IMHO.. my take on Faction's PvE

Try 4-6 hours.

From a Tyrian character's perspective, it takes roughly three hours of actual gameplaying (discounting lfg) for me to get from Kaineng to Maatu, and I am by no means king of PvE.

It might seem repetative, but there's nothing more funny than him telling that joke whilst you do the quest to be their friends.. the guy has no idea about diplomacy and not insulting them.

I've hated City to Maatu mainly due to Assasin and npc groups.. due to difficulty with pugs and the ability to get in to them

Once I got out (2-3 weeks of casual 1-2 hour play 3-4 days a week) I'm actually having fun again.

One thing I'm glad is faction is account based vs character base so I can sit on 10k faction of the group I want when I take my 2nd character through (ele from C1)

I don't anticipate my monk has as much trouble at least

Uh what do you guys mean? I loved the jungle! Awesome scenery and all.

As soon as I get done with the city, I'm never going back. Admittedly, there are the occasional rare spots of color, but ususally you're too busy dealing with a mob to take it in.

Before Maatu - just....just....omg bleh (okay, I'd like Vizunah if not for Assasin overpopulation)!
After Maatu - Oki, interesting and short

Never got the "bleh" feeling in Prophecies though (ok, except in Hell's Precipice, that was a real bore for me)

I hated the first mission on cantha from tyrea the first and second time I tried it.

Then I played MM and Healer in it. PWNS! I've done that mission 4-5 times as MM or healer now.

Arborstone and Boreas Seabed are before Maatu Keep, and those are fun, and not in the city.

I didn't think playing from Kaineng Center to Maatu Keep was bad for a Tyrian character, because you can just do the primary quests and missions. Doesn't take that long.

It gets much more tedious for a Canthan-born character, because you really need to grind through all of the silly repetative quests in Wejuun Bazzar and Bukdek Byway to get from 15th level to 20th.

Me too. I was starting to think I was the only one.

I personally think the whole Faction is boring. I prefer going back to GWP and repeating some of the quest there, its more fun then Faction.

Seems that everyone feels the same way as i do about the first 50% of factions, boooooring, i cant stand that crap, on my 5th time around and i have to do it in small parts as i get sick of it very fast.
Didn't anet do beta testing? surely they would be better of deleting half the game, its got no replay value at all.

you guys that hate the city missions need to read why you are doing them, I find them all cute.

Like getting "Salving Problems", you talk to everybody only to find that the last bottle was taken by a rich to "enhance his performace" for his wife that left him any way. Or "To High a Price" where you rescue a girl being held as collateral from a lone shark, you have 2 options: pay back the loan or kill the loan shark.

The quest are not mindlesss running arround, they actually tell a part of the city life story.

The quests are easier with a little planning, just do the whole zone at once. You can get a second healer from Napui Quarter which makes things a lot easier.

i personally love factions more than prophecies, in prophecies it was really how long it'd take to get to where u want to go not what mobs am i going to face, in factions its more of a challange and i love the path crossing that the mobs do now, means u gotta constantly watch out for mobs coming towards ur fight in prophecies it was just one mob to the next without any real trouble.

i think the problem is people got too used to the way it is in prophecies and now when ur presented with something that takes some brain power, u moan.

I'm playing a game. DOING the quest has to be fun, not reading about it. If I want a good read, I'll read a book.

But they have appsolutly nothing at all to do with the "story line", they are just there to make you think Factions is bigger than it really is. A couple of quest's like that is ok, if they would give you skill's as a reward for doing, fine. To much UPS/FedEx in city. After Matu you can atleast take diffrent way's each time you have to back track while in the city you have to take the exact same route or end up on a diffrent leavel.

Brain Power? where? when? are we talking about the same game?
The only thing that was hard was grinding for factions to continue with the story line(thank god you only need to do it on 1 toon) the rest was just a long run back and forth.

And the End Mission.
That one should be the hardest one to finish, as it is now you can get master on it with 7 henchis, lot's off Brain Power used in less than 2 min. lol

compared to prophecies u need to think alot more, my chars went through prophecies like a hot knife through butter. Obv. im not saying factions is hard, but its harder than prophecies.

I liked the jungle too, the desert annoyed me.
The city is, well, I dont like it much. I got my monk, ele and necro thru bits of it (my mesmer refuses to leave kaneng and has returned to tyria to get a bunch of titles instead).
My monk has gotten the farthest even though my lag is soooo bad sometimes I wonder if I am doing much (heal party a lot).
I was happy to see the green areas south of maatu keep and the arborstone mission was fun (and the spear one too)...but I was dreading returning to the city to do the next quests and missions (my lag seems worse there)........and have not progressed beyond that for now.
I have worked on the way of doing the bazaar quests with the am fah being nice, so all I need to do is run from point a to point b with no mobs of fighting in between....makes it much less mind numbing since its quicker. But I still dread trying to get a group for my non-monk characters (my guild is tiny).
So for now my mesmer and ritualist are hanging around tyria while my monk takes in the sites of cantha, my ele and necro are still wondering if they like cantha or not.........but they both want new armor so they are working thru it.

I am disappointed with factions, my monk is on mission 8 (I believe) and there are only 13 or so....which means he is more than half way and I am hoping that the next part is more fun. BUT it seems way tooo rushed for me (prophecies took me 4 months to get 1/2 way.....)......so I am feeling a bit let down. (and no I dont pvp....try it with 2-7second lag and see just how long you last, not to mention the multitudes of err 7 recently)