Nightfall and the future of Guild Wars

Okay, I have been mulling over this for the past few days, but now I have made up my mind and I would like to see what others think.

I believe Nightfall is too hard for the average player. I am aware of the thread titled "Nightfall too hard" but this is not about Rihlon Refuge and what not.

I have finished the game twice already, and am convinced that the Realm of Torment (and parts of Desolation) are simply too hard to be enjoyable for average players. I do not understand this design by ANet and I feel personally that despite being a wonderful game, Nightfall will spell the end of the Guild Wars franchise in terms of popularity.

Just so that we are clear, I finished the game in 2.5 days. My elementalist has 18 Million XP over 2,500 hours. She has 6 titles maxed including Elonian Grandmaster Cartographer and Protector as well as the Skill Hunter titlethat cannot be maxed. So, I don't want any posts from any self-proclaimed experts about how I just need a little a little more experience with the game. I also would appreicate if those who have not finished the game hold their thoughts till they actually finish it.

The problem as I see it is that the Torment hordes are just too powerful when one considers the AI enhancements. This problem starts as early as fighting Hekets Kourna. If you're a caster and you play the high level areas of Elona, then you 've probably encoutnered the following situation with Henchmen/Heroes:

You attack a mob, their Warriors/Dervishes rush your casters and they kite like real pros. In a few seconds, the "smart" melee enemies turn their focus to... YOU. You're the only noob not kiting. So, they start hacking at you laying Deep Wound on you and Distracting Blow and you can hardly get anything off. So, you decide to kite.. However, as soon as you start moving, your henchies stop attacking and set out to follow you.

The solution in most cases is to "anchor" them using the hero/henchie markers. However, if you're constantly being chased (It's the worst when you are a monk), you have major problems calling and directing their attacks while you're running about.

This solution beings to fail in the Desolation and most certainly in the Realm of Torment. If you're not on top of it making calls, your henchies will not finish them off quickly enough and due to "Call to the torment" you'll end up with more bad guys than you started with. If you're a new player coming to GW from other games... You'll be like, what the heck is going on here?!

To summarize this case study, I feel the monster AI is ahead of the hencmen AI, and it shows very clearly in the Realm of Torment. It really takes the wind out of your excitement about the Hero system when you get to the realm of Torment and find yourself getting "pwned" left and right. Mostly due to elements not directly related to your skill with the game. For example, take the Domain of Secrets with it's delightful +40% energy cost. No way, should you run into a group of torment Demons with 3 Rain of Terror demons along with an Arm of Insanity who has Quickeing Zephyr. The math just does not add up. The henchie/hero healers WILL dump ALL their energy in the first 5 seconds of the encounter and your party will wipe soon after.

The way I see it. This kind of imbalance will cause much frustration. Soon the player community will split into the haves and have nots. Those who put up with/overcome this kind of frustration (5%) and those who do not (95%). On day 4 of the game coming out, there were already people in Torment towns offering runs to the different outposts because they knew traveling the realm was very difficult. This will not just be limited to running, soon acquiring items/skins from the realm will be the domain of those few who can put up with its challenges.

This is nothing like Prophecies or Factions. In Factions, large groups of Shiro'ken were a handful, but they were not in an entire realm. In fact, the only time you "had" to go through them, Kuunavang offered you uber skills. In Prophecies, the Ring of Fire is Pre-Searing compared to the Realm of Torment.

In closing, I feel the end game in Nightfall is too hard for average players, and I think it will turn people off from the game once they discover that it's the area with the most lucrative drops and that they cannot go very far there on their own.

I dont see any issues

could say the same thing about it being a "turnoff" with the hardship of Prophecies, THK and beyond..

ThK is henchable, if you have the skill. And by henchable, I mean not a single death, easy cruise. The main problem with ThK was that it required rudimentary coordination which most hastily formed PuGs lacked.

Moreover, I would hardly compare "anything" in the Southern Shiverpeaks and the Ring of Fire to what's in the Realm of Torment right now. The difficulty is an order of magnitude higher.

I love the difficulty at the end, but precisely BECAUSE of that, I can see your point.
A lot of the more casual players will hit a wall at a certain point and just give up.
The final areas are all FoW level in difficulty with the added unfair disadvantage of the area environmental effects.
A great challenge to an experienced GW player, sure, and it makes that Protector of Elona title a thing to be cherished, but it WILL dissuade the more casual player.

Oh, a couple of tips for hero control:
Bind each hero flag to a key near to those you use for movement (or hell, even a mouse button). Kind of like how serious FPS players bind weapons to keys surrounding the movement ones. My hero keys are R, T and Y with my group flag being X.
You probably already knew that you could use the compass to place hero flags, but did you know that you can also use the "U" map? Very handy as it doesn't spin as the player changes facing.

My only real issue was gates of madness with Shiro, appart from that I also agree that the difficulty is above average, but no problem with that, but that shiro... I tried to beat him 15 times, only to have success at the 16th time. That clearly is very difficult

I'm confident that anyone who can hench THK can also hench Torment

but its more likely people will be grouping in Torment

first of all - could we get a bit of a SPOILER tag on the thread title?

to the OPs concern - i dont consider high difficulty a problem. i do consider it a problem if the high difficulty is a replacemnet for content, if one is stuck at a mission for hours/days and cant advance becuase it does not allow for mistakes and thus prolonging the experience without adding extra content.
i have no idea how this translates to the last missions since i am stuck at the general titles and i have no desire to farm that and without that i am unable to move on.

you can quest it

my 1st time thru Nightfall I did no farming at all (beyond picking up bounties as I quested)

you can easily quest 2500 Sunspear points
- Questing will take you longer tho

if you farm it, can earn the title in less than 2 hours in SW corner of Arkjok Ward

You keep responding as if the thread was about difficulty that I am facing with the game. As I said, I have fully completed the game with my ele, I have fully mapped the Realm of torment for the wiki with henchies. I can easily clear out the Domain of Secrets and Fear and Pain.

Personally, I would say the difficulty took out much of the fun playing with my monk, not my ele. My ele enjoyed her run and is very grateful for Invoke Lightning. However, this is not about my personal run and how I can get better at the game. I thought I had made that clear.

This IS about: Do you feel the end game difficulty would make Nightfall unenjoyable for average players.

I found NF to be quite easy, I wish it was harder, but when you have preteens playing I guess it can be quite difficult (I'm using sever artery on a rock!), I do agree that the torment mobs are tougher than the average mob in guild wars (I find the margonites are real joke, way too easy to kill), when you aggro 2 torment mobs you are almost certainly dead.

In my experience, a game is never hard indefinitely, I will agree with you that areas like the Realm of Torment were surprisingly challenging the first time through for me, but I remember when I thought the Ring of Fire islands were unbeatable.

sorry - weve talked about this on the other forum and they said the same thing. so i should be more precise - i include the questing into the term 'farming' since i dont have the desire to do it over and over and over again on multiple chars. (besides i have multiple issuses with NF - so lets just leave it at that )

I agree with you - doing the same quest (on diff chars) is same as farming

In my honest opinion it doesn't. The end game Nightfall is where it should be and where Factions should have been. Battles are difficult, require quick thinking and coordination. It gives the player the sense that the game is near an end and that all the difficult battles that he/she is facing and is to face will give them a far more better sense of accomplishment than the likes of Factions where all you really needed was a MM.

I think the question is if the average player actually wants to put any effort into playing the game rather than being hand fed directions and "how-to" guides throughout the game. I think the Realm areas teach you what GW has stressed all along. "Teamwork, Coordination and Strategy" Careful pulls, coordinated attacks on Torments and communication between everyone is what is at key and is the heart of Guild Wars throughout the Chapters that have come and yet to come.

No, I'm not an elitist and say something that all missions were too easy or whatever. I'll admit that I failed missions throughout the game because I didn't come prepared with the skills or my strategy for the mission was faulty. Now I'm going through the game again with a paragon then after that I'll go with my monk main.

I've known many who have returned to GW cause of Nightfall and they all love the chapter and the challenges that come with it. I've also known a couple of friends who have just started playing GW as Nightfall is their first chapter and I have not yet run them through any missions because things are "too difficult."

I'm not - I'm responding to you saying that this is a "turnoff" for the casual player

and I disagree because I feel that THK+ was no different

I'm sorry, I didn't find Prophecies hard at all, at least not after getting the basics down.

And looking back on the first chapter of Guild Wars after completing both Factions and Nightfall, the only reason I could see Prophecies being harder is the fact that you can't get max armor as quickly as you can in Factions or Nightfall, thus in later areas with large mobs it gets a bit overwhelming in terms of your defense. But it was still beatable, and I only had problems in a few areas. That was BEFORE we had heros. And to be honest, the ability of having heros makes Nightfall easier in some cases but extremely frustrating in others.
Earlier situations in Nightfall aren't too difficult, it's when you progress and are faced with a mob of enemies every 5 steps, and in between these mobs you have 'roaming' mobs.
I find it frustrating when you're trying to successfully take on two mobs that were unaggroable, and as you try to run away, you can't leave your henchies anchored or they'll aggro the roaming mob, so you make them all run. And because you're ALL running, you cannot be healed, nor can they, so you get walloped by 12-14 enemies, or more, and then have to face a roaming mob??????? This is particularly annoying in the Realm of Torment because literally every mob roams. Or some stupid mob of mandragors pops up every 5 steps.

That isn't to say that Nightfall isn't playable. Because it is. It just takes patience, but for people coming into the game with no prior experience, it could take forever for them to progress.
But then again, that's what it was like with Prophecies, and Factions as well. More specifically Factions because I found the mobs a lot worse in that chapter than in Prophecies.
I remember in Factions going outside Kaineng Center, or into Bukdek Byway or whatever, and getting destroyed. But now it's not that difficult having learned how to deal with them.
The same applies here. And in a sense, if it's going to take the new players a longer amount of time to beat the game, this means it will be a while before they ever face the Realm of Torment, so in a sense, going into such a place, players should know to at least prepare themselves. But it's hard to prepare for a place like Realm of Torment, because rather than fighting things, I find myself running to places a lot more because I want to flip out if I choose the latter idea.

Well i agree it is perhaps hard for ur average player but most people wont have a problem with it. As for saying the other chapters were easy, Prophecies had and has atleast 2 points taht are considerend difficult for average players, THK and killing glint but after some experience and soem build changes most people get by them. Factions had the shiroken which were normmay where u were gievn uber skills howve, if you explore outside Harvest temple you get no such skills and so the Shirken even in small numbers become a pain and even worse are they high level elementalist groups theres which ofen have Oni nearby to. I dont think NF is any more difficult than the other 2 campaigns each has its difficult spots but everyone adapts and makes there way through never the less

A good game is meant to be challenging - not a walk in a park. If a player isn't up to the challenge, then it's not game's fault.

To over come a challenge = rewarding = gaming euphoria.

I played Prophecies on release

I saw *many* people complaining (ingame) about
- Crossing the Dune (used to be only 1 monk henchie)
- Dune missions
- Fighting the Mirror
- THK
- the final missions of Ember camp


the game is almost 2 years old and many people are experienced GW players

It is only hard due to the average skill level of PuG players being very low. You have to take into account people improving and adapting to areas, and if it started off as easy for an average player then in time it would be almost mindless.

I hate to brag but it reminds me of when ToPK was first converted to a PvE arena, and the threads back then complaining about how hard it was. I found them most amusing after having completed it on our first run on the day it came out with a four man group.


Ok I love to brag about that, it gives me immense pleasure.