Nightfall: Short-lived Thrill Ride

Well in spite of some amazing additions, NF is losing its appeal. I've now completed the game with my ranger, ritualist, and last night my Dervish. I can honestly say I am tired of it. Especially the upper boards that force you to leave the build you enjoy playing, and switch to a less fun build just to get through the mission. (example: having to replace high energy skills in domain of madness, or disable half your skill bar in the domain of pain)

I think playing it with the Dervish really did me in. My ranger breezed through NF. But the aggro issues really made playing a Dervish frustrating, even though I'd beaten the game twice and knew exactly what to do. I spent most of my time on the upper boards hanging in the back lines and wasting a whole character slot. It was the only way to keep two or three mobs from hitting my groups at the same time. What a shame it is to have a melee toon that has to hang in the back just because Anet stuck mobs too close together. That wasn't fun, and I hate just standing around.

There is no way I will be taking my assn or my warrior through NF. Besides all the grind of sunspear points, grinding up hero lvls, and grinding through boards that were designed to merely aggravate PvE players-- I just don't want my beat-down toons cowering in the back.

One week later, DoA is nothing short of frustrating either. Hats off to you have found good groups (which can take upwards of an hour) and had the patience to forge through it (which can take upwards of 2 hours per area). I sincerely compliment you for your patience.

But Sorrow's Furnace was the ideal Guild Wars addition. There's nothing like going to a mission, coming out before 2am, and looking at your inventory to see you actually accomplished something. That's fun, and fun is what gaming is about for me.

I have noticed that DoA has dropped to only 2, maybe three functional districts. The only reason it has more than one district is because people who just finished the game want to check it out. Within a month it will more empty than the Deep was. 95% of the community isn't going to bother.

So, I dunno what I'm going to do now. There's very little left in either of the two campains for me to do, except run a Dervish through. I may run one more time through NF with a paragon just to have something to do in the other campaigns.

All in all, NF was great thrill ride. For a month. The replayability of this chapter is horrid. I played Prophecies and Factions non-stop for six months a piece. And I still go to Sorrow's Furnace and have a blast. Guess its back to that, or maybe a new game. I dunno.

I agree with you completely. I have only gone through the game on my Dervish, and even that was enough for me to not want to play it again. The whole campaign is grinding in my opinion. If you want a good game to play other than Guild Wars, try Rainbow Six Vegas.

Honestly? Nightfall is a great Chapter for GuildWars and basically offers as much replayability as the other ones. The only problem is that it has turned into a downright Single Player Game and that's simply a place where it terribly loses to other games.

Simply put, it looks like you burnt yourself out.

wow.. you beat the game already?

50 hours in, 41 days, i just reached the realm of torment.

(no, im not a slow player, i just do a lot of random stuff. eg. farming, training other characters, etc.)

I still play it , its still fun ,100x better than factions was . As for DoA , I dont play it either , not because of difficulty but because of the boredom of elite missions , I never played the deep or ugroz just because well ..... they sucked , SF was a great addition so much more but it was the impact of new items which made that better . I wish they would add something more intresting , who knows what but not the same elite mission sort of thing over and over ,,, how about fort invasions with alliances that gain areas all over the map .

Also get prophcies back on top again!!! Rebuild ascalon missions and orr , just add new intresting stuff people want to do for fun , not just to get a hero

Farming, what kind?

And yea, in my 8+ years of gaming experience I have never seen a company before that encourages people to takes breaks from their game. I want to spend my life on this game Anet, ok? I would even pay a monthly fee for new content to be added to all three chapters. Just more open-endedness, and I would pay per month if money is what it takes for a change.

Moral of the story:

More open endedness plz

The forced linearity does get annoying :|

I like the gates concept to an extent, but the areas need to be bigger >

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Note: If you play Nintendo's Wiisports they tell you to take breaks like every half hour.

i beat the game on my necro (had a blast) and it was very satisfying. what i need to get used to is the very long area of istan:P. Much slower than pre and shing jea but it is also more in depth so i guess that evens things out.oh and you get to go to great temple too which is a plus.

Hehe lyra, haven't seen you here in a while

Ya, I have been preaching that for a while..but I think without a monthly fee it won't happen. With 5 or 10 dollars a month though, I would pay, and Anet would make more money. Right now, its the only thing that can save this game imo.

I just finshed the game with my ranger two weeks ago, my mesmer and ritualist should last me till the next chapter. I don't see how you can expect to do the missons over and over again non-stop for six months. I think you are a normal player two or three times through any chapter is more than enough. Delete some toons and you won't feel obligated to repeat the missions when you really dont want to.

As I've said in previous posts....I'm fine with having to work one or two characters through, but I really have no interest in trying to get all 9 of mine through just to get them to DoA.

Please bring back running. K? Thanks.

I don't have any problems with the OP except for the first two complaints, which are pretty ridiculous if you stop and think about them.

Your first complaint is that you couldn't use the build you wanted to beat the game. OH NOES the game is making you think and adapt. If people could use whatever random build they wanted and beat the game, there would be no point in playing it. What if I want to play the game with an empty skillbar? The game should let me win even if I have no equipped skills! Ridiculous.

Your second complaint is aggro management. I have two tips for you: get a longbow, and learn to flag your henchmen. Just because you have no clue how to handle aggro with a melee character doesn't mean there's an inherent flaw in the game.

I have no problem with milk, cept its white and a dairy product. Jeez.

Yeah. That's what I said. I want to be able to beat the game with an empty skill bar. Remind me again, which statement is ridiculous.

I have more than just a clue. I have three characters through the game. I think I know how to flag heroes, and manage aggro. Thank you very much. I know what is needed to master every mission. I also know that a ranged team owns NF hands down. I ran a guildie through Varesh, all domain missions, and the final mission in about 2 hours. We mastered all three of the final missions on the first try.

That doesn't change the fact that melee characters have to stand around the back lines and not fight because the aggro and wounded creature running is programmed horribly.

Advice for burnouts: Take a two week break. You'll get back.

A monthly fee would kill GW for me. I absolutely refuse to pay a monthly subscription to ANY game. WoW, EQ? Never played, but would be ok with a free trial. SWG(original, GOOD one), AO(long ago), CoH? Played trials, had lots of fun, then stopped because of subscription. We need to work to make games like GW the new model. I didnt have a problem with subscription games when you would pay for each hour you used(though I never played them then), as you werent paying for time you couldnt possibly use(sleeping, power outage, hard/software failure, ect). Free to play should become alot more common, in my opinion.

Its not a burnout, he is not like: Woah, I am tired (not angry tired, but physically or mentally tired) such as a post-exam burnout. He is tired of the way of the game.

Foreign characters no longer need to bother with sunspear points, btw...

Nightfall was meh for me. I played through Proph a few times, got 5 or 6 characters to around Ember light camp and finished the final missions twice or three times, played through factions fully on 5 characters and didn't get fed up (besides my dislike for some areas) at all despite playing through it one character after another for a few months. Nightfall I finished in a week on my warrior, started on my new paragon and the boredem of noob island killed that at the first mission. The thought of sunspear farming again has put me off bothering with other old characters, despite some great missions/areas there's a lot of boring crap that I never want to play again (e.g. that stupid talk to all these npcs at a party and play lame mini games to avoid paying to finish it, having to use heroes on certain missions that you never want to use at other times so having to carry level 14 heroes through the last parts of the game).

Maybe it's because I've been unable to pvp recently to isp/vent issues that I am somehow disliking pve more than usual, but nightfall hardly blew me away with the exception of the early docks mission which I thought was cool as it actually felt like you were in a real battle.

Delete some toons? Arg. I actually loved taking them through both Proph and Factions. I loved making sure I had every elite capped for them, and a few others for my builds. They are like my children. I can't delete my children.

Anyone who's complaining about LB or sunspear points has simply found an excuse through which they can finally express the fact they are playing the wrong game.

The "grind" is simply not an issue. It's not. As anyone and everyone will give you an exact breakdown of not only how you get these points as you progress through the story, but also by all acounts from the high-end areas, these aren't required.

Anyone quoting "grind" has finally found a scape goat that resonates in public. After all, everyone associates MMOs with grind, so everyone comes in and agrees with you. Except, there simply is no grind.

So rather than bringing up the same old tired reason, find out what it is that's really bothering you.

Refusing to change builds, and agro management are good indications of general direction of why you dislike of the game. Anyone playing a melee character should be intimately familiar with pulling and agro management well before the end missions.

i can say im burntout after taking my ranger and monk through.

my solution? i just made a rit and playing through factions (which is totaly diffrent)

Addition to post:

if you dont like to change builds then maby GW is not really for you? cuz in ANY campaign you HAVE to adjust your builds depending on area or the mission. this is why you have so many skills availble

Time to put in my 2 cents. I think the Dervish is really not all that great of a class. It seems like a pretty awesome idea, until you actually start playing it and realize it's basically a specialized warrior with really high damage per hit and a really low rate of hits. I know people might argue that it has enchants and gets back health and energy blah blah blah, but that's just its way of compensating for the 70AL.

As for the comment that "it's a fact that warriors have to stay in the backlines in nightfall pve," um, wtf? I've farmed thousands of lightbringer points, beat the game, etc, with Savio (the supermod warrior, not the minipet) and Koss in my party, and they pretty much own face. Bring things to slow down/knock down enemies or speed yourself up if you really see it as a problem, but I ran a R/W hammer build for a long time in Nightfall and I don't remember having any real problems like you're describing. Then again, I really like to take knockdowns, and Savio brings Shock. You should try that if you're not already.

I was burned out after playing through with my dervish. Please bring back running, k? Thx.

Yeah, bringing running back, would make it a lot more rewarding. I don't wan to grind through the campaign again, just to play DoA with my necromancer.

I would *love* it if they'd open up the crystal desert - desolation connection, once you've won the game with your first character. It would be a nice perk for owning both games. You'd need a "get a wurm" mission at that end, of course.

Anyway, I was a little burnt out after the first character and daunted by the idea of having to get the others through. I've found that joining pugs actually makes it more fun, even when I could do it more easily with heros.

I agree with Unienaule about the Dervish and that might have been your problem. This prof is touted as a melee character, but I don't find mine as useful as a warrior. I realize that it is partly the new AI (drawing aggro impossible), but its more like someone building a strange primary/secondary combo that doesn't really work well together. They've designed a melee/magic-user that is not that great at either and with the lower armor can overextend a monk very quickly.

But take some of your characters out and do other things with them (I also can't believe that suggestion to casually delete them) for a while, until the bad taste is gone.

Then if you still want to bring all your characters through, try with your warrior using a hammer build. According to most forum comments, this is the way to go in Nightfall. I can't comment on the assassin because I've never had one except in Factions preview.

Grind.. well... I'm afraid it is finding it's way into GW, because of the new options - farming actually begins to reward you in things that make a difference (Titles affecting gameplay): you don't need Lightbringer title to proceed through the game, but having it makes gameplay easier and your character more desirable in some areas; and having high treasure/wisdom title makes you more likely to gain more gold in some situations; hence: farming is good. And farm = grind for me.

Besides, I can't call DoA anything else than grind (the Truth thingie worth 100 gems? eeek.... Razah - hero without a counterpart - woth 4 hard-to-gain gems? Majon eeek.... Quest 2h+ long? annother major eeek).

Anyways back to the topic - guess you've burned yourself out. I dont think it's Nightfall's fault: from what you say it seems you are playing GW for quite a time - i guess the game simply lost its freshness for you. Take a break, do something else, maybe youll come back. Despite the farm/grind alert that keeps beeping in my mind, I myself find Nightfall the best chapter so far - gameplay wise, aesthetic-wise I preffered Factions.

I do agree with the OP : Nightfall has like no replay value at all. Took two chars through the game, got my paragon up to the Torment and didn't feel like playing anymore.
I had no problem bringing 6 chars through Prophecies and 9 chars through Factions, the fun was always there.

I blame :

- artificially long missions without real challenge, most of them being about luring/killing. Where's the adrenaline? Raisu, Vizunah, Gyala, THK offered more action than all NF missions together.
- awfully slow rythm (thanksfully, they got rid of the 2,5K Sunspear Points requirement for the foreign chars...)
- lack of interesting landscapes to explore : jungle desert -> dusty desert -> desert with blue carpets -> yellow sulfurous desert -> dark gloomy desert of doom (worst area design ever, even more than the Fire Islands)
- heroes and their impact on GW players' behaviour

I don't think Nightfall itself was the cause for me getting bored with it, as much as it was doing the whole linear campaign thing again. I took four characters through Prophecies, four through Factions, and one through Nightfall. Why? I'm sick of the repetitive nature of it.

I made a Dervish too and wasn't all that impressed either. The game it just too restrictive. The areas, after a while, aren't really as big as you thought they were.

And then crippling was invented...

Isn't that a skill you automatically get with a Dervish when you start out?

My friend, the answer is a monthly fee..

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10088269

I think this is it, people can choose to accept it or not.

Once again, there is a difference between implemented optional grind and neccessary grind. There is absolutely nothing in your post that is required to play the game. As was said - declaring GW a 'grind game' because there are channels for those who wish to be able to do so is scapegoating.

I think it really has alot to do with the addition of Domain of Anguish,and the fact that its a failure in the view of the whole moral of Guildwars.

I was completely underwhelmed at the fact that:

A)It was simply so frustrating that I couldn't enjoy it
B)I need to find 100 Gems to get a "Armor of Truth"(?) just to get a 15^50% weapon.I wouldn't mind this,if it wasnt for the fact that the drop at a rate of oh..1 for every 3 or 4 hours?
C)The fact that completeing parts of the quests themselves require around 2-4 hours,not including the time it may take to form said group.

Thats what really killed my interest in Nightfall.I was waiting on DoA,and was completely "Anguished" at the fact that they made the area so difficult I derived no pleasure from attempting such quests.

Grind is a relative word...it has hard to distinguish what is optional and what is necessary. Guild wars is a grind, more than anything, in the sense that it forces one type of gameplay, and that is fight fight fight, accept mission reward, fight fight fight, accept reward, and repeat with new character.

Heros killed miltiplayer

Farming is not like it was in the old days (you can argue its now better, but alot of people liked it way back when)

Running was killed when lots of people want to run (i think its stupid running was stopped because a few stuck up peple called it "cheating" and a few stupid people got run, and couldnt see it was a shortcut and would leave them "lost").

Factions could get away with not having running because it was easy to rush trhough it, and level quickly (other than the 10k faction quests), nightfall is slower paced, so it becomes so much more painfully obvios.

Its far far far far to easy untill you hit the end game.

Those are my issues with nightfall

Bring back running, make some missions harder and require your team to split (encouraging human teams), and for gods sake stop making skil aquisition so painfully slow.

A monthly fee to play a game that was originaly designed around being free online play?
Thanks but no thanks. Pay to play and I wouldnt bother with guild wars, Wow is already out there, do we realy need GW to be another Wow? Oh and I dont accept it. There are a ton of online role playing games that already charge money, not needing a fee to play online makes GW unique without that feature GW losses a lot of its uniqeness.

Well, I remember there is a thread in the dervish section describing the dervish's ability to tank. I think it started by someone who compared dervish with assassin. Anyways, take a look at that post, if you have doubts in dervish's ability to 'tank'.
As for low rate of hitting, consider the attack speed boost skills, such as heart of fury, and the ability to hit multiple targets, with attacks, and attack skills. The attack rate of scythe in fact just follows spear, same as hammer.

Dervish is a good class both in pve and pvp. The skills will indeed need some change from area to area. I found that in the early missions, I use wind prayer more often than earth prayer, and in the late missions, I use earth prayer instead of wind prayer to efficiently tank the mob.

Nightfall's pve part seems to be alright for me. The introduction of hero does make things a lot easier. The chapter itself is not really easy compared to the other two. There are a lot of interesting little things that increase the replay value of the game, such as challenge missions. My friend, a paragon, and I, the dervish, really enjoyed Dajkah Inlet, and once played just that mission for two days over more than 10 hours (we are current the 2 man team on the 3rd place all time best in that mission ).

[QUOTE]completely wrong.

the rotten community killed almost anybody who wanted to group at the start.

people are not saying (except for a few)

*OMG I AM FORCED TO TAKE A HERO*

most people are saying with their actions

*THANK YOU ANET FOR MY HEROES AND GIVE ME MORE OF THEM*

only the goldbot farmers

i remember a post after the Riverside nerf lamenting that done right you could get 50 runes per hour there when any rune had value.

fix exploits equals goldbot/farmerbot anger

Proof perhaps, I think you are using your special case to encompass a big population of people