Why I like Nightfall more than GWP and GWF.

Im probably going to get flamed, but I wanted to speak my mind of what I totally dig about Nightfall. I won't go into the main new features but just the little subtle differences, that just help make the experience better.


1 - Level layout. Less invisible wall and more free terrain, gives the sense that there are less restrictions. Factions was a step in the right direction, but NF takes it further with giant open planes as far as the eye can see. Very nice.

2 - Setting. Asian and European fantasy has been done to death. I can't belive what a breath of fresh air this north african setting is. It's so refreshing. I havent said that about an RPG for almost a decade! The new enemies are great too - The termites and Corsairs are fun to fight. I enjoy the structures and armor aswell.


3 - Much easier to get into. GWP and GWF where a mess to get into. How many people did ArenaNet lose on that account? Now it's easy - Even the beginner quests give you the materials needed to craft new armor. This means that pretty much right of the bat you are getting new stuff for your character which is a real motivation quicker. Many people dislike the hole salavage thing and don't understand why they just can't loot the armor of fallen corpses. They don't understand or like why it needed to go out of your way to trade and find and grind certain things to get a certain piece of armor. This makes it much easier for them. At least here in the beginning.

4 - Better and more consistent loot. In 15 minutes in planes of Jahiri(spelling?) I got silver dye, istani key, tons of weapons, gold from almost all foes and so on - This is great. This is awesome. I understand that I am also biased because of the novelty of seeing all these new items, but seriously - More and more and more varied and consistent loot makes the game so much more fun. I hope Nightfall will be like this throughout the entire game.

5 - Quests are much better than in the previous two chapters. Suddenly I think im reading the quests again. Some of the dialouge is actually pretty witty and funny. I like the dude who is self proclaimed the best chef in the world, or the worried mother which son decides he want to be a Corsair because they speak funny. But quests are also easier, and simple - Straight to get into and out of. Exactly what you want them to be. The missions are there to tell the story and get you pulled in - Quests are the fast little excuses, but unlike the other two chapters quests which felt really really repetitive and lame, had horrible dialouge and the same repeated NPC throughout entire sections of the games, have been replaced by much more amusing quests, while fast and easy, makes you feel that you are accomplishing something. Making some easy money - Quickly and instantly getting you to new places - New NPCs - More easy to get loot.
I also like how the game tries to tie into with the two chapters - The little short story with the black Moa bird was a nice touch I think.

6 - Voice Acting has been improved dramaticly(Koss FTW:-D ). It means so much... to the hole game I think.

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I think all these 5 reasons will help get skepticals into the game, but even myself as a veteran am enjoying the PvE side of things more than I have in the previous two chapters. The level progression is faster than GWP but slower than GWF. It seems just right.

I guess though... If I had to say something negative it would probably be about the new amount of customization features. I really think both the Deverish and Paragon could use alot more features, but also more haistyles for the other ones. I don't know why they removed the afro hair and Mr. T style hair for the warrior for example. Maybe it's time to add extra customization features like beard, pircings and eye color? Maybe in chapter 4, or later.

I mean it's not perfect or anything. But I feel that NF is such a big step forward from the other two games. If the rest of the game holds up to this quality, then im sold.

In fact I like how they are doing Nightfall so much, that I wish they would go back to GWP and GWF and try to introduce some of these new subtle changes. I can understand them if Heroes will never make it to does chapters, though it would be cool, but other parts would be great.

Thanks for a great event, ArenaNet. Probably the most fun time I have had with Guild Wars since the WPE in October 2004, before the game was released. It's been as fun as the first moment I stepped into Lions Arch for the first time, almost two years ago now.

Ya know, I hadn't noticed, but now that you mention it, hell yeah! That's one thing I loved about exploring areas in the Jade Sea and the Crystal Desert was their openness. I hate feeling cramped, especially in invisible barriers. Don't even get me started on Kaineng.

Agreed again. Though the Corsairs are pretty much just like the Crimson Skull from Shing Jea and the Bandits from Pre, just some human antagonists amidst all the weird monsters. The Egyptian setting is definately a wonderful change. Can't wait to see the other areas of Elona!

Pretty much agree, except for the Hero feature. I don't think it's explained early enough how to command Koss and what the flags mean. Though I think Factions had a pretty nice training area, was pretty impressed with that.

Didn't see any differences in loot for the 4 hours I played. Maybe you just got lucky? Consistent, I'll give it that, I think I got something for every profession (cept sin and rit) on a pretty regular basis... though I'm not sure how much different that is from the norm.

Too true. I'm loving these new quests! To be fair, some of the Factions ones were pretty good, you could tell whoever works on the quests was getting better, but they've perfected it in NF. A few were pretty standard go here, talk to this guy, protect this guy, kill so many of these things... but honestly, there's only so much you can do with quests in a game like this. I think it's pretty good for what it is.

Here, here! Better voice actors and cutscenes FTW!

Yeah I agree that the Corsair are just there as the "bad humans". Before we had bandits or the Fahn folks from GWF, but I like these cosairs. They got that arabian thing going on. Looks cool.

I thinck Prophecies , will always be the best , just because of the range of enviorments and stuff to do , i felt factions was boring , nightfall can be promosing , but please , no more gates =D

Well at least the new skills aren't exactly sucktastic like in Factions. I agree however that Prophecies just might have been the best because it didn't actively try to be totally unfair.

I agree with you on every point you made. The collectors edition of Nightfall will be mine come october 27th without a doubt. This preview may be the best gaming experience I've ever had.

The environments in phropicies hooked me to this game.... Factions gave me fast quick leveling lots of skills NOW!! Like most of the hardcore pve'rs and pvp'ers wanted... Some liked factions speed other didn't. Personaly I did...

But Nightfall... Simply AMAZING... My hat is off to all of the artists and programers on this one... Simply beautiful and breathtakeing. Feels like this could be a real place. The buildings the decor "feels" almost egyptian/aztec inspired and in a word the place looks sounds and "feels" ancient. I could not be more impressed. Only bad thing I can say is that to make things more real the grass needs to move in the breeze the moss needs to move with the breeze, sand needs to blow ect...(not a complaint!!!) Small touches like that and the real look would be perfect, and yeah I know probably laggy lol. These environments like prophicies make me want to explore every last inch for the hidden waterfall some artist stuck away in some out of the way spot or some other amazing view. I can't wait to find my favorite spot in Nightfall.


I have to agree the leveling of the characters seems "just about right" not to fast not to slow. The hero's amazing concept so much more than the build your own henchie everyone assumed they would be like. Only thing that would make them better to me would be to give them a bit of storage for different wepon and build combos. I don't know about everyone but my bags are already so full of wepons and armor for various bulds the last thing I need is more stuff to store. Heck even just one primary bag would be plenty.

Congrats Anet without even seeing the finished product yet I have no doubt you have another hit on your hands. Now the long wait till release.... Any chance of an early realease?.... lol

As a massive Factions fan, I'm quite impressed with the refinements to the introductory/tutorial phases of the game (which Factions already did exceptionally well).

I'm also quite impressed with the gameplay refinements. Factions was a huge improvement in terms of making the combat experience more interesting and dinamic, and Nightfall hasn't changed that. What they've done on top of that is to use honest-to-goodness good writers and stretch the engine to provide some respectable puzzle-based gameplay. Note that Factions had some of that as well, but it didn't translate into enjoyment because the writing wasn't up to scratch so we didn't care about the characters.

e.g. the Phoenix Wright style "tribunal"*. It could've come accross as arbitrary and tedious - and the mechanics could use a quick coat of polish - but because the writing was good the whole experience was enjoyable and I genuinely got into trying to figure out the system.

I still have some reservations about the game's development - the difficulty scaling and party composition with different levels of unlocks for heroes, for instance - but since this is a positive thread I'll leave by adding my overall approval and support instead.

*Though I seem to remember Neverwinter Nights doing something similar at one point.

Why? The new gates are pimp.... stargate ftw

The new gates are strange to say at least.

I like the layout of the towns. Jarin is sort of like a massive place, which has towns and outposts inside of it and all around it. It feels like a massive place. In GWP and GWF it was often a linear path - one way to one town. Here it's more unfied as you just find new stuff and quests as you go along.

Nighfall is amazing. I simply love it. Can't get my hands down!

Factions had the amount of quest XP right. You would always be about the right level by the time you reached the area you had to do next.

The story (what we've seen of it so far) is infinitely better than factions.

Agreed. The narration alone is better than GWP.

One point you forgot to add...

You can tell the Henchies/Heroes "Wait here till I set traps and pull some mobs", and they will stay there and let you set up. You pull, mobs come in hit all the traps, and the Henchie THEN come in.. omg.

Now, try this with A.D.D. Jr...

You: "Ok, Im gonna set some traps. You guys stay back some ok, so we dont get aggro."

NoobNec: "I wanna come up and see too..with ALL my minions."

NoobEle: "I want to come up and target some mobs too."

NoobMonk: "Back? why all the way back there? I have a customized staff.. I can do good dmg."

You: ...

Not to mention, gonna be a lot easier to kill off your Henchies when going for farming items too now. Just send him to a point past where you want to cross, they follow him, you go the other way. ^^

Anet did a pretty good job so far with this game it looks like. Oh, and a tip kill Paragons last. That Leader's Comfort is a great skill and it will be fairly spammable. But with less teammates, its gonna be useless. (at least for now)

/agree on all...this game is just amazing,i wasnt a big fan of Factions,it was way to fast to lvl and all, now with nightfalls its perfect.the cinematics, the voice acting just pwn everything from the other chapters imo. the mission OMG, they are amazing specialy the 2nd one with all the traps and the boss that change proffesion and transforms.Wen i was playing my friend that plays wow was with me, normaly he isnt a big fan of gw but wen he saw the graphics and all he told me that he will buy it...anyways i cant wait...

I have to say I definately already like Nightfall more than Factions and Prophecies, Because it met everything I was dreaming Nightfall would be like at night =p lolz

Anyways one thing I love about it is the leveling, such as in Prophecies you had one loong grind to get to lvl 20, and in factions it seemed like you could reach lvl 20 in about 6 hours (Which I did without even dying on my Survivor Char) Now this just seems perfect, you are right on cue with everything else you fight against to keep it actually challenging but not impossible.

One thing I'm going to leave open for some of you: Should you Heroes/Henchmen be able to zone the party now that you can command them where to move? This could be taken advantage of by controlling them with a running setup and having them run you through, is this good or bad? It could be a great aid for moving to certain areas if you need to.

There is nothing like an Original Prophecies will always be the best.

I agree with almost everything you said Lawnmower, very nice post, just one thing

"Many people dislike the hole salavage thing"

'Whole' not 'hole'

Petty I know but you did it twice so I thought I would correct you

No matter how much new stuff A.Net put in it will never be a new game, prophecies was the first, 90% of the things that make you go 'WOW' in GW happen in prophecies, they may have been improved since but it isn't the same. I have always found Factions got a bit of tough judgement due to people not realising this.

One and only reason: less locked gates.

Agreed on every point.

There was a quest Tutorial for that. You must have skipped a green exclamation point.

Agreed also on every point but still I feel I must repeat n times: what an amazing expansion. When they announced afrikan/egyptian based settings I had already a good feeling about this but now... Hat off.
Colours, monsters, cities and quests and the masters quests all is so finely setup you forget the small missing things here and there.
And this is only a preview event, compared to GWP BWE I... wow!
I can only cross my fingers and say that these funny quests promise also a good story line. Not a cheap one like the GWF.
I have a strong feeling that the 2 new classes need a few touches.

I was going to start a thread like this. As a mostly pvper, I actually played guild wars as a RPG this weekend. The pacing was great and the explorable areas were really fresh. The team finally used some of the game mechanics into an interesting story. Examples:

1)Instancing cooperative missions. Prophecies had huge areas of the map as "mission areas" which were totally unused except for the missions which were largely linear and boring. Factions put gates on mission areas, but let you in afterwards. Nightfall included at least missions in normal explorable areas with a unique set of missions NPCs and areas.

2)Instancing allows for puzzles, disguises and other plot driven sillyness which makes a story more interesting. Sinking ship to annoying ghosts that steal your stone tablet... that's the kind of thing that makes instancing great, but hasn't been exploited.

3)A real dungeon! GW has put teaser caves in all of the noob areas (catacombs in pre-searing), but a dungeon with traps and undead is classically amusing. Respawning undead also seems somewhat new to guild wars. It may be cheesy, but we all still remember Mario Bros. fondly.

4) Quests and missions are largely integrated. Quests seem more like mini missions and missions seem like extended quests. The game seems to finally flow naturally.

5) Titles are being employed in naturally in game play. All good RPGs have some point where they tell you: come back once you have more experience. Having that type of moment in guild wars was the moment I realized Anet was going in a better direction.

6) Equipping and levelling up your entire team of heros provides more to do for those of us who really only want to focus on the story one time through. There is just more to choices as to budget allocation, which means more interesting decisions for players.

7) Skill lists actually reacted to what is considered useful in PvP. After a fairly weak list in Factions and 2 fairly horrible classes, neither new class seems particularly flawed at this point and many of the skills seem like they'd get PvP consideration. Some skills enter the realm of bizzarely unuseful (Judges Intervention, Frenzied Defense), but even those made me laugh.

I bought Factions first and really liked it although I hated the slum areas. By the time I got to the end (hated the Jade sea area) I was getting bored and looking around for another game. I tried Prophecies and yes it was 'wow!!!!!!!' from the first minute. I doubt I could ever love a game as much as Prophecies. The beautiful New England fall look and feel and the wind blowing in the Shiverpeaks.. love it. My point is that Factions was not a step down or a let down to me because it followed Proph. since I did Factions first. It just is not as good. I did not get the wow feeling with NF about the environment but I sure did with the heroes!

Yeah, I loved Prophecies and Factions wasn't too bad but it just....wasn't a new game anymore, if you know what I mean. Sorta like...you know how everything works and every new thing that pop up isn't just WOW anymore.

But Nightfall really was WOW when I saw most of the stuff and its gonna be awesome =P

2 Thumbs Up ANet =P

I'll keep it short because much of what I think of Nightfall has been stated here already.

Nightfall restored my faith in ANet. Loved it so far.

/agreed on all. CE will be mine the 27th . This game will make me rich, I got GWF and GWP on the 2nd yr after it was made, so I couldn't grab anything before it was all nerfed. Sanctum runs stopped working for me after the first week after that major nerf, no golds were dropping save for a few exceptions of gothic dual axe that only paid back my key fee and I was not doing well with solo farming. In factions I realized over 10 solos with level
15s and got rich(no one to sell to, but I got some rare skins and a perfect or two) not many max damages though...oh well, it's quite easy to get perfect sundering and fortitudes and rare dyes in NF. Eventually it will all become nerfed so I must act quickly and get all the items and wait for everyone to realize the rare skin value and such.

I just think we as a community need to spread more words about how good NF is. I would hate having people dismiss NF because they maybe didnt enjoyed Factions as much

How do ya even know ya like NF, that was a preview, a bunch can change in a month, besides, watdya have against prophecies i can understand factions tho

Maybe he should change the title for people who cant read posts very well? Perhaps it should be "Why I like Nightfall more than GWP and GWF from the Preview event" But if you read the posts its quite obvious.

Honestly I like the way NIghtfall is going from the preview. Each mission had its own unique thing that made you remember it. The first one I liked very much despite its simplicity. I mean, fighting corsairs taking over a village and then catapulting their ships is awesome. Also, the puzzles and corsair costumes were awesome as well.

The zones were way better as well. Even the more tightly packed swamplands seemed more open, with more ways to go and more cool things to see in them. For example, going through the one zone in between the Diggings and Champions Dawn (cant remember the name of it) was such a cool experience because you could go south to the beach and mines and fight harpies or follow the path through the middle of it and come across a Sunspear camp or go a more northern route. But you could always cut though the general "routes", unlike the defined carved paths of Ascalon, or even more supposedly open areas like Kryta.


Anyways, I agree with everything the OP said as well.

The hero flag system is dirt easy. Plant your flag, henchies/heroes go/stay there. I had a lot of fun with that first village when you were placed high atop the monument and you had to order your henchies to run to places using flags/attack, etc.

Nightfall definitely answers why I've been playing GW for so long - love the scenery, though I do think that pre-Searing is by far the most impressive scenery so far.

Little things like sand blowing, lions roaring in the background and the sky darkening as you progress will make it VERY nice!

Good job A-Net. Now, all you have to do is actually get it started on time. Let's not repeat the PvE Event start fiasco.

pfft Prophecies ftw,

Nightfall improves upon both Factions and Prophecies in many ways. I'll just outline some of them.

They hired a D&D RPG guy to handle the story. I think we've seen evidence in the beta event that it will be better than the first two, by a lot. The quests were varied, some of them were actually non trivial. Props for the trial quest and which heir to choose quest for variety.

A simple thing like adding the sunspear points via killing random monsters that you'd kill anyway to get from point A to point B is a welcome addition.

Missions being located in outposts that aren't just mission towns. But you have to have the right quest to be able to do the mission.

Heroes, obviously. This changes a lot. You want to PUG, but XYZ character can't be found. Bring a hero or two. They also are far superior to henchmen. Also giving a purpose for unlocks in PvE was a side effect of heroes. A neat way to link them. You can only give heroes stuff you've unlocked. Though I thinking making Koss a Dragon Slash warrior at lv 1 was perhaps a bit much.

The new skills from the beta events actually look good compared to many of the Factions skills which were subpar. Most PvP builds use almost nothing from Factions, Nightfall skills look much more promising.

If Nightfall is only half as good as the preview it will beat Factions hands down. If it keeps that level of goodness it will give Prophecies a run for its money. Plus I'm looking forward to a Dervish with the new heroes and hench AI in a run through prophecies

I constantly felt restricted in Factions. I like to explore quite a bit, didn't really feel restricted in Nightfall's preview. I don't mind the gates so much - I think there are ways of doing them where they make sense (and I understand removing things like Drok's runs even though I used them). I just hated being told I couldn't go someplace, well, just because (in reality because the game designers felt I shouldn't be there yet). If there is a reason why that makes sense and doesn't feel restrictive then great. On my first time in Maguuma Jungle I explored a little too much and found out some of the story before actually completing the quest (talk about confusing when the Shining Mantle suddenly treat me like a friend and I reply talking bad about my enemy the White Mantle), there should have been some way to block me that didn't make me feel cheated. Nightfall seems to have done just that in the preview. That experience was jarring enough I still remember it well over a year later.

Ahh, well. I can't say I will like it more than prophecies. For one thing I will have to wait and see how the mainland goes. I would say I was not a big fan of most of Factions being level 20 content - I liked the slower progression of Prophecies. It gave me a bigger sense of advancement and lots of places to play with soloing areas after hitting level 20. On the bright side the "noob isle" is large enough I *think* that will eleminate that feeling. But that is minor and will need to wait for the release.

Over all I am MUCH more excited over this than Factions. I, personally, think A-net has done a good job in the past - over all I liked Factions quite a bit even though my griping seems to say I didn't (remember, that's talking about stuff I didn't like without listing my likes). As such I think Nightfall should either equal or nearly equal prophecies which has been one of my favorite games of all times (and I go back to green Hercules graphics and text based games - while my opinion may not hold much weight to others, for myself that is saying a lot).

agreed with every point. very nice post.

if NF lives up to what i experienced during the preview, then im sold.

the main thing I'm looking forward to is the heros. I like the idea. Skill unlocks are going to seperate new guys from the older ones, the templates and variabilty of your hencies will help you get 2 man gruops with guildies, and you'll be a big help too noobies in places like, the shing jea islands. you'll now be able to "run" people through missions using supior heros and things like that.

I'm really going to love taking my heros back into cantha and prophicies jsut to explore and finish up random quests.

Isn't this a bit premature?

Seems like it's far too early to be making a claim like this. After you've finished Nightfall would be more appropriate. Quite frankly, Nightfall has a lot to live up to if it's going to equal Prophecies, much less surpass it, and after the disappointment that was Factions, it would seem reasonable to reserve judgement on it until you've actually played it.

story, dialouge, voice acting, enemies, art, music, graphics, balance, quests, missions, new features, skills, cities/outposts, and so on... everything I experienced in does 14 hours with NF was better than my entire time with GWP.

Honestly.


In GWNF, I have already covered my way through a temple full of traps in a crazy like maze. I have already infiltrated the enemy in disguise along with my team.


PvP is the only thing I have not seen yet. the new professions and the heroes add a hole new layer of depth I did not thought possible.

So in conclusion.. yeah.

I would rather take the preview over entire GWP, if we look at PvE only. And im dead serious about that.

GWP is just a total joke in comparrison, as far as presentation and story goes. I feel like a jerk for suggesting that they should remove the cut scenes a while back.. I didnt thought they would improve. But they did. They actually did it. I feel like that for the first time, that a freakin company has listened honestly to their players request.

While I agree its a bit early to be giving Nightfall its due's, I really dont agree with Prophecies being the best.

I played it through once with one character, thought it was good but I enjoyed othergames much more (Never winter nights)..

when playing through with a second character it was hard to be motivated and rushed through as much as I could..

Third character, totally lost the will to live, the only reason why I even bother to ascend him was to get him to factions.


Factions however I have played through will all characters and thoroughly enoyed it, I like the fact that its shorter, I liked the 16 team missions, like the challenges of the the challenge missions and the pve/pvp of fort aspen..

I hold out alot of hopes for Nightfall!.. I think it will enhance all chapters of Guildwars and agree with the good points made by the OP, but im certain there will be opposite and equal reactions once the game is out..