Why none of the chapters live up to Prophecies...

mazza558

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Mar 2006

R/

[WARNING, LONG POST!]

I think you could argue that, after all the new content in the form of new chapters, GW:EN, etc, the time of Prophecies was easily the best, for several reasons:

1. No Wiki -With the arrival of Guildwiki, and later, the official Wiki, the fun seems to have drained out of playing. All the mystery is gone. Why explore an area for a quest when the wikis both give you maps of the area with the best possible route for the quest? PvXwiki made the situation even worse, promoting build elitism and preventing people from desigining their own builds. Template codes were both a good and bad addition, as now you could save all your builds and swap them with ease. The problem with this is that new players can simply request a "good warrior build plz", and not really thinking themselves. I'm not entirely blaming the wikis - after all, you can simply not look at them and discover everything yourself. However, this leads on to the next problem...

2. No Repetition - Sure, you can ignore the wikis, but in the later chapters, like Factions and Nightfall, and especially GW:EN, the sheer number of enemies is insane. These enemies are easy to kill, but it takes a painfully long time to cut through them all, even with a very good group. This means that you no longer are focused on the environment, but simply where the next popup will appear, or whether you'll run into a patrol or overaggro. This is a real shame as GW:EN has some of the most beautiful environments in any of the chapters. Think of Arbor Bay - the cavern in the top part of it was stunning, but I only noticed it by the end of the path. It's fun to explore, but these chapters present so many obstacles to exploration that you just don't bother - instead focusing on the Primary Quests. Prophecies only had these annoying areas in Post-searing Ascalon and in some parts of the crystal desert.

3. Open-ended and vast explorables - Yes, the explorables in all chapters are essentially the same size, but the sheer number of enemies in them (see above) means that they are no longer vast, but tiny areas which feel very claustrophobic. Nightfall handled this very well, with areas of wilderness with few enemies and a proper sense of scale. Prophecies has plenty of wonderfully free explorables which actually give you an urge to explore, to see "what's around that corner" without the fear of tons of enemies.

4. Storyline - Prophecies still feels like it has an epic storyline, with varied and interesting quests to go along with it. These quests are often interesting because they are not "fed-ex" quests, or quests which are simply variations on "kill x number of enemies". They expand the lore greatly and because you have the freedom to move properly in the explorables, they suddenly become fun. The actual storytelling of all the games are pretty good, but the presentation impedes your understanding of them. GW:EN also has plenty of new lore for us all, but we have to fight tooth and nail through hordes of enemies to find it out.

4. "Good" and "Bad" Grind - What I mean here is that some kinds of what you'd class as grind are good, such as a slower level progression, and some are bad, such as the allegiance titles, introduced in Factions, continued in Nightfall, and completely hammered into you in GW:EN. Both Factions and Nightfall require a small amount of boring grind to continue through the storyline (Factions has FFF, the fed-ex quests giving you small amounts of allegiance faction, and AB - Nightfall has Sunspear points, which, again, have boring quests or repeatedly killing enemies in order for you to progress). GW:EN has no compulsory grind to speak of, but to get your hands on the PvE skills with a rank that makes the skills useable, you need to complete the game and hand in a completed Book. Fair enough, you might say. What if you want skills from another title track? Do a few dungeons. Again, fair enough. In GW:EN, however, the grind is hidden in the form of long, repetitive dungeons packed with slow-to-kill enemies every inch. The primary quests would be fun if the situation wasn't the same above ground. "Good" grind comes in the form of playing through the game and levelling up/gaining a title WITHOUT thinking "Phew, only 154 enemies to kill and I have the title/level up" or "Once I complete this quest...blah blah". A player should NEVER be thinking this. They should be enjoying the quest right now. With prophecies, the fact that you were "nearly level 6" in presearing really never came into your mind as you carry a beehive over a bridge, explore an eerie and beautiful Catacombs (with, guess what, less enemies!), or exploring beyond the wall with a friend. As you slowly progressed past post-searing and into the northern shiverpeaks, you knew you were now level 12 and were pleased about it, but you were much more eager to find out what would happen next, or, even if replaying from the beginning, you might notice something that you didn't notice the first time.


___

Anyway, if you made it this far, thanks for reading!

Cacheelma

Cacheelma

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Jun 2005

The Ascalon Union

Me/Mo

I disagree.

1. Useful place that you can go to get some info about the game is a good thing to have. And let me tell you, the more popular the game is, the better this kind of sites for that game become. Build-elitism didn't arise because of the Wiki. Please, people can figure out by themselves which build works for a place. The wiki only helps people to get the right build without asking others OR trying to figure it out by themselves.

2. Repetitiveness in Prophecies is pretty much the same as other games.

3. What are you talking about? "Prophecies has plenty of wonderfully free explorables which actually give you an urge to explore, to see "what's around that corner" without the fear of tons of enemies." Where? Pre-searing? Last time I check, Snake Dance, Perdition Rock, Mineral Springs, Ice Floe, *insert any post-ascended area names here* are nothing close to "without the fear of tons of enemies". In fact, you can't really get anywhere in those areas without risking getting killed all the time.

4. "OMG Prince Rurik is dead! Now, let's leave his corpse there and go have some boat party in LA, shall we?" Good story indeed.

5. I don't view the drag-on tutorial of Prophecies as a good thing. Leveling in Guild Wars is a tutorial to the game. Spending 3/4 of your game time doing it is just wrong. I'd go play WoW if I want that. I agree about the Grind in other games. But not because other games' grind are worse, but because other games have "grind content" while Prophecies just doesn't have it, and PvP was supposed to be the end-game for you.

Or should I count the two elite areas, in which pve players had no other choice but to play them over and over and over and over? Isn't that the "worse" kind of grind?

Alex the Great

Alex the Great

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Feb 2007

America.....got a problem with that?

[Lite]

W/

some of the shiverpeaks areas are hard, but proph as nothing as hard as Urgoz, the deep, DoA, or somo of the dungeons.

I like exploring proph, it just seems biggers and more fun!

Quru

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Feb 2007

Acolytes of Death

N/

I'd say that Sorrows Furnace is as hard as many dungeons at EOTN.

Eldin

Eldin

Forge Runner

Join Date: Dec 2005

America. How about you, commie?

Fellows of Mythgar [FOM]

R/Mo

Yes, not only did Prophecies have a great story, but the areas were much more open and free.

In Kaineng City, you can't go 5 steps without some Am Fah coming out of nowhere or Afflicted.

Nightfall was kind of able to pull off the open spaces, somewhat, mainly in Istan. The Desolation had a ton of enemies - even though you had Junundus and they were easy to beat, if you think about the logic behind it "why are 50,000,000 Margonites all bunched up in this tiny area?" - makes no sense.

Unfortunately, GW:EN was crazy with enemies.

garethporlest18

garethporlest18

Forge Runner

Join Date: Jan 2006

[HiDe]

W/

Wiki is nice actually for armor and stuff like that. But I agree with you somewhat. Back in those days when the community didn't suck as bad and there were less people playing and THK was a betch with pugs. Good ol days.

Esan

Esan

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Jul 2007

Wars

GuildWiki was largely responsible for making Guild Wars one of the most egalitarian online games in existence. For this, it should be lauded. Its spiritual successors are doing a fine job of keeping the ideal of good information freely available to all. The only reason to dislike it is if you want to be recognized for your knowledge of the game, which is a twisted ambition (games are not real life!) and you will one day thank GuildWiki and its ilk for disabusing you of it.

Balan Makki

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Nov 2007

Well, speaking for myself, I find I'm replayng Factions and Nightfall the most. Prophecies being a close third

Jiub

Jiub

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Oct 2006

The Sky Pirates

W/R

i totally agree. when i first started playing the game it was fun
nobody cared what build the monk had, they were just happy to have a monk.
i gave up playing GW for about six months because i couldnt get a party at all with my N/W because after telling people i was neither SS or MM they simply said "noob kick him" and that was it
factions made it even worse. getting to level 20 in afternoon of playing is just a waste of time
and i havent even played nightfall yet. i was so dissapointed with factions that i didnt buy it.
i did buy EOTN, and i love it. i disagree that it has too many enemies in, i find it quite easy to play far from boring.

Nor

Nor

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Jan 2008

none yet :X

Me/N

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jiub
i totally agree. when i first started playing the game it was fun
nobody cared what build the monk had, they were just happy to have a monk.
i gave up playing GW for about six months because i couldnt get a party at all with my N/W because after telling people i was neither SS or MM they simply said "noob kick him" and that was it
factions made it even worse. getting to level 20 in afternoon of playing is just a waste of time
and i havent even played nightfall yet. i was so dissapointed with factions that i didnt buy it.
i did buy EOTN, and i love it. i disagree that it has too many enemies in, i find it quite easy to play far from boring.
If you dont want to waste time getting killed in a mision you gotta have some usefull skills.

why is a waste of time on afternoon ? your not even saying why, and i think factions gives you alot of money from droppings. (factions is great, lots of indoors something new than proph lacked)

EOTN it is alot of fun , but omg this expantion DO really has ALOT of enemies around. (havent you done even the first misions "charr patrol" and "defend eye of the north?")

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with the gw wiki part i think its ok , make noobs catch up with pros faster and makes our casual game better (yes all of us arent that hardcore to spend ALOT of time studyng all the gw content)

CyberMesh0

CyberMesh0

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Jul 2005

Charter Vanguard [CV]

N/Me

Quote:
Originally Posted by mazza558
1. No Wiki
How many people still willfully ignore it/don't know it exists?

Quote:
2. No Repetition
The only area in EotN where this is terribly apparent is the Asuran storyline. Also, many of the quests lead you back through those areas multiple times, there's plenty of time to enjoy the scenery imo.

Quote:
3. Open-ended and vast explorables
Prophecies *sometimes* had this problem, and so did Factions. Nightfall has more open areas because deserts generally fit that description, but there are plenty of areas in Nightfall that are also clausterphobic. (Barbarous Shore anyone?) I think all four places had a fair balance of each.

Quote:
4. Storyline
Yes and no, in my opinion. Prophecies still had some fedex/kill X of Y quests, but it definitely had the lowest count of the four. As for the presentation, GW:EN answered this problem best with the introduction of the Scrying Pool. One for each chapter would be awesome.

Quote:
4. "Good" and "Bad" Grind
Again, yes and no. Factions allegiance is meant to be a long drawn-out thing, I'll agree- but especially now, that's a matter of 4 or 5 alliance battles and you're done with what you really *need* to do. Regarding Nightfall's, most of the sunspear "grinding" wasn't really grinding at all if you properly used the bounties every time you needed to be outside. I never hit a point where I needed to stop and backtrack for more points. Lightbringer wasn't even a necessary title in regards to gameplay. For EotN: as you said, you just need one book for one title. If you want the skills/max titles, just keep filling books. They aren't that terribly repetitive, especially if you only add one more title.

BodhiNightwind

Academy Page

Join Date: Jul 2006

United States

Stonewall Of Unity League [SOUL]

Mo/Rt

I got Prophecies a week before Factions came out. I got Factions and pretty much never looked back.

Factions was better than Prophecies and Nightfall introduced things that were better still. Though Cantha is still my favorite continent.

Pre-searing alone is enough to take Prophecies out of the running.

Also Prophecies just has this blah, bland, beige feel to it.

Quaker

Quaker

Hell's Protector

Join Date: Aug 2005

Canada

Brothers Disgruntled

I'd have to agree with the OP. The most fun I've had in GW recently was taking a couple of new characters through pre-searing and simply exploring.
In fact, I'm actively looking for a new game to play which will give that old Prophecies feeling. More exploring, less mindless killing.
I fear that GW2 will be more like EotN than Prophecies - lots of stupid "kiddie" titles (party animal - what-everrr), lots of mindless killing, and 3 days to max your character.

Malice Black

Site Legend

Join Date: Oct 2005

I'm kinda playing all 4 games at the same time. Helps keep things interesting.

But, I do have to agree, back in the old days things were more interesting. Some newer people won't understand this.

Shadowspawn X

Shadowspawn X

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Jun 2005

Fellowship of Champions

R/E

Interesting position on wiki, it has created a new breed of cut and paste GW player. People running bars without understanding the skills or synergy, however on the flip side it was convent to find that hard to find collector back when things like collectors actually meant something in the game (before Anet flooded the market with golds and made greens ridiculously easy to get you can't even leave and outpost in Factions or NF without tripping over a boss and having a green drop).GW incompetence in Prophesies on the other hand was at an all time high due to the running. People skipping huge portions off the game and running around FoW with 170 attribs was horrible.

You talk about the storyline in Prophesies like it was great. It wasn't, no one could follow it at the time, especially the ones who didn't do the side quests. It was poorly told and presented.Many players had no idea what was going on in the storyline after completing Prophesies two even three times. Not until they hired Jeff Grubb did the storytelling come up to par and the loose ends slowly get tied up.

As far as the explorable the campaigns are missing that back to back to back explorable like the falls, dry top, mineral springs, and snake dance. It was the remoteness of traveling though three explorable areas to get somewhere without encountering an outpost that added to the vastness not the number of enemies which i don't know why you complain about that Prophesies had plenty of enemies .

As far as the grind its been ok except for the rep grind in GWEN it was over the top and excessive. If they continue the trend of pve skills with massive grind they will lose many players because the grind has no entertainment value.

zwei2stein

zwei2stein

Grotto Attendant

Join Date: Jun 2006

Europe

The German Order [GER]

N/

It is simple why.

Prophecies was visionary, born from possible distaste of traditional MMOs and designed to capture specific market share. It was deisgned to be so far from traditional MMO that people argue about whether its can be labeled as much.

It suceeded at that.

Further chapter were aimed at increasing market share, notably at catching attention of people who at first discarded GW because lack of grind/traditional character progression.

Devs also listened to much for QQ of "hardcore" people who end up been-there-done-it-all regardless of how much grinding they add to game.

Basically, game philosophy changed from being as far from traditional MMORPG as possible to being as close to traditional MMORPG as possible.

So if you bought GWs at begining because you liked it as game (and not because it was free), you are guaranteed to feel that first was best.

Sleeper Service

Sleeper Service

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Dec 2005

CULT

why on earth does Wiki come into the equation?

Saying Wiki affects the game is like complaining that a movie sucks because you went and read all the spoilers, asked a bunch of people who went to see it to tell you in detail what happened and then (just to make sure you understood) downloaded it on divx only to watch the last 15 min of it.

its a choice.

to clarify, its like rating a game on its cheats.

bel unbreakable

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Jun 2006

scotland

shadow hunters of light

W/Mo

yep the original was the best i think it worked fine right up to the end where we were all ment to go pvp thats were it all went pear shaped

Sab

Sab

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Dec 2005

Quote:
Originally Posted by mazza558
1. No Wiki -With the arrival of Guildwiki, and later, the official Wiki, the fun seems to have drained out of playing. All the mystery is gone. Why explore an area for a quest when the wikis both give you maps of the area with the best possible route for the quest? PvXwiki made the situation even worse, promoting build elitism and preventing people from desigining their own builds. Template codes were both a good and bad addition, as now you could save all your builds and swap them with ease. The problem with this is that new players can simply request a "good warrior build plz", and not really thinking themselves. I'm not entirely blaming the wikis - after all, you can simply not look at them and discover everything yourself. However, this leads on to the next problem...
If you're going to look up GWWiki, don't blame GWWiki for spoiling your fun.

As for PvXWiki, it's just a place where you can look up builds. If you want to make your own builds, go ahead. PvXWiki doesn't have all the decent builds, nor are the builds PvXWiki necessarily good. If someone's arguing that such and such a build is bad solely on the basis that it's not on PvXWiki, you can rest assured that person is mentally retarded. While I don't really like PvXWiki (the builds there are often wrong, or just bad, and it's infested with people who have no clue what they're talking about), you should stop blaming Wiki and see where the real problem lies.

And for skill pinging, you do realise that people have asked each other for builds before the feature was implemented right? They just typed out the skills manually.

MithranArkanere

MithranArkanere

Underworld Spelunker

Join Date: Nov 2006

wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigo

Heraldos de la Llama Oscura [HLO]

E/

Prophecies had a great basis, but many mistakes:

- No going back to pre-Searing.
- No challenges.
- Mission and Bonus can be made separately.
- Can skip missions. You only talk-to-start like in Nightfall and EotN in the pre-Searing final mission. You don't need the previous primary quest to start a mission.
- Everything's too late. In factions it was too soon. Nightfall speed it's the best, 25% of the missions, then level 20 and ascend.
- Small parties. Parties of 8 people should have started from Lion's Arch. Pre-Searing should have been for 4 people, and Ascalon and Shiverpeaks for 6.
- Almost no skins. No prophecies-only skins since faction, when the prophecies skins urnet to be 'core'. They 'fixed' the problem by adding fake rarity with inherent modifiers, but they should fix that. Add more skins, prophecies-only skins and update the rates to inscribable.
- Horrible rewards. With a couple of exceptions, like the -50HP grim cesta, in Prophecies the quets give poor XP(or too much, but just XP and nothing else), almost no gold, items you may use only with your first character and then just discard them with the rest, and there are no skills for the New professions, so making those quests for a Ritualist/Assassin and a PAragon/Dervish it's almost a waste of time.
- No end-game map(Party at Droknar's Forge) with ending credits and fireworks, no end-game cinematic, nor end-game greens.
- Non-repeatable elite missions (titans) with puny rewards (just XP). They should have been repeatable, give less XP and a bit of gold.
- Too many single-type enemy groups. There are some armies, but most groups are composed entirely by one or two type of creature. A bunch of warrior trolls, and bunch of ranger spiders, a bunch of elementalist imps. In the rest of the campaigns it's more rare to find a group of enemies exactly the same, there is much more variety.

The best thing in Prophecies is Grenth's Footprint, and that was added later.

I hope Anet do not forget retroactivity again. If they find a better way to make things, they should update the entire game, this is one game after all, not 4 separate ones. You can't completely forget about and old campaign.

I Will Heal You Ally

I Will Heal You Ally

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Feb 2007

In my HoM

Canthan Refugees [TOGO]

E/Rt

I agree... no wiki, everyone were "newbs" at the beginning of GW, people asked for anyone to join their party, now only the popular profs. I wish I was there from the beginning.

0mar

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Jul 2006

Factions is an absolute pain to play through. The enemy density is ridiculous, there are literally hundreds of Am Fah or Jade Brotherhood just milling around. There's nothing exciting about killing the same group 15 different times on the same map. It they didn't kill you the first time, they sure as hell won't kill you the 15th time. The story was bad, the directing was laughable and the voice acting was atrocious. The story wasn't engaging, it wasn't interesting and the missions were mostly boring. 75% of the game was involved in boring, drab slum areas that had very little in terms of diversity, both enemy and architecture. The factions grind was the worst; there's no need to make the amount such a ludicrously high number (10,000!). It's a chore getting 10k faction for both sides on a new character. Factions turned me off to this game for almost a year. It was seriously that bad.

Nightfall, on the other hand, was a ton of fun. Enemy density was brought back to a managable level. There was very little grind; I had ~6800 sunspear points at the point where I needed 7500, but that was easily attained via quests and bounties. I didn't feel like I was grinding and my subsequent playthroughs, I never had a problem getting enough SS points. The story was interesting and was epic. I especially liked the Realm of Torment, the added environmental conditions were an added change. Finally, the quests were more involved, even if they were FedEx'ey in nature. Sure, a lot of quests involved bringing back some cloth or bones or missing shipments, you also had quests like destroying the Staff of Mists or holding the line against invading demons.

EtoN is a lot of fun too, but I haven't gotten very far into it. I really like the enemy skillbars and enemy group layouts. Fighting Charr is a lot of fun!

mazza558

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Mar 2006

R/

Okay, I understand your point on the Wiki. Still, I think mystery is better than "OMG 100% MAP RIGHT HERE!!"... Glad that GW2 is changing this somewhat.

EPO Bot

EPO Bot

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Aug 2006

Mo/N

If WoW had no fee, i would have been playing that instead. So i DO like the way GW changed. Having just one PVE character to develop is exactly what i wanted. The original prophecies world was vast but mostly empty with no reason to return to it after running trough it to get to the missions.

Numa Pompilius

Numa Pompilius

Grotto Attendant

Join Date: May 2005

At an Insit.. Intis... a house.

Live Forever Or Die Trying [GLHF]

W/Me

Quote:
Originally Posted by zwei2stein
Devs also listened to much for QQ of "hardcore" people who end up been-there-done-it-all regardless of how much grinding they add to game.

Basically, game philosophy changed from being as far from traditional MMORPG as possible to being as close to traditional MMORPG as possible.

So if you bought GWs at begining because you liked it as game (and not because it was free), you are guaranteed to feel that first was best.
Pretty much, it was a kinder, gentler, time, where farmers were few and far between and grind basically didn't exist - although it should be said that there were always hardcore people. There were people complaining about that there was "nothing to do" (they'd been in the beta, hardcore people always are), and complaining about the "insane grind" when I joined GWGuru back in 2005.

Ironically back then it was the PvP'ers who complained about ANets focus on PvE, and how they were forced to play PvE when all they wanted to do was play PvP.

Also ironic is that one of the most common complaints about the PvE was that it wasn't open enough, and that it felt claustrophobic and "corridor-like".

As for wiki... It does take all the exploration out of the game, but on the other hand it's such a valuable resource that on balance I think it's mostly good. I just have to make sure not to read about quests and missions before I do them.

MirkoTeran

MirkoTeran

Forge Runner

Join Date: Sep 2005

Slovenia

Scars Meadows [SMS]

Mo/

Quote:
Originally Posted by Malice Black
back in the old days things were more interesting. Some newer people won't understand this.
QFT

Quote:
Originally Posted by MithranArkanere
many mistakes:
- No going back to pre-Searing.
- Mission and Bonus can be made separately.
- Can skip missions.
- Everything's too late.
- Small parties.
- Almost no skins.
- Horrible rewards.
- No end-game map(Party at Droknar's Forge) with ending credits and fireworks, no end-game cinematic, nor end-game greens.
I feel the exact opposite of this. This are one of the best points of Prophecies over other chapters. Bonuses were actually interesting and quest rewards were awesome (skills, unique items,..). No crappy greens, but they messed that up later.

Sir Pandra Pierva

Sir Pandra Pierva

Forge Runner

Join Date: Apr 2007

Sardelec yelling at Tenshi

Angels Of Strife

E/

honestly i have to say Proph has been the most gipped of all the chapters it doesn't have its own elite area, and no sorrows furnace doesn't count its too easy, but all in all it was a more epic style of play. Sure you could get runs everywere but yet still you were doing to eventually get the whole plot by trying to cap certin elites which are only in certain areas in the game. But while the other campaignes brought some interesting things in GW mostly they just were bleh. There is no epic defend a fort fight like THK, even though it is easy as hell, also to the point of the endgame greens...they have all sucked.
Just look at shiros blades look cool but why is req not 9?
the forgotten stuff is ok at best
droks weapons all look like shit
some of the proph greens are still the highest selling greens in the game.
also the lvling thing was nice since it was more of you actually becoming better by going on a journy instead of oh i lvled up in a day and am as strong as I will ever be
it was more of I ascend and I feel strong as hell, and then you got your ass kicked by the forgotten.
i also liked that in game unless you were a specific class you really didn't need any elites at all. My ele beat the game and got groups just fine with out any elites, but now adays with elite tomes i have seen some groups where if you dont have this elite by the first mission in the nub island you are a very bad player.

man i miss the old days when there was no such things as builds.

Lady Raenef

Lady Raenef

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Feb 2007

Oregon, USA.

Zero Mercy [zm]

W/

I started in Prophecies shortly before Factions was to be released. I love that campaign more than the others still to date. The enjoyment that campaign brought me isn't even comparable. I loved it, because it was so huge that I felt lost. As the land twisted and turned, every new area felt like a whole new world.

Factions, was like that...sort of. Nightfall, no, it was lame. Sand, sand, sand, more sand. Boring.

roshanabey2

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: May 2007

[lion]

N/Mo

Quote:
Originally Posted by mazza558
[WARNING, LONG POST!
4. "Good" and "Bad" Grind - What I mean here is that some kinds of what you'd class as grind are good, such as a slower level progression, and some are bad, such as the allegiance titles, introduced in Factions, continued in Nightfall, and completely hammered into you in GW:EN. Both Factions and Nightfall require a small amount of boring grind to continue through the storyline (Factions has FFF, the fed-ex quests giving you small amounts of allegiance faction, and AB - Nightfall has Sunspear points, which, again, have boring quests or repeatedly killing enemies in order for you to progress). GW:EN has no compulsory grind to speak of, but to get your hands on the PvE skills with a rank that makes the skills useable, you need to complete the game and hand in a completed Book. Fair enough, you might say. What if you want skills from another title track? Do a few dungeons. Again, fair enough. In GW:EN, however, the grind is hidden in the form of long, repetitive dungeons packed with slow-to-kill enemies every inch. The primary quests would be fun if the situation wasn't the same above ground. "Good" grind comes in the form of playing through the game and levelling up/gaining a title WITHOUT thinking "Phew, only 154 enemies to kill and I have the title/level up" or "Once I complete this quest...blah blah". A player should NEVER be thinking this. They should be enjoying the quest right now. With prophecies, the fact that you were "nearly level 6" in presearing really never came into your mind as you carry a beehive over a bridge, explore an eerie and beautiful Catacombs (with, guess what, less enemies!), or exploring beyond the wall with a friend. As you slowly progressed past post-searing and into the northern shiverpeaks, you knew you were now level 12 and were pleased about it, but you were much more eager to find out what would happen next, or, even if replaying from the beginning, you might notice something that you didn't notice the first time.


___

Anyway, if you made it this far, thanks for reading!
So legendary defender of ascalon isn't grind then?
Think pls

Nemo the Capitalist

Nemo the Capitalist

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Aug 2006

Trust me you dont want to know my Chasms of Despair

Zaishen Brotherhood

N/Me

guildwiki is a favorite cookie of mine

Malice Black

Site Legend

Join Date: Oct 2005

Pre-planning every skill/build before entering a mission/zone is highly boring if you ask me.

Horus

Horus

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Aug 2007

www.godtguild.com

Blades Of Burning Shadows [GoDT]-leader

Mo/

Proph is the best campaign if you play it trough storyline(do quests and missions n order, not to get a runner till desert, then missions runner etc. or even worst, after pre a runner to droks). Factions just gives you a chance to get a lvl20 character very fast, and to finnish it in less than one day. also its lame that you need to farm kurz AND lux points if you want to finnish ALL missions in game, which is hard as you can only play ab for one allegiace(and hen to get guest nvite in other allegiance guild.). NF came and just killed groupig at missions, mainy the 1st thing i can think of when i hear NF. also those SS and LB grinding is lame.

proph- great storyline/exploring/questing/etc.
fact/NF- grind/cool end game missions/lame storylines
if you combine everything together, yu get great game^^with everything included

zwei2stein

zwei2stein

Grotto Attendant

Join Date: Jun 2006

Europe

The German Order [GER]

N/

Quote:
Originally Posted by roshanabey2
So legendary defender of ascalon isn't grind then?
Think pls
Because everyone needs to be legendary defender, right? Becuase prohecies was deisgned with legendary defender being main goal, right? Hell, it was not even in game since beginig, it was added what ... year, year and half after release.

He is talking Grind that is not really grind at all ... aka, enjoying game. Versus compulsory "farm 10k points or you cant progress storyline."

Nevin

Nevin

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Jul 2005

I disagree, the only thing that made Prophecies good was being a noob. If Nightfall or Factions was the first chapter of GW I played, I'd be biased that they were better.

Hyper Cutter

Hyper Cutter

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Jun 2006

Knights of the White Eye [HINA]

Quote:
Originally Posted by 0mar
The factions grind was the worst; there's no need to make the amount such a ludicrously high number (10,000!). It's a chore getting 10k faction for both sides on a new character. Factions turned me off to this game for almost a year. It was seriously that bad.
Just doing the available quests gets you to 9000-some Kurzick faction and something like 7000 Luxon faction (for reasons I don't really understand, a lot of Luxon quests are post-Hatchery)...

Also, the way Prophecies handled your last 30 attribute points was ridiculous.

AuraofMana

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Jun 2005

Georgia, US

To me, Prophecies was undeniably the WORST chapter ever. It was slow-paced in both gameplay, storyline development, and character development. Not only that, but a lot of the missions and quests were of pure boredom. Let's not include the lame cheesy storyline.
Yes, the world was bigger, but who cares? It only took longer to finish the boring gameplay and storyline. If you are going to tell me how amazing the environment looked, then I clearly missed it because I was trying to not fall asleep from the long and boring missions, especially the ones in the Jungles.

Quote:
1. No Wiki
That's great to some extend, but that's it. Some missions are long and boring that it is worth more trouble to do it for the sake of storyline (which sucked and didn't make sense).

Quote:
2. No Repetition
Are you kidding me? The missions were poorly designed and clearly did not require any semblance of intelligence to finish. Most of the game you are spent traveling from town to town, and that was VERY REPETITIVE. Some people might enjoy this but I clearly did not. The enemies on the way were easy, they were just annoying and took too much of the time. GW was trying to pull off the combat-oriented theme, and it clearly backfired, since the combat was not challenging and was more of a nuisance.

Quote:
3. Open-ended and vast explorables
No, it did not give me the urge to explore. Every corner looked the same. Sure, there were some good sites here and there, but the rest were just so-so. Plus, the monsters were annoying at the very best, why would I want to waste time fighting more?

Quote:
4. Storyline
Epic storyline? That storyline can't get any cheesier. Plus the fact that it is melodramatic and didn't feel like you were even part of it. And the vizier? Who made the script? Even an idiot could tell he was evil, if not already guessed he is the lich. And the prince, who actually cared? He was so annoying the entire game it felt satisfying to kill him in the end. The lore in Prophecies sucked. I still don't know anything beyond the name for Ascalon.

Quote:
4. "Good" and "Bad" Grind
Quote:
What I mean here is that some kinds of what you'd class as grind are good, such as a slower level progression, and some are bad, such as the allegiance titles, introduced in Factions, continued in Nightfall, and completely hammered into you in GW:EN.
Both are clearly bad. Who wants to spend 20 million hours to grind to the next level? And remember, high level cap =/= slow level progression. D2 clearly had high level cap and it was easy to reach level 85+ in a day.

Quote:
A player should NEVER be thinking this. They should be enjoying the quest right now.
All the quests in Prophecies sucked. Honestly, Presearing as a whole was much more fun than the entire Post-searing. People get to enjoy a little bit of Presearing and then get thrown into the retarded melodramatic Post-searing.

Quote:
With prophecies, the fact that you were "nearly level 6" in presearing really never came into your mind
Actually, I did. I was thinking that I am a little less than 1/3 the max level ALREADY (oh boy, was I wrong, it takes you forever to hit level 20 in Prophecies without grinding) and the fact that my character still can't one shot kill things that are at least same level as me worried me. Oh no I was right.

Quote:
but you were much more eager to find out what would happen next
So I can finish the storyline and put GW on the shelf because it was so boring. I never ended up finishing Prophecies before I just quit and played something else. I only came back because Factions came out and THAT was clearly much more interesting.

Quote:
even if replaying from the beginning, you might notice something that you didn't notice the first time
Every time I play Prophecies and try to enjoy it I end up going to Factions to kick some serious Shiro-ass because I am getting more action doing that than walking around trying to save a melodramatic prince and some "civilians".

In my honest opinion, Prophecies is the worst chapter ever.

AW Lore

AW Lore

Jungle Guide

Join Date: May 2006

Ancient Warriors Gaming Clan

W/Mo

Quote:
To me, Prophecies was undeniably the WORST chapter ever. It was slow-paced in both gameplay, storyline development, and character development. Not only that, but a lot of the missions and quests were of pure boredom. Let's not include the lame cheesy storyline.
Yes, the world was bigger, but who cares? It only took longer to finish the boring gameplay and storyline. If you are going to tell me how amazing the environment looked, then I clearly missed it because I was trying to not fall asleep from the long and boring missions, especially the ones in the Jungles.
QTF

i only made two chars in prophecies, warrior and then a monk to help guildies, i tried making an ele and a ranger, but upon reaching desert i was bored out of my mind with the slow leveling, so i deleted them. also i try to spend as little time in prophecies as i kind, i really hate that area, eotn excluded. only my warrior finished prophecies back in the days, and my monk was 3 or 4 missions away, but i was bored of wanting to do the fire ring missions.

when factions came out, i not only did finish it with both my warrior and monk, but also elementalist, ranger, necro, mesmer (new found love) and asassin, i didnt finish it with a ritualist, because honestly, i didnt knew how to play that class then (and still dont know now), back then, only my rit didnt finish factions, and she was lvl 18.

when NF came out, i made the paragon and dervish, and finished with all 10 classes, yes including the ritualist, made a half assed build for her that worked decently well.

the only char that i have taken back to prophecies and finished it, other than my warrior, was my mesmer, and that was only to get the honor monument mention of it, and i skipped half of it.

my other chars, they only have LA for the festival quests and stuff, they have not set a foot far from LA (only for quests, and if they require to go anywhere far from la, abandon quest) they have not and they will NEVER do a mission in tyria, even though i could make over 20k per character just for doing it all, ill never do prophecies with any other char (other than to get the HM title for my mesmer only)

for me, Factions>eotn>NF>bonus mission pack>__________________> prophecies

Thorondor Port

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jul 2006

British Columbia

W/

I dont fully agree with your platforms but..

Prophecies to me was the most exciting to start out of any other game:

Brand new game
No one had money
Tons of ppl played in a smaller world than now
Everyone used pugs (as frustrating as it was at times)

I thought it was great.

IlikeGW

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Aug 2005

Mainly because they pushed out sequels to a game made in several years, in less than half the time probably for each. Basically, sequelitus. When you make a bunch of sequels to a game on the same engine in succession, it's a given that the sequels are going to feel like weak remixes.

Windf0rce

Windf0rce

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Jan 2007

Quote:
Originally Posted by AuraofMana
To me, Prophecies was undeniably the WORST chapter ever. It was slow-paced in both gameplay, storyline development, and character development. Not only that, but a lot of the missions and quests were of pure boredom. Let's not include the lame cheesy storyline.
Yes, the world was bigger, but who cares? It only took longer to finish the boring gameplay and storyline. If you are going to tell me how amazing the environment looked, then I clearly missed it because I was trying to not fall asleep from the long and boring missions, especially the ones in the Jungles.
I agree. Prophecies is very boring, specially thanks to its huge length and missions; they take just too much time and not much of it is spent actually fighting, mostly running around with some annoying bundle.

I liked Factions the most due to the lots of killing and high number of monsters. Though I have to admit the campaign feels a bit 'rushed'. Could use some extra lenght (though still not as much as Prophecies) and cinematics.

Nightfall has the perfect length, unfortunately the whole continent looks the same. Every location is brown and full of sand, most places lack identity.