Favor taking the fun out of GW

I'm sick of this favor crap.

I understand the theoretical reasons for it, but I don't like it. Sure it could "get me into PvP", but I mostly PvP anyways. What I don't do is pick up groups for PvP or PvE. That is not fun in my opinion. I have plenty of in game friends and guildmates so I no longer have to do pick up groups, but sometimes enough are on for a ToA level, but not for Heros Ascent. Even if they were, who cares, that's not what any of us feel like doing at times.

You could say that I'm only complaining because I don't have hall right now. And I am, because I logged on really wanting to try something in a ToA level. This is a game, and fun should be the point. I've never liked the favor thing, even when my region has held favor.

Right now you can change regions 5 times for the life of the account. It would be better if you would gain back one change per month. There's a European guild that asked me to switch. If I did that, I could go European region. But if I switch guilds back to an American guild, I'll want to switch regions. So this is 2 switches. I can do this type on thing once more for the entirety that I play GW. Another solution would be to have the entrance fees double if you don't have favor. Actually, I recommend implementing both those changes. I'd also like to see lv20 henchies that could go with you. And I don't want to hear any "get a second account". I have a feeling some aspects of Factions will be equally disappointing.

Gain one every month, means abuse to happen. Change to Europe or wherever is favor the most, and use international districts.

Take the hunch and don't buy Factions than if your feeling resentment.

Ok then, give us unlimited switches then. How the F is it abuse to want to play FoW or UW on demand?

I understand you, and pretty much agree with your frustration about the favor of the gods system. In my opinion, UW/FoW are the only two true challenging spots in Tyria's PvE right now. And when I'm locked out of that because my server's teams don't keep up with Hall of Heroes, that is hardly fair. I wish to see this favor system abandoned, but it's looking like Factions will introduce similar concepts, the only difference being it will be individual alliances and guilds against each other battling for certain privileges instead of whole servers (that's the way it appears to be anyway).

So it's obvious Factions isn't for me, but I will of course buy it and play it because the new professions and skills do look amazing so far. I guess trying to have an open mind and having a willingness to find new things to do will only help. ArenaNet's fully aware of the current situation with the favor system, and I do believe they will find a reasonable way to compromise, putting the fun back into the high-level content.

I doubt it.

Linking successes in PvP to content in PvE never made sense to me. Any time that the discussion between the difference between PvP and PvE (or "huge effing rift" if you prefer) comes up, typically screaming flaming posts come out all to say that the two aspects of the game have thier own corners, and that any play preference you have is utterly and undeniable separate from the other.

Just the same, a lot of people defend the favor system for no other reason (I imagine) than that this is how it was originally designed, and this is how it ought to stay. If the situation were reversed, and favor never existed and the suggestion were made to impose it on the game, there'd be just as much screaming and howling over how little sense it makes. At least that's my desperate, unfounded, uneducated guess. Call it a hunch.

I really wish they would just scrap favor outright, or failing that, link favor's benefit to something more closely related to how it is gained (read: some other kind of PvP event). I always thought (and think I suggested once before) that some kind of sub-tournament separate from HA could be unlocked through favor. Whatever - just leave us PvE shlubs to our business. Favor doesn't belong in our world.

-Jessyi

I do agree, it would fix the problem so easily if they un-linked PvE and PvP, via removing the favor system. It would give hardcore PvP'ers better incentive to win HoH, and would result in less frustration in dedicated PvE'ers such as myself and my guild. Regarding Chapter II, the whole faction/alliance thing only adds to the same concept of linking PvE and PvP, a move that is pretty cavalier and somewhat new; which results in much dissatisfaction and frustration by many. But I'll keep my hopes up, ArenaNet will find a way to make Guild Wars fun regardless of whether the PvP-PvE link is changed or not.

One side-note...

There's more pride to be had in being a dedicated PvE player than is reflected in that statement.

If they completely disconnected PvP from PvE, then there will be an even bigger gap between the two player types.

There will be more hate and attrition, since there would be nothing binding the two player styles.

That's exactly the point of favor. So you can't play UW or FoW on demand. If you want favor, go get it. It's what I do (not this week tho )
I do feel bad for taiwan and japan, seeing as how japan has had favor once, and taiwan to my knowledge has never had it. Favor gets those regions into PVP.
Favor will also make a big difference in future expansions of the game. A-net will probably add more levels into ToA for dwayna, lyssa, and melandru to make people want favor more.
I also think that if a group takes favor away from another region, that group should get double fame for the win.

/not signed

If you've only got enough for UW/FoW but can't get there due to favor, go to HA with your guildmates, pick up a few extra people, hold the HoH or play in HA until america has it, then go UW.

...why...didn't...I THINK OF THAT!?

My guild (god bless 'em) aren't exactly world-class tactical experts, and that's putting it really, really nicely.

I've got two options: join a mostly PvP-dedicated guild who do HA (like, y'know, with some success) which isn't too likely because I'm not looking for that kind of constant competetive atmosphere, and because my PvP resume doesn't have a lot of padding. I'm not even r3 for crissakes.

Two: Go into HA anyways with *whoever* and help feed the beast by losing to Europe. I can't imagine anyone will thank me for that.

Aside from that hopeless situation, I guess I'm completely in the clear! UW, here I come!

...
...

Oh...yeah...

-Jessyi

Be more optimistic, europe aint that good as u might think. Just focus.

"Stop trying to hit me, and hit me!" - Doppelganger

:P

Simply leave your guild and join one that is!

Like I'm planning to do...

Poison, are you blatantly ignorant on purpose or something?

"because I'm not looking for that kind of constant atmosphere".

It'd be so much easier if everyone liked pvp and pve like me. I never have these problems because I can go to HA and try to take favor then do a guild run of FoW.

Well obviously there are some people that don't, now how does your statement help..? ;\

It's annoying as heck to not have favor... but I don't mind having something built-in to rant against

Leave it as it is, I'd say.

I don't care for PVE. I've never been to the Temple and I doubt I'll ever go. I've even been known to wish aloud that Guild Wars had never had a PVE component so that Arenanet would focus on what's important.

But even I can see that favor is a terrible idea and should be abolished.

For the first 6-8 months America and Korea ALWAYS has favor, and Europe only had it for a couple of hours aweek! America still has alot of favor!!!!!!! sadly Korea and Japan don't. Yes Eurpoe has the most favor, but it's your fault for not stepping up to the new level!!!

I Know Iway and Spike Builds are getting boring, but they are the way to win HoH so either make a build that surpasses them or do Iway or Spike.

"If you can't Beat Them, Join Them"

/notsigned

gees, i am totaly SICK of the lot of you....

what the frell is it with , eat it or bugger off atitude...

i mean, what if i told all of you to go play a train simulator because it was ether play that and win some area you wanted or to sod off and go play another game.

i will not *join them* as you say..i am TOTALLY, UTTERLY CRAP AT PVP..!
i will be WASTIN a space that a COMPETENT pvp player would be able to use...
for goddess sake, stop telling everyone to beat it or leave.

if your a permamnat fixture at a pvp match ad HATE with a venghence pve, would YOU like it if i tell you that to have the ToA and HoH, you have to wait around for a bunch of PvE players to finish the HA missions in enough numbers....No, you will scream, cry and throw a toddler sized tantrum.

so where does it say that it is right and fair that you can say the same thing to us, who do not enjoy pvp and may, like me have absolutely no aptitude for it...
which would you rather have, hm? a good pvp player that can be relied upon to be there and work in the group, or a pvp crappy player that has no idea and will not understand and be able to cntribute in your groupe?
im betting on the good player

In Factions, you may lose control of towns that you started out with, or push the border out and take control of other's towns. Unfortunately, there is no way to actively balance who joins which Faction and how skilled they are, so I have no clue how it's going to turn out. Bleh.

Favor goes to those who want it. For the longest time, HoH was dominated by the Koreans, with some American time, then the Korean PvPers largely lost interest. Then, it was the Americans, and still Europe rarely had favor. Now, American PvPers are largely losing interest, while Europeans are getting more intense and honing their play (or perfecting FotMs, whichever). Down the road, Japan and Taiwan will have their turns at dominating HoH, if their PvPers really want it. Then, Korea and America, tired of not having favor, will be back. It's cyclical.

One alternative would be to make UW and FoW elite via gold, rather than favor. Say, 8K to enter (1K each?). What happens then is you'll no longer have any all-profession PuGs, it'll all be 5-man or specialty farming teams where if you're a mesmer, an ele, a non-trapper ranger, an assassin or a non-SS necro (until that gets nerfed), forget about finding a team. Plus, you'll have instances of 55-ubermonks posing as healers to get on teams, allowing them to wipe, and then proceed to farm while gloating about how they saved themselves 7K for the trip. And how many rangers will never get their spider then? In other words, the things we see occasionally now will only get exponentially worse.

I'm sure there are more alternatives, but the point is that right now we have a system which seems somewhat unfair, but is less prone to abuse. And making UW and FoW not elite in any way risks devaluing some of the economy, not to mention leaving people who did the grind for FoW armor or their spider feeling ripped off.

So as much as I miss having favor, myself,

/not signed

/signed

No one has come up with a proper cogent reason for linking the two. The usual arguments for this lousy system in general are just full of fallacies or just plain dissonance of logic. Telling people to go PvP when they don't want to doesn't make sense.

I understand the theory, and on paper it seems sound, but there's a large number of people who just don't like PvP, but like PvE. Linking the best PvE areas to PvP just isn't fair for us.

Of course there's Factions, which seems to be worse in an aspect (since now it's limited to Alliances and not region, meaning it's more exclusive) but that's another rant for another time.

/not signed

Wait until summer, when all the kids in America get out of school. More than likely, America will dominate HOH again as a result.

Amen brother.

3 Sir. Perhaps you should engage in the study of swallows I hear the information available is not only fascinating but useful as well. Just remember that 3 shall be the number of times you may change your region and the number of the region changes shall be three. Thou shalt not stop at 2 unless thou then proceedest to three. 5 is right out!

Oh yes and the Lord sayeth /not signed

.....You're both wrong...its 4. You can change from your home region (1), then back (2), then change from home again (3), then back to home (4). That way you are back in the same home dist as when you made your account.


I think that you should always be able to get into ToA levels...maybe at an entrance fee of 2k if you don't have favor.

Actually I don't care. I just found it amusing that he said 5 then said two switches would leave him with one more chance to switch. Reminded me of Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Graile. " One...two...five" " Three sir." " Three!"

Assassins are not implanted - D'oH! Concerning rangers and necros, you can find a team (or make it, that's faster) in 5 mins if you're a barager, MM or order. Nothing prevents you froml making a balanced team either. It's way easier than in the tombs. The thing is that most of the players are waiting to find a 7/8 team (they never find of course) and then start whining about how impossible it is to find a team hen you're not this or that. Another alternative is to solo the thing: it's not that hard after all.

Now concerning the flavour thing, this topic is just another topic on the same subject, on something that wont change anyway. What's wrong guys? Cant you live without FoW or UW? Is it such a pain when sometimes you dont have access to 2 maps?

And again, the flavour system won't change, so why complaining about it?

Please re-read. I wasn't complaining that it was difficult to find a group, only making the case that it would become moreso in a SF / ToPK scenario where you need to fit a FotM in order to be accepted.

I like the current system. I'm a PvE player mostly, but occassionally do PvP. I've never been terribly good at PvP, but I'm decent and it's fun. I've never won HA, but I never complained about the current system. Actually, maybe the first time I wanted to go UW or FOW farming and we didn't have favor I complained.
But I don't really think it should be changed, even though according to Gaile Grey it's being investigated right now. So it looks like the whiners will get their way. I won't really mind the link between pvp and pve being gone, but I thought it was a great concept and it brought me into the game more. If you guys want a high level instance all the time, try out WoW. There's plenty of 'em there. Sure, the PvP sucks, but you can solo pretty much the whole game if you want, since it sounds like you might enjoy that type of play more.

Having never played PvP I don't know the answer to this but, how long does it take to play all the necessary PvP events for your team to win favor and then how long does it take to play to the bottom of UW/FoW? I would venture to guess that you can't do in 3-4 hrs and that is all the time those of us who have a real world life can play a night.

*puts on fire retardent clothing*

To keep interests and competetive gameplay up, Favour System or World-At-War system as some like to call it, is fun & exciting thing.

Maybe if Guild Wars wouldn't have instances where you can play with your own group but instead have system like other MMORPGS (have to wait long times to get a turn to kill some elite boss or something) then Favour would feel the least 'restricting' thing.

I mean by this that GW is otherwise very friendly game for PvE players. So Favour might be quite a contrast to the casual gameplay.

If we wouldnt have Favour system, everyone would get access to high-end areas and eventually overfarm even more. That would do damage to economy.

As mentioned couple posts above eventually every region gets favour & as more time passes the amount of favour per regions is more and more balanced.

Access to the best looking, probably most fun pve areas is determined by who is running the most annoying holding builds in HA..... that's really how stupid it is.

I really feel for Japan and Taiwan right now, they are missing out on the better pve section of the game because of heroes ascent... we can't really organise anything as a guild as far as going to these areas are concerned since you can't guarentee having access, and there is not a chance in hell I would enter with a pick up group because a significant number pve players are either rude, immature, 12, or just bad... and for crap players, fissure isn't too easy.

But, I doubt it's going to change, Gaile, and probably a lot of anet are under the impression that it's "some of the most dynamic aspects of the game!" Where as a lot of players think it's absolutely ridiculous and makes no sense whatsoever.

The only thing that should link PVP and PVE should be capping skills for those who want to use PVE chars for PVP, thats it, nothing else. Its a nice concept, but one that is a thorn to either side, mainly the pve side, cause if pvp player in that area aren't good enough cause the good ones are too busy w/ gvg, then pve players are stuck waiting, its a stupid solution.

I say just abolish linking the 2, the way of play is totally different anyway, pvp are elitist scrubs and pve players grind like a mofo and complain about pvp getting all the attention from Anet.

I havent pve'd in 6 months and I can see that the favor system needs to be removed. The PvP'rs got faction so we no longer needed to grind pve to get skills. Its only fair that the pve'rs get the favor system removed so the dont need to pvp at all to pve where they want.

And to all the people saying go win HoH yourself, you dont get good at pvp overnight.

You said it Da Cebuano! Sever the ties except completely. If people want to do PvP then they should have to create a PvP only character and start, unlocking things along the way within PvP. Same goes for PvE. If people want to do PvE then they should have to create a PvE only characters and start, unlocking things along the way with in PvE. This would mean that the missions and quests are for PvE characters only and arenas are for PvP only. Whatever is done in either has no affect on the other. With this said there could be one arena for levels 20s where both PvP and PvE can go and fight in formed teams (formed in the outpost so friends and guildies can team up) and it will have no affect on either side as well as nothing can be unlocked.

What the...

PvE = PvP
All the missions (except the endgame and the fow/uw/sf) are PvP tutorials.
PvE missions are used to prepare players for PvP.
Take the Frost Gate mission for example. You need to repair sieges in order to keep your guild lord/ghostly (Rurik) safe.

Desert missions, see the similiarities?

THK = GvG simulation.
Protect your guild lord. Defend your area. If you light the beacons (bring flag to flagstand), prepare to defend it. Enemies come in waves, like in lots of GvG matches when the enemy team gets ressed.
And above all, it's easier to do these missions with a GvG build rather than a messed up tank frontline with caster backline unless you hold a book/gear or torch.

If you want to beat THK, don't bring stance tanks, don't try with mending. Bring damagewars, even iway could do the trick.
I've been observing the players in THK and all those who bring W/Mo "tanks" hardly make it towards the end of the mission. Don't even try doing the bonus with a tank (unless you hold the torches but still...) (did I mention that torches, kegs and books are the equivalent of repairkits and flags in PvP?)
The better way to dominate in THK is to bring a GvG build. I'm serious here. Don't bother with "PvE"-builds, "PvE"-builds are crap. They're too slow, there's too much focus on one thing and they're usually very lame.

If you look at UW/FoW/SF and take away the monster AI that makes them lock on the gear-holder (I believe that this was meant to simulate the taking down of flagrunners and siegerepairers) then these areas will become a lot like PvP.

Currently, all I see are "5 man Oro farm group" and "barrager team looking for barrager" and "55monk LF SS necro, selfinvite".

This is not PvE, this is laming. With laming I mean using lame tactics to win.
But HoH and the UW, FOW, SF areas have the exact same laming things.
For HoH it's Iway, for the other it's the booktrick.


This entire deal of "seperating PvE and PvP" is madness. It's like sending a soldier to war without teaching him how to fire a gun.

If it wasn't for the laming, then both areas would be the same. We'd all be running PvP/PvE hybrid builds and favor would shift from one side to the other all the time because the builds that were being used would be very different.
The PvErs of today wouldn't have to learn how a specific build works and they wouldn't have to farm fame and faction to actually do anything. The PvPers would just walk over the FoW with their own PvP builds.

PvE = PvP
PvE = PvP tutorial area and PvP/GvG simulation or trainingarea. But this balance was broken due to AI.

What I propose instead of the seperation is the simple nerfing of lame things.
And from what I've heard, the booktricks won't work come factions and Iway... well, the rebalance....
So it will get nerfed anyway.
Favor problem solved.


*digs a hole and waits for the firestorm to pass*

While I agree with alot of what you say Don, PvE and PvP are certainly not the same. That's for sure.

Anyhow, let's presume that PvE is your training ground for PvP. I can agree to that, but then, how many gamers need to be told this? When I started playing UT, I didn't just join the first available server and get in on the PvP action. You'd last about 3 seconds. Naw, naw...you train on the bots first. I'd like to think the favor system doesn't exist to tell people the obvious.

Now, since FoW and UW are PvE areas, I guess I don't get the overall message in your post. It sounds like you're saying that PvE is training for PvP and that's all. Well...for some, maybe. But then, why should additional PvE content be unlocked if you're already beyond your PvE stage as a competent PvP player? Eh, I don't get it...

-Jessyi

I mean that the missions, mostly those before you get to the fire island chain, are moe liek tutorial and simulation missions.

They prepare you for:
- PvP
- GvG
- High end PvE areas like FoW, UW and SF

What I meant was that FoW, uw, etc are at the same level as PvP and that if the booktricks get reworked, they'll be nearly the same.

I might be crazy though

*gets back into his hole awaiting the fiery flames of abaddons mouth*

I've alwayus thought the favor system as it was a stupid idea - those that don't like/want to PvP having their access to certain areas restricted by PvP pl;ayers who probably don't give a monkey's about entering a PvE area.

IMO a better system would be for favor to affect access to certain PvP areas and access to the FoW/UW restricted to characters that have completed every mission (not bonuses just the missions) from Ascalon to Hell's Precipice - so the high level areas are a reward for those completing the PvE part of GW.