Need some opinions on Factions

How is Factions? Is it better than Prophecies? How long is the game? How are the missions? Are they more enjoyable than the Prophecies ones? Was it worth your money?

Lot of questions can't answer (really not that far yet) but here are some change's I noticed right off the bat.

Everything is more "dense". Smaller map but tons of stuff to do in each zone / explore zone.

They want you to get to lvl 20 quickly, it's designed so when you get out the "starting" area you should be around lvl 15+ and have the highest armor you can get.

That's about all I can answer. I take the time to smell the rose's do every quest, and slowly explorer / go on my way. Then I will bring over my other character's from c1

Any others?

i have level 20 poking around the mainland having fun.

i have 2 in the monestary having fun.

bottom line i am having fun seeing new sights and the quests can drive you nuts at times

PVE only

Well even if ya get past the bugs and such, it is still really just missing the feel that the last one had....

Heck the BIGGEST thing I was looking forward to was the 12man roster when doing Alliance Battles ... but they took that away as well.... So all in all I am not really impressed.

heck yeah the monsters look killer but if the story line is that thin o_O? meh -_- I already paid for it and I would like to be able to play with my guildies - otherwise I personally wouldn't bother and I deffinately won't be getting a copy for my second account.

And I truly feel sorry for those who get this one without having prophecies first (thinking that this one will be so much better) I feel they are just gipping themselves *sighs*

Factions is better looking than prophecies, although smaller. I have yet to leave the tutorial island so i dunno about the missions, but the quests are about the same.

It also doesn't seem to have as much of a plot so far, and the beginning is pothetic in setting up the plot/ getting you interested in the game. The cutscenes have no voiceover either.

Eviance is right. It doesnt have the feel the last on did.

I would say from what I've seen that prophecies is better than factions, but factions is still worth the money.

Well i havnt got far, i jumped into the level 20 area with an existing charachter. No real story so far, so i just grabbed all the quests in town, and there all of the fetch/carry/kill variety. To be honest i quit out of boredom, defenatly not as attention grabbing as GW1, ill try it again tomorrow and see if it gets more interesting as i have only done the initial bunch of quests.

Oh and the assasin henchmen seems a tad bad so far, keeps teleporting at bad times, and once teleported into a nearby group i had so far not aggrod

I personally am enjoying Factions. To me, it seems more realistic.It feels like they are trying harder to immerse you into the story. I think the amount of tutorials they have is wonderful. (Rushy people, remeber, a lone hero is a dead hero ) To those of you who say it doesn't have the same feel, I agree. I don't think it should have quite the same feel. We're in a new place with a whole new story, of course it will be different. Just my two cents though.

*gets off soapbox and dons anti-flame armor and waits*

disappointed ..

the monsters are new only by their skin ... same stuff again and again
lotsa new items that wont replace my Prophecies ones cuz of their skin
the difficulty taht requires a full guildies group to complete missions, something i cant have since we can never be online all at the same time, just 2-3 tops
so it's not really playable to me as it is .. 8hours on the first mission and a headache for nothing
no comments on the henchies as well

What is the story, ive only done those initial 6 quests in the level 20 area?

I have no intentions of flaming anyone, your opinion is your own - but the lack of voiceover is saddening...

The lack of plot is lame...

The fact that you spend till lvl 15 in the tutorial only to quickly beat the story line is lame!

I mean seriously - the game has been out for such a short time and its already beaten... My brother said screw it after 2days that he is going back to EQ full time - cause it's just not as great as the first and nothing so far has made me go WOOOOOOW! except the history/background movie we got to watch where she comes and kicks his butt!

They gave so much hype and didn't deliver in so many ways.... If all the rest of the expansions keep on like this - I will just go back to PS2 and SRO.

I actually haven't gooten that far myself, just finished the first mission. I guess I was talking more about the little "stories" inside the big one. I'm not surpirised to hear that people have finished, people will rush. I don't see how you could finish the game so quickly. The quests during the preview were hard and so was the one mission I tried. Plus, people are getting stuck at the first two missions. I don't think there is that many finishing but I might be wrong. Mabe I'm just weird because I didn't get bored with Phorphecies until about the same time as the FPE.

Eviance, I never meant to say anyone was going to flame, just my way of injecting humor. I'm sorry to hear so many people are having a poor time of it.

IMO appart from the first mission (which is already compared to THK ) the lvl 20 area is too easy. I've completed 4 missions with a fullhench team and 1 with 50/50 hench/pug. Only the first mission I did with PUGs since that was quite a hard one to do. The quests are also really easy, I've done all of them with henchies. The only quest which gave me trouble was the one in the undercity where you have to defeat hordes of afflicted (I had 45% DP there) I have to add that I'm playing with my W/Mo. For other professions it might be more difficult. Maybe others can share their expierences with other professions regarding the difficulty.

The graphics look really nice and so do the monsters when you enter the luxon and kurzick area's. Cinematics also look cool except for the fact that the mouths still don't move when they are talking.

The storyline reminds me of another very popular RPG, which I will not mention cause I don't wanna spoil things for those who haven't gotten that far in the game yet.

So far I'm liking it, the biggest downside however, is that it's more or less the same as Prophecies. If you played that one a lot, you know exactly how to play Factions regarding tactics, builds etc. Never the less, I'm having a lot of fun. GW simply can't bore me, and I'm looking forward to how PvP will evolve itself.

I'm playing a r/mo with my friend who is a n/a and henchies. I guess it would put the diffficulty level about a low medium to regular medium. As I said, I haven't made it over to th lvl 20 area so no clue on how difficult that is.

I'd buy factions if you are competative in GvG or pvp for the skills.

Other than that its a complete waste of money.

With the CE mess up I'm canceling my order completely and buy it within a month at $30.

The game release has been completely miss handled.

None of the Game mechanics have been explained in detail FROM Anet. They just made a game and threw us all in to find out for ourselves.

Ok i must be having a blonde moment.

Ive played again for another 1/2hour, i did another load of those STUPID fetch/kill quests but cant find an actual mission, doh. I had to quit as my brain was melting from boredom, am i being blonde and just missing it or do i have to do a particular fetch mission to get to it?

Im dissapointed that ive chosen to take my old toon in, and find myself in this level 20 area with no direction on what to do / whats the story.

Definatly reccomend starting a new character!..


As for my opinions on Factions... well, what can I say, its COMPLETLY Different!

the monsters are better, the maps are better, the Items are better.. the missions, the armour...

aah, the missions!!.. there are SO many side quests and main missions..

Even all the training is much better, if I were a noob just starting Guildwars I would definaltly reccomend Factions.

There are a few down sides though :

Its MUCH Harder!.. you really do need to get at least a few real people to help some of the missions..

The Henchies... are WORSE Than ever!... if you thought they were stupid in Prophecies, then are are completly pathetic in factions, I think this is just ANET's way of trying to discourage you from playing the game on your own.

the maps in the built up areas can be VERY frustrating, but its all good fun at the end of the day...

The only problem is that all the henchies get STUCK behind all the friendly NPC 'Peasants' walking around.

Factions is DEFINATLY worth it, i been playing solidly since thursday and im just having the best time ever

Thanks for all the replies!

It's a shame that there aren't any voice-overs this time and they changed the Alliance battles.

Maps are big... which is a huge problem in my mind. I wouldn't mind it if it was packed with monsters, but seriously I was running around for about 20 minutes doing quests without killing one thing. So if you plan on doing all of these really boring quests for 3k experience... bring along some humans to chat to.

I am enjoying the level 20 enemies, unlike chapter 1 where everything was 24+ at the endgame. That and the multiple armour crafters for different skins (tempted to craft some chainmail...).

[QUOTE=Racthoh if you plan on doing all of these really boring quests for 3k experience... bring along some humans to chat to.[/QUOTE]

this is true, they definatly want to encourage team-play.

tbh though the maps are smaller, not bigger, but they are so much more complex that they can take along time to figure the maps out...

they arnt nearly as boring as the Ascalon quests either.. especially piken square missions :S

Ok first, what are you guys talking about? There is voiceover. So far the only cutscene with no voiceover was the very first, and that's because no character was speaking, it was the "narrator".

Don't listen to all those who say it's bad. Everytime a sequel/expansion is released, all the people on the forums complain about the game while the people who actually like it, play it.

The music is better, the monsters have much more original designs, the challenge has gotten better, missions are timed to determine how well you did, armor stats are no longer associated with looks, the new skills fill nice niches, the ritualist and assassin playstyles are VERY different from what we have right now, there are tons of new weapon skins, there is much more content per area, the new guild npc's are cool, alliance battles are cool, competitive missions are cool, the new way of acquiring skills is much more flexible and allows you to quickly build your character into what you want him to be, the preorder items are actually very good (the ritualist staff kicks ass), the art is very distinct, the story is better, the voiceover is better, missions become explorable areas after you beat them...

In two words, it owns.

Well, when I first started playing Factions during the headstart event, I made a new Ritualist. It was fun for awhile, but then I got off of the island at level 15 and fought nothing but level 20 character. I realised (or, rather, thought at that moment) that ritualists suck.

No on wanted me for my spirits or enchantments, everyone just wanted me to be the parties healer since they couldn't find any monks around. I got really bored and quit playing for the rest of the day or so.

Now, I brought my level 20 Monk, Ember Loreweaver, to Cantha, and am having a blast. I love the first mission, it was great. I love the monsters, I love the items, and I love the maps. As for the story, nothing to great but I'm still at the beginning of it I think ^_^.

I don't listen to the ingame music, since I have winamp/vent in the BG making noise for me.

It's pretty good. I can't really see the two new classes replacing any core classes in PvE or PvE. But it's pretty good.

7.5/10 in my book ^_^

ok, i know u go on a boat to get to factions...but who is the person u go to in lions arch to travel

It's definitely true that factions is NOT a substitute for prophecies. Although I can't say the prophecies' plot was great, I'm not sure factions has anything you can really call a plot. Cutscenes are weak with even weaker voice-overs, and the factions pre-searing equivalent is huge. I finally got through it at level 14 and about 6 hours of gameplay. So far I've gotten through two missions; the first one wasn't bad at level 12 (full hench party, beat it in 18 minutes), but the second one was a pain. As everyone has already said, henchman a.i. is atrocious. The assasin's "shadow" movements have him/her appearing everywhere outside of the main combat area, easily agroing other groups at bad times. So what's good about factions?

First, it's something new to play. I've cleared out prophecies with 3 characters already, and I'm getting a little tired of the "challenge" of fow, uw, sf, and tombs. Factions is providing something new for us to do, explore, etc. New weapon and armor skins, new skills (finally have some axe-bleeding skills), and monsters provide something fresh and different. Missions are actually challenging from the beginning... none of that camp rankor, north wall crap from prophecies. So is it worth the $50?

IMO, yes, simply because it's providing us with something more to do. It's not what most of us were expecting, but it could be a lot worse. All in all, I'm glad I bought it, and I plan on enjoying factions as much as I have enjoyed prophecies.

I'm liking factions as much or more than prophecies, at least as a first play through (only time will tell if it has they staying power or not).

It's different. For the first few hours I played like I would in Prophecies and died a lot, and when I didn't it wasn't very fun. Heck, the first mission I kept looking to find the bonus

The maps are smaller, denser, but IMO have a larger feel. That is, you may have an explorable map be a town, get to have regular quests in mission areas after you beat them (and have them tie into the mission's story), and just generally have pretty much the same "feel" regardles of the map type. That took more getting used to than anything for me.

EXP is earned like crazy. I've heard people mention a few missions I missed in the "newbie" area and I left at level 17, might have been able to make 18. Again, different from prophecies where I left quite a few quests till end game - do *not* do that here or you hit the mainland at 13 against level 20 mobs (and, unlike prophecies that had only one such beast, many quests are in the explorable map regions).

Little reason for runs to get armor - you get max armor so quick it's faster than most of the times I had a prophecy character ran.

As far as I can tell you get almost no skills from quests (outside of a very quick, very large influx at the very first of the game), all from the trainers. Though an abundance of 4000xp quests makes it actually faster than the original.

*shrug* too much to list. It's different, for a new player I don't think better or worse. If you were very comfortable with Prophecies your gonna hurt for a while. If you are completely new until the economy settles you're gonna hurt. Unlike others here, I much prefer this story and think it's well done (For instance, my game had the same amount of voice acting after the first mission, I'm not sure why thiers didn't). I like the newer layout of the maps quite a bit more. I also like the level progression.

So far my only complaints are that I can't play it like I do Prophecies (that's also a plus, it's like a new car that you keep pressing the wrong buttons on - sorta sucks until you get used to it), the current economy (especially the current lack of the new profession's runes at the trader), and that they really should have had you at 20 before hitting the mainland. All but one of those a little time should fix.

I also like to farm, I haven't tried that here yet so I can't comment on it.

Oh, and one more thing, don't expect to feel any love for a while with the new professions. Pretty much every mission is mostly "LFG - no asassin or ritualist" or one of the new professions spamming "LFG" until they go with the henchies. Just give it a bit and I bet the Overpowered Godlike Build will be found and one of them will be wanted for everything. But right now, few seem to want someone learning a new profession (heck, I'm not seeing very many of the newer core profession's skills used and some of them are nearly overpowered for PvE). Just that after a year of comfort with prophecies there is a TON of non-comfort with the chages.

In short, worth the money. I think most of the griping will end in a few weeks as people get used to the changes.