Thursday November 13, 2008 - update notes

I'm currently working on the young heroes book. Does anyone know if the Kurzick reward is faction or points to the title track? If its faction then the title will be a breeze!

On the book issue... Just change the fee to add pages you've already done to be in line with the gold reward you get when handing it in. That way there will be no negative impact on the economy and we can still get our rep points or faction for already completed missions. Simple solution.

Nice synergy between vanq, masters and rep. Too bad I've already maxed a lot of those titles. Would have been great a year ago! :P
Other than that I think it is an Excellent update. Thanks for all the hard work.

Nice update in general. I'm not going to rant about it making titles way to easy, even if it does.
pros:
- Storybooks. Nice addition, kind of expected.
- Retroactive changes. Nice thing for old players.
cons:
- Consumables. Game is easy enough without sigege turtles...

As someone with 30 max titles, I fail to comprehend how exactly are the books going to force me into doing the missions all over again. Why would anyone in their right mind want to do that? And what's this "playing loyally for years" business? Do you expect aNet to give you a stack of ecto every time you log in? /facepalm

Concerning the update itself - very good job, aNet. Good decision on not making the books retroactive. The influx of free gold would have caused a massive inflation. Although, it would be cool to see elitists QQ about noobs having money to buy leet-skins. The only problem of the update is the fact that Luxon and Kurzick faction is given at the same time. It's making people lose vast amounts of previously gained faction.
Correcting this would be nice, but I suspect it's too late. Not *that* big of a deal.

Once again - great update. Many thanks to all who worked on it.

BEST UPDATE IN A LONG TIME ^.^

The only part that worries me slightly is the rebalance to Amber/Jadeite. Elite Luxon/Kurzick Armor is going to be somewhat harder to get. Oh well price of progress I suppose ...

Okay first off..

For the books, you do not have to complete the bonuses to the HM missions, just the missions themselves making them leagues easier than getting Guardian. Because bonuses were the hardest part of getting that, especially in Factions. Also HELLOOOOO people who got Protector and Guardian, those were your rewards, those titles, nothing else. So you don't deserve these rewards until you re-do them like everyone else has to. Yes yes I'm sorry you wasted all your time to get a title, but that's the way it goes. So I don't see why people are whining about it.

I thank Anet for renewing at least a week more of life to their game for me, maybe not that much. Been pretty fun revisiting old missions again.

I like the Treasure Hunter+Wisdom title changes, I also like what you did with Kurzick and Luxon faction, and some of the items you added.

Overall I'm pretty satisfied with the update. As long as Anet doesn't go giving rewards to people that haven't earned it. I don't see why folks should get a title AND a fairly decent reward. I earned my Protector and I don't feel bad about doing the missions over again, I don't expect anything, the title was my reward for that. Guardian no, but HM isn't my cup of tea so I probably won't be doing the books in HM anyways, I might try it seeing as I don't have to do bonuses but I don't know.

@ Master Patricko, with the amount of faction you can earn now, you may as well trade in for Amber and Jade yourself. I mean not to mention that you can earn anywhere from 10,000-18,000 faction in 1- 1 1/2 hours vanquishing Luxon and Kurzick areas now. Sure maybe not as good as HFFF, but certainly not as boring either.

For my part the only things that strike me about this have already been stated above.

1) The loss of Faction when accounts both credited - I gained about 45k Kurzick but lost 18k Luxon.

2) Having achieved Legendary Guardian literally the other week, it would be nice to be able to trade a book in. I dont care about the gold, I am simply after the Faction.

Overall: Thumbs up, Linsey!

They are made for 4 man areas, most of which are the hardest places to vanquish.

Did anyone list the things that are retroactive?
Because that's kinda the only thing that is interesting atm.
I mean if I didn't find doing missions or vanquishing fun last week, I don't see what has changed to make it fun this week?


Ohh and I do approve adding reward NPCs in the places that they were needed in.
Good stuff!

it´s a nice update

Awesome update.

And god forbit there are places where you can't win with c+space while eating and watching TV while playing GW.

I read the notes and I have some questions.

1. I already have gwamm on my main and r12 Kurzick.
I got r12 kurzick doing 400 hours of HFFF.

How much do you think it will take now, with the new ways, to get r12?
I'm asking this for my guildmate, we did together 26 titles and now I could help him to get other 4.

If the update reduced the time to no more than 100 hours, it's good.

Otherwise, if it still takes 400 hours, then A.net has simply changed the type of grind, maybe making the title less boring but nothing more.

The best way, as I always said and say, would have been to make the title character base and achievable in 25-30 hours as all other titles.


2. I don't care about the gold rewards for the books.
But with my other characters, I have completed Nightfall, so I would like to have books filled and turn them in SS or LB points, reducing the grind for those characters.
I don't want the money, I would instead pay to fill the books, I want the faction.


The update seems interesting and probably goes to the right direction.

Great update A-net, Linsey and whomever supported you. I know it took a lot of time and thought(balancing what to do where). So thank you for the work for something that I paid for a long time ago.

I'm sure there will be things/bugs to work out with it being live now. So here's *drink/toast* to you folks getting everything fine tuned soon, and getting a well deserved vacation for your efforts.

It is appalling to see so many people whining about a nice, FREE update. I like it very much, thank you to everyone who worked on this update!

Where's the skill nerfs? Why is Shadowform not nerfed? Who gives a rats petunia about books and title grind? Childs play stuff. Bring on the fixes to pvp and shutdown Shadowform anyways for PVE. This has to rank in the most useless update in the history of GW's. PVE is not fun without phatt loot. Sorry, but, stupid silly titles just don't do it for me and the thousands of others that have already exited the PVE game. Bring in some +20>50 mods for specific weapons and you'll see some new activity like you've never seen before. Add +5 to armor class of specific armors and the same applies. Add +5hp to something that has +30hp already. It can be for PVE only fine, just do it.

Somethimes i don't understand people.
You now get rewarded to play the game. To me thats a good thing. Title hunters can now play the game/help other people to reach there goal, diffrently then simply farm alone (or in small groups) to get that wanted faction/reputation.

There is less need to farm for money (=less grinding) cause you get more money in general.

Because titles can be reached easier its now worth playing those other characters too.

Doing missions pay off again, hopefully it means people play together more again, though my hopes on that are not to high.

Some pvp arena's are revamped and hopefully brought back alive

Titles never showed skill anyway. Dedication yes. Those who want that e-peen, get some high rank in a reap pvp title. PVE titles was only a matter of time anyway before everyone who sticked into the game got them.

Survivor title finally is a bit less broken. I did one survivor the hard way (just by playing the game) and the easy way: hfff. One i was really proud i did it, the other one felt like: is this really it??? There is still brawling - but even with brawling there is a small chance you will not make it

Nobody, absolutly nobody forces you to use consumbables. Complaining about htem, and that they take space is kinda dumb. Don't use them and you got space. Or use em directly so they are gone.

Wisdom/treasure going account wide is awesome. It sure will stop my own discrimination vs non-title characters to not use lockpicks/keys.

In general what they did was: easier to get titles, with more ways, wich means less grinding. That what it was all about?

It wasn't perfect with the faction handed out directly, causing some losses. But better some losses, then no gain at all?

The books aren't retro-active, and thats not to bad. Granted those (like me) who would have finished them on several toons miss a LOT of money/faction. But thats not why we finished those missions back then in the first place.

People should really stop thinking about what they should have gotten if, but be glad with what they really got. And imo thats still a (huge) LOT.

Only argument i can agree with is that once you got all those titles, what will you do next? Titles kept me busy quite a while, and now that they get easier, they will keep me less busy in the future. Doing elite area's get boring after a while. It will mean to me i will have more time to help other people out, perhaps even start pvp'ing.

I say great work to the programmers/analysts ect. Good work on opening the game for everyone. You can't please everyone but i'm convinced the majority gained with this update. Congrats.

Loos good so far. I like the free faction, gogo AN

Only thing im worried about is...

Are there going to be insanely long waits now to get into an AB? hope there can now be more games going on at once.

Cant wait to see how high my caps go and how much faction i get

Overall GG AN

Maybe you should have, because 50*400 = 20000, not 2000.

This update is made of AWESOME and WIN

Looks like VQ'ing is capable of giving faction at a faster rate than the old HFFF...
...AND LUXONS CAN DO IT TOO!!!

Those whining about having to repeat quests, missions blah blah: BOLLOCKS. Way to bite the hand that feeds you.

You don't have to repeat anything if you don't want to. A-net haven't taken anything away, and held it for ransom until you repeat stuff. What did you have before the update? Did you not have the SAME stuff, or MORE, after the update? You are getting a bonus if you DO replay the game.

Okies. *notes to mods* if u dun RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO like my post, tell me. Don't do a shinobi & stealth kill my post so many times.

The update is an epic failz. Since as someone pointed that all posts with epic fail got deleted & he thanks God for it. I will say why it is an epic failz.

When Linsey said that she can assure players that the new methods of gaining factions is much more efficient then HFFF. After a few rounds of testing (when ABing, doing some competitive missions, vanq, etc) which is the boosted form of faction gaining. Nothing, I REPEAT, NOTHING comes close to gaining factions as efficient as HFFF(maybe for the lux but definately not kurz).

This was one of the main issues Anet is supposed to address. instead, they made it worse.

Thank God for epic failz update (as usual)

The only thing I believe which is thankful is for the HARD work, NOT GOOD work.

I don't think I've seen a more retarded post. Saying 'epic failz' over and over doesn't make you cool. In fact it makes you look illiterate and stupid, which I'm guessing you are. As for the update, this DOES make it more efficient than HFFF. Doing a vanquish gets you huge amounts of faction, with no effort and in no time.

If your post was deleted once, why repost it. Clearly it wasn't worth posting in the first place, which is blatantly obvious by the content.

VQ an area with 200+ enemies in less than 35 minutes (or 300+ enemies in less than 50 minutes) and you should match the old HFFF rate. Add to that the bonuses from the shrine blessing for each kill/boss and you're well ahead of the old HFFF.

Are you saying that isn't the case? Or is it just that you suck at PvE/VQing? Or did you simply lie about trying a vanquish?

Great update for the most part!

Faction boost is great, wisdom/chest is good.

The only thing that bugs me is this: I completed all 3 campaigns with 6 chars, but when I wanted to get a reward for the books, I have to do them all over again?? WTH???

Same with the Kurzick/Luxon faction cap, It states that you have to win a battle in AB/fort/jade to increase your title, but I have won hundreds of battles there already. This is not a big deal as the books, but still.

Would be very happy if they can fix this.

Yes I suck & lied.

Oh definately. I am a retard & I like posting nonsense

For the above 2 comments, I thank them for stating the obvious. I just like to QQ.

It doesn't need fixing.

Let's analyze Cantha in HM. We'll use Expert level as it's probably a more accurate representation of an average run through the campaign. With all Expert's rewards times added up for the 11 missions, you've got 354 minutes or almost 6 hours. Note that this is a VERY conservative estimate, especially considering by the 3rd or 4th time through you'll more than likely be hammering down Master's or well under Master's on every timed mission, so 4.5-6 hours for 120,000 Faction. The latter is comparable to HFFF. The former, which is quite attainable, is 33% quicker than HFFF (~26.6k/hr vs. ~20k/hr).

To go from 0 K/L faction to max title, you'd need 83.3 books, and since odds are nobody is starting from absolute 0, we'll say 83 books for max. 83 books at the lower (but again, still quite possible) time of 4.5 hours = 373.5 hours or 15.6 full days to achieve max. Proportionalities spawn from that, i.e. 12 hour days would take 31.2 "days," etc.

Cash wise, you're nowhere near HFFF (498k for 83 full HM books, 1.86M for zero-to-max HFFF) from books, but merch food, IDs, chests, etc., will help to shrink that gap. Assuming you make only 4k from doing all of the missions in NM (I made about 3k from doing 9/11 tonight, so again this is rather conservative even for NM), you've got another 332k notwithstanding progress on other titles such as TH/W or the chance to get rares/items above merch price or even sell 7 golds at 5k or whatever the going rate is. To be as money-effective as HFFF, playing through the campaign each time would have to average 16.6k net profit. While it seems steep, 83 times through of opening chests and killing thousands of foes in HM yields high likelihood of rare weapons. At the very least I'd guess you can make 8k once through these missions in HM consistently, leaving you some 600k short of HFFF. Realistically, this isn't a *terrible* loss of consistent income of money and faction.

I hope this was easy to understand, typed it late at night after investigating the changes and thinking over how this affects my title pursuits.

So where does the 120k faction go if my cap aint so high?

It goes to The Whiners Fund I've set up to help all those QQ'ers.

I stop at this.

If your math is right, it's actually the same amount of time of the previous HFFF.

So nothing has significantly changed in terms of grind.


I think that those numbers are coherent with the fact that R12 Kurzick is an account-based title.
You spend 375-400 hours grinding and than you have the title on all your characters.
From this standpoint, the update is correct.

The problem is actually the account based system.

Players who need to max a title to get GWAMM on their main, as I did with 400 hours of HFFF on mine, only have the possibility to max it on the whole account.

Grinding 400 hours can be acceptable if you want a title on each single character, but most players have a main on which they try to reach gwamm, and others they play occasionally.

In my opinion, the account-based system for Factions allegiance is wrong, as I always said and say.

finally kurzick and luxon faction gaining possibilities are balanced. Nice title rework. Great update!

This update is good, i agree. But its only good for the pve community.

So, we pvp'ers get to sit through another whole month without a decent skill balance!

[glyph of swiftness][deadly paradox][shadow form] [ursan blessing]


Ok then

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shiro%27s_Return

It's apparently added directly to your title as 120k straight points and not faction that you can trade in (for double the amount).

The update for pvp was last week. There was some decent skill balance. I know you want more but the one they did was welcomed.

Isn't that a bit like me deciding to set up a preservation society to protect the Dodo?

Last weeks update wasn't decent at all. It made things worse!

This update is great. Finally I can be bothered to achieve a higher Luxon rank.
However, is it just me, or did the Hero AI get a slight improvement too? I've noticed Xandra is doing a better job at throwing SW everywhere, and can keep her energy up with OoS to boot. Anyone else experience anything?

GREAT update
- BAHAHA! There you go, HFFF
but still sad they didnt decreased lux/kurz title points by at least half (5mil)