Missions & Quests, A M$ creation?

After almost reaching Ascention (about a dozen missions till I reach it, starting it that is), I realize something. Missions and quests, more so missions, are the real bane of GW. Seriously, after looking at how wide and open they are and at the same time very constrictive on things it almost makes me wonder if their broken like something Micro$oft released?

Cases in point;

- (1) Probably the closet first outposts you reach post-searing is Piken Square. Nice place to do quests right? The two biggest being "Ashes" and "Dukes Daughter" to use their common place names. Both fairly long, with Ashes being the longer of the two imo. Now in Piken, your party is limited to 4 people. On average, in prime hours, most districts for America are filled to the brim, easily 40+ districts. For Piken, on average, most people here at that time are between levels 6-10ish. Even if your party survives, it's a good 30+ minutes. Now I never played World of Warcraft, and I do know of it's really, really long quests. But dumping half an hour to an hour into a quest is unacceptable in itself.

The game has a super low level cap right? Yet it has missions that can take hours on end.. In reality though, most times your party dies, alot. I kid you not when it on 2 different characters that I've leveled easily past 10ish, it's taken me on average 5-8 attempts to complete Ashes. And this is knowing exactly where to go, what to do and how fast to do it. Problem? Too many mobs to zerg you, too many mobs too high a level for the current player level, at that point in the game.

- (2) You get to a major outpost, say Gates of Kryta, and you party with your full party (six at that op). And you begin the mission. If you die, you have to start all over. I don't know about the average player but personally getting to say, close to the end of a mission or the end and then dying, ****ing sucks. Theres another wasted half hour, assuming it's a Mission you can complete in under 30 minutes. (and yes I know "drake" runs can be done quicker than that, Kryta was the first op I thought of).

- (3) Similar to (2) you start a mission, except it's not about length or time it's the death penalty of starting completely ****ing over PLUS the fact that since you are partying with real people, stopping to type out a strategy is NOT an option. Example, you get to Aurora Glade. Not too long of a mission, but complex. By the time you get to the part where you must protect/guard & activate the pillar light things, theres no time to stop and type out what the party should do before being zerged and eventually ending the mission. 9 times out of 10 the party will die trying to "Defend" whatever, or attack or get seperated cause you had no time to form a plan. People who've done this mission can know and type something out in advance if others don't know. But even so, your looking at, at least several retries to get everyone in your party on the same page.

- (4) Starting a good party for any mission/quest is a ****ing chore. Now granted my computer isn't the best, but when fighting I get good frames. When I'm in a town that's full (100 people or close to it) I lag cause that's just too many people. Thats just me personally. But even with awesome frames, you must wade through local spam of what would be trade spam, to find the random dude who has the most wacky spelled name out of a stack of 100 names. On average they'll tell you were their at, and also on average they always pick Storage to stand by where everyone congregates around. I know this part is overly rantageous (if thats even a word) but still the fact remains building a good party for the over-hard missions itself is a bitch.

- (5) Once in a Mission (not sure if it's in quests as well), the party leader cannot kick someone. That's awesome. So if you DO develop a strategy, and some asshat purposely ****s it up, aggroing extra mobs, getting in the way, etc (again, ON purpose) then it's just even more shit to wade through to complete the overly hard missions that even as a party leader, you can't control.

- (6) Loot, should be more evenly distributed (as such as XP as well). Some say it's greedy, others will agree with the more damage/more action taken = more loot and xp for yourself, is ok. I don't. Monks, pet Rangers, minion Necros etc get ****ed on this alot. I can easily put up say, 5-6 capped Fiends, or 12+ B.Minions etc and tank like mad. They won't pump out insane damage like that Warrior who's getting constant heals, but they'll do alot to keep agro off real players, make up defenseive walls etc Hell we're lucky we get Loot/xp at all in this manner. Same for Healers (less they use alot of Smite or something..). I realize I'm a "support" class but damn when the Warriors need to run back a minute to get fully healed and get hexes off them, the Healers are keeping them alive, Necros/Rangers got their summons/pet's doing the dirty work, and we get I'd say half the benefit. And you can scream all you want "not true, it's even, blah blah" Out of a ****load of missions and quests, I've seen Person A, or Person B getting several rares per quest, or others getting several rares per quest (purple and orange) while I'm lucky to get something like Bog Scale Fins or Centuar Horn Gauntlent Tailored Finer Hide Skin Bone that's worth all of 20 gold at a merchant (and won't e.salvage to anything useful for me).

So in all I think the mission/quest system needs tweaking. Let the party leader kick people out of the party at any time, tweak some of the mobs at lower levels for the big quests, give more time for the complex missions so players can communicate via typing (even those of us who type close to 100 wpm will have to take a few seconds to type out strategies for things), tweak loot for support class players, etc

Can't understand what this has to do with Microsoft though?

So for quests and missions:

Quests are optional. Their rewards are self-explanitory. Why do I do quests? To save skill points. To earn quick exp for buyback points when I need them *right now*. To have something to do with my friends for a while that isn't PvP. If you don't want to do quests, you really don't have to. In fact, many quests exist simply to point you to your next mission. It both infuriates me and warms my heart.

Missions are, in many ways, designed to prepare you for PvP. You have so many tools for communicating quickly...target-calling, beacons and drawing on the compass, speaking, and of course - as most people find out - the divine boon of Vent/Teamspeak. I like to help people get through tough missions, call it a hobby. I always get complaints about how hard the Gates of Kryta, D'Alessio Seaboard, and Aurora Glade missions are. All of these can be won with simple strategies. Did I know them the first time I went in? No. Did being observant, even in defeat, help a great deal? Yes. Dying sucks. I hate it. But it was more satisfying to me when I went through the Gates a second time with an utterly flawless victory because I'd analyzed my opponent and the environment and figured out a way to capitalize on it. The ascension missions should be impossible for people who haven't developed good team skills. I like that.

I completely agree about the kicking. I'd also like to see party voting put in.

I don't mean this as an attack, but for people who think they're above doing the missions (or simply don't enjoy playing through the content), ArenaNet allows you to play level 20 PvP. If you don't like the challenge of the missions and other content, there's no shame in playing PvP for its own sake. Some missions are hard. None of them are impossible. Many of us can vouch, having gone through the end. It does require teamwork. It requires distribution of work, strategy, and cooperation. It can be frustrating (I'm guildless, so I am a slave to the pick-up group...I seriously share your agony), but the key is really showing other players what your strengths are and developing relationships. I get called a lot to help out on missions, to help guildies of people I've met, and to go exploring because of my performance in missions. Of course, I've also been added to a few ignore lists. : )

I guess I'd just suggest being persistant. When you find someone you like, ask to add him or her to your friend list. Try to schedule mission times with people or befriend talented players who are nice enough to run back-missions simply because they like you and thought you were nice and pretty funny and didn't lol at everything or act like a twelve-year-old who switched his ridalin for crystal meth. Hell, I'll monk for you. I just don't agree that missions are a never-ending money-making scheme designed to keep you enthralled to the GW PvE machine for the rest of your life.

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If they introduced party kicking it would have to use a voting system..

Imagine this scenario:

You get an ***hole leader, who decides to take every member of his PUG to the end of the mission, and then..just for fun, decides to kick everybody out so they have to do it all again.

Having seen the average intelligence of the community, I would say there are some people who would do this.

1. If you're not willing to invest thirty minutes to an hour into a quest, maybe RPGs aren't your cup of tea. Also, Duke's Daughter and Althea's Ashes come in at a whopping 2000 experience, being the highest postsearing Ascalon quest rewards available; the mobs in the Charr Flame Temple require a decent team and some actual strategy to beat. If it's too difficult for you, you can always leave it for later.

2. Having to start a mission over because you fail it is as old as computer games, pretty much. It's part of game challenge. If you want to see a story roll out without any significant challenge, read a book or watch a movie.

3. Type faster, or explain in detail before triggering the mechanism.

4. Hold down left-ctrl. Click on the name of the person that invites you or who you wish to invite. Done.

5. This is a simple result of having to play with 'other people'. Any kick mechanism can be abused by itself - imagine how much fun it would be to have an immature party leader kicking everyone out except his friends at the end of a mission. If you want to entirely avoid the stupidity of other players, go play a single player game.

6. Loot and experience is entirely evenly distributed - loot is a round-robin system, gold gets split evenly, experience gets split evenly (and is adjusted for player levels). You get the same amount of experience for standing near a kill doing nothing as you get killing it entirely by yourself. Someone else can get 3 rares in a mission while you get none - next time you get 3 rares and someone else gets nothing. That's statistics in small sample spaces for you.

I looked a bit hasty through your post, because it was awfully long, but what I conclude out of it is that the people you've been teaming up with are unorganised. Best way is to form a guild and find only a few people who actually listen to the leader once one is assigned. Also you can use the mini-map to indicate what to do and use ctrl + double click to target an enemy which has to be killed. This all has to do with the members you're teaming up with though so get a small group of friends together and you'll do just fine.

complete bs. the easiest way to win any mission is to load up on warriors. for all the ascension missions, the only time we won were when I set up the team. I stacked it. 3 warriors, me, a ranger, a monk. then it was simple. that was the only strategy involved

Hmm, I haven't had that experience at all. Partially because I learned that the predictably stupid Henchmen are better partymates than unpredictably stupid Players - excepting players I know are quality players (I frequently duo with a friend in the same room as me.)

Even with human parties, I never ended up replaying quests/mission that frequently. And while my skill builds are usually pretty solid I seriously doubt they were so great that they were the reason my groups survived. So I can either conclude that you are (a) incredibly unlucky in the teammates you get, (b) poor at communicating with your teammates, or (c) you are the cause of your teams' failures. I'm leaning towards (b), since I that unluckiness alone would cause you to have the beliefs you have. (c) is a definite possibility too, but I don't like being overly accusatory towards players I haven't personally seen in action.

Personally I love the way Coop Missions are layed out - with a party wipe resetting you back to square one. It reminds me of oldschool videogame levels, where completing the level successfully in a sitting was part of the difficulty factor! Missions are also more immersive than any other MMORPGs quests, for the simple fact that the storyline is conveyed in a much more personal way. The voice acting, script, and storyline may be poor in places but it's still superior to the random non-immersive garbage quests you find in other MMORPGs ("FedEx", "Kill x creatures", etc).

Quests I generally won't do unless they have skill rewards. They're just too bland and similar to other MMORPG quests for me to really enjoy them.

At this point I have stopped bothering with Collector items too. Crafted stuff is far better and easier to come by. There are rare instances where you happen to get 5 of an item and pass a Collector who has a freebie upgrade for ya, but aside from that I never even bother.

I don't think at all that doing a quest that lasts 30-60 minutes is too long. Just about right I would say, quests that you finish in like 5 minutes would be boring after the first time! Also to say, I did both Althea quests as a Level 8 E/Mo with 3 henchmen and didn't die even once.

As above, I had absolutely no problem doing this quest with henchies. Let them take on a few enemies, run past them, grab the ashes, warp back to town, get reward.

Though this statement bears some truth (I too have died with the whole party 5 mins before finishing the mission) it's the one thing that separates missions from regular quests. If you would just respawn in missions as you do normally, you could just suicidal throw your team at the enemy wave after wave, which is clearly not the intention of mission. You just have to teamplay and communicate a little...

Hmm... don't know about you, but I have no problem at all communicating with a PUG. I did Aurora Glade twice with the same party, the first time it failed because we didn't knew that we had to stop those runners. Second time communication was nice and everything went fine.

Again, communication dude! Also you can invite people with "/invite Their Name"...

Well just talk a few sentences with your party members pefore the play, and you wouldn't have a problem. I never did, because I only choose people which can type out real sentences...

If you really hate so much about GW what you write about in all your hate posts, you should just stop playing the game!

I'm too bloody lazy to read out the rest of this long ass topic, but to the original thread creator: What the hell are you smoking dude? Less then half an hour to complete a mission? Yeah, lets make the game real short so there is less to enjoy. Good Job. Pat on the back. And the connection you made between long quests/missions and Microsoft? XD You need to lay off whatever you're taking. Sorry if this sounds like a flame, but your claims are absolutely absurd.

Sounds to me like the OP just wants a "gimme" button.

Gimme level 20
Gimme best set of equipment
Gimme access to last mission
Gimme my money back, game was too short

First of all, thanks for bumping an old thread

Second, no I don't want shit handed to me. But at the same time some stuff does need a tweak in the difficulty level (that being, it lowered).

A good example, Elonas Reach. You know how many attempts it took to complete this? 58. And definitely not all the same part(ies). I tried henchies, I tried being stealthy about it, I tried playing it cautious, I tried going at it full swing, we tried every party combonation there was. And I swear to god there was a dude in our party at one point, that actually uninstalled the game cause he was just too frustrated with that mission.

The timelimit, some say, isn't an issue, but it can be. The fact you can be attacked while in the cutscenes (proven) is a bitch.

Sure, you should have to work for it since it is an Ascension mission after all. However, my god after so many attempts I'm sorry I want the game to "unlock uber pussy mode" for me (to coin a Penny Arcade phrase). When you have 3 monks fully healing your warriors and yourself, and you're still taking an ass bounding from just a small handful of mobs that you lured away from the giganticnormous group you know the mob attack and defense are a tad too stacked aganist you. (and no these monks were some of the best I seen, capped level, some of the best items, huge mana pools with the best healing skills you can get)


And that's just ONE mission tha can be very, very difficult. And it's not a mission you can just skip either..(sure if you don't wish to Ascend or PvP later on in the HoH). Theres just no slack to the game, which can be a good thing but at times it's not. The mob AI and stats don't give you very much leeway, and often or not they'll use whatever advantage they can over you (and yes a good human party does the same in return) but more often than not especially in higher end missions, you are completely zerged more than your party can handle, and this comes in at a point of the game where you are essentially level capped, attribute capped (minus a few runes you may be missing) and just need to unlock more skills and possibly some better items.

There's a thread over on The Guild Hall's forums that has a guy saying monks are too overpowered and it's unfair some monks charge gold for their services for late game missions. My god, after you do some of these missions you can understand how monks see things. I've had parties that will beg, plead, give cash, give rares, give runes, anything to get as many monks as we can for some of these missions. Granted this is more of a community thing, being the monk to mission/quest party ratio but when you need a good couple of monks (im thinking at least 2+ for some of these missions) it's just another little sign that says "slightly too hard". Granted things should get progressively harder there are times where it takes leaps and bounds ahead of what it previously was and you going into them for the first time have no idea, let alone doing them over more times than you have fingers and toes.

The relation I made to M$ was, it felt rushed. Not the missions and their progression, but the difficulty. At first (even for Post Searing) your first few missions are what you'd expect; mobs slightly higher than you, that don't HUGELY over damage your abilities to heal, or deal damage or whatnot. And then after you traverse over a continent or so (I'd say once you hit the area past Kryta-ish) it just goes from being on target with what you expect to failing miserably in terms of proper delivery. Same with M$ (anyone that's used any Windows OS knows of their many flaws, loopholes, bugs, security vulernabilities and much more. Same like missions at first it appears to do fine, what you expect then things suddenly crop up like say M$ releasing news of 12 new critical security flaws found all at the same time totally far from what you were experiencing before.)

Poor analogy, possibly. And for the few touting "well if you don't like GW and blah blah blah blah quit playing" I'm sorry, am I lost? This is a forum is it not? Dictionary.com states a forum being used for discussion, or debate. Which I am doing. If my negative tone is to your disliking, please there is an ignore feature built into almost every forum software. I apologize for displeasing those who wish to invoke this feature and wish you the best in your forum usage. If you do not wish to use this feature then please kindly stfu and continue on with the discussion

I'm sorry, but if it takes you 58 tries to finish a mission (or anything else in this game, for that matter), you need to seriously work on your playstyle or something. At that point, it's certainly not the game's difficulty that's holding you back, it's something you or the people you're with are doing wrong.

In an objective view, Guild Wars is absurdly easy. You can lame both missions and quests (of which completion of either is 100% optional), you can grind off the levels, you can even skip the ENTIRE rpg experience altogether and create a L20 character.

I can understand that you may be frustrated because of what you consider poor performance, but it's time to accept some responsibility for your own (apparent?) inabilities and stop blaming an inanimate virtual object.

- Kymber

seriously.. the game is easy up until the desert.
I understand the problem with aurora glade... one of the only
missions pre-desert that I can't beat with the available henchmen. Attuning the crystals is a pain in the butt.

But the entire desert ascension process requires teamwork on the missions. After 3 tries.. you should have a solid idea of how to beat it... then maybe another 3 to perfect that idea.
I've ascended two characters so far... a W/E and a N/Mo.... and I'm working on a third. I'm assuming its something wrong with your build or playstyle. Either way.. after ascension.. it was back to henchmen for me for 3 missions... then.. more required grouping.

I don't actually think it's possible to recover Althea's ashes with a low-level party without dying. As a low-level character it's virtually impossible to kill any of the Charr guarding it, because there are several Shamans hiding just out of attacking range who heal their damage quicker than you can deal it. Perhaps if I was an elementalist I could have dealt more damage, but as a Ranger I couldn't get in enough powerful hits before their health zoomed back up to full again. It only took me one try to realise this, though. As the resurrection point is right next to the raised area, I just legged it up the stairs, grabbed the ashes and zoned out. Not that hard. Certainly didn't take 30+ minutes, as I did it as a last quest a short while before I went to bed.

Perhaps an 'easy mode' would be good for a single-player game. But, this is not a single-player game. It wouldn't work, as multiple people use it. You either make the game so difficult newbies can't enjoy it, or you make it so easy that people experienced with the genre can't enjoy it. I personally feel that the game has a good difficulty balance.

Besides, what's the problem with long quests? I can't get this place straight in my head at all. There are people complaining how short the game is, then there are people complaining about how long it takes to do something... can we make up our minds before my head jumps off, starts dancing and singing 'Old McDonald' please?!

Oh, as a side note, I find it very hard to take people seriously when they refer to Microsoft as 'M$'.

I agree. I am assuming that you(the poster) are using "M$" and are hypocritical for calling them "M$" because you either bought a computer with, or bought a Windows OS and are therefore supporting the company that you seem to be shunning.

Anyway. In response to your 5th point, they should implement some sort of kicking process. Maybe a majority group vote against a certain peron would get them kicked. For Example: During the mission where you have the scepter of orr. A group member became angry at us because he kept aggroing people and kept dying and he told the monk it was his fault. So then he gets all pissy and grabs the scepter while we are in a battle and runs away with it. We couldn't find him, and he refused to come back or quit. So in this situation it was in the interest of the group for him to be removed.

I propose that they install a group kick system. The leader of the group would first click on that person and have an option to announce that he wanted that person removed from the group. That person would see this and decide whether to straighten out or get kicked. At this point the other group members would recieve a pop-up asking whether or not they wish to remove this person. Once everyone else in the group voted yes the leader would get a confirmation box. He could send a final warning to that person and then if the person still acted foolish then he would be kicked and ideally replaced my a henchman of the same main build.

Ok. First, I'd like to say that the first post-searing town I reached was Sardelac Sanitarium. Does that make me weird?

1)About your first point, I find the quests to actually be a good length. I haven't been on a quest or mission for more than 2 hours (and that includes ALL deaths and ALL restarts), but generally quests take a solid hour. When I sit down to play Guild Wars, I never do the "play for 6 30min. stints". I find that if I leave about an hour for each quest/mission/find town thing I do, it will be more than enough time. If you make the quests short, it will seem less epic and completely boring. Right now, quest and mission length are perfect.

2) Ressurrection is fine for explorable areas, but something like missions do not need ressurrection altars. They are designed to be tougher than quests, and should be so. If you don't like no rezz, do as few missions as possible.

3) Number three I do not believe is a separate point and/or coherent english

4) Get in a guild. or make friends (if possible). To date, I have NEVER had this problem. The worst my parties have been is average. But maybe that's just me . Also, no missions are "over-hard"

5) Unless there is a vote, if you have an "asshat" party leader, he will screw up your group more than any one player could.

6) Uh, loot is already evenly distributed.

The mission system does need a little tweaking. They need another, "LFG" channel, and that should solve some problems. Also, if they instituted a "vote party member out" trype-thing, I would be in favour of that. But the rest is fine, and should be left alone.

It's not wholly hypocritical to dislike a company whose product you use - or to infer they are a very greedy company.

...particularly when said company has a stranglehold on the OS market and it's impossible to enjoy gaming on any other OS.

I'm not anti-MS, but I just felt I'd point that out. :P

Exactly. You want to game? Better have windows. You want to do video editing? Get a mac. You want total, insane, infinately upgrading security? Linux distros, my friend. Now back to the original subject:

A few posts back some brighteyes said something to the effect of "OMGZ WARRIORS STACKING FOR TEH WIN." Sorry, but if this is the only way you can think to win a mission, you seriously need to A: Stragetize and/or B: Think of a new build.

I have run what SHOULD be one of the most useless PvE builds (Full interrupt mesmer) all the way through to the final mission. It has a whopping 146 deaths, and has been in HoH several times. That's far less than my farming war/mo who is only at LA.

Finally, if you're REALLY.. REALLY having that much trouble, Ask around for a group on Teamspeak/Ventrilo and hook up with them for the missions. Garuntee your success rate will go up*.

[Disclaimer: Your success rate is only garunteed if you do NOT find a group of retards.]

If you don't like missions and quests, what do you play RPGs for?
What does Microsoft has to do with anything?

I am not trying to be a nuisance but many of the things you have described are the ones which make Guild Wars fun. Low cap, lots of missions, exploring, challenge. From the look of it, all you need is an invulnerability trainer and a speed hack.

This is sort-of my point. He wants to game so he bought a machine with windows on it, yes? Now he does not have to game to survive. He does not even need a computer. So in order to get what he wants he buys something from a company which allows him to do what he wants and then badmouths them. I don't care that MS has a stranglehold on the Gaming OS market. Windows has always worked fine for me and I don't mind feeding the meat grinder, if you will, that is the Microsoft corporation.

As long as you dont use Millenium Edition, you're fine xD

Try using Firefox as your browser, and Microsofts Antispyware programe in addition to your own firewall(s) and AV, iv seen an unimaginable improvement in the safety and lack of spyware and crap since doing this.

Myself, W/Mo 12-13,and a mate who was a Mo/R 12 wiped out every mob in the area, including every single char around the ashes area, and every single char on the Guzzar Bloodfur (thats not his exact name i dont remember it) mission nearby with one death. Which was my fault for not seeing a Char Healer and killing it.

Requires a completely different style of play from PvP to 'pwnzor' PvE, IMO, but feels just as good when you pull out a good performance, especially with a mate around.

Start learning who are good players by spotting their strengths, and good play in groups, and not just focusing on weaknesses of idiots which are glaringly obvious.
Try getting to know even the average 'not utterly crap' players, and try teaming up with those people more often.
A small team of 2-3 people that can work together well can outperform any number of hopeless players, and get a bigger share of loot/exp/gold at the same time.