ArenaNet shuns cooperative role playing...

1) ArenaNet chose/chooses a model where balance is sacrosanct
2) IMHO, small teams in Guild Wars campaigns including Factions who want to cooperate in missions are inherently crippled:
a) Henchies are not reliable and actually create complexity in certain situations
b) Henchies are completely unpredictable (in certain situations)
c) ArenaNet chose to not allow some level of control of henchies as other pseudo-RPGs have done

3) ArenaNet has blurred/is blurring the lines of PVP and PVE when they introduced the concept of a PVE player waiting for a PVP success.....

Premise: Blurring the lines of PVP and PVE "too much" will ultimately eat into ArenaNet's profit margins/success.

Speaking from a personal perspective and please don't flame me for your passionate backing of the Guild Wars model...

1) My future wife and I have spent 400+ hours on the initial campaign and have dealt/are dealing with our perceived weaknesses of ArenaNet's approach
2) Absolutely love the gameplay... To a point...
3) We pre-ordered and paid extra for multiple Collectors editions and still want to play...

However;

*) The henchman approach to support a small guild simply is schizophrenic, unpredictable, unreliable, and simple out and out frustrating
*) The AOT? "anyone out there?" approach to "LFG" simply is like going to Vegas or Atlantic City:
a) If you happen to be lucky, you will breeze right through (Odds:RARE)
b) Most of the times... It is simply a feeble attempt to get at least a little better than a henchie team... ("I have to go eat now", "This team sucks", "I got my shard, thank you team", etc...)
*) Waiting for "favor" to get good stuff (where PVP meets PVE) simply SUCKS. Countless hours are spent waiting for favor only to join a team that sucked only to lose favor during the mission.... BOGUS.

IMHO huge guilds and factions should not be end goals.

Give me an option.
I want to sell my 500 useless items that I feebly/naively pick up to any merchant.

Simply said:
If any merchant in any town insults me and says he won't buy my useless items because I am not on his side... I/we will simply play another game. (Having to sell 25 Dwarven armors is bad enough, let alone having to find and/or wait for a merchant who cares about Dwarven armors)


Tough call for me; however I am gonna play Oblivion this weekend, 'cus ArenaNet is gonna forget whatever I did this weekend anyway....

Mike

How do you figure?

PvE'ers don't NEED to do those missions.

PvP'ers don't NEED to do those missions.

Some PvP'ers want MORE than mindless attacking.

Some PvE'ers want MORE than creature killing.

Sounds to me like in GW they targeted both ends of the spectrum and now in GW:F they're going after the middle without hurting either end.

Last time I checked, that was where their success was coming from.

Their not meant to support your guild, they're meant for last minute missing-player subsitution. A typical guild should have at least 8 members before entering battle.

I agree henchies are difficult to manage, improvements have already been announced and will be implemented, albeit rather late, in Chapter 3. That aside, a quest/missions come with their own challenges, so does a party. It's easy to blame someone else when a party fails, for the leavers, afks, and noobs... but pushing forward is what seperates oneself from them.

Yep yep. But please, look for and use the threads discussed Monday-Thursday this week, topics "pvp players in competitive missions" and "March 14 article".

As for, "but PvE people don't NEED these missions..." true, but why lock PvE content behind PvP winnings?

^That is the summary of those threads. Please review them before continuing the discussion.

i agree with the op, i hate pvp, i dont want o have to pvp to get further in the game, but then im not buying factons either now, preorder has been cancelled thanks to factions preview