What would you like to see fixed before release

This pre-event showed Anet was listening to it's player base with some improvments toward previous chapters.

What i am asking you now is what would you like to see improved / fixed before official release.

And please this is not RANT thread what I want is constuctive criticism or ideas how you want something to be fixed.

AND DO NOT START YOUR ANSWER LIKE: "This preevent failed or GWN is doomed".

As I said be constructive so Anet may get some objective feedback.


Write like:

I liked the most: ....


I didnt like: ....... and i think it could be improved ......

I liked the customization of hero NPC's. I would like to see all the classes have heros, but I am sure this was just because it was a preview event.

I enjoyed how you could command the hero’s skills being used; it was like playing many characters at once. The screen area there skill bars took up tended to clutter the screen though.

I enjoyed how you can command your henchmen to stand in specific areas to "pull monsters."

I felt the Sunspear titles were a very good idea to encourage PvE. I would like to see other things to enhance the PvE experience.

I didn't like the timers that seemed to be in place of many of the spells while loading them. Perhaps this was purely because of large amounts of lag seeing as how popular the event was.

I felt many of the primary quests were rather jumpy or non-linear. It seemed like you did one thing and travel to towns constantly. This made the game seem to go on forever when really it would of took a short time frame in comparison.

The trial part of the preview event was rather boring just a bunch of talking. It added to the storyline but it seemed like a waste.

I enjoyed many of the new NPC monsters but I feel some of there skills could have been altered to be more powerful. When Fractions previewed the game had a higher learning curve where in Nightfall it was quite easy in comparison.

I liked:
The custumization of skills and weaponary on heroes but:
I think all this skill customization would need little tweak so u could influence what skills should be used more ( for example: Aggresive stance - use all skills mostly on itself, defensive stance: distribute skills evenly to all in party, passive cast skills only on others ( and if necessary on itself - monk for healing )).
Here is also worth mentioning storage for heroes weapons ( i think it would be good if u could have 4 types of weapons equiped on them ( like on player only that heero would keep em in his inventory and u could switch em with F1-F4 )


I liked sunspear titles, very good idea but maybe it should be implemented a bit:

I didnt see any real difference in dmg or any other benefits from it. Id like to see this titles would have some benefits after you build em up ( same goes for other titles in faction that does nothing except you just have'em written under your name ( not enough motivation for me if i dont get anything for acheiving it ))


Quests: I d like too see more non-linear quests or missions ( like prophecies where u did missions where ever u wanted first, and where u could take time for bonus and exploring ( in this preview were both types ( faction and prophecies like ).

Secondary quests should offer more rewards than just soon unneeded XP and few golds. I hope it wouldnt end like in factions where i stopped doing quests after lvl 20. Rewards may be reason of replayability of game later on with other characters.


But overall I must say I was positivly surprised with the effort Anet tried to put in Nightfall. I hope it will only go up from here on.


Please share more of your obsevings so we can disccus em together.

First: congratulations for the nth time ArenaNet for an excellent preview of what appears to be the most ambitious release in the game's evolution.

Requests:

1. Please review the ranger armor dye strategy. Dying the jaguar skin makes it appear artificial and significantly degrades the overall appearance of the texture (and yes, I know that there are African tribes which do just that). But in this case it only makes one of the most striking aspects of the armor design much weaker.

2. A few more hair style options for Paragons and Dervishes would be most appreciated.

What can you deduce from these requests? In the context of everything of NightFall we've seen, if this all that someone who played almost continuously from Friday evening through Monday morning, leveling a character to 16, doing all the missions and most of the quests can ask, you have a phenominal release on your hands. Again congrats.

And please think again about the ranger animal skin dye strategy.

I totally agree with the quest rewards. I really hope they will add skill rewards like they were present in prophecies (Though I doubt it actually ).

As they are now, when you hit level 20 and get a new quest, you just say "nah, again 2000 XP and 100 gold? I'll pass..."

That's EXACTLY why people shunned the factions quests. NO SKILL REWARDS

Granted there weren't enough skills to warrent it. But all the same, XP is not a good enough reward anymore. Moar cash/pratical rewards will work.

Different hair styles for the female monk and necro and some decent armour for the monk PLEASE! Remove 'wings' from Necro because they stick thru the guild cape. Make the ele look less like a stripper.

Put back the 'enter mission' button.

I guess I am unlike the others, I like to buy my skills since it saves time. I don't like waiting around on a favorite skill to show up in a quest, so I hope that won't change.

All in all a great game!

I loved most everything about the event. So, I would take several pages to write about what I loved.

What I want or would like to see changed or added:

More hair styles and faces for all classes and the in game ability (as in not from the GW Store) to change to those hair styles. My characters are traveling to a new land and would like to adapt to the local customs, just as I did when I went on vacation.
Removal of all locked gates and any and all situations that prevent exploration of this gorgeous new land. Factions might have looked good, but I've only got a vague idea since everywhere I turned I was blocked or had my hand held into a mission. I could explore now that I've finished it, but since there is no point now, I care not too.
Skill quests. I love having a reason to do quests. Quests that give experience in a game where exp is pretty much useless, makes the quests useless. Skill quests are a must.
Money quests. Same as above, but for a reward worth the time, 20 minutes for 100 gold... not worth the time.
Challenge Missions worth the time: Not sure about these yet, but if they are set to reward like Factions' Challenge Missions do, then these are again wasted. Make the Challenge Missions pay out more than or better than the average farming run. If I can make 2k in 10 minutes on a very boring farming run, then I would love and prefer to group and enjoy my time in a Challenge Mission. So the pay out in the Challenge Missions need to match that or my time feels wasted and I feel I cheated myself. Let's make these full of players by making them worth the time!
Bump Mapping: Where's the bump mapping in game that we see on the login screen?

Everything else was simply awesome! Good job Anet.

i think that dervish are way to imbalanced because they are near 100% better than war....

I'd first like to start off by saying thank you Anet for the very much needed second preview event. With the capabilities of the Dervish and Paragon in the beta preview, this second Balance/test was greatly needed.

During this PvE preview I took about 1 hr to view the PvE and see the landscape. From what Guildies have told me its breathe taking and the New Henchie system even though a tad cumbersome to use is better by far then the typical hench system.

I then switched to PvP. The CoP build was greatly diminished and the spikes that were use reduced by over 30dmg and recharges were multiplied by 4.
A massive drop in mysticisms healing ability was implimented and energy gain was capped at 5.

I ran a scythe as a D/N ( death attribute ) , D/A ( Shadow arts ) ,
D/ME ( inspiration ), D/W ( Tactic ) , D/E ( Air ).

As a scythe character the dervish is ok but does lack a tad for the following reasons....
First and for most the dmg range. 9-41 is extremely inconsistant a 30dmg average window makes dmg vary greatly. For a front line dmg dealer this is not exceptable because its not even remotely predictable.

Energy managment is rather rough for a scythe user due to a very low energy Bar cap and enchatments not being as previlent as an enchantment spammer. Combine this with lack of points in mysticism and your looking at 3-4e per enchantment.
Carrying 2-3 enchantments 20sec recharge and 3-4 scythe skills 4-12 sec recharges, most of which strip your enchantments and cost mostly 10e,... You will find yourself drained and skilless quite often.

The dervish as a caster dmg dealer. Similar to CoP I chose a D/W and ran ViMway. Vim is greatly complimented by the AoE conditions caused by the enchantment stripping I ran 5 enchantments, 1 strip, ViM, and either a res or armor buff. ( not watch yourself ) my spike read like this....60,60, 78, 130-155 + bleeding, weakness, crippling, Burning. The 60 dmg skills are direct dmg and the earth spikes are read thru armor
( fix sandstorm it was reading direct ) , The combo went off in seconds and then 15 seconds to wait for recharges. True it was considerable conditioning and moderate spiking ability but the recharge of D enchantments was rediculious, these recharges make for a long wait for casting dervish and also hurt a scythe user who needs them more.
As a caster ViM made up for what mysticism now lacks. All in all I wouldn't call the current dervish caster over powered but it does have some issues.
Most the dervish heals are both powerful and spammable. I ran vital Boon 8sec recharge. This is the staple heal for a dervish and to a scythe its needed and yeilds about 150 = to heal sig. As a caster vital boon heals for 192+15 = to generous was tsungrai,.. it however needs a slightly higher recharge.
Mysticism on the other hand should get some of the healing ability back.
I never gained more then 75hp and 25E from mysticism. I agree the energy gain is perfect but the hp should be raised to 2 per point and some of the heals extended and dropped by 20hp.

Please note I am not complaining, I made over 100k faction this weekend alone.
I just want to show that the dervish is not quite balanced. as a scythe they dont have the Energy to keep dmg pressure/heals skills going and as a caster they have to much recharge time on enchantments for the dmg reduction of the spikes.

as for ViM... ViM is broken when it comes to a dervish using it. at one point my dervish hit vim at 17/531hp and 5/48energy I have 8 in tactic and healed for 880 hp and 85e!!!!!! This skill needs a 250-300hp 25-30e cap.

I suggest:...
reduce vital boon's healing ability by 20-30hp and give it a 10 sec recast.
Making dwaynas touch a 8 sec recharge.
place a cap on ViM 250-300hp 25-30e
reduce the recharge on all D enchantments to 15sec 1sec cast time
Increase Aura of thorns recharge to 15sec 1sec cast time
Change mysticism to 2 hp for every point max = 30 and 1e for every 3 max 5
reduce the recharges of scythe attacks skills
stablize the dmg of scythe ( 14-36/38 )

as for paragons.... stunning spear is rediculous. 10a and they can use dozens of adreniline boosting skills to keep spamming it. This skill causes dazed for up to 17 sec and causes it unconditionally. This skill should have its duration reduced or made so someone has to be suffering from some type of condition.
Paragons and ranger paragons kept this up none stop on multiple targets.

all in all this was a better preview and true both new classes are very strong but with the new skills coming out all others are boosted with them. They just need more of a balancing then a nerfing.

QFT!! I had no friggin' idea I was in a mission until it was over. Very disconcerting.

I'd love to have additional face and hair choices for NF. Some of those faces and horrible, and the male paragon is severely limited in facial appearance. Needs more diversity overall.

Game is 95% perfect as is IMHO, but there are two HUGE flaws.

1) The Deadly Arts tree still has no self-heal and practically no usability outside of dagger mastery. Hence, although some of the new skills are interesting, I can't use deadly arts and still manage to survive AT ALL -OR- in the opposite extreme, do damage AT ALL. (I either sacrifice dagger mastery or shadow mastery)

2) Most Dervishes and Paragons look like clones at the moment. More facial styles

Please strongly consider both of these points ANet if you still have time. Thanks!

Ok, let me try to recap.

• I'm very pleased with the way the heroes work, but I posted that in more detail in another thread so I won't go into details here.
• I really liked that they recycled maps for certain quests and missions. Fighting in the towns was a great way of enhancing the story.
• I like the quests marked with master difficulty, although they won't give me much the second time through, they were really a challenge the first time. Especially the two Skale quests in the islands.
• The leveling is slower then Factions, that is good.
• The introduction of Sunspear advancement points is both good and bad. It gives the game an unnecessary grind, but also makes the story more immersive.
• I like that you had to be level 5 to get a secondary. 5 doesn't take long, even if you're in a hurry, and it's enough to teach new players a bit more before they're faced with two professions.
• I like that you had to choose a hero in one quest, and the Tribunal quest which I utterly messed up the first time through.
• The WPE took me three days of casual gaming to play through (as in not playing 10 hours a day), perfect length on the event. I finished absolutely everything and made level 20 about three hours before the event ended without stressing to make it.

...the not so good things

• As I mentioned before, the sunspear points give a grind. It's really not that big deal though.
• I liked the master quests, but the master tag doesn't really tell me much about how difficult its going to be. A master quest I picked up in Zehlon Reach was far easier then one from the Cliffs of Dohjok, even if I picked up the one from the cliffs much earlier then the others.
• Harpies with bows look silly.

That's it, can't think of any more right now, maybe later.

-edit-

One more thing I found odd. The game is supposed to take place in an African theme, but half the henchies look like they just came from a Swedish farm. Shouldn't most, if not all, be tanned or dark skinned?

Since the characters you can make come with the options of being white, dark, darker, even darker or darkest. I think the henchies should at least use an average spread of those skin tones.

Please note, I know this is nitpicking, but, like I said, I just found it odd. Also, I'm not trying to offend Swedes, just making a point :P

The hero AI should hopefully be more polished before release. I was also on when they updated the AI for all henchmen, and after that a mission (Sunjiang District) became much harder for me to do with henchmen for some reason, or most certainly seemed to. After all, I had been able to get masters on every run with henchies before that, but that night it was tougher. I managed to solo it with masters but the henchies died and were just generally weaker AI wise IMO than normal... I doubt very seriously that it was the person I was running the mission with, as even when I did it by myself and henchies the henchies died a disproportionate amount of time comparatively, to the number of times that I had seen them die before. However maybe I was just caught unawares by an unmentioned Sunjiang update? Perhaps they wanted the urn and spear to I dunno, be useful more than worthless in that mission?

Seems the return of Skill reward quests over Exp and Gold is the number two request behind the Auction House...

I know for a Old character especially... like my original near 3 year old Ingram of Haz if you count Early betas... It costs a fortune to buy skills when a new chapter comes out. I would love to do some quests for low end campaign skills at least. reserving something like 10 higher end skills and the elites (via Cap Sig) for skill points and 1 plat each... Its not the Skill points I have plenty of that... its the gold... I don't farm, I play, so this particular gold sink is a pain in the butt for a real PvE player.

The absence of the enter mission button was so people couldn't be ran there and just do mission, but get some of the storyline and primary quests (Sort of like having closed doors but techninally not)

You mean with people asking for skill points back, right?
They aren't asking for actual skills, notice when you buy a skill it takes one skill point + so much gold? That's what they want back in quests, which is the same thing as those skills points you see in your Hero [H] Screen

I like the new new mission and quest system, actually.

Rather than just being completely straight forward by just pressing "Enter Mission," or "Go here, kill that," you can really interact and get into the story more.

I LOVE the heroes, but there still is some general issues that need to be tweaked.
Specifically:
-Need to make it so the skill effects bar on heroes need to have the effects going horizontal, rather than vertical.
-Fix the Agressive/Defensive toggles. It seems that sometimes when I switch the toggles from agressive, to defensive, and back to agressive, the heroes "think" that they are still defensive for some odd reason, and wont attack foes attacking us within the area unless I target/attack them. Also, when I put my heroes on defensive, they dont always act properly defensive like the website says they should..ie I put my monk heroes on defensive, but they dont keep towards the back on the group like the website describes; They still seem to be the first along with Koss to go right upfront and attack.

Another specific error:
I target Koss on the party window, and then click "mending" on his skill bar. For some odd reason though, sometimes the target will automatically switch to another hero, in my case Dunkoro, and cast mending at him. The only real counter I've found is to target Koss, click mending, then rapidly click Koss's name on the party window so the target wont go switching.

One more hero issue..( ) ..is that in many cases, the heroes are much to slow to respond for some reason.

One smaller issue, assuming Anet folks read our post, which I also assume they do according to Gaile anyways, is that some of the Nightfall skills have minor capitalization issues here and there. No big deal, but something to fix anyhow.

I think the most important fix of all is the bad lag. Without lag means more customers, more customers results in more money, from there Anet can start shaping the game. Oh and I would also like to see more benefits for players who own all campaign, in a way we lost 2 char slots per chapter compare to making a new account and storage. Yes I do know we get variety of skills/skins to choose from, but I want MORE!

Maybe a little more of a hint for new players on how to get koss into their party![I spent about ten minutes trying to find help on wiki and places!]

<.< >.> and maybe some character upgrading npcs to help our old characters look a little nicer/rename them if that's possable

I'd say your pretty wrong there and probably play a warrior yourself.
I bet most of the people here would agree that the Dervish got nerfed too hard and need to be rebalanced to a place thats more comfortable before ruining more proffesions and not rebalancing them until the next expansion was released.

I like the map setting, and how music change in the transition of roaming -> battle.

I dislike how sometimes I can't finish listening to the full song/music. I hope these is an option that let us choose

Majority of the Nightfall characters did not have white eyeball (sclera?). I hope to see this change...

Also, some skill description are incorrect. I don't know all of them, so I won't bother posting them =(

1) More character customization options and variety (especially for Paragon and Dervish males) because I doubt all people in Africa have big noses and lips. Think Arabs*. If adding more unique options to customization is something that can't be done, then implement an option where we can choose options from previous chapters because those are done and ready for us.

2) Let us skip the tutorial if we choose to.

hero ai....koss was not very aggressive, while the monk never stayed where the marker was, and the ele would run off and agro when I wasnt asking for it.
Also made koss w/mo....in one instance the rest of my party was dead and I had used my res sig....we had dunkoro, the prot monk and 3 henchies....he raises me first, nice thought but I had dunkoro targeted.....he raised everyone ELSE before he rezed the monk.....just not right.
another thing about the heros----they only get skills that you have unlocked, this sucks since I dont have nor will I ever make a warrior so my koss had the same 6 skills and never got any new ones the whole time I played (and he was level 18 when I finished)....this was a freebee account, but my real account will be the same--no warriors. So I wont be using Koss---I will use the henchie instead.

the lack of more hair styles and colors options....the only character that I made this weekend with an abundant amount of color options was the necro, even the ele had less than when I made my first one 14 months ago.....the hair styles were not so good and the faces were horrible!
the lack of colorable parts of the paragon armor----it was almost impossible to tell people apart with there being sooooo limited hair options as well....I found 3 others who looked just like me!

grinding sunspear points got very old, and I only did the 1000 on one character, if all my other characters have to do this as well I wont be getting the game. Its too repeative to just have to kill the same stuff over and over again to get to the next level.....boring!!!!

a little more story line----I never got the trial quest cause I didnt even know about it....or where to get it, I was able to progress thru the rest of the story ok, though I did go to a few places out of order (and got wiped quickly).

a place to put the stuff our heros need---like extra weapons....if there is none I will need to make another mule character (the dervish) just to house them all.....especially since I have 6 characters I play on now....thats 6x12heros....or if you just go for a few....lets say 6x4...thats 24x whatever amount of stuff they each need......ok, will need 2 more mule characters!

maybe some kind of reminder when you enter missions towns that it IS a mission town even though the mission button is gone........

better drops----it was stinking HARD to get that dang drake flesh (I would purposely go out of my way to kill them just to see if I could get 1.....only my ele got one the whole weekend of playing)....and the reward just wasnt worth the wasted extra effort. (I finally gave my kabob from my ele to my paragon via a guildee so that I could finish the quest and clear my quest log before the preview ended). Maybe more of those drakes would make it easier.

I enjoyed the event.I liked the non linear part.I wanted to enjoy the scenery.It was excellant.
I think there needs to be some work done with Heroes but I really liked how they worked.I think they just need to do some tinkering with them.Use of skills and such.Some I tried didnt work.
I like the Sunspear points and how they worked it to get you atts.
I think the monsters were definately tough enough.If you didnt pay attention you got spanked.
Someone said they were killed a hundred times..whoa that is alot..)
It was such a enjoyable expierence for me I have a hard time picking what I think could be improved.
More selection on class of npcs and heros at the start I think would be good.I would of like to seen a necro.I really like the Ele that came later.He rocked.It was nice for the heroes to have viable skills.
I think the Dervish could use some work.I agree he was hit to hard with the nerf bat but still enjoyed playing one.
More facial selections.I like a few with beards..no bias on my part because I have a beard..)
Like I stated earlier I enjoyed the Beta.I havent had this much fun in along time.

I'll try to group my likes and dislikes so it's easier to read or skim over:

New Classes
Likes:
1) Paragon seems like a swiss army knife, even moreso than the Ritualist. I can play healer, buffer, and damage dealer in one build, and I'm loving it! (still loving my Rit, too)
2) The Dervish is still going to be a sweet soloer, I believe. Their unique AoEs and decent attack skills make for a killer tank.
Dislikes:
1) I think the Dervish was hit a bit too hard by the Mysticism nerf. That's the only beef I have with them right now.

Heroes
Likes:
1) Absolutely the best thing that ever happened to PvE, IMO. The henchies were great, the Heroes are phenomenal.
2) Customization, FTW. Just being able to change their skillbar is fantastic. The fact that you can equip their weapons and runes, control their skillbars, set their aggresiveness, and setup waypoints is above and beyond!
3) They have personality and are a more integral part of the storyline unlike henchies. I like having to take certain Heroes on certain quests/missions because of the important part they play.
4) Being able to use your own customized stuff is a nice feature.
Dislikes:
1) Wish they were just a little smarter and not so gung-ho while in aggressive mode. Defensive mode tends to make them stand around and not attack a lot, while Passive mode can actually make them run away, but into another mob threatening the whole group's survival.
2) The flag waypoints need to control Allied NPC's as well. It seems in-place so you can do maneuvers such as pulling, but Allied NPC's will ruin that entirely just as the old henchies do.
3) Need to be able to set a "priority skill" that they will use over any other. i thought that the check-mark did exactly that until I realized that all it did was buffer that skill to be used next, no matter what. You should be able to let a Hero know that "Watch Yourself!" and skills like it are a priority and should be spammed as much as possible.

Quests
Likes:
1) Tons of quests! The more the merrier! As long as they're not required, it's fun to have options.
2) Quests that are only available when certain criteria is met. There's a small handful of these in the other two games, but it seems prominent in Nightfall, and I love it! It makes the game seem alive and dependant on what you do.
3) Quest rewards are creative and quite useful. The promotion points are ingenious, and it feels like I'm gaining status within the Sunspears for doing oddjobs for people. Glad to see the "Quartermaster" rewards are still there. I thought that was a great idea in Factions and I'm glad to see it carried over.
Dislikes:
1) I was a bit sad to see that there were no skills as rewards to any quests. Even in Factions you at least got a good chunk of skills in the beginning to try out. In NF, you can only get about 8-10 for each class.
2) Any quest where you need to get a certain item or items to drop to complete the quest, please make the drop rate a little better, even if it's only while the quest is active. I never did finish the chef quest for that very reason.

Audio/Visual
Likes:
1) The game is absolutely beautiful! Landscapes, monsters, architecture, effects (love the zone portals!), character armors, and items are leaps and bounds ahead of Prophecies and Factions. People in the art team are getting paid well, I hope!
2) Jeremy Soule, you've outdone yourself. The music sets the mood so well. If I wasn't so caught up in everything else, I'd swear I was watching a movie with the score done by John Williams.
3) The battle music is an awesome addition. I know people were suggesting it and I'm glad Anet listened and stuck it in there. Adds a new dimension to battle.
4) Animation - just want to say I think the Dervish attacking with the Scythe is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. The way they hang their head after a killing blow just oozes mega-Fonzies. The dance animations are all sweet, too. Yes, even the female Paragon, I love it!
5) Cutscenes, lip synching, and voice acting... superb! I know it's been said over and over, but I commend thee! These improvements are long-awaited and much appreciated!
Dislikes:
Just a few glitches in sound effects to mention here...
1) Sometimes there's no sound effects right at the start of battle, as if it's washed out, then I can start hearing it.
2) Also, I noticed that when raising minions, the character goes through the motion, filling the progress bar, then the minion is raised, but at the finishing of the spell, the character just abruptly stops and it plays the 'clicking' sound as if the spell was cancelled, but yet the minion was raised. Not sure if it does it for all corpse-exploiting spells, but it is kinda annoying cause I have to make sure the spell was completed.
3) One more thing, about the battle music, it does seem to start at odd times. It shouldn't start just because you activated "Blood of the Master" or "Orison of Healing" when there's no enemies in sight. It makes me kinda freak out thinking we're being ambushed or something came up out of hte ground and is attacking us.

Oh, I can't wait till release! This is a very solid game and I think the amount of whiners with this chapter will be a LOT less than Factions. Personally, I had a hard time trying to come up with any dislikes, and I look at them as more "things I don't absolutely love", rather than dislikes.

The game just needs a little fine tuning. For instance....

...the skill/attribute interface, which is kinda cumbersome and even counterintuitive. I mean, how many players tried to drag and drop skills from the skill list into a char's actual skill slots? There's no reason there should be two sets of skill slots on the screen at the same time....

Other than little stuff like that, NF is pretty cool. Already looks much more polished than Factions, which had massive terrain bugs until well after release.

Quest rewards could be more creative:
- xp was fine
- 10 promotion points is not much, point farming with npcs is faster. Makes doing certain quests redundant. (promotion point rewards should be increased)
- no skill rewards (bad, yes I can buy them all, I could even buy a crappy crystalline sword but there is the fun, skills should be earned not bought)
- finishing certain quests gave a random dye, a rune or materials (this is an example for a good quest reward)
- there are no item rewards, what about an item with random stats as quest reward

Collector Items:
- were all the same (boring)
- collector items should have unique stats but thats just my opinion, example: http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Poor_Tenant

Quest became unrewarding after faction release. How about Item rewards...

U get lets say gold unindentified Sword, or gold unid rune... At the earlier quests you could get blue or purple items.

For quests ( MASTER difficulty ) u would get 15K armor piece ( there would be many master quests so u can collect whole 15K armor threw quests ) how about that? That would be quest worth finishing.

At the beggining early quests simple rewards, later on better rewards. That would make me complete all this quests later on ( i would have a big motivation doing it ) and one more thing would probably be solved this way: there wouldnt be so many empty outpost because ppl would group for this quests where they all get their rewards and they would keep coming back for more.

I've always been a fan of PvE and was crushed when Factions and the "closed-doors" came out. But Nightfall was a return the original feel of Guild Wars PvE!

Things I think need improvement:
1. The so-called Master Level quests...were too easy! I defeated both on a level 7 Paragon character with assistance only from my sister's level 9 Dervish character. :O
2. The switch from roaming to battle music - as console gamer I appreciate this because I am very used to listening for that type of cue. However, I had many false alarms when the battle music would start up and I was standing in an area with no enemies!

Things that I loved (the short list):
1. The Paragons. A highly useful buffer/healer/damage dealer. I can't tell you how much I loved playing this class!
2. The absolutely lovely landscapes. It made exploring so much better than trudging through the big city in Factions.
3. The return of open-door portals. I loved this in the original Guild Wars - not so much for the runs, but because I could explore as a I pleased. I love exploring.
4. The music is absolutely stunning!

There's more that I loved, but like I said that's just the short list!

Talking about portals, I like the old ones (just with a unobtrusive film of mist) much more than the new ones (big flashy spheres). The new ones remind me that each region is clearly seperated and only connected via some "warp portals", whereas the old ones strenghten the feeling of being in a huge global world.

Gonna quote you for truth on that one. Although there are more than 2 Master Dilficulty Quests, all but one of them were easy as pie to complete, the one where you defend the harbour being the only real challenge amongst them all.

Thoughts on the Dervish: Mysticism is dead in the water as it stands. If you ask me, a decent compromise would be a scale similar to the A's critical strikes attribute:
0-7 Mysticism: 1 point per level
8-12 Mysticism: 2 ponts per level
13+ Mysticism: 3 points per level
So, for example, A dervish with 6 Mst would heal for 6, a dervish with 10 Mst would heal for 13 (7+6) and a dervish with 15 Mst would heal for 26 (7+10+9.)

As for the energy management of the Mst attribute, I feel that while 1 per 3 ranks looks a little underwhelming at first, once it is played out, it works just fine.

Scythes and Scythe mastery: 9-41 damage is a big range that encourages players to invest >12 in Scythe mastery for the increased critical hit rate. Because of the massive criticals a scythe is capable of doing, A/D was an obvious choice even before it was shown in the pre-order box's mini strategy guide. W/D may also become popular, as the warrior has several hard hitting attacks that are not tied to a particular weapon, as well as being able to spam wild blow for heavy hitting criticals - although this is a tactic better implimented by a D/W. Bulls Strike: It's fairly obvious - an untied to weapon type attack that can cause knockdown. This could situationally knock down 3 people silmultaneously, which when combined with the dervishes AoE deterrent, could be devastatingly effective. The last thing to note is that Twin Moon Sweep is the only melee attack in the game which can actually heal you, as far as I know.

Wind prayers did not get any love from me during the weekend, so I wont comment on something I have no experience in.

Earth Prayers: Okay, where to start. Earth prayers is currently, in my opinion currently the strongest Dervish attribute. Put quite simply, a D/x or x/D with 9 Ep can heal themselves for 234 points for only 5 energy with an 8 second recharge. I am, of course taking about Vital Boon>Signet of Piety. The defensive skills on offer were also impressive, but that was the combo that saved me on several occasions over this weekend. Also to note at 16 Ep, this combo heals for 334 health!

Dervish Armour: If theres stuff like what the holy henchman has? Sold.

Paragons: Hmmmmm, yeah, theyre nice, but I didnt really get to experience them a great deal over the weekend. They have some nice armour, thats for sure, but one thing a friend of mine commented on, (and I agree on, btw,) is that the effects of dying P armour black are virtually identical to what it looks like in silver! Also, the motivation henchman looks positively greek in origin.

Heroes: Me likey, very much. Just being able to give them a second profession and set their skills makes them a world apart from the henchmen of old. One thing I have noticed is that they will ocassionally charge off towards a group of enemies and lure em back to the main group - this NEEDS to be fixed, as this could have very serious consequences in higher level areas.

The starter Island: Artistically it's a fantastic effort, as usual. I was also impressed by the sheer variety of locations they managed to shoehorn in. Not that it's a small place, oh no, it's much bigger than the starter island in factions - Zehlon Reach, in particular is impressively large, incorporating an area much bigger than any I care to remember in Factions and far more interesting to boot.

Graphical Glitches: There was an error I noticed during play with my Dervishes hair - if you zoom out far enough for the LQ textures to implement, the hair on her forehead would disappear entirely!

PvE Rank: I have mixed feelings on this. First, I think it's a good way to spice up PvE and I think the system with which it was implemented during the preview was exceptional. But on the other hand, even during the course of the weekend, that ugly thing we call Rank Snobbery was rearing it's ugly head. (GLF R6+ for Defend ---) I'll say it now, the last thing PvE needs is the sort of attitude towards new players that is predominant in HA. Granted, R6 wasn't THAT hard to achieve, but it takes time to do, nonetheless, time which some people may not have. Again, this is purely in the context of a 3 day preview, we will have to see how it affects the game at release, until then, all we can do is speculate.

Lastly, I have a request for Anet: Please, oh please, give us few female eles with some dignity a non-skimpy armour set! I dont care if it's statisticly the worst piece of armour in the world, I and many others would still buy it
(i.e, something that actually covers our legs for once? That'd be nice )

Ok, long post, but I think I've said all I need to say, for now anyway...

I thought everything about the event was great.

The only thing I didn't get was how to start the Jokunar Diggings mission. I prefer the Enter Mission buttons, but thats probably just me.

Enjoyed the preview, except everyone looked the same. They definately need more face and hair options. My main character is an E/Mo. I would like to see some new skills that bring back their destructive capability, particularly in PvP. Same with Necros. With yet more professions, if their all going to a single account, we're all going to need more storage.

First and above all: Something MUST be done about the messy transitions in and out of the battle music. The only world class composer working in the entertainment business today has poured his heart into this game and I feel they are taking him for granted. It is upsetting to see an otherwise very classy outfit being so boneheaded about this.

Almost as important: This is becoming a single player game. There should be some incentive to PvE with humans other than loot trading. The who-gets-what game makes everyone feel dirty on some level, and the opportunity to take part in that doesn't match the benefits of an all hero & hench party.

It's too easy to level, and there aren't enough incremental rewards. What a drag finally reaching 500 gold stars on my Sunspear hat, going back to headquarters, and the guy who congratulates you on your gold stars won't even shake my hand.

I missed the vertical, maze-like design of the Factions world. To look up or down at something very distant and then later find yourself there adds to the sense of the setting being real and grand and big. In Prophecies the maze factor was a little much, but in Factions you could usually takes several routes, yet there was still some adventure in finding your way.

I didn't expect to enter buildings and so forth, but it was disappointing we were never, ever able to go up onto the ships, balconies, scaffolds, ewok villages, etc. The first time I found myself running across the rooftops in Cantha I involuntarily burst out in delighted cursing and accidentally woke up my girlfriend.

Factions made me feel like I was part of an old and honored organization. I'd go back to the monastery to log out because it felt like home. I didn't care too much about the Sunspears or their place in the world this weekend, and I think it's because the process of choosing a secondary profession didn't involve much questing. There were either too many NPCs or not enough interaction with each character. The Sunspear HQ wasn't impressive like the monastery, and when I encountered them in the field they were just standing around. I felt no connection to their traditions and endeavors. The one exception to this was the haunted ruins in the western swamps. I found myself very moved when I realized that within this very dangerous region I felt safe in that place and didn't wish to leave.

And I don't really care for the map icons for towns and outposts. The designs are too familiar, and the colors make them look a little cheap.

Reading this over, it looks like a very negative post, so let me say in closing that, while I wanted to register here every complaint and concern I have about the game - I am in the end MADLY in love with Nightfall, and this weekend was easily the most fun I have had gaming-wise in the past five years.

I had a great time plaing a dervish with my friends. I'm usually the caster type, I found the dervish melee was fun and rewarding.

Loved the Heros! Some AI needed, though.

I didn't like the skill attribute interface either. I did the same thing as easyg, tried dragging skills to my skill bar.
I suggest losing the "second" row of skills and opening up more space to see the list of skills.
With so many skills now, it was more difficult to scroll through them as I could only see a dozen or so at a time. When I'm looking at my Monk "Protection" skills, it would make is much easier to see them all at once!
Having the skill points on the interface was nice, though there was some space that also used up the skill list window. Maybe a reorganization of the whole interface might help.

As others have said, bring back the skill rewards for quests. It really helps for us poor folk!

All in all... Nightfall was very rewarding for me. Seemed better than Factions.

Dwig

I like the idea of rewarding skills for doing quests, but I think the these skills should not appear in skill trainer until you advance a bit further in the game. This is because I bought many skills that I could have gotten from quests back in prophecies. Another alternative is to give away skill points for quests (I actually like this way better). Also increase the money/xp rewards amount for long quests, for example Defend Droknar.

I found the translation between the games background ambient music to battle music was interesting. It doesn't work very well technically speaking. A few times it made some really screwed up loud sounds. I can't really even describe it, definately was annoying, but I am guessing that was more or less a issue with it being a "preview" event. You might want to look into getting that to work on all sound cards.

What would I like to see fixed? Well fixed may not be the best word to describe some of the changes I'd like to see, as they currently aren't "broken".

Anyways most important ---> least important

1) Making PvP and PvE characters EQUAL in PvP. This means either handicapping the PvE characters to make them equal to the PvPers (no armor switching, 2 primary 2 offhand weapons max) or boosting the PvP characters to PvE level (let us get 4 primary, 4 offhand and 3 sets of armor with different runes PLEASE).

2) Balthazar Faction sinks. I'm UAX, and I'm usually UAX really early once an expansion comes out, and sticking at 10k balths faction with nothing to spend it on seems like a bit of a waste to me.

How about having "Maids of Balthazar" or something that'll exchange balth's faction into items? Maybe like those flames of balthazar for the 4v4 arena event so you could store / sell your balthazar faction off (good way to make money without PvEing). If this is implemented I'd think that 10k normal balths faction would be able to buy 5k of storeable / tradeable balths faction.

Or how about having a skin unlocker for weapons / armor? Even if the most basic skins cost 10k faction and you had to work from the bottom up at least it'd be something.

3) TA / RA rewards. Alliance battle has faction that can be converted into amber / jade for money, halls has fame / the chest drop for emotes / gold, GvG has capes and real life money. TA and RA only have a title track (which all the others have as well). How about putting those medallions back in? (Maybe not for RA, as it doesn't encourage team based builds).

I enjoyed the event. I hope that the mainland will be just as good.

1) I was confused when I first got to the diggings. It said co-operative mission, but no mission (or NPC to talk to about the mission) was available. Later, when I'd completed the storyline quests this was okay - but initially confusing.
2) Density of quests was a little high in some cases - for instance, you finish a quest to find the same NPC giving you something else to do in that area straight away - the bog got a little tiresome. With prophecies the same quests would move you through the game into more areas, giving a feeling of progress and newness even though the quests were fairly repetitive on the whole. I love skill quests, but I guess they're a thing of the past. I liked how the inheritance quest transported you to the area you needed to be and back again - a nice touch and time saving too!
3) I'd like clarification on what you feel Master level is - I'd see the quest and not take it because I was concerned it would modify the area to be too difficult if I couldn't complete it - I come back later and the lvl 15 enemy is a bit of a push over.
4) *All* of the paragon armours are white and dye very subtly. I am hoping that there are armours with more dyable areas later on. Because you don't particularly stand out in the crowd, or from the NPC sunspears for that matter.
5) Thank you for balancing the Dervish.
6) Drops of collector stuff was fine - just not the iron drake flesh. I didn't see any until I got to the keys a fair way through the game. The aboba petals were listed as a salvage item rather than a collector item.
7) I felt that the story flowed more, the town transforming to mission outpost was neat. The tribunal was fun and made me wish I'd read the dialogues as well as watching the cutscenes. Voice acting was much better - but I'm sure there's still room for a Danika to appear in the story somewhere. The only break was a wait to get sunspear ranks, but that was based in my confusion about how the sunspears scouts worked - I didn't talk to them when I went through an area initially, which would have made a great deal of difference. People claim they felt they needed to farm sunspear points, but talking to the scouts in the process of doing quests and just travelling through an area I thought the points tended to accumulate just fine.

The sad thing was I finally got used to it by the end of the preview event. I logged in today to cap an elite and decided to change my attributes (first time changing anything since the preview) and immediatly hit "k" instead of "h". *sigh* - at least if you tried the old method it ditfully opened up the correct new window.

I liked it over all, no real complaints. I thought the Dervish will probably be hit with the nerf bat again (I have not played a GW PvE char that powerful) but do not know know from reading PvP reviews. I didn't play a paragon so no comment there.

Probably the only "complaint" is no skill rewards for quests. I really miss that even if it was mostly spells I never used. Too many skills are worth a try if free, but not worth a skill point and 1k to goof off with.

I would say one of my very big likes was crafting materials, minor vigor, and random dye for rewards. It really makes a new character easier to play - I hated either sitting for hours on factions waiting on a material to be available or to spend hours farming for that materia (can not imagine a new player that can not farm - had to be really frustrating)l. I wouldn't support it for any max armor other than very plain (have rare materials for other skins/stats), but for non-max armor that you are essentially required to purchase (waste) gold on for a short amount of time it was a real help.

The factions preview I was pretty much non-excited. Factions release I would give an "Ok" (I liked the professions and skills, hated the actual game) - how good prophecies was is why I am still here. All my factions characters were immediatly moved to tyria and played there. So far, Nightfall has me feeling like prophecies again - really looking forward to the retail version. Not only that, but I think they will easily meet my expectations and have a good chance of exceeding it.