NF vs Factions vs Proph, 4 months later

Alright, i'll say it. I hate nightfall. I absolutely think it's the biggest flop ever. Why? Well, there are 3 spots for grind, level advancement is a pain in the arse, and the story takes WAAAAAAAY too long. Not to mention the end-game enemies are on crack, and Domain Of Anguish is too damn purple. That being said...

I make characters in Factions, and get them to level 20 in a few hours. Then I go get a run to the desert (at the cost of 3k to me), then I go get them ran to the desert missions (assuming I can't run myself) which costs me 4k. Then I go beat the missions (easy as pie), and then I can go beat my double (even easier now than ever with all the new skills). I am now an ascended level 20 character with 200 attribute points in 6-7 hours. I love factions

NF=Prophecies>Factions

I think I may have had an easier time of gaining Sunspear points than everyone else. One character is going for Cartographer/doing random quests/vanquishing many monsters and the other is going for Survivor and I'd already attained the necessary amount of Sunspear points to move the story along at 2 points on n00b island. *shrug* I started with Prophecies so I thought I was supposed to just run around exploring and killing stuff in order to get to level 20. I like that you have to do a decent amount of battling in Elona to advance the story. The quick leveling in Factions sorta turned me off. Also, I think I'm just really bad at playing an Assassin. The attacks hardly do any damage and I don't have any status causing skills yet(I just got to Kaineng and went to Elona real quick to get heroes). I'm thinking of doing a Rt/N or a N/Rt but can't decide which. I don't know why but Prophecies is my favorite. Perhaps its the storyline. I love running around Old Ascalon and finding ruins and stuff like Gwen's Broken Flute. I'm such a nerd.

Yea pretty blunt..
The Spanish Flu is here! Omg panic! It is teh haxxors SHIRO! Kill him! Yay we teh safe again!

Factions has so many quests where its travel to point A then B and get 3000-5000 exp. I wish quests gave the choice of trained skills and lots of gold, and experience x4 on every enemy NPC.

I enjoy prophecies the most and haven't fully completed nightfall due to the fact im working on my ele survivor through Tyria... I'll tell you what I think when Chp4 comes out.

Aye, that pretty much sums it up...

However, because of that, I actually liked it the most out of the three, you had a goal from the very beginning, you knew who you had to slap around and you pushed throught to get there

The sunspear thing really wasn't THAt serious, guys. As long as you take the extra 3 seconds to walk to every Scout around the entrances and exits to places, grinding isn't even that necessary. If you ever got stuck, you were probabably less than 100 points away from where you needed to be anyway.
And on the mainland, where you have to get general, I have found that farming Jahai bluffs can be very profitable. Make money and get SS points at the same time! Automatic win!

If you carry characters over from another campaign to nightfall you dont have to grind the sunspear points at all. Can just go through the game without any of those barriers.

Personally I still think factions is the worse of the games but like it better than I used to. The elite missions and the new PvP features are really enjoyable even if the storyline wasn't exactly original.

Nightfall and prophecies are pretty close when it comes to comparing them and I think they're probably on par with each other. They were both original but for some reason I did enjoy nightfall more. I like desert areas a lot in games so that could explain why.

factions added more features than nightfall but nightfall had a better storyline. Really depends on whether your PvP or PvE orientated.

Factions > Nightfall > Prophecies

Factions is the prettiest, has an excellent plot and presents the most challenging gameplay. Nightfall has a good plot and intorduces heroes (whcih saved the game for me) but the desert gets a bit old nad newbie island takes too damn long. Prophecies was great back in the day but I just can't play through it anymore. It's so slow and you have to play for a good stretch with no heroes, plus I'm just tired of most of it. That said I appreciate the difficult Ascension process and love the large explorable endgame areas. They're all good, that much is for sure.

Prophecies > Nightfall > Factions

have 4 chars through Tyria, 1 through NF and 2 are going to. have 1 char though Cantha and will never want to do it again. I even have more interest helping my friends go through Tyria than Cantha where most of the time I just sleep and play

For me I'd go Prophecies>Factions>Nightfall. Although-I still have yet to beat NF so my opinion may change soon.

For me it is Prophecies>Factions>NightFall

The reason is that the in Prophecies you aren't held up by a repetitive type of game which Factions and Nightfall both are.You are forced into doing missions and quests.That is fine for your first char. but your second char I don't think so especially if all I want to do is go and get collector item and cap elites for that char.I don't like the repetitiveness of either Factions and Nightfall what I like about Factions is the pre island is way faster to lvl up from I can lvl up faster in Prophecies than that of Istani of Nightfall.To me Nightfall is no where near what Prophecies was like and they going to make it like it.

I made three characters in Prophecies specifically to collect skills as quest rewards, but that's not what happened. The second and third got run most of the way to the desert, leveled up in Factions, and now purchase skills when they want them. Prophecies retains the most varied and beautiful settings, but the rate of progress is very tedious.

I must say, I've come to appreciate Factions more over time. There's something to be said for getting a character up and running (attribute points, max armor and weapons, level 20, ascended) in a few hours of gameplay. Also, questing in high-level areas beats farming hands-down. However, the storyline is skeletal and much of the environment is fugly.

As many others have commented, Nightfall is the happy medium. There are more and prettier regions than in Factions, but the pacing of the storyline is faster than Prophecies. Also, heroes FTW.

I'm very curious about Chapter 4. My hope is for more interactive terrain, like boats or ice floes or airships.

I have 4 characters from prophecies, 4 characters from factions, and 3 from nightfalls. All 10 characters (different classes...duh) are lvl 20, and I have an extra slot for pvp purposes. I've been at the game since beta, and I can honestly say I'm not bored of it.

Prophecies was the original, and IMO the best. I've always had a strong bias towards originals though, so my opinion is definitely skewed. It had solid gameplay, good story, a good series of quests/sidequests, and good pacing.

Factions was fast, and I felt forgetable. There was nothing in the story that kept me at it, and the areas felt repetitive. The pacing was definitely fast, which was bad if you're just starting or great if you're replaying. What I enjoyed the most about this game were the 16 player coop missions, and the 12 player alliance battles. Those truly felt big and epic. My biggest complaint would be faction farming, and that's really just a one time deal. Took me only one day to get 10k for both sides. The classes were new and fun (i love shadowstepping, really fun to annoy people)

Nightfalls slowed the speed down a bit, but it was still fast. Despite what some people are saying, there's pretty much no grinding for points. All 10 of my characters are at least in Vabbi, and I've beaten the game with 2 of them. I only had to farm faction ONCE, and that was before they removed the faction requirement for foreign characters. The story IMO was great, the enviroments fantastic. The addition of heroes was a double-edged sword, but IMO mostly a good thing. The new professions were good, but imo not as interesting as the assassin and ritualist. Overall a good solid game.

My opinion of these three games 4 months later? Well, the value of factions has gone up since I'm playing it over again with my NF characters. I've actually found prophecies has less value, since I'm more inclined to run to the places I want to get. Heck, I've only done the jungle area twice in my entire gaming experience... Nightfalls is still great, but I'm starting to get sick of Vabbi despite its spectacular looks. The desolation i'm already sick of...

I'm hoping chapter four will introduce more interesting professions, and have another great story. I hope Anet keeps up its (for the most part) great work!

Even if people don't like factions, I think everyone should own it due to the PvP additions and extra slots. I believe Alliance battles aren't available on Proph/NF, am I correct?

Nightfall far and away. I quit for a few months after Factions ... but after hearing about the new skill updates, I recently decided to give Nightfall a shot. Glad I did. Nightfall has the best voice acting, plot progression, enemy lay out, quests and character designs of any of the Chapter thus far.

That's what I play RPGs for, and Nightfall delivered. Job well done to ArenaNet for making a believer out of me again.

After that I would say Prophecies (it has Sorrow's Furnace and some fun repeatable areas, passable plot, okay voice acting) and then Factions (no areas really fun to play over except maybe the final areas, bad voice acting, bad plot, enemies either falling on top of each other or leagues apart).

All just my opinion of course.

Thanks to all who replied...very interesting how evenly split opinions are. I didn't expect that after reading a lot of posts on these boards. I guess this goes to show two things:

1. The people who are most vocal with their opinions are not necessarily representative of the majority opinion, and

2. Anet can't win with Chapter 4 no matter what it is, because no matter what it is it will give some people more of what they like and others more of what they hate.

My humble opinions:

In the context of Skills creativity (i.e. ideas behind the skills):

Nightfall > Prophecies > Factions

In the context of visuals (i.e. scenery, armour, etc...):

Factions > Prophecies & Nightfall

In the context of gameplay:

Factions > Prophecies & Nightfall

hmmm.. Didn't expect that.. looks like Factions wins 2 out of 3. Really like the idea of AB from Factions, just wish they could fix it up a bit.

I think each chapter has it good points, and when you put them all together you have one huge diverse game.

Prophecies is great for its size, challenge, and (now that it's been around a while) its nostalgia.

Agree with an earlier post that Factions is the easiest for starting a new character. Just do all the quests on Shing Jea island and you'll hit level 20 in no time.

Nightfall adds a whole new continent to explore, heroes, more flexible armor (insignias).

All in all, there's something to like in each one.