ANet: Get rid of the "locked door" concept in Nightfall

The locked gates really hurt the exploration side of Factions for me as well. In a act of boredom I deleted my assassin and made yet another ranger. I got all the way to VSquare forgot it wasn't henchable without a monk; failed it... remembered why I hated it; began wandering around and dead ended everywhere. I've done all the quests (again...) and ended up heading back to Tyria where I could enjoy myself.
See, since henchies are so dumb and PuGs have become the nightmares that nightmares have when they dream of games like WoW; and most of my guildies find Factions a cespool of boredom; I have little to do in the game but explore, farm or stand around and watch trade spam in all chat if I try to play in Factions. Since exploration is dead thanks to the gates and farming is like watching paint dry I am left with standing around watching trade spam and seeing fools pay 100+xEctos for something or play in Tyria. The alternate RL option is to go outside and be sucked dry by mosquitoes...
In sum, the locked gates have aided in the halt of fun in Cantha for me; though I've taken 6 total characters through to Shiro (one deleted for the new ranger).

A solution to the arguments above: Make it so merchants further into the game do not speak/sell/buy from you till all previous missions are complete. Make it so a mission does not activate or allow access untill you have completed all previous ones. - This allows exploration while continues the need for story movement.
If the reason for locked gates was because Cantha was too small; well, that's something Anet needs to address and not something the player base should suffer for.

/signed

I don't want to grind my way through with every character. Even if there is a reward at the end for completing the game, the reward itself does not make up for the time we did not want to waste to go through the game multiple times (especially the same way). IMO, the locked gates were just to make the game seem longer which it is not. In fact, someone should start a petition to get ANET to kill the "errand boy" quests that sends us back and forth ridiculously. I doubt having running/runners in the game takes back any fun in it. Compared to Factions, Prophecies was more or as equally enjoyable (IMO, definitely more).

I'd change my mind if ANET can actually come up with a grand story for once and make the quests non-linear.

We need to remember that ANet has to test different things out atleast once. Consider Factions a sort of test for new concepts. This way ANet knows what ones not to retry. Not forgetting that its the same dev team that did chapter one we have working on Nightfall. Personally your lack of faith in ANet isn't constructive at all. So stop complaining and do something useful apart from whinging.

Maybe some kind of compromise? Reduce the amount of locked doors but keep some of them. And make runnable places a nightmare for solo or dual runners. Moving speed reduction FTW!

so how is it runnable then ? Triple runner ftw? Actually dual assassin runners could do like anything if they used shadow form and a mesmer secondary

People have to fight for their shortcut. It would require some work but is still faster than following the storyline.

Shadow form protects only against attacks and spells. AoE, shadow stepping and touch skills still work. Shadow step + chilblains would be a nice suprise, signet skills or lots of traps on the way.

/signed

I've brought 4 characters through factios now, and have another 4 waiting.

It's getting really annoying, to play the same stupid mission for 6 times...

After completing the factions campaign with one character, alle doors in kaineng, the echovald forest an the jade sea should be opend except for the gate to raisu palace, for this gate you should hav e to complete the unwaking waters mission.

If we don't "whing" (I like to call it "voicing our opinion"), how would ANET know if we like some of the things they do or not?

sry, server is very slow today

/Signed

I hate closed doors just because I want to PLAY!

Lord knows I've said this a million times before... How about:

On your first character everything is locked out. No runs, just a bunch of closed off portals.
On your other characters you can make your way to any place any of your other characters have previously been to or unlocked.

ooh ooh how about you can only have one character because the point of all the other characters would be nil because they can beat the game in one second because they don't have to anything, oh and how about after we beat the game we get the uber leetzors power that let's us make the game how we want it because dev's suxxorz bad.
/endsarcasm
and shin, there is voicing your opinion then there is saying something 500 times and not even giving an idea of how to umm FIX IT. Whining= "I don't like this anet suxxorz" voicing an opinion/constructive criticism= "Idon't like this, here is my idea for fixing it."

also, whining can also be wanting something to be changed when it can't be changed or when it would destroy the purpose of something. taking the gates would make the game way to easy, taking away the challenge. challenge=what a game is for..

Zap/remove the gates after your first character unlocks them. It still screws over first-time explorers but at least I dont have to do Napuhi quarter over and over and over just to be able to get out of the city. If level 1 people at Ember Light really bother you - then dont invite them. Go with your guild or henchies or friends. theres plenty of level 20's that dont know how to play the game either (powerleveling anyone?).

One of the really nice things about propecies was there was only 2 missions you had to do to get areas, and 5 to be a full character.

Wow, big exaggeration in some of your words. 500 times? Whoo. Challenge? In GW's PvE in its current state? Uh, sure... I'll buy that. I'd like to clarify that voicing an opinion and suggesting an idea are two different things. Is there something wrong with voicing an opinion on an element in the game and not giving an idea to fix it? No. It just would show that we are not content with it and if the majority of people share that discontentment, maybe it would be enough to drive a change in some of the way things work in the game.

You're just putting my words out of context. I did not mention anything about how "Anet suxx0rz" or whatever negative l33t speak you threw in nor did I show any disapproval of Anet or its dev teams. I only showed disapproval on certain elements of the game and how Anet runs it. That is also what most of the other players are doing in this thread. Chill, man.

Wrong. Unless you mean you don't even bring a monk hench.

@OP.. /signed

I'm on my fourth character now..its painful to have to do these damn missions again. I'm sure by Nightfall solo running will be impossible anyway.

No I had a monk henchie, but they never seem to heal Togo or Mhenlo for me. Thus they drop dead... apparently it's just me then. But it is cause to want to skip that mission completely and not being able to is further cause to desire removing the locked gates; so I can at least keep exploring and "doing something" rather than sit in town like a fool spamming "lfg" or "Glf"... too me, that's not fun... PuGs are not fun either though... so lately the whole game is going down hill... /sigh

Ill agree that exploring is great fun sometimes..definately a change of pace from other PvE activities. And I've done VizSquare 3 times already, so Im with you on not wanting to do it again.

Locked doors kept you playing, running to places kept your progress in the game go faster. Either way, depends on the player.

/signed

I don't like it when I'm told I can't go somewhere just because I have not completed a quest. Especially when I have done it before. I can understand how they had to have the locked gate at Raisu since it was so close to the begining of the game. But when I have to wait for Togo to go through killing all the lvl1 mobs around him just to get into minister chos estate or when I can't continue exploration just because I haven't completed a mission it starts to get quite bothersome. :[

/signed

boo locked gates!