PvE content. With over 98% of the population worldwide completely shut off from *any* top PvE content, the public outcry would be deafening.


I'm extremely skeptical at this point. I do know that A.Net has a lot of talent, and that they could potentially pull something like this off. At the same time, this is not an easy project by any means. Even on the most basic of levels, I'm interested to see how they intend to create dynamic borders through PvE that actually represent some conflict. Game theory is not on their side, this is not PvP where people have real world stakes involved. It's players against a system that ostensibly only rewards one side at a time, and in that environment everyone zergs the first side to show a position of power out of personal self interest.

Similarly I don't see how you can match alliances up against each other through PvE to see which *alliance* controls a city. Maybe I'm grossly overestimated the scale of things here, but shouldn't there be an awful lot of alliances looking at a given city at a time? Again I'm not willing to pass judgement until I've seen the system in practice, but right now, I'm skeptical.


If what that article said was truth, and not just speculation, then I'd have to agree, Factions looks like a game that's truly for the hardest of the hardcore while everyone else shouldn't even bother coming. Given their target audiences (casual players and those attracted by no monthly fees in particular) that style of gameplay would be an unmitigated disaster. A.Net makes mistakes like any other developer, but making one that colossally stupid is not something I'd expect from *any developer*.

We'll see how it plays out.

Peace,
-CxE

I think they said that gaining favor with one faction or another takes time and a good number of missions. If that's right, then winner-zerging would take a good deal of time, which might allow some balance to be restored.

As for the controlling-alliance thing, the only way I see that working is if the internal reputation required for access to a particular area is static and not competitive. Instead of having to be the top alliance inside a faction of, supposedly, over five hundred thousand players, you only have to have X Reputation in order to gain access to the Elite missions. Which is grind, and bad, and not good on many levels, but still light years beyond the whole Elite Players ONLY thing.

12v12 PvP is going to be freakin' ridiculous. 8v8 is crazy enough... and even crazier when you do it in HoH.... I can't even begin to imagine what 12v12 is going to be like.

more err7's, longer times to wait for people, noisy vent channels..gg

My understanding is that 12v12 won't be 12v12 in the truest sense, but instead 3 allied squads of 4. Global effects won't help allied squads, and you won't be able to see allied health bars or targets.

Otherwise 12v12 would be some pretty boring spiking contests.

Peace,
-CxE

Well, from the beginning, it has sounded like Factions would offer more of an Eve Online type of playing experience - not necessarily a good thing in a game designed for the casual player, as has already been stated here. I'm all for more openedness in games - the Fantasy RPG in particular, but with that openedness comes a multitude of problems - in essence a higher learning curve and more grind to get where you want to be.

The great thing about Prophecies was its structure - you can essentially run through the bulk of the game in a matter of days, or weeks, depending on just how much time you have to play in any particular sitting. While nice in some respects, the static nature does create some boredom. How interesting would it be to go back to Ascalon after playing the Frost Gate mission, and have the entire setting change to reflect the fact that Rurik is dead, and Refugees have left for Kryta?

I think this is what Anet is trying to accomplish with Factions - having the quests and mission you complete have a dynamic impact on the game world at large. While in theory this makes for a more interesting game playing experience - their way of doing it looks like it will limit the amount and type of content we can play at any one time with Factions - which was my biggest beef in regards to the slot limit imposed by Prophecies and carried over into the merged account status with Factions. By not being able to use all primes at any given time, there are certain prime specific quests and items that cannot be experienced. This will seem to have an even greater impact in Factions, as what you will be able to do will be inherent on whether you are part of a guild, whether that guild is allied with other guilds, and whether that allience is part of one of the Factions.

How is my game play going to be affected if I don't want my guild allied with anyone, and if I don't want to join a particular Faction, but remain a neutral party? What happens if I want to join a particular Faction, but some of my guildmates want to join the other Faction, or remain neutral? There are a lot of unanswered questions in regards to this new dynamic they are introducing that should have been answered long before the pre-order was released.

Dynamic game play is a good thing in any genre of the gaming world, however, I don't see how it will work in GW's basic design. If I can play only a limited portion of the content based on the alliances and Factions, then Anet's 6 x 100% math is even fuzzier than originally thought - unless all content (explorable area, items, quests & missions, skills & attributes, strategy) is accessable regardless of any alliances or Faction your account is a part of.

Hanok Odbrook
Real Millennium Group Guild
Truth * Knowledge * Peace

Devourers are the new Cliff Racers.

12vs12.........words....cannot..describe ;_;

12 v 12, multi-team format.....THE JOYS OF UNBRIDLED CARNAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also it's good because getting 8 people for a team is hard enough. 4 is easier

From what I've read from this article, people think that only one alliance can control a city at a time. From searching the internet and GW Guru, I've read that alliances are only smaller parts of the bigger picture. The alliances (10 guilds max) can choose whether to be in one Canthan Faction, or another (the alliance leader desides).

I've seen pictures of the world with its border of where the two Factions fight one another, and anyone on one of the two Factions that, according to the border, has control of an "elite" mission, anyone on any alliance on any guild has access to that mission. This also goes for any special event in the cities, as I have heard A.Net mention.

Anyways, I'm sure that A.Net has everything under control, and that everyone will have pretty much 50/50 access to all the missions, depending on how much faction your Faction can muster.