So, uh. (Elite Missions)

Alliances are competitive. There are (and should be) rewards for "winning" in a competition. Your alliance isn't big enough? strong enough? Let the merging commence. A guild shouldn't be 2 players. That's a party. Put the other guy on f-list and join up that way.

Is it the favor system all over again? Yes. Is it inherently broken? No. It's designed to nudge people into the types of guilds and alliances envisioned with the design of the game. Large Alliances with member guilds of a healthy size and that they'll last. You don't have to like the new rules. You just have to play within their confines. It may mean repositioning yourself into a new guild, merging your entire guild with others, rethinking your separatist ideas.

I would like to see realms for the other deities. Lyssa, Dwayna and Melandru should all have corresponding elite realms. I'd love an armorer in Lyssa's realm that required some ridiculously expensive material only dropped there. (No, I am not kidding. I think FoW armor is horrid for most classes and would love something "beautiful" that would embody Lyssa's spirit.)

I agree. Rewards should be given.

Odd. I don't remember the guild registrar saying that "you must have 20 members before you are considered a REAL guild."

Please reference the above.

Can you give us a clue why we should reference it in relation to this topic? I assume you're going after the CORPG thing again but that quote says competitive/cooperative so doesn't actually prove anything at all. If anything, both sides of the discussion will try and use it to bash the other over the head.

So, if there were more cities that could be controlled with elite missions, would this solve some of the problems? I still think the problem is managable by the community (Most people's hands-on experience is that it's easy to get someone from the alliance to "open" the mission for you), but it seems like only the biggest of the best can control the few cities. Maybe make more rewards available for the next few factions down the list...?

Don't see why I have to grind to have fun.
Should have made it like Favor system, not "go grind in an army or hope that you can get into an alliance group once in a while" system.

Skill at getting large numbers to join them in a grind fest maybe - these have little to do with playing the game and a lot to do with being in a large alliance/guild

I'm hesitant to even post in this thread, but here's a fairly decent summary of the high points:

1) We're talking PvE here. The sooner everyone realizes that, the better. Yes, GW has a competitive side, we call that PvP. You want to prove you're an awesome competitive person? GvG. HoH. Arenas. 12v12 alliance battles. There are your proving grounds.

2) Mathematically speaking, only large (dare I say, maxxed out) alliances will be able to hold elite missions ... this is not a point anyone has had any sort of significant rebuttal in the 15 or so pages i've read.

Quoted for truth for point #2, and I can't because it doesn't exist anywhere, Unien

3) I've seen it once, maybe twice in this thread, but the thing that immediately comes to my mind is: it's a BRAND NEW game ... give them some time to fix or update it! The most heavily researched, documented, and tested projects fail to the public's opinion and preference sometimes. This is true with any product you can produce from video games, to sneakers, to the latest soft-drink.

Granted. I can realize everyone is upset. I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little miffed myself, but i'm saving the sharpness of my tongue until I see if ANet does something to balance. Everyone who has steam coming out of your ears just take a deep breath, and relax for a while.

....Edited out this part since it ended up being incorrect....

Now, you all need to chill! I am as unhappy with my Factions purchase as the next person at the moment. It's new, it's different, it's buggy, and it feels incomplete and/or rushed to me at this time. What I decided to do was continue playing as I had originally intended, mark it off as a strike against A.Net, and watch to see them balance and fix it in due time. They will either redeem themselves or turn me off even more....only time will tell.

They cannot balance anything within a week of playing. Most of us casual gamers haven't even made it to a point where we could even consider the "Elite Missions" and yet here you all are complaining about it before you even give it a chance.

You think the top 10 PvP alliances are going to make it their goal in life to keep the elite missions all to themselves at all times for the next 6 months? No way. Just like most of you aren't rushing out to spend 100k+30 ecto on a nice new shiny set of gold daggers, you need to give the rush of these elite missions time to blow over. I would wager that in 3-4 months or most likely less, you won't need anywhere near 1 million faction to control these cities...not to mention how many days that will give you and your "12-man guild" alliance to capture the high-score-for-the-day on any one of the challenge missions.

You guys all just need to relax, play your way through, and give Factions the time it needs to become the balanced, honed, enjoyable game Prophecies ended up being. We are being way too critical way too quickly and I think we all need to back off, let our initial outrage mellow, and start realizing that Guild Wars: Prophecies wasn't build in a week either

We have all voiced our concerns, A.Net is no doubt watching these forums as they always do, if you reach the point where you've done everything else and it's still unsatisfactory, then you can rage.

Until then see if the system they have created manages to balance itself

-Beat Go

EDIT:
ps - If I were Gaile or Alex, I wouldn't touch these forums with a 50 meter stick either. Let's try and make this a place they can feel comfortable coming to again. Their presence is definitely missed (though understandably absent) and I, for one, would like to get the tone of this community back to being constructive rather than accusatory. Maybe then, A.Net will begin to see some rational suggestions and be able to make the changes we would all like to see.

pps - *laugh* It's only been 7 days

Knowledge. I get my facts straight before I spam the forums.

No those challenge missions do not grant access, uninformed as it is your statements about waiting and just playing stand on their own merit as logical ways to act.

It was a suggestion on how it could work to make folks happy. Not a reality.

But, I do agree that one of two things will happen in the next few weeks (because it is a new game, after all):

1. The system will balance itself out, and smaller alliances will be able to hold the city for enough time to give the elite missions a bunch of runs.
2. A-Net will come in and attempt to rebalance the system, people will complain some more, it will get balanced again, and then people will be moderately happy.

As much as each of us hates/loves the faction system, I don't think it's going anywhere, unfortunately.

You are correct. It is not balance at all, and I would say that it actually penalises 90%+ of the Guild Wars community.

The only "content" that is exclusively accessible by only a few people should be purely aesthetic stuff, like cape fringes. I thought that was an excellent idea by ANet. I do not believe for a second that they actually wanted to have a tiny minority of people accessing the elite missions. They either didn't think it over or refused to listen to the queries raised at the beta event. So they need to fix this - pure and simple.

I certainly hope that they are already thinking about this, and of course I am willing to give them time. However it is important that they do work on this as best they can. The problem many people have here is that people like Gaile have not given us any feedback that such action is actually being taken. Another cause for concern is, as I mentioned, that many people raised fears about exactly what has happened ages ago, so people worry that ANet may drag their feet over this.

In a nutshell - we want acknowledgment that there is a problem and that it is being worked on as a top priority. ANet may want to keep silent on this issue, rather than expose themselves to the criticism/make more people aware of the problem - someone mentioned that a majority of players haven't probably got into a situation where they could try to take control of a settlement to get into the elite missions. However they would be shooting themselves in the foot to put off addressing this. Better to bite on the bullet and get the hard work done, than put if off and have to deal with it when the "honeymoon period" is over and people are more likely to want access to more content.

If you are referring to your previous post about high cost charging for entrance then no you don't get your facts straihgt, in fact in your post you asked a question. granted it seems meant to be a rhetorical question used to imply that the overwhelming majority of top alliances are charging 40k.

now considering that there is only one other post who mentions having to pay, which isn't stipulated as imagining the future, that would mean that your comment about pricing is more correctly categorized as the less common of the experiences.

this coming from the fact that more people in just this thread including myself have not had to pay anyhting to do these misisons as of yet.

what you said was a fact in that we may take on faith that you yourself were offered the price of 40k but what you implied with your post is not fact but merely just blatant assumption.

ok, so how about providing a name of the alliance that charges 40k to join their guild?

so far, many top alliance members have came in here specifically to say that there are no charges to join the guild or access elite missions.

Um - no - he was offering up an alternate entry method. That is not currently in the game.

The reference is perfectly relative to this topic. GW was designed as a competitive cooperative game. A team of players cooperating with each other and competing against another team of players (or in some cases, the environment) to achieve a goal or reward. This isn't T-ball. We all don't get trophies or prizes for showing up and being good sports. If your team isn't able to obtain the goal, then the prize for reaching the goal is also denied to you.

Thanks for the clarity. It's too bad, doing it that way made sense to me

I'm not even saying that the system they have is great, mind you, but I'm not even there yet and I wonder how many others who are complaining about the inability to explore 100% of Cantha's glorious PvE have already explored everything else *chuckle*

But again - the prize is NOT the same. In sports you get a trophy and money.
In GW it is actual content! Nobody is arguing that Evil gets a cooler cape and $50k during competition.

The reality - no matter how they design it - half of ANet's paycheck is from PvErs who have no interest in PvP.

Even if we accept the argument of CORPG - do they really want to alienate half the fanbase? Half the paycheck?


Content PAID for. You PAID to play.

Stop the sports analogy. It is wrong.

PvE and PvP, while both competitive and coorperative, are two DIFFERENT playing styles. Why are we being forced to merge them? That is the only issue I have here. Strange how PvP players whined about skill unlocks and the Factions system was introduced for that, but when PvE players don't like something, it is swept aside.

I'll let this go for now. A prior post was dead on. Anet will not fix this anytime soon, as they see nothing wrong with it, but we should give it some time and see how it pans out as more guilds/alliances reach the end-game areas. I can just see this being a bad thing in the long run.

I have a friend who PvP's and I have tried to assist this person in skill capping, and they ahve tried to assist me. (Time restraints became an issue.) This PvP player I respect, not worship, both for skill and mostly for attitude toward others.

Those who hold an absolute monopoly over entry into restricted areas will abuse it. Power does not corrupt, it instead attracts the corruptible. The favor and faction systems for controlling PvE content and attempting cajole, coerce, or threaten PvE players into PvP are immoral. What is done is wrong.

Irrelevant. I spent just as much as anyone else in real money, and I spent more than most in relation to my income. No matter how the dollars are looked at I either deserve equall access to all content, or even greater access because I invested more of a percentage of my income into the purchase. No one has a right to more of the game than someone else just because they are Olympic Gold medal quality players. The top 1,000 do not deserve to run the lives of the rest of us. Their souls are not worth more than ours.

They may have coined the term, but they have in no wise understood how to implement it. There are places in the world where cooperation by force, threat, and fear has met with marginal success. The Soviet Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia comes to mind. Iraq comes to mind. We see what happens when those forced to cooperate with one another are no longer playing that game.

I was not aware that NC Soft was Korean. This may be a part of the cultural difference. In Korean caste is so ingrained that a younger twin brother may not speak to his elder twin brother without using formal and polite language and tone. The elder is required to speak a conjugated form that indicates his superiority and effectively sounds like cussing out his inferior twin. While given the opportunity I would have fought to the death to maintain the Korean right to be Korean, I have no interest in becoming devoid of my nation's form of individualism in order to play a game they promote. This also explains why the team structure for alliances is exclusive of one another in team chat and party formations. Communications between subordinates instead of relying exclusively on superiors is not a part of many Oriental cultures; even tho that system has not proven effective against the alternative in any modern military engagement.

It is never a good idea to role over and die even if the ''authorities'' are not listening. Continual active protest is the only acceptable course. As the song says, ''You have got to stand for something or you will fall for anything.''

The GW staff went to great lengths to avoid telling us the truth so that they would no lose patronage. Now they have a short time period to turn it around before they drive a protion or even large portion of their audience away. The attacks on individuality and personal expression have so disgusted and enraged me that I barely play the game at all since the opening of the Factions servers. I used to play about 8 hours a day average.

Fitz Rinley

I don't care if either Gaile of Alex feels comfortable about visiting these boards. I work in software development and I've been in some very uncomfortable meetings with customers who were unhappy about some aspect of our product. As a developer I could avoid these issue and that would only serve to piss my customers off. The alternative is to take a bit of heat and listen.

Just my views, but I do agree with you that time and perspective may help this issue.

If he really wants to make that analogy, how about this:

How many people pay to play t-ball? Sure, you buy the equipment, but once you do, you decide how you want to play with it. This alliance system dumps on small guilds that people have been playing in and enjoying for quite some time now.

So many people here are taking the attitude of, 'well, that's the way the world works, if you don't like it, get out, etc. etc.' That's all well and fine for them if they want to say that, but they aren't the ones trying to make money from this product. Anet makes the rules for the game, Anet needs their customers' money to survive. So sit there and sneer at the disgruntled players if you want, but I think Anet at least might want to listen.

yeah im disappointed in the whole elite mission setup. It should be unlockable for us regular guilds too. Really stinks that 99.9% of us will never see even one of those missions.

LOL beat I"m really glad it made sense, at times my phrasing is a bit whacked out from the norm. ok that might be an understatement i'm not sure maybe a lot whacked out.

For people making the "put up or shut up" / "love it or leave it" argument about Guild Wars factions, please read the following article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_choice

I don't recall ever seeing anywhere that Anet promised "buy Factions and get insta-access to Elite missions". You have what you paid for: access to Factions, which includes all the missions and quests that are part/parcel of the storyline, access to the PvP areas and character slots. The Elite Alliance missions are not something that were "sold" as part of the game, although they were used in advertisement as enticements. They exist within the game, but as rewards for those inclined and capable of earning them. Anet continues to do what they began in GW:Prophecies: attempt a union of PvE and PvP. Nobody said you had to be happy about it, but Anet hasn't falsely advertised anything. It was pretty clear from all the early indications which told us the Elite missions would be accessible by elite Alliances, not everyone.

I am not sneering at disgruntled players. I am simply trying to point out that none of this is surprising given the type of game that Anet is promoting GW to be and is driving towards in their development efforts. As mentioned above, once you buy the T-ball equipment, you get to decide what to do with it. If you win a lot, there is a championship that not every team and every player gets to play. (All-Stars? Sound familiar?) You get the "regular season play" by buying your copy of Factions. You don't get the "playoffs" unless you earn it.

as long as these missions don't got special green items, other special stuff... I am k with it.

It's like PvP 99.9% of the ppl who play PvP will never win a championship in GuildWars

2 elite missions... do you really need to cry about it?

I really hope these rants will stop

I can understand why you want to have acces to these missions to, I want to have acces to, but on the other hand I understand they want to give a little "gift" to the more competive guild ou there.

I will be unhappy when these elite missions got content thats only there in these missions.

But ppl give it some time... factions is not even a week old...

There are unique skins only available there. And I don't think that should be changed. They are only cosmetically different. They still have the same chance at being crappy, good or perfect stat-wise as any other item. They don't unbalance the game. They just look different. There are also greens there that I understand have the same stats and skins as the ones after beating the last mission. No big deal.

Will people pay a lot more for these unique skins? Probably, but they are also difficult to acquire because the mission itself is difficult. So they should be expensive to purchase from the player who spent his time in getting it. It's fair compensation. If you spent 6 hours clearing an area and came away with one perfect rare item with a unique skin, I doubt you'd sell it for 10k.

Heh, I would wager they are listening and I actually find it surprising that people doubt that. They have always listened regardless of whether or not they ended up agreeing with out opinions.

All I am saying is that threads that end up as this one did for a good 4-5 pages serve no constructive purpose and are better avoided by Gaile and Alex due to the probability of just being flamed the second they entered.

I know what you mean and I would also like to hear even a "We are reading and taking everything you say into consideration" from them just for piece of mind but when I really think about it, A.Net has a great track record of paying atttention to us. I feel like I also have been lied to by their PR campaign but I'm comfortable giving them a week or so to just let everything calm down to a simmer instead of a fierce boil before coming in to explain why things aren't the way we expected

It seems everyday i read something on here that makes me want to get Factions less and less.

I wouldn't buy it yet if I hadn't already done so

I haven't actually purchased Factions yet (lack of funds), however I plan to do so within a few days, when I get the money I need. Believe it or not, just because I make a thread to discuss this particular aspect of the game, it's not make or break--it's not the whole game. It's annoying, but it doesn't detract, on the whole, from an otherwise stellar product.

If everyone was allowed access to it... it wouldn't be so "elite" would it? They would have to tone down the amount of special items there and it would be just like any other pve place in either game. Making it so exclusive allows only the best to acquire these items, kinda like FOW armor (excluding ebay).

Yeah but its not just these 'Elite missions'. Its everything they've messed with recently.
They're screwing up builds just for 12vs12s (MM's, i haven't played my necro since that update), they've totally ruined the 12vs12s themselves by making it a random team arena with no communication between groups (i'd hardly call All chat appropriate). From what i've heard henchman AI is worse than ever. 13 missions seems to be all of Cantha too... 25 missions took a while to get through, but 13? Hardly worth spending 30quid on. There really isn't as much new material as it seems we were promised.
I mean come on, Revealed Hex... did they actually include this sorta thing in there count of 'new' skills? Its the exact frigging same as Inspired Hex last i checked. Same with many other skills.

No, they didn't.

Fantastic point Kakumei. It doesn't make or break the game.

Uhh the copied skills, Evilsod, are "core" skills that if someone buys Factions standalone, they will get those skills since they won't get prophecies skills.
If it isn't worth your 30 quid in your opinion, don't buy it. We're better off without you whining about it.

Edit: Oh yeah, forgot about people who only bought Factions. Still, why change the name...

Yeah I must admit I was confused by this at first. Then I realized that because they are technically 2 skills, I could have both on my skillbar at once. While maybe not the most practical, in some cases I have found good use for 2 of basically the same skill.

I wonder if you ever heard a professional athlete saying : " It's not fair that Micheal Jordan gets to practice more then me. I should be able to be a NBA star and win millions too but I dont' have the time to practice like him..."

I was reading the whole thread and for a minute I thought I was on Blizzard Worlf of Warcraft forums. Hardcore complains they want harder content. Anet give it to them, the casual complaint they can't access the content. It's always the same useless discussion. If you are not willing to do the time, then don't do the crime. END OF DISCUSSION.