Give alliances that owns cities the option of offering Elite missions for everyone.

Theres been much debate about how Factions discourages causal players who will never likely see an Elite mission or be able to participate if they are unguilded or belong to a small group of friends in a guild together.

We understand that there are many advantages for Alliances to control towns namely: Alliance Flag/banners in city, lower NPC prices, access to certain structures of the city eg tall balcony over looking city or even the ability to hold parades but more importantly access to Elite missions with loot boasted to make your time worth. Currently our understanding is that the Elite missions is an exclusive form of reward for Alliances that are large enough to hold the said cities either through gaining points by 12v12 Alliance battles or repeatable Fed Ex quest for faction points. But considering how Town control is based worldwide and seening how only 55 towns will be up for grabs brings a even gloomy outlook for players who like to participate in those Elite missions but rather not choose to leave their guilds to join a larger one or change their style of play.

Hence i would like to suggest for Alliances that hold those respective towns be given the option to open up these Elite missions (they can keep the rest of the perks) to players other than their Alliance. This can be done for free or at the cost of Faction points automatically donated to the Alliance who choose to do so ( i dont recommed gold/item transactions) which can help toward the maintaince of Alliance standing to keep the town if possible. This option if implemented will better serve the GW community as a whole to encourage a more user friendy environment to game in and also encourage a more inclusive style of play rather than the exclusive extreme that everyone dreads. The donated Factions will also go a long way to help Alliances play in a more balance fashion rather than to think of it as a job having to constantly farm/grind for faction points to keep up with the competition. They will also be more likely to gain more in game fame and recogition for their generousity hence attracting a more friendier crowd/response toward their Guilds/Alliance.

I understand they will be some who feel that they should have exclusive right because they like to feel elite being in a large guild or prefer to corner off the market from drops from Elite missions that would sell for more gold if less of the GW population have access to them in the first place to get rich and i wont argue with those opinions if they are right or wrong but merely your own opinons thats all. Please keep this disccussion civil and i am looking to see if our community feels that if this is a good idea or more interestingly if someone can come up with a much better suggestion that cater to everyone in GW Factions Elite mission situation.

Thank you for taking the time to read this long post and please /Signed if you agree or /not signed if you dont. comments please.

I'd rather have that they wouldn't make these quests alliancedependable...

but if i can't have that then ay /signed

Umm... Donating faction for access to elite missions helping the alliance keep control of the city/outpost.... Great Idea!!

/Signed

I think it should be like favour and uw/fow. If some kurznic alliance wins whatever and unlocks elite missions then the whole kurznic faction is able to go there. However if Anet does not choose to implement this, your idea is the next best thing.

Maybe Elite Missions should not be included as "Content for Controlling Guild Only" at all. And instead they should be - hard to get areas -.

I mean by that every player has chance to get there but it is hard due for example you need certain artifact from certain boss or something like that.

We don't know though if Factions can be grind so heavily that it's the biggest guilds that controls everything but if it is so then High-End missions are things that for example I will never see..gasp..and my point is that maybe Elite Missions should be accessable to all but you have to be get certain goals achievied in PVE to get there.

I know this may sound like WoW, in there you have to hunt around world certain artifacts to get to certain dungeons.

/signed for donating faction points to the alliance controlling a town/city/outpost

This is a nice middle ground.

Aren't you then just a defacto member of the alliance? Under such a system, as soon as the first alliance takes control of an Elite Mission staging area, everyone will be donating faction to them to get access to the mission, and they'll then have such an enormous faction income stream that no other alliance can possibly hope to take it off them (you're essentially making an alliance of infinite size). You've nullified the entire concept of town control within an hour of release.

Trust me, members of controlling alliances will be selling access to the elite missions within minutes over taking over a town. If you're not in a guild and want to play those missions, start stockpiling gold now.

Elite quests for 1% (or less) of the players? Wow, that sounds more like World of Warcraft than Guild Wars. If that's true I'll be forced to drop this game faster than I dropped WoW (elite guild-only areas ftl).

I agree with this. put outposts near (or on) that boundary line that shifts with pvp, and make it so you can only do them if you have the most faction with that side (like merchants and such in town, they won't deal with you otherwise, in this case won't let you do the mission), add maybe a minimum amount of faction you need to have with that team before they'll let you in. Maybe have it cost say 1k faction (per person) to do, or free you're controlling a town or such.

Anyway, ick. Content only available to a very very small percentage of the game like that makes me ill.

I agree with Pharalon with the first point however there was a mention of cap for faction points that can be converted to Alliance standing and what i propose is an option to allow it which alliances that feel they rather not open the Elite missions to the public, they can choose not to, of course one would argue the great benefits of doing so and forcing it to be the norm (If it does, i will be a very happy faction player since we could join Elite missions in exchange for Factions donated to the Alliance holding the town-it being an easy and both parties gain from this.) As for being the defacto member of any particular alliance, its not certain that all Elite missions would be the same meaning some areas maybe be more desirable than others possibly in terms of either content or loot hence meaning not everyone will always be "supporting" the same few alliances all the time. What this translates is infact empowering the individual with choices on how he/she wants to spent his Faction points. If someone spends a huge amount of Faction donating to another alliance to have access to Elite missions, perhaps he/she could better use them for furthering their own guild/alliance standing or 15k armour but what matters more is the choice that is present rather than paying large amounts of gold for a short period of access by buying your way into it or risk never seening those content at all.

Your second point is precisely what i dont want to see but will likely happen such that either individuals/entire guilds will be charged to join the guild/Alliance holding towns for a day for example and left to their own devices with all the complcations of scamming involved leaving a bad taste in the mouth for everyone.

Edit for spelling

I see your point and I have to agree with you, but I don't like the idea of the alliances having to farm factions points over and over to keep control of the towns. I think something in between would be desirable. Well, I guess we'll have to wait for the 27

P.D.: Sorry, but I'm not an english native speaker

I think the better option here is to make the elite missions available to those who don't control the town at a very high cost in faction (somewhere around 80k sounds right, the total faction 8 people can carry by themselves) that doesn't go to the controlling alliance. This way there is definitely a huge advantage in controlling the town in that they can play the mission whenever they want at no cost (and therefore actually have the ability to farm it), but other alliances will still have the option of making a large sacrifice in order to actually experience the mission.

I agree that this is a huge problem, but I don't think that is much of a solution. Most alliances won't want to just give the access away. And it isn't even really fair for them to have to feel pressured to.

I'd prefer any of these solutions:

Remove the 10-guild cap, and limit alliances by number of players instead. Small active guilds would be welcomed everywhere.

Give each elite mission a fee in faction points that anybody can spend to play. Members of the controlling alliance are exempt from this fee.

Throw out the whole elite-content-as-a-reward concept. Generally everyone is happiest if they are allowed to play everywhere. There are tons of other good ways to reward the best players or guilds.

Can you start another petition based on these ideas?!?

I like them more.

I like this idea, faction points are spent for armor and city purchases, so spending them to gain access to the quest would be the pay off. Add this into:

... and we have a great system. I'm also with Mordakai, I'll sign that petition.

Throw out the access to Elite missions/quests from the town control.

Town control gives you four things:
1. Reduced costs from NPC's.
2. A few more areas to run around in the town.
3. Ability to hold parades or whatever.
4. Your Alliance cape on the map and all over the town.

I've already made my views on the whole Town Control issue clear in other threads. However, if this goes off as badly as it seems it will, my purchase of Campaign III will be in SERIOUS flux...

I like this idea alot, I support it completely.

You raise an interesting point, but keep in mind that the more faction an alliance has donated the quicker thier faction "runs out" and they lose control of the city. If there are tons of people donating thier faction, then the controling alliance's total faction donated will drain just as fast.

Yeah, I agree with Mordakai... those sound like good ideas... probably would keep most people happy. I'll sign a petition.

/signed

but w/o the donate faction clause to "jam" it open because that what it is really doing and it's a bit unfair.

I agree that spending faction points to enter these Elite mission would be also a good idea but problem also lies in how much is enough?

Too high 80K for whole party-means you can only do the mission once and if someone makes a mistake and party wide occurs... all that points and time wasted back to faction point farming.

Too low 100-500 faction points-why would a large guild who spends all the time and energy and resources to gain those cities do it when you can get in Elite missions for the time spend doing one quest.

unlimiting 10 guild cap may seem like a good solution for small guilds to expand in unlimited fashion but now imagine mega alliances of over 20-50+ large guilds..... the zerg factor would be far too unbalancing.

I agree with throwing out this Elite mission from the game as it seem to be a poor attempt from ANET to merge the PvE and PvP playstyes. But as it stands, it was promised as a feature of the game hence doing that would not be wise at this stage and many guilds have already set their gear in motion for Factions which is why i suggested system in the form it did in the OP hopes it clears things up abit but appreciate everyone's who posted comments about it. Keep them comming since it help to generate more awareness and perhaps a perfect solution further in this thread possibly.

Do we even know how it is going to work? Maybe I missed something...

In the second part VGM interview with Jeff Strain, he mentioned that there will not be any significant advantage that Elite missions (in terms of loot) will give players that dont have access to it but rather for hardcore players who want to take their gaming experience to the next level testing their skills in those highly challenging Elite missions.

It seems that from Jeff's answer, Elite missions are just another high level areas that reward skillful players who want the challenge in those areas. What puzzles me is why are those areas limited to just some of the community, why not just open them up like tombs if they dont even have unbalancing rewards from completing them?

/signed

Regardless Giving complete control of PVE mission availability to one Guild Alliance is completely insane. Once it is controlled it will be exploited and let the bidding begin just to play part of the game. I can see the Faction (kurzik/Luxon) being the determining factor but not leaving it up to the guild alliance in control, which ultimately means ONE PERSON the guild leader of the alliance. Way to much power for an obvious control abuse system. If I wanted that I would Play WoW! I play this game for it's content. I sincerely hope that ANET is'nt changing to a play style copied from WoW. Hopefully they are smart enough to come up with their own ideas not copy others

I agree. We dont know if a group or few groups will be able to keep a hold on a city for long. It's possible that over 50% of guilds will get access to it. We dont really know how it will work. We should wait to see how it works out for a while before we go making drastic changes to it.

Better yet, you raise their standing by enough so that you put them in control of the next town up.

Donating is a bad idea because then the alliance in control is getting faction from every single kurzick/luxon, and then they will have way more faction than anybody else. I think that maybe one solution is everyone that wants to be able to enter has to donate some crazy number like 100k faction towards their guild to be able to enter the mission. This would last forever though, but everyone would have to have paid the "entrance fee" to go to the start of the mission area. Members of the leading alliance would be exempt from the fee, but if they lose control, only members that paid the 100k would be able to actually enter.

/signed

Signed.
I didn't know that post and I actually proposed the same thing.

Rather than trying to patch a broken system, these elite missions should just be made available to everyone.

Kinda ruins the point of fighting for them, dont you think?

I guess it would be ok if the option was given to people, at some sort of price though. Im starting to come around because I made some kind of fool of myself in another thread... lack of sleep does things to the mind.

/signed, somewhat.

"You have been invited by the guild X to compete in a Elite Mission"
/signed

/signed

A guild like (for example) Xen of Onslaught must have several hundred players between their many sub-guilds. Put them in a big alliance as well and there is no hope at all my small (~60 players total over 4 guilds) alliance can ever hope to compete for sheer amount of faction gained. It's not a system conducive to a diversity of alliance sizes, and this looks like a good way to remedy the problem.

The point being that you shouldn't have to fight for them.

/signed

For the 99.9% of those who have also paid for the game and yet are excluded.

Perhaps donated faction should isntead of going to the Alliance/Guild would instead go to the Allied Faction Lux or Kur as a whole. In that way it is not the Alliance/Guild benefitting but the Faction as a whole(?)

let me sign Again
/Signed

I noticed this thread started before the game was released and now all you have to do is go to cavalon or of kurz town (dont remember the name) and see ppl angry at ANET for the concept.

I think you are right on the money, i just sent ANet a question to their marketing and public relations section about this, this is a subject that is upsetting a lot of ppl, access to areas where over 90% of the players will never get to see it?

Take Cavalon, the same alliance has controled it for days and and 2 million more factions compared to the 2nd luxon alliance, kudos to the black blades alliance for their hard work, but what about the rest of us, i am guessing that my only chance to see an elite mission with the current system is to join their alliance.

/signed for a faction based entry fee and leading alliance gets in free, but that does mean that you are not donation factions to your alliance

There are several ways to make the majority of the players happy, without taking the advandge away from those that worked hard for their alliance...

This is the one thing from factions that made me really angry, that there is a mission and area that i cant go to because I like the guild am in and dont want to switch.

Well, the current setup is that if your in a party with someone in the holding alliance, and they go to the elite mission outpost (max party size: 12), you are brought along with them. So the holding alliance can chose to bring other people there. Once you get into that outpost, you dont have to party with the alliances members to enter the mission

Now if an alliance wanted to make the elite mission open to everyone, then they just need to assign some of their members to run people into the elite mission outpost. But for now they will enjoy the high prices of zodiac weapons