elite missions in cantha

ok, so ive beaten factions twice already and am getting bored with the pve, so i wanted to try and do elite missions that gw is talking about, but cannot do them. Why you ask? because only the guilds that control cavalon or house zu heltzer can join in on them. I recently asked members and the leaders of these guilds what their requirements are to join. for cavalon you must give 10k faction per day atleast!! Neither of these guilds is recruiting, and at 10k faction a day anyone wtih a real life will never be able to be a member. also, neither guild will allow guests, both reps said that they do not want to share the rights with anyone not in thier guild. Meaning, anyone who wants to do an elite mission needs to start a guild and accumulate over 4 million luxon faction or 3 million kurzic faction to get the respective outpost for a long enough time to ejoy the missions. I have no idea what goes on in these missions because no one outside these guilds can do them, but i know that there are some awsome skins on weapons, and that we should all be able to do any mission we want, we paid 50$ for the game, and more for the ce.

Am i the only one that thinks this is rediculous? I mean, come on people, you are not elites or better than anyone else because you run supply mission or scouting missions in jade sea over and over again. I feel that there should be a different requirement to get into the elite missions, like you must have beaten the game and killed shiro fast enough to get all 3 rewards. that will prove that an individual or group is elite, not running the same mission over and over again. Anyone can hench scouting missions and supply missions over and over again for hours if not days.

What does everyone else think of this?

I definitely agree with you, so do many other peeps, because there is already one topic - petition because of this elite missions

good to know im not the only one who thinks this. I would have searched for other posts about it, but the search has been down for the longest time for me, i cannot use search on this site. but i feel that we should make as many posts and topics about opening up the elite missions, make it a major issue for gw.com

While I agree that they should be a LITTLE more open, I like the fact that you have to know what you are doing to get in there, so there aren't thousands of screaming PUGs that will die from the first mob. I don't know if you've read the thread in the Canthan Explorer's League, but the elite missions are CRAZY hard, one room you are in has a constant -8 health degen!

I went once because one of the people who was holding House zu Heltzer was looking for people to go, and I happened to be one of the few available that was far enough along to go. You don't have to actually own the city to go (I wasn't a part of any guild at the time).

Trust me when I say you aren't missing that much. The best thing that dropped for me was spiritwood planks (or a few salvageables, you decide). The best loot I saw was when my teammates popped a chest we fought tooth and nail to get to. I didn't have a key. I can't remember anything better than a blue dropping until we got to that chest and almost everyone got a gold.

Seriously, you'd be better off solo farming FoW/UW.

Thats the thing, they wont take anyone but guildies in with them anymore, they think that bc they do the same mission over and over again that they are better than everyone else. And i dont care about drops, yes zodiac daggers and weapons are cool, but i want the chalenge. the rest of the game was no chalenge at all, even shiro was easy, beat him in under 2 minuts and have the screen to prove it.

/golfclap

ehh, beating shiro is easy, im sure that there is a thread that gives the under 2 minutes walkthrough, if you cant find it send me a pm and ill send you the build for it, its pretty simple, but doesnt really belong in this post beyond this point

I beat the game two times too. I want to do the elite missions so bad but it is impossible for my alliance to even DREAM of holding a town. Siiiiiigh.

im dissapointed with the same aswell. time for Anet to open up new Godly realms ... Melandru/Lyssa/Dwayna .. cmon !

but as we're only just after release, i suppose we'll need to wait months to see them.

anet seriously droped the ball on factions. for those of us that have prophecies it is a good expansion, but for anyone that only has factions it is a horrible stand alone game. too short, and too easy. The only hard missions arent available to anyone but a select few, and they probably compramise about 1%, if not less, of the total guild wars community. I like how they restrict fow/uw, makes you practicaly beat the game in order to get into them. We should all send something to anet, telling gale gray how we all feel about this. now, the leader said that b/c you have to pay to get in like fow/uw they dont want to have freeloaders. I have an idea about restricting people to these missions: If you own the major town, you get in for free, if you own another town you get in for half price, if you are in a guild that doesnt own a town you pay full price, and if you arent in a guild you have to pay full price. In order to let anyone in, make each person pay individualy, so that a member of the house of cavalon guild can play with a friend tahts not in a guild.

Hi there

Yes I agree with you wholeheartedly on this.

They should implement some other ways to get into these Elites. Maybe exchanging Kurzick/Luxon Faction for a key that gives you access for a limited time only.

I think limiting Elite Missions for those who own Outposts/Towns is basically a joke. I payed my cash for Factions like everyone else, everyone should get the same chance at playing.

It seems to me that a lot of elements in Factions have NOT been thought through and implemented properly.

Anyway enough said...

Im part of the Luxon dynasty myself and it does seem a little unfair. Last time I checked, we had over 3.5 mil Luxon xp. To think that any alliance could catch up to something like that is unbelievable. Hell, our only challange is over 1mil behind us. I suppose they will have resets or eventually work out all the bugs. You must admit though, it was a very interesting concept to start off with though.

heh, 10,000 faction a day
I remember in one topic, a member of the alliance that controlled cavalon claimed that because they were smart enough to organize an 800-man alliance, they only need people to contribute an average of 3750 faction a week

This is slightly off-topic but I just wanted to know if it's even worth it to donate Factions points to play these stupid elite missions? Faction points are currently worth a lot. Right now, 1000 Kurzick Faction= 1 amber= 3K gold.

So, if each member of the controlling alliances is donating 10K factions a day, that means that each person is putting in about 30K gold per day. I've never been in an elite mission so I don't know how valuable the drops are, but is it even worth 30K gold per person to play these elite missions?

I will be in the elite missions soon.

I heard that it is possible for the alliance guild to invite random people into their group (not guest them into their guild, simply invite them to their party.) then do the alliance mission. I have not confirmed this. If I were the top guild and this was true, just charge an entrance fee and take people on trips =).

Yeah, those Top Guilds should be charging 30K per head to make up for the Faction points spent.

you know, ive been in cavalon, tried to talk the guild that controls cavalon in a civil maner, and each person ive talked to was completely rude. you are a god compared to the rest of the ones ive talked too. you admit that its unfair, and you are the one with the perks. i think this is an example to anet that they definately droped the ball if the people that are given the bennefits of owning a major town disagree with the tactics over who gets into the elite missions. now, ok, i was wrong about being charged to get into elite missions, thanks for pointing that out. So, on that note, there should be a fee to enter, just like fow/uw, and have discounts depending on you/you're guilds standing

how about we start posting what we all think the req's/perks should be, heres mine:

req's: 1)must have beaten the game and killed shiro fast enough to get all 3 rewards, this will show that you work well with a group, it takes an organized group to kill shiro in under 2min15sec

2)Beat atleast 9 missions fully, getting all 3 swords(latest edit)

perks: 1)If you're guild/alliance owns cavalon/hzh you get for free.
2)If you're guild/alliance owns a supporting town you get in for half price.
3)If you're guild/alliance owns nothing you mus pay full price.
4)If you are not part of a guild, but have a group that wants to go in, you must pay double price.

misc: 1)As far as getting discounts from merchants, allow people to use faction points to buy their discounted stuff, not gold, but also do not allow them to sell that stuff in trade or back to merchant, but keep it same quality as normal, or even make it better quality, depending on if you own territory or not. This gives bennifits to each person based on how powerful their alliances and guild are, but allows us all the ability to do elite missions

2)Make it a favor-based time line, same rules as fow/uw, adds another elite objective to the missions.

feel free to quote this and add whatever you want to it

A couple things. First it is worth donating your faction to your alliance, because from what I have been able to gather, it helps the battle lines.

Second, give it a couple months to see what Anet does. I agree that it is unfair to leave elite missions for only the most elite alliances, but from what I heard they are hard as hell, no PUG would survive. IMO they should still require some sort of work for it. That is the point of RPG's, reward over time.

Along those lines this reminds me of the UAS debate when prophecies first came out. Over all the forums were literally hundreds of post on how you should be able to have all the skills open for PvP. Anet fixed that problem with faction, a way to unlock skills through just PvP. If they were to make Elite missions more available I doubt they would just open them up. They would probably come up with a difficult system of gaining them.

In the end, be patient, if this becomes to much of a problem, it will get fixed. Until then, enjoy the challenge missions. According to the manual they are lesser versions of the elite missions which might just be up the ally of most people that want to PUG elite missions.

As much as I loved Factions and CE, I agree these elite missions are a downer for 95% of the GW populous.

Elite mission are for elite ppl, I'm not in 1 of those Elite alliances, maybe I will never be. But having something that prevent me to enter becouse I'm not good enough make me thinking I can do it best. Make me fight. Give me a reason to keep trying.

If you think you have the right to enter those mission just because you pay the game you are wrong.

Amassing 2 million + faction has NOTHING TO DO with your own skill as a player... Personally I don't see this as an incentive to "Get better" but more as an annoying ohh now I need to join some awful guild with 1k players to be able to compete.

Yep, and if A-Net make those missions accessible to everyone tomorrow, than tomorrow everyone would rant because they have the game ended and nothing to do anymore.

..And bye bye factions. Try to make a better alliance, if you wanna earn something more in game. If you wanna stay in your "1 man guild" than I think you will never see the elite content.

this game is called "Guild Wars" and is called "Factions".

You mean you have a life (Well, maybe), and aren't spending enough time toting packages on repeatable quests to earn faction for your alliance to get in (This part at least is true, if not you'd be able to access them).

Explain how this means you're not good enough? It takes no skill to equip a couple speed boosts and trot back and forth on fedex quests.
Oddly enough, I didn't see that right after the new tombs went in, even after people figured out how to beat it easily. If the new areas are as challenging as advertised, even with immediate access people won't get bored right away. If they do...Anet really needs to work on how to make areas difficult.

Personally I don't really care, but I see how some people would. It would be nice if more people got a chance at it, but demanding to give everyone access is a bit much. What would be the point of spending (as was thrown up earlier) 30k a day so you could own a town, then? So you can spend 5k more each time you want fireworks? Lol.

Then it'll just turn into people saying, "Hey, they're stupid enough to own a town.". It's a role-playing game; there should be rewards for powerful alliances.

Like I said, it would be nice if smaller guilds and individuals had a chance at it. It would also be nice if I was a billionaire irl and had everything made out for me. I realize games are there to immerse yourself in, to forget about the real world and be entertained, but there is always a line somewhere. It wouldn't be very fun, at least for me, to have had unlimited gold and all skill unlocks upon account creation, and had my character auto-levelled to 20 and given all locations and everything else you can imagine.

I just see this as something to strive for; to earn. Maybe that's my problem, since I'm not acting like I already deserve it. Saying you paid for Factions as a reason to get what you want just makes you look silly. You didn't pay for "access to elite missions whenever I want", you paid for "access to elite missions after me and my powerful alliance earn it". It says so right on the box. But this is apparently just being unaware of what you're actually buying.

I don't have anything against small guilds or alliances of close friends or family. This is even difficult for medium sized ones. But if you want to stay in small guilds with your friends, elite missions are something you have to sacrifice. Because face it: how would you survive against an alliance chock full of sleepless faction farmers? At the end of the day, they are far ahead of you in the amount of time and effort spent toward that goal. Put that on the battlefield, and they win. It may not be fair, but war isn't fair. You know there's a war going on and this is a role-playing game, right?

In 6 more months, it'll become a lot easier to own a town anyway. Right now, Factions is the new thing and everyone wants to get in on it. Of course the die-hards will control it for a while. Of course, we could always just skip to the end where you accept the unlimited gold and this unlock-everything button.

6 months will make no difference to the small alliances, the larger ones will still have more people back in Cantha than them. And who cares about owning -a- town, it's only the top one that matters...and that will always be held by the biggest, most farmingist alliance unless the entire mechanism changes.

I don't have any problems with the elite missions... however, I do have one small problem... faction farming. If they find a way to get rid of that, I'm all for it. However, I will point out that the Supply missions are doable quickly with a particular build... over and over, it wouldn't surprise me if some of the guilds are doing this to build faction.

ANet gets rid of the mechanical Faction farming and viola, great idea.

Than try to make a larger alliance, is not difficult to get faction points, you don't need to be good, what you need is ppl, join up and try it.

Then thats poor level design imho. There are any number of things to make this not happen, random missions when you go in. Hey why not even give the player base a tool where they can design missions(no rare drops mind, dont want to imbalance things) Look at games like morrowind/oblivion for example.

An SDK toolkit to let people design and implement their own levels would be a god send.

I think maybe you are making the wrong assumption. Players want to pit their wits and those of their friends against the challenges the levels of the game offers. They want to earn and feel the acomplishment of doing so. Ever tried to beat a personal best at something? Thats what this is about.

I play GW because it's (Supposedly) a game where skill matters more than time spent playing.

I am not going to play it so I can demonstrate that I have more time to spend than you. That completely defeats the purpose I have for playing the game.

There's not curently a fee to do the mission, but I support something like this, although I would want it to be made very expensive. Perhaps restructured so that it looks like this:

1) Cavalon HzH holders - free
2) "Second-best" town - 6k/party
3) Other supporting towns - 12k/party
4) Non-holders - 24k/party

As you can see, my spin would make it pricey, but not unbearable considering both the challenge and the potential for rewards. It would be expensive enough that only those with a committed team would even try to attempt it.

There is a limit to the amount of players in an alliance. Choosing to split their efforts just makes it easier for everyone else.

As long as the quest is(/is made) a real pain to run (I haven't tried it), or if missions and other one-time quests are the main source of faction, then I don't really see what's illogical in having the largest alliance of active players holding the capital city...

You mean like those challenge mission thingies I've ran across? What are those for, anyway?

EDIT:
The point of Factions is not to hold a town. It's something to do after you beat the PvE campaign (which is based on skill), and if you're not interested in doing PvP (which is based on skill). It is extra.

Lol this thread an the other one are so funny.
U really think it is so hard have 10k per day?
Black alliance is only a teenager alliance with a leader.
They recruit random for have more points and find real pro like me or others like me for their drop (don't worry i'm in a guild more better than them).
Now u think it is hard. Lol we will talk next month.
An alliance of 4 guilds can manage cavalon or hzh in 3 days. And don't needs of 100 players each.
Surely next month we will see a lot of alliance with a total of 100 or 200 members with their 10k per day, but there is the factions war.
If your alliance isn't enough , invite other guilds.
There are million of guilds. Don't worry.
And 10k per day is more easy than u think now.
The emperor of a great alliance will fight with other emperors.
Factions is great with this idea.
Simply start to organize for it.
Don't talk here with i will not see Elite mission. Start an alliance with other guilds.
I repeat, actually u can beat black alliance (teenager) with 3 days of work and 3 ally.
Don't try to join them. U don't need of them. Don't invite useless random ppl.
U don't need of hardcore gamers only but simply serious players for a fun gameplay.
And when 1 day will be emperors simply join 1 empire.
An empire needs of points and 1 guy can make the difference. Future will be different.
Have fun with factions.Trust me.
(P.S. zodiac weapons are awesome) (P.P.S. U have degen every 2 step too hard for normal players)

In the spirit of competition, consider joining the second or third alliance not the one holding. Your second place team will be more likely to want your services than a team thinking that you just want to milk them. I am sure if you wanted it badly enough you could pay someone enough to enter.

Love it how people complain about how easy the game is and in the same breath want everythign to come easy.

The elite missions are very hard btw, there is no point having pugs allowed in there. If you are a friendly enough person I am sure that the alliances controlling the capitals will bring you along if they need someone.

I agree that there should be some sort of mission for people owning the other towns, although it is nice to have some kind of ''elite'' items that you know are never going to be farmed by hundreds of thousands of people, so maybe they could be kept in the elite.

The guilds holding the towns do not have 1000 people farming 10k faction a day, they do it by working as a team and getting faction.

IMO they should just add some elite missions to the towns, but not have the elite chests/zodiac items. They can still have decent amount of kurzick and luxon chests, as well as difficult challenges.

The Kurzick elite mission is very hard with sucide bombers that kill you instantly, -15 degen global effects, -4 energy regen global effects and every spell exhausts effects, 20+ Lv 28mobs at time, odd requirements such as vampiric weapons and consume corpse/necrotic travel and takes about 4 hours to do. Your given twelve people to do it.

Its nice to go into a pug with only guildies or people who are friends of the guild.

I've seen and grouped with people from EviL, Te, and iGi so I know its not an exclusive thing.


Charging to enter is forbidden.

This basically is a favor of the gods debate.

actualy, according to members of the black blades, 10k faction/day is the minimum to remain a member. and the leader said that since they control the house then they will only allow people in thier guild to join in on the missions.

All of those things, in game and in real life, are acheivable by everyone and anyone. theres already unlimited gold in the game, just go and kill stuff, and anyone, including noobs on their first drop can unlock a 20/20 sundering mod or a +30hp mod. you dont get what im saying, im saying make it possible for anyone to get in, dont make it an automatic mission that anyone can get into right off the bat. Yes, i want to get in, but i do want it to be a challenge. and i want that challenge that anyone with a good group has the ability to accomplish at some point. its not right to say, these are the best, hardest, most elite missions in the game, but unless you get millions of faction points you cannot do them at all.

Also, im not saying we are entitled to everything right away, like auto-level 20 chars, or every town and outpost automaticaly opened, those are all things anyone can get/do, but take time and effort. If you would read what i said in the first post you will see that it is IMPOSSIBLE for any small guild to make an alliance, or even a large active guild to start an alliance and surpass the nearly 4million faction they ahve at this point, and there was even a member of the black blades who posted here on the first page stating that exact fact. The point is, we all payed for this game, we all deserve the right to make it to the elites, not teh right to try and form a 1000 person alliance, give up our jobs and lives and famillies to do fed-ex runs and scouting runs all the time. I honestly think we need specific guidlines to getting into the elite missions, but a pay/party req i really like the sound of, keeps noobs and bots out of them.

"master chief" I am glad you have such a good grip on what is and isn't possible less than 2 weeks after release. If you spent as much time devising a way to gain access as you did complaining, you'd be on the right track.

3 million faction really isn't that difficult to get. If an alliance of 300 all dropped 10k they have access. 300 people is 10 guilds averaging 30 active. If you plan a weekend, you should be able to easily get that number. If you started a guild just to harvest faction you could find 300 casual players simply wanting to get elite access over a weekend. Fact is that people will be starting those types of guilds and if you are willing to spend a saturday farming, contributing 15-20k isn't that difficult.

you're alliance doesnt control cavalon/hzh, the guild that has dropped the most faction to date has control, and thats straight from guildwars.com, gaile gray, messege boards on this site and on other sites. so its your guild, with 30 active members droping 10k a day, thats 300k a day. according to the black blades members ive talked to you must donate 10k faction per day that you are online, or you are kicked as a member, and that they are nearly full most of the time, with active members. so add that up and see how rediculousy hard it is to surpass them, and read on the first page where there is a member of the black blades saying it would be rediculous