What is with the grind?!

The part of the Factions campaign in which you have to accumulate 10,000 faction for your faction is outrageous. Pray you are going with the faction your alliance is going with, because if you don't, you can't AB for that faction! The quests are not enough to accumulate 10,000 faction.
Furthermore, if you want to achieve Protector of Cantha, you must grind 10,000 more factionn for the other faction! This time, if you didn't choose the faction your alliance is with, you cannot do AB!

What is with the Luxon/Kurzick skills?! If you want to have access to those skills, you have to grind (yet again) to transfer faction to your account and get Friend of the Kurzicks/Luxons. Furthermore, if you want them to be worth anything on the battlefield, you have to grind MORE to get a higher rank in that title track!

Is anyone else as disturbed about this as I am?

The Luxon/Kurzick skills don't really matter, aren't that great, and aren't required.

There are also very easy repeatable quests that will give you Faction.

The first issue isn't new and had no real effect on the game, the second is no barrier. So it's not really a disturbing issue, imo.

You have friends from the other Faction. Pm them ask them for a guild invite, visit their guildhall and go AB for the other Faction.

and 10k is EASY to accumulate.

i had to check the date on this post...yup recent.

10k is nothing. Plus theres always FA which you can play either side no matter what your guild is alligned with.

bud, just do the same quests with your other chars or FFF. Faction are account-wide.

The news on the insane amount of faction needed for the skills had me disturbed, but not shaken.

It's kind of predictable on A-Net's side. Every good thing comes with a horrible thing in Guild Wars. And once again, A-Net is messing with us. It's like they're taking revenge on the farmers.

A-Net said that they have nothing against farmers, but they act childish and just nerf the drops, so the farming is still there. The result: INSANE AMOUNTS of farming for little reward. Same goes for everything in GW, and the luxon/kurzick skills are not an exception.

I'm not sure about Luxon, but this is definitely false for Kurzick. There are more than enough quests available to hit 10k without having to repeat any.

100k is insane? They put those bounties in for a reason, you know.

I was going to say it, but it looks like it's been pretty well covered. There are many, many ways to accumulate faction on boths sides. 10k is a walk in the park.

I havent had a problem and I just started to collect faction for titles...

There are more than enough ways to get faction, I just find AB to be the most entertaining way to do it. Haven't even tried hunting monsters yet, the 100 gold price for blessing is slightly annoying.

ANET did this for this campaign to try and introduce more casual players into the PvP side of the game, thus allowing you to gain Kurzik or Luxon Faction through places like Alliance Battles as Guildwars: Factions was a more PvP based game than Guildwars: Nightfall was.

The 10k Faction isn't hard to acquire and has all the suggestions have been covered on the many ways to acquire faction for either side.

wow 5 faction per monster, and sometimes (when lucky) 125 faction for a boss (most of the time I only get like 15 faction for a boss, though).

Seeing how I can vanquish about 1 area per day, let's say that's 300 monsters. I only get 1500 points per day, then (300 times 5).


So in 66 days, I'll have rank 1 of the title. For the skills to be EFFECTIVE, however, it'll take me... a looooong time.

And that only goes if I spend ALL MY TIME grinding. Sorry, but these skills and the grind required is just crap.

or you could alliance battle and get the first track in 2 days by donating the faction towards your guild/alliance...

Reetkever,

The key word here is, optional. The skills, and the grind are optional.

Think about it, Guild Wars is free after your initial purchase. To compensate for the amount of continuous effort but lack of a continuous income from every player, ANet has to appeal to a larger audience. That means both casual and grinders.

You can beat the entire game without spending a single gold piece, or you can spend hundreds and hundreds of platinum. You can beat the game with the "biggest" skills being the two to four elites offered to you for free, or you can beat it with 2 Sunspear Skills (with maxed title), 2 Faction skills (with maxed title), a res, and elite and then two normal skills of your choosing.

And I wouldn't suggest vanquishing as your primary method of gaining Faction. It's meant to "help you out" while questing/exploring/vanquishing, but it is by no means the most effective method.

Alliance battles yield between 300 to 1300 (on average, losing and winning respectively) in roughly a twenty minute period. So in about thirteen hours, you will have rank one of a Faction title (assuming you are donating to an alliance, otherwise double the time.)

Plus there is FFF and I've never really calculated the potential Faction/Hour ratio, but I believe its on par, if not higher than ABing.

And the end of the day, it's still optional.

Anet want you to be bored , thats why they nerf everything . Get over it , theyll nerf you next.

If you can get several toons to Maatu keep, you can do the basic quests and collect enough faction to get them all to 10,000.

To get Prot of Cantha, I just got a guild invite and did Luxon AB plus some quests...took about 2 days

The biggest issue I had was dealing with the aggro and AI of Factions. I had trouble at first cuz I was a caster and not used to Sins...Once I figured it out, 10k faction was cake

Playing the game is optional too. And if it becomes too much about grind I'll just opt to do something that's actually fun. (Yes, there ARE activities out there that you can enjoy without doing the same thing over and over mindlessly).

That said, getting 10,000 faction isn't a problem. Just do the quests. If you think quests are grind... well then no one can help you. The luxon quests will leave you a little short, but doing a little FA or AB is really not grind at all.

The skills... well they nerfed elemental lord so there really isn't a point anymore.

I have been trying to AB lately so I can grind out the faction required for the PvE skills. I'm no newbie to ABs: after a long, long period of doing nothing but ABs, I managed to get a set of 15k Kurzick armor without buying any of the amber. The process of getting all that amber really burnt me out to them however, so it is almost agonizing to AB anymore. What is worse is that it seems like the deeper into Kurzick territory the border is, the longer the wait time to actually get into a match is.

I'm also disappointed that the AB Bonus weekend was immediately BEFORE the release of the skills, and not after. I usually never ever play on the weekend (having a life FTW) so it normally wouldn't affect me, but in this case I may have tried to earn some extra bonus faction to help ease the grind. Right now I only have ~14k faction for my efforts of the last 5 days (of course I have about 120k faction earned on my account but it means absolutely jack in terms of getting the PvE skills... go figure)

Yeah, I WTF'ed quite a bit at that, but just take all the quests that give faction and plough through them, alt-tabbing to Wiki as and when.

You'll burn through them in no time, taking advantage of multiple quests in the same area (Wiki!) and there's more than enough to knock up 10K faction.

(Just FYI, I don't wiki myself through the game as a rule, but seriously this grind calls for it, if you value your sanity)

scary man

reetkeever, i have been doing runs outside House zu heltzer, 30 min on the map, normal mode, two 400 repeatable quests and 8 bosses on ferndaleis a fair ammount of faction, also yo really need 50k to raise the title i guess you missed that update

I have a random question - I utilized my epic key last night to install Factions (I ordered it today after I realized that the Sin class is the best class I had ever played). I'm Lvl 11 and finishing up the few quests that are left for me in the starter island.

My guild has kurzick alliance. When do I have to start with this 'grind' business and should I participate in AB with my guild to earn faction?

It is really up to you if you want to earn faction or not. This is by no means a requirement to complete any campaign, Just like the new susnspear skills and kurzick/luxon skills, it is all optional.

Please, playin AB for a couple of hours is hardly grind.
Grind is playing WoW for 2 days straight just to gain another level.
Buy a dictionary or just stop whining.

So you can call even the easy first 10,000 faction a grind?
/laugh
I always thought of that as a part of the storyline which has numerous ways to be skipped! Do it once and get all characters through. Don't like the quests, go play some AB/FA, or just take the bounty and go for some killing. Don't like that? So why are you playing the game then?

You call that grind? Play RF Online and get back to me.

If doing it is grind... Why do I have to grind to get out of pre-, and what about the grind to get the second proffession in faction (back to serious : the only part that CAN be seen as grind), or grind for max armor, or max weapon, or gold, or grind to map new towns, and missions those are grinds too. Then again why am I playing guild wars? A single player RPG... but those have grinding too... another? No, still grinding for levels. FPS, counter-strike! there'S no grind there. But wait, I have to grind for the money. Next FPS, just grab the weapon on the ground, no grind. OH but why do I have to grind to kill people? Can't I just get the kills without killing anyone, grinding is painful!

not sure if anyone else suggested this but fort aspenwood playing both kurz and luxon side is a very very very easy way to accumulate 10k faction for both kurz and lux

Theoretically that might seem possbile, but it's not very realistic with, on average, about 600 faction per battle (assuming a generalized case, win some, loose some) you'd need approximately 80 battles for the first rank. That's more then a few hours. Not to mention that, you'll need some more players willing to AB.

It's ok if you like to AB, or like to grind, or whatever makes it 'easy' for you, but getting the 50k for the first rank requires grind.

There was no grind in VtM:Bloodlines and KotOR didn't have much parts that felt like grind.

The 10k required for the story can come for the most part from quests that are part of the story.

Why do the quest if they can just get the reward for free? Questing and doing missions is just grinding to the end game right? Hell could just buy the game and Anet would automatically just give us the end game item and say "You did it! You won!"

Yes, I absolutely hate it.

My husband and I got to this area with several of our characters from different accounts sometime around when Elona came out. After trying to do quests in Ferndale, we abandoned Factions for months and went to play in Elona instead.

Finally, we went back to finish the Cantha campaign and it was a nightmare. First of all, he wanted to be a Kurzak and I had no opinion on the subject, so that’s where we went. However, because you can’t easily pull the baddies without getting the whole flock and there are so many spawners that you can't run away, we found the area particularly frustrating.

I like almost every other part of all three campaigns (that I have experienced thus far), except the Factions point grind. Together we have faced lots of tough situations and have made it through. We have been at minus 60 dp almost the whole trip to Droknar’s Forge and have been able to use long and tedious, but effective strategy to finally arrive at Droknar’s Forge 5-6 hours later, but it was fun!

We have killed all of the Charr in pre-searing, taking down all of the Bosses and claimed the superweapon as our own while the both of us still remained survivors till the very end. It was fun!

But this section of the game is not fun. It has divided us.

My husband quit doing the quest grind all together and just did the PvP Fort Aspenwood battles. I did not like the Fort Aspenwood battles, but they were only slightly worse than doing the Ferndale quests. Sometimes I’d actually get him to help me for a little while, but it always ended with him suddenly logging out saying, “I’m done!” leaving me abandoned mid-quest and still having to get through it because I want to carry on with the story.

By myself (well actually in a PUG), I made it to the Gates of Madness Mission and tried to make it through. Even though, I am still there and after failing the mission 14 times, I still think it's fun. By myself with heroes and henchies, I slay bosses and steal their elite skills. By myself, I wander around the South Shiverpeaks just me and the heroes and henchies poking about, just exploring. However, when I try to go through Ferndale by myself with the same heroes and henchies, I end up so frustrated and cranky that it literally ruins my whole day. I can hardly stand it. I’d rather go to work at my day job.

The Luxon side is a bit better. First of all, it’s pretty. That makes a huge difference. I find the Shiverpeaks nice too. I prefer sunny places. However, even though the Luxon side isn’t as much of an eyesore, it is still the same grind and I still found that I didn’t like it much. Although, I do like that I can see farther ahead and possibly plan my attacks a bit better.

Sadly, though, I am on my own in this area. I have a couple of friends that I play with occasionally and they asked if I wanted some help. So I said, “Yeah, I need help getting Faction points” and they respond, “Anything but that! Is there anything ELSE I can help you with?” *Sigh*

So I struggle through by myself wishing that there was such thing as a runner for this sort of thing. I never use runners for anything even when 2k sounds like a good deal to get to Droknar’s Forge, and it would be very quick, I’d much rather slug it out. But I wouldn’t bat an eye to pay if someone advertised for 2k to get me through this nightmare part of the game.

I have more than one account, so I have to do this section more than once, and yes, it sucks. It’s boring. I have no desire to help either side with their petty feud. There is nothing about the Kurzaks and Luxons that makes me care about them at all, so I am doing all this stuff simply because it's a huge roadblock that I have to overcome just so I can get back to the interesting story about Shiro and world takeover.

And as for the new skills, I'm not even going to look. What's the point. I hate earning faction points and will get the bare minimum I need to continue and then never go back.

I am so glad that you brought this up, Runeseeker1, because I have been bothered by this for a long time. If there is any pet peeve that I have in this game, it's gaining Kurzak and Luxon faction points. I only hope that Balthazar points are easier to get because I need those too!