So, uh. (Elite Missions)

I do. But, I was being more sarcastic than anything. I want the Elite Missions too.

Faction control degrades, the more you have, the more the loss will be after it degrades.

Exactly. That means that eventually all alliances will find a certain balance between what they lose in time and what their members can bring up. How dynamic this is will depend on how much alliance standing you get for 5000 faction, and how much you lose. If they make it bigger, you'll see a lot more dynamics in who controls the outposts, and if you make it smaller, changes will go slower. I hope they found a good balance, because either extreme is a total nightmare.

Still doesn't change the fact that the system is unfair to 99% of the players.

Yeah, either way, it's not going to convince my guild leader to ally with my friend's guild.

So who are the two alliances that have control of the Elite Missions anyway?

Wow, talk about elitism.
That is just... wow.

Do they know how hard it is to find a good guild or to form a good grown-up alliance?

To get into HoH is peanuts compared to that.

As much as I loved all the new contents in factions, I have to agree this is rather discouraging. I rather a game that promotes newbies to join a competitive mission rather than to lock them out.

But if there's anything we've learned in the past, its that Arenanet may make some mistakes every now and then, but they're never too ashamed to correct them.... give it time.

What I don't understand is why they thought this would be a good idea in the first place.

Fireworks, parades, having your alliance's name on a town, even discounts at merchants, all this would be fine. But what were they thinking when they cut people out of missions?

Does anyone know if the elite mission territory counts towards your exploration title percentage?

Actually at Breaker Hollow the gate is open (I don't control it though) and you can talk to the Fireworks guy. :P

(well it is for me anyways)

Actually, reading those numbers dash every little spark of hope I ever harbored. My guild won't even be able to get as much as 0.1% of those numbers on a good week. I don't have high hopes of joining a competitive alliance on that basis.

I'm not a huge fan of the system but it might not be as bad as we all fear.

1.2 million, though an awfull lot is basicly 120 people dumping their max faction. 160 people is quite a lot but it is only 16 people per guild. If you just want to access Elite missions then you could save up your faction and 'dump' it all at once at a pre-defined time. You thus get a huge boost and might be able to take control for a short time. I'm not sure this would solve all problems but it might give more people a chance to access them.

I guess I'm not living the glamorous life of a full-time games fanatic so I might be totally off base with my next assumption... To have 120 people dump all their factions over a short period of time, wouldn't you need a much bigger player base than just 120 to pull this off at any one time? It's not as if some people don't have anything better to do with their lives than set a calender date for a damn computer game. I might have 15 years ago, but not in 2006.

Judging from ANet's response (or the lack thereof) to the Favor problem in Prophecies, I don't think the Alliance system in Factions will change anytime soon, regardless of how many complaints there are throughout the community.

Awww but don't lose hope people...c'mon they just offered the CE people a little pet dragon to make up for the fact they were totally screwed over in multiple ways. Surely the 99.99% of us who aren't in huge guilds and can't access the elite missions will have something equally awesome thrown our way.

Oh I know maybe they will come up with a new system...where I can pay Anet real world money to buy time in the elite missions? My own little instanced copy that only costs me $10.00 a try.. BAH!

The games only a week old... so no worries :P Many things in the past have seemed like a total disater "OH NOES ANET TEH THIEF OF MA MON3Y!!"... and it all worked out nicely. If this method turns out to be a total disaster, Im sure ANET will fix it Give it a chance, as the month progresses more and more people will get further into thr game, new guilds will surface, and the control thing may balance out

~prime

ANet did have an answer to the Favors' problem: "suck it up, get better and you'll get access. That's what competition is about baby.". The law of the jungle basically.
Well, when you have hundreds of thousands of people playing for America, and the same number for Europe, that makes 2 regions that will get Favor quite often (well, even then...). Or you could switch servers (and forget about playing with fellow americans, or fellow frenchies, or fellow germans, etc). That was already a big deal, as a Euro-server player, I felt bad for our Asian pals because we would just own the place.

Now it goes totally overboard.

I'm supposed to find AT LEAST 120 players coordinated in an alliance to take control of the capital, using all their Faction points? Knowing that barely 5% of the players even know of the existance of the cities because they're still in Kaineng? It will only get harder and harder. I'm sure HoH was nothing in April 2005 compared to now. What will city-owning be next? Just another world to motivated, but somewhat isolated, players.

Fck it. I've spent more than a few hundred hours on this great game, I love it, I've made friends but hey, it happens that the nicest and the funniest people are not always the most competitive. We're doing our best, enjoying the fact that others also have only 200 skill points...
I happen to be a guildmaster now, I have friends, we have a good time, but there is no chance we will get there. What will winning guilds do? Charge a fee to enter with them?

ArenaNet, I like your game most of all because of the level 20 concept. That's great. But you just go the exact opposite way there. That pisses off people, you should know that, right?

A solution maybe: leave the option to those guilds to leave the zone totally open (without having to send their players in parties). They'll get a nice reputation.

Do you all know the controlling alliances?
I would not judge groups of people you do not know. There may be some groups that would charge, but I sincerely believe that many of them would not charge entry fees. I do of course admit it is very possible, but unlikely.

Perhaps you might be able to contact the leading figures in some of these alliances, maybe a smaller one or one that you like, and apply to join?
If there's 10 guilds, it's likely there are positions open. Many positions.

I would think if you were smart, capable and mature you could apply and play with some good people that you like.

Many of them are open minded and accepting of players, especially with the possibility of someone to contribute faction. Just don't be a lunatic or a complete retard.

Hell..try to establish contact with some of them and play with them. Don't try to befriend them just to get into the mission.

It's a very challenging mission. Even if 90% of the people had access to it they would just die. And then they'd whine about the difficulty instead of the exclusivity (sp?). I think it's called Elite for more than just the comment.

Are you miffed because you have to spend faction for your guild and not for yourself to get amber/jadeite?

I'm pissed about this whole controlling thing too, but....


Why don't they make it so an Alliance can BUY ACCESS TO ELITE MISSIONS for say, a month at a time. If there are 12 stages to the mission, then it could be 100k faction for each stage. After paying 1.2 mil faction, you would have the entire elite mission unlocked for your guild for a whole month. Then, after the month the price could go down, maybe to 80k faction per stage. This would make it easier to get the more you get it, and encourage alliances to keep working hard to get access. Or, it could go opposite. Make it easy to get the first few times, but then make the cost higher and higher, so the alliances that like it most will work harder and harder to get more faction and capture!

Maybe the reason you have no shot at gaining access to these elite, competitive PvE missions is that you're not competitive...not even having the drive to do something as simple as setting up a time to dump faction.

To all the people who are again using the silly logic that you're being denied access to "a part of the game that you paid for", that's just ridiculous. You bought a game that labels itself as a competitive roleplaying game, you paid for the ability to compete for the best stuff. Frankly, it's no mystery to me why the top alliances have decent to heavy PvP guild involvement; these are the people who, instead of immediately going to the forums to bitch and whine, actually have the drive to go out and grab what they want in the game.

You know...you dont NEED to do the elite missions. Even when America has favor I rarely ever do FoW or UW. It's possible to live without it. Deal with it. I may never get into an elite mission either but I dont care. There are other things to do.

I'm sure once Chapter 3 comes out it will be extremely easy to get into Elite missions....

Maybe they should make it so that elite missions become open to the public once a week or something for 24 hours, then its complete off limits again.

This way the top guilds can join the missions anytime they want and retain a huge advantage for controlling the top cities, but the public at least isn't totally cut off from it.