Post and Discuss your First Impressions of Nightfall here! [Merged]

I love those two faced arguments.
If someone states that darker skin tones appeal more to him/her, no one is going to complain or say anything.
If someone states that lighter skin tones appeal more to him/her, he/she is a racist.

To me, this logic is utterly flawed. It's a stupid world we're living in, so fricking loaded with shame and guilt that some folks even think it is necessary to find and claim it disturbing that many people chose a white skin for their character.

Let everyone choose for himself and don't interpret racism into everything.

First of all, im new to boards so hi (I know not place to say but rude not to befor posting, please dont shout at me :P)

Anyways, from reading through a few posts, little drunk to read all. I first of all think NF is a good expansion from what ive seen so far. Yes everyone is going to want to try out the new characters, but why not. If you cant get a group wuthout just Ps and Ds use hench/heros. As for the micro management of the heros, I have found, give them 1-2 enchantments to maintain on you, select yourself and select that skill for them. This way you can have balthisars on you w/o energy degen (i tryed a lot more but you all get idea)

As for looks, I work in graphical design and am going to uni next year all going well to study graphical design for com games and im impressed & the detail level is still extreme.

As for character faces and armors, i dont play GW for the look of the character, more for the game play (hence why I hate WoW, too much grinding) but there is more to be desired.

One thing I havent noticed which I was hoping for is a way to save builds. I hope its either im too drunk to find or its not available to release, otherwise I wont be happy.

For now im just going to curl up in a ball with my beer a happy man with the joy of such a great addition to GW

Well I did and it works pretty good....better then expected actually. althoough I really need to mess around with the skills to tune them a bit.

Further some dislikes before the lieks
-drop rate of mission items has gone so far down I am stuck now because I can not get the drops so gave up for today.....

-material shortage.....tanned hides were sold out at trader in under an hour I think ......

-balance issue really.......-Giving you Heros Necro secondairy skills and decking them out with minions of many sorts gives you a pretty impressive army that can clear about anything .......BUT on the other hand for the event it is pretty ok

-bit unclear what quests to follow.....you can do quests almost in a random order so the on minute you are fighting equal level monsters and the next double you level monsters.....kinda hard to move on.

Ok other then that nothing but praise , ok the odd bug but hey it is a beta preview event nothing else then expectable. Although the 1000+Dervishes running around is kinda funny to see
After the first major bugs got quuickly resolved gameplay is pretty solid except for the above mentioned drop rates, material shortage and quest line. I haven't come across any locked gates so far and about 80% of the island explored....As for the timed missions well I don't care to much makes it a challenge and you can always go back and redo it, if I remember correct there will be timesd and non timed missions in Nightfall so not to worried about it either.

The control and "micromanagment" of the hero's is highly overraded I think you pretty much set them up once and leave it at that rarely you will have to change anything and to be honest I don't use the control functions alot either as there is little benefit from it.

Ok I guess that covers it

I will say this, it’s technically not over-quests (the fact of so many quests) thats bringing people down, it’s just that one main promotion quest to get anywhere else in the game. I think that’s what getting people to feel like Nightfall is a bit dragging. If they fixed that maybe it would not be so bad? Anyways that’s my only complaint, I see so far.

2 things came to my attention.

The timed mission: what time do you need to get to have a beter reward as standard, 3:20 isn't good enough. (might not be implemented yet of course)

heroes: we get the 2 attribute quest and thus 30 points, but the heros don't seem to get those points, will they gain them on lvl 20 or will they stay with only 170 attribute points?

Overal I liked it very much, only the absense of skill quest is disturbing,
it really takes replayabillity out of the game knowing you'll have to spend a fortune on skills every time you shoose to start a new character.

Well played it a few more hours and I think it already feels like it might bigger than Factions, and lots of nice open-ish areas.

May as well rename it to Hench Wars if things stay as they are from this preview though - at least in Europe, virtually everyone was in a hench/hero team. I even hopped around outposts/districts asking "is anyone here not in a henchie team?" and the number of people who responded even were incredibly small. I don't see what's the point of calling it a multiplayer game if everyone uses bots... hope it doesn't continue like this into the game proper.

i can successfulyl play the monk hero, Koss, and my devrish while still staying alive, its tough but fun

Henchmen already make better teammates than most pick up group players, and now with Heroes I can customise to exactly work with my build (rather than taking god knows what from a pickup group), I don't see any reason to bother trying to find the good players out of all the crappy ones, when doing PvE.

I'm glad you can't bring heroes into PvP though (well except for that new 'me + my bots vs you + your bots' PvP arena).

My second go round has this I can add. The minimum micro management on a hero is to equip them some weapons, pick their skills, and set their type "Aggressive etc..." then treat them like a henchie if you don't want to bother with their Flags or skill priorities.

Like:
` The "U" map shows collectors and other things like "Area 1" in the training area (forgot it's name) when outside of a city
` Still like my buddy Koss

Dislike:
` Koss as a monk secondary with Purge Condition would not leave a wonded villager alone in the training area even though I set his Flag. I had to set it far away before he would leave the guy alone, even as "Passive". I really don't like that I can't stop what he is doing, or at least I don't know how. Pressing ESC cancels your skill but there isn't an easy way to do that for heroes as far as I can tell.
` Said I won't be able to change secondary for a while when I picked one. How am I supposed to unlock skills for me AND my heroes with quests that offer little cash. Dissapointed that this wasn't changed from the previous games.

Still havin a blast. Talking to the guys by the Res shrines really helps your XP and points.

I am loving the heroes system. (so much that regular hench will be a big letdown if heroes can't go to other chapters) I made Koss into a w/mo and stuck live vicariously on him and he uses it better than most w/mo players. He actually casts it on whoever is getting hit while still managing to kill stuff. I'm playing a Paragon and I have a low adrenaline cost bleed skill so I took sever off of Koss and gave him gash and now we work together really well. I see lot's of potential for playing with 3 heroes skill sets. I wonder if they will be able to ascend and gain access to god realms.

On another note I am not thrilled with the faces. They all look angry or snide. The Paragon dance is the worst thing I've ever seen. I tried it briefly and couldn't stand it. When I stopped, 3 people around me laughed at me. lol.

Well I guess time will tell if it was a smart move or not; though so far it's played out pretty much as I predicted it would even before any beta event appeared i.e. causing a meltdown in teamplay.

PvE (and PUGs) is where a lot of people will start, especially casual players (which is supposedly a significant focus this time round)

If they are taught right from the start to just use bots all the time - well, personally, I think that's not a good thing for the games future. Isn't that what single player offline games are for? Multiplayer should not be a pseudo single player experience where everyone is in an outpost but then goes off with a team of AI bots. How good/bad peoples' perception of each other is beside the point in that context.

Oh well, time to play the old "wait and see" game as it's new right now and people will be wanting to try out the new classes and stuff. If several months down the line large chunks of the population are just playing with bots, I think that's not a good sign at all (look how poorly Factions did in terms of general public teamplay, at least in the PvE side of things...)

First Impressions :

The Egyptian theme is brilliant, Love it very much.


Heroes. Game defining, imo. Finally people without large active guilds, or who play at strange times can actually build teams of NPCs, and control them. This is an awsome feature that can only benefit Guild Wars in the longer term.

For those who dont like them, you dont have to use them. It is that simple.


So far I have been waiting 6 hours for plains of Jarin to DL, and it finally has, so Ill come back with more once I have played more.


So far, apart from the obvious beta, its looking far superior as an actual game than factions ever did.

I think plenty of people will still play with other people. But why should they be forced to? Why can't someone play the game solo and just deal with the online economy aspect if that's what they want to do. Or 2 friends can each take 3 heroes and do something amazing with them. More options is a good thing.

Anet need to make the newb area more interesting..dont think I could drag myself through that more then once.

Well nobody's suggesting forcing - bots were there in Prophecies but most people teamed up with others, even from the starter area (res signet quest anyone?) Bots were there in Factions but due to the structure (i.e. players being encouraged from the training area onwards to grab a bot) and several other reasons, less people were teaming up. In fact less people seemed to be around period. Now so far Nightfall has continued that trend and made it worse. Like I observed, the number of people not in bot teams apparently so far is in a minority.

I'd be really interested if this is what Anet had in mind. As I said it's early days and I'll give leeway because many people are trying out the new professions etc so that might be one reason. We'll see how it pans out in some months from now I'll leave it at that and come back to this post in a few months (assuming am still playing lol)

I wouldn't worry too much, people just wanted to try out the new hero system that is all.

Personaly I am liking what I see so far, Dervish I particulary like. Won't play too much however, I would rather wait until retail.

I like it so far. I think the good thing, although I haven't hit the mainland yet, is that it's ancillary and not required from the presence and number of henchman. I also like decking them out in skills and gear to best fit each situation. Sure, I'm not going to be dropping 60k armor on them, but I like it. It's like having advanced pets.

I think the skills work well if it's like Cantha where you'll be level 20 by the time you get to the mainland and not be as overwhelmed like it seemed most people were in Factions.

Eh, I'm not enjoying the preview weekend only because I want to start playing it for real instead of these temp characters. One month to go.

I got even further to the 3rd mission (I think). It gets better and better and really grows on you. Good job Anet. I was so happy when the 2nd mission had a proper bonus.

to many "jedi", ok sorry dervish, they were EVERYWERE, crawling up the walls, down the drains, dancing, running, walking,.. ok anyway back to serious I started out with a ranger ^^ was about the only one in oh 1000 dervishes and I loved it. However I didnt like the fact that nobody was partying up. Durring factions preview everybody was partying up because it was new and unexplored while in NF everybody has there own little buddie and why deal with pugs? It gets lonely with just your 70's loving warrior.


~warrning~ post was made without a brain in control sorry for the bad english and strange post~

Nobody was partying up because everyone was walking around with their hero(es) permanently in their party. Kinda sad, but eventually I did find a group. And when you do get a party sometimes you get the whose Koss is better arguments. "oh mine has this elite and that res etc". lol

I'm really enjoying it.

So far I've played for about 3 hours and I already like it better than Factions. I think that's a personal thing for just "Me"

Unlike many I've never been a big "Asian stuff" buff. I mean.. I like Ninja's and Samurai as much as the next guy, but it doesn't rule my world.

Yes I know a high percentage of PC gamers think god was born with chopsticks and never learned how to use a fork but for me... Factions didn't really trip my trigger.

I got into GW funny. One of my friends had GW P and GW F and kept talking about it. I was a normal RPGer, not even vedio game. Just table top with books and stuff. They kept on and kept on talking about GW and when I found out it didn't have the ongoing monthly fees like WoW I said "ooooooook. I'll try it"

I got factions first. It'd just come out when I finally gave in and well I thought the Ritualist on the box was hot. The learning curve was steep but about 3 weeks later I broke down and got GW:P

Now... when I had factions I didn't play tons because I couldn't really figure it out.

GW:P I jumped in with both feet and took off running. I loved it. I still like GW:P more than GW;F

Anyway back to night fall. Yeah I like it more than GW: F if for nothing else, it's new, it's fresh and it's not so damn clastrophobic.

Like most everyone I made one of the two new classes first. Dervish for me. I didn't really have a problem with the faces. I picked one, a nice long red hair, hair style, green robes and went off.

I'm a guild leader and pretty experienced player now with about 6 months of play under my belt but I played the tutorial anyway, just for giggles. It cracked me up that they up and murder you to show you the rez point again. I don't know why but that makes me laugh.

Playing a Dervish is fun. They hit slower than warriors... so they're not going to replace tanks, and their skills have an interesting way of meshing and building (( and breaking)) one another for things. It's more.... "A thinking man's Melee" Char. You have to sort of think to play it. While a warrior you can line up spikes and what not and just hit every fight 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, repeat.... I'm digging that.

One of my Guild mates made a nice Paragon, and.... *looks around and whispers* I don't think she's really figured out how to use it too well.... but still it's fun to play.

Heros: I like um. I won't be doing much other than tweeking their skills now and then and patting them on the head. I like the flag points and what not. Useful if you're in a pinch and what not. If not.. Leave um alone and they act like heniches. God why are people complaining? You don't HAVE to controll them. I went on about 5 quests and never opened their bars. No big deal. But if you WANT to.... the option is great. People have been begging for it sicne I got into the game. Now we have the OPTION. and I think it's great.

All in all I'm liking it.

I'm kicking back and about to make my second char. Looking though ALL the options makes me smile. Yeah we all wish there were some more faces, but meh. It's not that bad. Each and every class I found at least one I liked, male and female. I like the starting armor on most everyone except the Monks. Ugg... yuck.

As a side note.. has anyone really looked though the male Necro's faces?? There's one with a gouged out and burned eyesocket. lol that cracked me up.


To other's Critisisims, I offer warm heart felt suggestions.
1: If you don't like the hero's, simply don't add them to your party or use them. Noone's forcing you to (( out side an occasional mission, then just use them as henchies))
2: If you do like hero's but don't want to micromanage.. just add them to your party like a henchie and leave him alone. He does just as good on his own.
3: Yes....... everyone is trying out Dervish and paragon during the trial weekend. It's no surprise. No it's not going to stay that way. People will "try them out" get a feel if they like them or not and then go with what they like. My first char was an assassin when I first got factions, but I didn't "LIKE" it as much as others so I don't play it any more. These are brand new toys. People are going to play with them a bit to see if they like them.
4: About the colors..... Oh for christ sake. Make what ever you want to play. LEAVE EVERYONE ELSE ALONE. It's a computer game. If you wanna make your char white. Make um white. If you wanna make it coal black. Make it coal black. If you want to make it green (( I really do... I like green)) Well you have to wait on the green (( but I do wish all classes had the green hair option)).
Anyway, back to the black white thing. Ugg. Play what you like. Don't worry about others. NONE of us look like our chars on this game. I'm a 6'3" 250 white guy with brown hair and green eyes.

My main char in Guild wars is an amazonian white girl with red hair and dangely pony tails. lol

I play what I enjoy having run around the screen for hours at a time. Not a "True reprensentation of my own self"

You do realise that that 'skirt' is essentially the same thing that the warrior wears with his gladiator armor, right? Just a little frayed at the bottom.
But I suppose warriors aren't too feminine because they are bulked out ...

As for the hair; that's why they give you choices when you create a character.

well so far this preview hasnt convinced me to get nightfall. making new characters looks like it will be a tiresome chore after doing it with one or 2 characters already. why do you need to form groups in the pre isle? part of prophecies charm was you could explore alone and get used to the game in pre, now you are fighting levels much higher than yourself for very little xp and farming for stupid points so you can progress. also not good to see the enforced pvp mission again.
maybe anet fluked it with prophecies cos it seems like they just cant recreate that old gw magic.

it actually kinda fell short in my opinion...in every aspect...i particulary did not like the "hero" thing...not only are they worthless, but they look ugly compared to the henchies...so i always use henchies over them, unless the game forces you to use them...i didnt care too much for Dervish/Paragon after playing them either...

all in all, all the hype was a bit much and unnecessary...it was really a big disappointment...for me anyways.

I am not crazy about the P or the D but the heroes are AWESOME!!! I would pay money to have that feature in Prophecies. I don't think any game can equal the graphics in Proh for me.. I loved pre searing so much and also the shiverpeaks, but I don't think any game can touch this hero option. They did a fantastic job with that and I am grateful for the heroes.

I'm happy with the new enviorment and classes. The hero's aren't as good as a real person but if they can go to other chapters then they could help out when you're questing in an old chapter that's not played as often. Over all, I'd give it an A-.

well i think the heroes are a class idea... and how many people begged for it.. and how many people said they would need to micro-manage.. and now how many people moan... no pleasing some aye

I'm damn sure i've mapped EVERYTHING that is possible and I'm blown away by the level of detail and attention thats gone into some of the vista's, set pieces and scenary.

All in all it feels very atmospheric and I can't wait for release.

- Do not like the farming-like features (the one where you get promotion points and double xp for filling x-types creeps). Reminded me of those free Korean MMOs... I'm not sure how compulsory or voluntary is this, since they are linked to promotion points and the NPC mentioned that promotion points are required to advance at certain points.

- Love the heroes feature. Would also love the ability to prioritize more than 1 skill to use at the next possible moment (so that they can pull off combos the way I want them), though I guess that would be too much micromanaging.

- Suggestion: There should be some indication that units are under the effects of shouts, chants and echoes. Especially for echoes, since they reapply. Hard for me to play paragon and not knowing whether an echo applied on a team mate is ending/ has ended. Weapon spells will show a small icon on the health bar, echoes should have them too.

- More faces and hairstyles... Some of the available faces for paragons and dervishes are so fugly that only their mothers could love them. That means we are more likely to see our doubles running at us now. Miss the prophecies days when I could spend an hours or more permutating through all the available choices!

I for one absolutely adore the whole thing. It has the YEY factor all over again. Endless skies, buildings in background, makes you wonder where youre heading.

Felt a bit like playing Prophesies for the first time. Im so sold. Hero aspect with micro managing is pretty cool, also cool that its optional. It looks awesome (my necro armor too, yum), runs like a charm and is what i wanted it to be: not Factions, lol.

Thnx anet, CE shall be mine...so you shuld thank me back...actually.

off to dervish land.

I always feel this way as i'm playing preview events as if i'm a little rushed and feeling as im doing quests theres something missing. The preview opinions arn't really what I think determins how I like nightfall. So even though I feels as if nightfall was rushed i think it will be different when i actually play the original version just as it happened with factions.

Archon, i feel the same..a bit. But the feel of the creatures, the artwork, the environments...id be more than happy to take the gamble and preorder it. Its like
trying out diet coke and saying: i like it...wonder what real coke (the beverage) is like.

I just wanted to say that I have been very impressed with Nightfall so far. Lots of improvements, some little, but very very useful. Overall, I think this is a big step up from Factions and Prophecies. I also liked the music very much. Everything feels more straightforward.

Good job ANet! I'm very much looking forward to playing the full version when it comes out

Does anyone know if missions are still timed and whether bonuses are still time-based? If they are, that'd be my only gripe.

Well I completed the preview with Dervish and decided to just give Paragon a quick test of a few quests and such to see how they stand up to things.

Here is my breakdown:

The hero system is a bit like Diablo 2's henchmen system where you can micromanage them as well, its cool but I believe this will also make people not party as much (which I have seen in the PE) Everyone had hench and heroes and didnt want to quest together.

The scenery and outposts are great, I love the new featured battle music when you encounter a good fight with some enemies. I think it will turn out to be better rated than Factions but Prophecies still is a classic and I must say that the original campaign is still my favorite thus far.

The dervish & paragon both have some 'fruity' aspects if you will.. Paragon look a bit too feminine and the dervish male dance is just.. eh.. (not too important though) I think they need to add more faces and hairstyles otherwise everyone will look the same. I noticed 95% of the dervish males used the same face with the goatee. On the subject of faces, I do like how cinematics now have movement in the mouth which gives it a realistic feel.

Overall the event is good, rather quick to finish but it is just a preview.. I was hoping we'd be able to lay eyes on the mainland but I will now just hold off on playing anymore preview until the release.

Well thats all I have for now, I keep thinking I'm forgetting some stuff but so far these are the major things I see to post. Thanks

As I said in my post after now reading yours, the hero system has already been used before in Diablo 2. This is like an amped up version of the henchmen from D2. Only difference in GW is that you can add spells, you dont have to buy them and if they die you dont have to buy to res them.

It feel like all those times being a monk, (stressful and full of “lets berserk because the monk will keep us immortal no matter what” crud) finally paid off. All those skills I unlocked go straight to this impressive henchie monk.

*claps* I <3 nightfall AWESOME job anet

First mission is timed based, second has a bonus to it.

I agree, NF is looking very good. The customizable hench are great. The art looks good. Voice acting is better. Interesting/significant new skills. And lots of other good things. Looking like a 9/10 or even 10/10 so far to me.

I started it up and realised it felt nothing like factions. I got that feeling I had back when I played prophecies, 16 months ago. I actually enjoyed doing that next quest...exploring that next area. The creaters of Prophecies seriously overdid themselves this time. I find it amazing. The heroes...Ill get used to. They have caused me no problems to date and hey...if I die, I still have a character to control.

I would also like to point out that I played for 8 hours today (Yes, I know). That was the first time I had played in a 1.5hour+ sitting since I beat prophecies. That, itself, says a lot about Nightfall. The storyline, or what I have seen of it so far, seems deep, well thought out, and interesting. It actually made me want to see what was next.

All in all, I preordered Nightfall online 2 hours into playing the Preview. This was great. And...the fact that this is the actual game just helps in me liking it.

As for the fact that there is no storage here...grrr.....I know its for obvious reasons but I had a black dye drop and got a black dye as the reward for that quest you get from the dye trader. That's two black dyes that are going down the drain. My friend also got a superior vigor rune. Bye bye to that. Ah well.

Nightfall seems great. It adds so much more to GW than Factions did. Yes, Factions added a lot of PvP, but the only PvP I like (LOVE) is GvG. I don't find the rest very interesting, apart from HA, but I get tired of all the "R6 IWAY JOIN NO N00BZ". And here is me going off-track again.

Nightfall Owns. Buy it. :-)

absolutely loving it. slow paced so i can really get into it. plus the heroes are really fun. i love the idea of giving my level 5 heroes elites and having control of thier equipment and attributes. and with the flag system no more stupid hench aggro!!!

i maybe played 3 hours and im done for the pve preview. seems like a waste of time since they all get deleted. but from this preview nightfall seems like the great comeback of gw.