How will nightfall missions work?

Prophercies missions = Main and bonus's!

Factions missions = Timed!

Nightfall missons = ?

Does anyone know, or heard from word of mouth?

Maybe a return to the classic, or a combination or a completely new format for playing missions.

I don't think that there have been any (in)official statements about that yet, but we know that there will be puzzles in the missions; like the already announced ghost-steals-sculptures-thingie on the tutorial island... something that we haven't had before in GW. Maybe the bonus goal will be connected to those somehow - something like:
"Standard Reward - solved the necessary puzzles, completed the mission."
"Expert's Reward - solved 15/20 puzzles, completed the mission."
"Master's Reward - all puzzles solved, mission complete!"

Just some speculation. *laughs* It will be different anyway. But I'd like that.

"Standard Reward - Finished mission with >2 deaths"
"Expert's Reward - Finished mission with 1 death"
"Master's Reward - Finished mission with 0 deaths, under 5 minutes, while helping some retarded ghost go to his grave"

I like that idea....

..but I can see wammos hating it

No more being able to rush around in missions or going on killing sprees. The poor sods wil have to take it slow and think about their actions before hand

What's the point of Expert? I mean, really, either you're satisfied with just moving on, or you want Master's.

Please, Anet, drop the middle-ground. It's useless, and just annoying to get.

PS: Dont forget to double the reward of Master's.

its a mesuring point, no-one aims for it but it helps to show the way - If you want a 30cm peice of string you dont rub out the other points on a ruler

Well, if you're going for Masters, Expert is just another reward that they give you inbetween. Don't complain about rewards...

Wow, got a lot of response from that!

Yes, of course, double rewards for Master's. I just said eliminate the Expert step, not eliminate the awards.

A measuring point?!? Mr. G, with the time system, it's just a way to say "Ahh, you were so close, but no cigar!" Screw that noise. Prophecy didn't have a "middle ground", and many people liked it more.

Hell, maybe we're thinking about this all wrong, and it will be like D&D Online, where you can select the level you want to enter the Mission at, and it will be harder on Masters than Standard! If that's the scenario, then maybe a middle ground makes sense.

But if it's conditional on "amount of traps completed" or "deaths" or whatever, I don't think anybody wants to end up second best... either you're going for the whole enchilada or not, no one goes "LFG for Expert!"

What I like about Expert is that you get the skill points and experience for completing it. If you miss masters by say 4 seconds, it would suck to only get the 1 skill point instead of 3.

I liked the idea of tiered rewards for mission completeness. What really sucked is the other element of the missions to get masters, namely the time and keeping an NPC alive. NPCs have pretty decent AI in this game, but not good enough yet to base your mission completness on them.

Some of the big problems:
1. They take too long. You waste time waiting for Togo/Mehnlo to catch up to just the right point on the map to activate a cutscene. Wasted time.
2. They get stuck. Danika sitting there healing all the minions around her instead of using her skill to open the door. Togo getting stuck on a chest.
3. Sometimes they go stupid. You can't do vizunah with partially matched humans and henchies on the local side. They henchies will always try to run up to the foreign group abandoning their team. Foreign henchies will often not stay to fight and run past the mobs to the local group leaving the human with mehnlo alone.
4. Healers are still pretty dumb. Let's give them rebirth, but still have them run up to the body and stand on it to use it. Let's have them stand around twiddling their thumbs while the whole party is healthy but one person who is precariously close to death and within healing range.

Part of the challenge of PvE is learning to control the environment. These henchies intoduce an element outside the general control of the user, especially when they go stupid. I like the henchies, but the bugs in them can be very frustrating when trying to get masters.

I would like to see the mission/bonus situation be more along the lines of prophecies and less like factions. But all that is already decided, we'll find out soon enough how it will all work.

It actually benefits you to have a middle ground.

You will achieve more skill points if you go from 1st rank to 2nd rank to 3rd, instead of jumping to the last rank.

Im sure your aware that in cantha you can only achieve more skills points and experience and gold if you achieve a rank higher then that which you already have.

So if you only had two rankings in a mission, then you would get less reward.

But I do agree that it works a mile-stone. Atleast you can say youve gone past the 1st rank and KNOW your close to the 3rd. It gives you more insentive to keep trying.

Tyria only has 2 rankings because it uses a main and bonus mission. Their not timed so you obviously couldnt have a 3rd rank, not unless you added a 3rd objective. Which is just stupid.

And you already have missions or challenges in cantha which are of varied hardness. Compare the normal missions to the deep. So you CAN choose to play hard or easy missions. Obviously only once you reach that location.

Plus if you gave people the choice to play a mission as EASY or HARD, you would have lvl10s running through the entire game on the easy setting. The idea of the game is that we all face the challenges and missions at the same level or hardness so it isnt unfair.

And im really not understanding why you dislike the idea of having a middle ground reward for a mission?

Would you rather be ranked lowest on a mission as apose to midway?

Atleast midway lets you know you can achieve better. I would feel a bit cheated if they only had 2 rankings for a mission. It wouldnt feel like I was being challenged to anything, or asked to achieve anything hard.

I think Anet did that on purpose. Made NPCs who take long periods of time to move around or have long acts to perform before they can move.

All the missions can be done at master because ive got protector on my ele for them. Yeah the NPCs can make it hard and cut it close, but it can be done.

The Leipzig Demo displayed a screen at the end which was exactly like Factions. A timed counter and two swords crossed in front of a shield. If that is any indication, then the same system as in Factions will be employed in Nightfall.

Imho, doing an eight player mission with a five man team would be a good indication of skill, as it shows that you really created a build and went up against some serious odds. With timelimits, like now, all you do is maximize the damage output, throw in the minimum of required healing and then charge into battle. I like the puzzle idea too, anything decelerating missions is good. too many rushers out there already. too many pointlessly failed mission because of them.

Time limit missions are little bit so-so. I personally like to play GW to relax and think my way through missions, not to rush under pressure against clock (of course in the end no mission was Too strict with time but still).

Hopefully some of the missions in Nightfall will have primary/secondary/tertiary goal type of design.

the #1 reason why I don't want time trial factoring masters level play ever again. If you haven't guessed: yes I PuG.

I've never been keen on puzzle games. But I got "bonus" style for GWP. Those who like puzzle games should get a puzzle style bonus--/sigh, I guess--in Nightfall or CH4.

Don't get me wrong; I want "Kind of a big deal" so I'll be doing whatever masters requires

Wait, why would that be stupid? If you're saying it's good to have midpoint for timed missions, why wouldn't it be good for rewards based on "bonuses."

Both are conditional rewards.

And you're with an Alliance that has access. You left that part out. So, right now, no I don't have access to "Elite" missions. But that's not the point, anyway.

The point is, some people think the regular storyline missions are too easy, and some think it's too hard. Rather than try to appeal to both camps (impossible), why not give people the choice of how hard the mission will be before they start?

That way people who just want to play the game. and aren't concerned with "Masters" or "Expert", can just say "LFG for Standard Mish" and get in and out relatively easily. People who want more of a challenge, more rewards (and Titles), and go the Master route. In this case, a middle ground makes sense as well, for those who want a bit more challenge and reward, but are either not ready or willing to try for Masters.

I never said it's unfair. It's all about giving people choices. As for level 10s running around looking for easy missions, who cares? Why not offer different ways to level up than doing quests? If you don't want them in your group, don't join them! In any case, they can't be level 10 forever....

Just my opinion. To me, because I'm going for Master's anyway, it's a complete waste. I don't need extra skill points or XP, I have plenty already.

But, I can see that others want it, so it's no biggie.


??? Masters would still exist, with Expert reward + Master reward.

If anything, it'd be more of a challenge: You're either Standard or Master (I can understand why some don't like the idea).

I just see Expert as waste of time, but again, that's only my point of view because I'm going for Masters (which will net me the "Expert" bonus anyway).

Seriously.

Red Engine Timetrial missions.

Nope!

Cant say I am. Ive never been a member of a guild who has access to the deep.

Ive only ever got there with a taxi or during that elite weekend.

I dont personally like the deep or its alernative.

Canthan missions are all about hack and slash and I prefere a bit of challenge.

Two tier system would be best

1. Complete mission/bonus no time limit
2. Complete mission/bonus with time limit

hope they dont do the "death" thing, cause for masters you need much monks then ==>2 or 3 at least<=== and i'm afraid some noobs ( or people who wanne make mony) will ask mony to play monk in the team.

Standard reward: complete mission with henchies
Expert reward: complete mission with guildies
Master reward: complete mission with a PUG

That's the order of difficulty in my exerience anyhow.

anything but just not timed or number of deaths !

/edit: i like the idea of puzzles in missions for Nightfall

Timed mission with Bonus.

I like the timed with bonus idea, how about an additonal bonus by clearing the entire mission? An "Overkill" or some kind of slaughter bonus for making the mission clear of all possible foes.

Heh, I was thinking of like different difficulties like...you have 3 separate areas, you only need to complete the 1st area to progress with the story, if you go into the 2nd area...the pve difficulty increases and if you make it past, you get like...a 2nd part of the shield or whatever =P and in the 3rd area, the pve difficulty just skyrockets and well yeah ._.

Makes it so more people will stay in missions so they can get that 3rd area no? =P (who really does missions for the fun of it anyway? Seen many people waiting at nolani? LFG For fun!).

Double reward those who do Bonus too.

Example.

Master Reward = 1500 exp, 500 gold.
Expert Reward = 750 exp, 250 gold.
Standard Reward = 500 exp, 100 gold.

Now if party finish mission with bonus. They get double gold and exp reward.

Seems like DDO's 3 levels of difficulty mission thing, Normal, Hard, & Elite.
It's done right at the same location where the mission starts and the enemies have much more health and hit even harder!

Personally I liked Bonus over Time Trial. I never like to be rushed. So hopefully nightfall will have an objective based mission setup.

May be missions in nightfall will still be timed but now it will be more on team cooperation. Not about killing the fastest but combined with puzzle solving like a player needs to do something in order for the other group to survive. Much more like traps in the elite missions where a player needs to stay behind a trap room to avoid pop-ups trigger but now he needs to solve a puzzle or something like that or like missions in THK where you need to split. It will be very challenging

Wy do you split up your group for THK?

Ive never had to do that!

I hated the timed missions in factions, and I'm just happy that they are not likely to be in Nightfall as well.

Really timed missions are really just applying PvP'ish logic to PvE, it makes nose sense to rush PvE since pvE isn't competetive.

http://pc.gamedaily.com/game/preview/?gameid=5404

Does it seem likely they'd time us for over an hour? Personally i dont think so. Well I'm hoping for a little variety in my bonus.

Timed missions did nothing except incourage hack and slash attitudes.

It made warriors even worse then they were already. It gave them insentive and reason to be arrogant @!£"@ and agro everything in sight.

In a way its good because you have factions to entertain the agro wanting warriors while you have Prophercies to entertain the more intelligent of us.

But its bad when you get factions players coming to tyria and playing like they would in cantha.

Rushing missions because they think they have to.

If Anet wants to get it right, they need to learn from the past and make a compromise.

A bit more hack and slash, but also more thinking about it.

Or have some missions timed and have some be more puzzle like.

The problem with the timed missions is it encouraged people to be stupid. I was in a group of guildies and henchies, and we got a Canthan group that was after masters. The entire mission they kept saying "How long do we have" and some guy kept saying "Five minutes, two minutes (they said two minutes before the final mass battle even begain)" etc, etc, etc. We ended up getting Experts, we were over by one minute and fifty seconds. I calculated that is the exact amount of time it takes for people to type "How long do we have left" three thousand times.

Also the warriors were running right past the mobs, leaving the MMs to clean up the path so that Mhenlo and Togo could get there unscathed, slowing us down even further because they wanted to rush ahead in a vain and useless attempt to speed the mission along.

Funny thing is, two days later I did the mission with one guildie and myself, we got Experts, we were thirty seconds over time for masters.

glad there will be "Heroes" to go with the new "puzzles" to keep the multiplayer pve facet of the game as singleplayer (solo) as possible. makes sense in a 'mmo'.

if i wanted a solo puzzle dungeon-thumping rpg, let me tell you, there are MANY and they are FAR better as they are not MMOs in disguise, or in disguise as MMOs, either way x_x.