With veteran players it is apparent that Factions is a failure.

For the last 5 months I have been an avid reader of Guru. During the Prophecies era the collection of threads on this site was more or less equal. Most of the threads were questions and all the others were opinions of aspects of the game. The opinions were about 50/50 between liking and disliking which is actually quite good considering most players won't stop playing to write a compliment if they are having fun.

Since Factions has been out I have noticed more and more negativity in this forum. I wanted some concrete numbers though to consider what the Guru crowd thought of the game. So I spent 3 hrs at work tonight reading the posters' beginnings to the latest 500 threads. I grouped them in 3 catagories:

1. having positive comments
2. having negative comments
3. asking a question about game without an opinion

I was stunned as i went through the threads.

23 threads complimenting Factions as whole or part.

275 threads asking questions about the game <i.e. strategy, items, misc.>

and a whopping 202 threads out of 500 complaining about some aspect of Factions or the game as a whole

This is disturbing to me considering how much time I spend on the game. I enjoy it overall but am getting bored as more and more of my Guildwars friends are going elsewhere.

Looks like its gonna be henchies for me.

From what I've heard from the older users/mods, the same things were said at the launch of Prophecies. I wasn't here, but it seems that the same thing might be happening. I see a lot of threads saying that the later-game missions are empty and thus, must suck. But the thing is, a lot of people can't get past (or are not rushing through) the first part of the game.

My goal in GW is to play for fun, and that goal has kept me playing GW since it was released.

Sometimes I play PvE when I have more time, other times, I jump into RA for a few games. Or just sit in front of the comp, watching the observer mode to see what top guilds are doing with their GvG build and hopefully witness a game which is exciting in the process.

Seriously, many of those people who start complaints/whining threads are those casual to the forum. There should be a complaints forum dedicated to all the complaints, and people who feel like they want to complain can go there instead of flooding the good in-game discussion forum.
As I'm tired of seeing threads which complain and whine.. they get mingled with the good discussion threads.

Most veteran players like factions so I don't know what your talking about.

It's the complaints/issues threads which lead to game changes (for better or for worse is a topic for another day). The fact is most people don't post about things which they're happy with - that's life in general. Look at any news programme and it's almost always focussed on things which aren't so great.

Really, if it weren't for people raising issues and complaints, we'd all still be living in the stone age content and happy with that. Nothing would ever be improved upon.

I was just stating the statistics in this thread. I could be wrong. Just do what I did and you will see how many ppl are upset.

It doesn't matter how many people are upset. hat matters is what people are upset 'about'.

The reason there's more people posting about being upset with Factions is because they had the opportunity to influence Factions, unlike Prophecies.

..and lastly..

We human beings love to argue and remember the negative moreso than the positive. People happy with the game don't post about it. Just human nature.

Just a side note but the majority of players don't post on any forum, at all (happy or unhappy) - this goes for most games, the forum population is a tiny minority compared to the total number of players

Vetran Players were expecting something out of the game that isnt quite there for the most part i think you will find. it IS good but has problems and may have been rushed a little, it needs to have the bugs worked out and things added to it, exactly as it did in Tyria. It need to be left a few months to see how Anet go with it.

the main disapointment i find having 5 Lvl 20 CHars is having to go through all the missions in the city with all of them, but at the same time i havnt got all the bonuses on all of them with a number of my characters so it is NOT that bad.

Change is never responded to well at first and a bad reaction in the forums was always going to be the case.

Ive not seen anyone who hates every aspect of the game, far from it infact people hate small things which Cantha doesnt have or frustrating gates that are always closed. But most complaints ive noticed are things people will play GW Factions anyway for. but they just want to have a bit of a moan about.

we will see how factions evolves.

It's think it's all down to a psychological phenomena known as "Sheep Syndrome". Okay, I 'fess. I just made that up.

I'm not sure how it started but I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be half as many rants if it wasn't generally perceived that people on this forum are unhappy with GW:F.

Check some of the other forums, it's like they're playing a different game.

Edit: *points down* lol. *looks suspiciously innocent*

do you want to know why people arnt posting they enjoy it?





thats why

I had high expectations, and even if I'm playing it and enjoying some of it, I'm disapointed. Good chance I'll be smart enough to spend my 50 bucks on other end-of-the-year game next time. Factions feels too much like a 19$ add-on. A good one at that, sure.
The only way I buy Ch.3 is if PvE isn't all about FedEx, ANet stops encouraging elitism and most importantly, if new skills are important for PvP. Meh. :/

Xenrath, Asrial and Tainek brought up the best points on this, IMO. People simply don't report good news, and the ones that have nothing but good news are probably playing instead of posting.

Personally, there are a number of things I dislike about Factions, as there are about the original game, but these things don't come anywhere near the number of things I like. If I absolutely hated the game, I simply wouldn't play it. Just because I have something negative to say about anything in the game, doesn't mean I hate it entirely.

Simply put, if people complain, it's because they like the game and want to see certain things change so they can like it more. The greatest part is, Anet is a company that actually listens to player's complaints and at best acts on them, at worst responds to them.

People will ‘put pen to paper’ to complain more readily than those who are just getting on and enjoying the game, sad fact of human nature.

The ratio of complaints/praise on here certainly does not surprise me but in my opinion does not truly represent the true split.

That may be true, and that is also unfortunate, because those other gamers don't have a "voice". In other words, they don't have a "vote". I believe due to the fact that this game is not p2p, ANET needs to be on top of the forums to be clear on what they are doing wrong, and what they have done right. I suppose that could be said for p2p ORPGs, but it is much more important in this case.

There are VALID gameplay problems in Factions. If you cannot see them, then there isn't much else to say.

Sure those other forums are riddled with 'fanboys'?
I like to think GWG tells it straight up here. We dont sugar-coat anything. As said before, a forum that provides valid complaints and constructive criticism proves to be much more beneficial to making a game better than a forum with blindless praise. If you don't like seeing or hearing the complaints, don't read them. To repeat myself, you learn more from your failures than you do from your victories.

Forums that point out valid criticism help improve the game. If the other forums are too scared to touch the bad parts, or don't have any problems with the game, well more power to them. The "extra" rants prove that the problems that plague the game are not minor ones shared by a minority. Besides, if you have a particular gameplay problem with ANET, and try to contact them, I believe they tell you to post it on these public forums.

And from that, I'd say it's natural to see more 'complaint' threads than 'this game is fun' threads. If there did not exist any complaints, there can be only two reasons:

1) the game is perfect
or
2) no one cares anymore

1 is rarely going to happen, and if it is 2, then the game series tanked and is beyond salvagable.

NO, that is in fact a real syndrome, and its one that a good 90% of the world populace adhere too...

Best example is Dieting for women... ( oh I'm gonna get flamed for that one, but its true!)

I feel only a little less than half the critisms are actually something Anet should look into.. others are pretty absurd or plain stupid. Many posters should think more than twice before complaining as the answer to their question is already there if they think a little harder.

EG. Unlinking accounts.. chances of this happening and making it work, is like ZERO.
How do you manage to split an account so that somehow the keys will get the right characters and items and skills unlocked, storage.. etc after the split??
It's a good idea, but it's unreasonable as it's hard to make it work.. so people who want this should think about HOW it can work. Anet don't make pigs fly.

How DARE you!

I've been dieting for AGES and STILL no women!

Off topic:
Try changing your Avatar! Maybe that will work

People have a baseline and certain expectations from Prophecies now. They have an idea about what to expect based on what they've seen before. Obviously then, when there are some areas that the new falls short of the old, they are easy to identify and complain about. Some unpopular changes:

1) Buginess of many factions missions/quests after these have been mostly patched in prophecies for a while.
2) Ultra-long fedex quests in the city, which are extremely rare in prophecies.
3) Realm of God's Favor system reincarnated into an even more elitist system, Elite missions. The elite tend to like them, but naturally they are the minority.
4) Factions is just plain not worth the same $50 as prophecies was to a veteran, its shorter, and you only get 2 new character classes and not nearly enough new skills on the other. Not that this necessarily matters or it should matter given their business model, but it's hard to argue you get less value for your buck here.

and I'm sure there's much more that could be added to the list... but basically, comparing factions to prophecies makes it pretty easy to identify tangible things "worth" complaining about. You've got your work more cut out for you when trying to find the flaws in something that cannot be compared more easily, as was prophecies' release.

Does this mean more people are actually unhappy? Maybe... people went into prophecies with vauger expecations before, now they are more concrete going into factions. It could be just as good as proph and that would still disappoint people because they've seen it before, so they complain or else leave...

Most ppl were expecting a game that would 100% be like they wanted it to be & therefore there's so many threads mocking Factions.

When I look through those threads I see so many posts starting: "I would have done this otherways", or "I'm so sad because they didn't make something or another"...And other thing that players like to mock is bugs...well hello...game was released little over week ago...geez...

If you have a game in develpment and 100000 fans want different things...See my point...

I think Anet has done remarkable thing in listening fans & making a stand-alone sequel. I'm really enjoying Factions and pleased that it isn't just the same old things with new skins so to speak...

OffTopic: So tony good man, shall I let your lovely wife know that? hahahaha

And cheers for the CE bits, GentleBreezes loves the sparkly Mousemat, it sticks to the surface so won't move under you and its really responsive...

OnTopic: I'm really happy with Factions, its just typical that in starting up a business with Gentlebreezes (My Fiancee), I haven't had as much time as she has to actually play... I've been playing for over a year now, and my second character has just gotten his birthday present too, a whole one year old already, its quite distressing, and time he had a makeover (so when are we getting hair stylists ANet???)

I class myself as a vet and I think that anyone whos gotten the birthday presents is also allowed to call themselves a vet, and those that still play are the happy ones... Those that aren't happy, don't play anymore, like LOTD! Although I actually do hope that some of them do come back, I'd love to see them ripping things up in Ob mode

Rubbish. Most vets think it sucks. Sadly we have a lot of noobs on this forums who think they are "vets".

CK0, you'll notice I never said nor implied there weren't any VALID gameplay problems. Perhaps all other forums are just 'fanboy' forums, but that's completely irrelevant. I was suggesting that people's posts/opinions are effected by their perception of the forum's views. Perhaps people on those forums are frustrated at the game, too. Perhaps they don't post their views for fear of reprisal at the hands of they 'fanboy' keyboard-warriors. But that's exactly what I was getting at.

As stated repeatedly, complaints to "ata boy" threads is hardly a good measure of customer satisfaction. People really aren't bringing anything new to the table:

A) People don't like "fedex" quests-- please tell me exactly what else there is to do on a quest besides kill something or deliver something. I love the large number of quests compared to prophecies, because I it gives me a reason to go back to an area and do something new. Some people didn't like quests in Prophecies and others loved them--not much has changed.

B)People don't like exclusive awards. Some players do like exclusive awards, namely those that are getting them.

C)PvE content-- it doesn't take long to level (20 hours slow) and it doesn't take long to "beat the game". This will be the standard since you really want your casual gamer to play through in ~30 hours. Once you "beat the game", there are skills to cap, missions the bonus, quests, items and a little thing called PvP.

D)Lack of high end content-- remains an issue, but elite missions are the pinnacle of high end conent for your master farmer. There needs to be a bit more to fill in the gap. Again this is not a new complaint, but this is much less of an issue compared to right after release.

E)Value- Guild Wars players are tight wads. I have hundreds of hours on my character and I am on the low end compared to many. Play through slowly with a new character and an old and you are already approaching 60 hours of game time. The PvP crowd is not complaining about price, doubling the amount of skills is well worth it for even your most casual PvPer. I would really like to know the total game time before the first person is fully unlocked, which in my book is the defining moment for a PvPer.

F) Guild options complaints: These have been largely addressed and surpassed.

G)Story, lore, culture: Still a problem, but there have been major improvements for those willing to read all the text boxes.

H)Game design/marketing restrictions: Most of that sort of stuff won't change.

Guild Wars is limited in what it provides, but it is a solid cooperative RPG with excellent PvP. Factions gameplay has a slightly different feel, but not everyone is going to appreciate that. Elder scrolls spends 4 years building a new system for each game, where Guild Wars tweaks and adds like MtG. Complaints are good and I feel that Factions directly addressed a number of the complaints from a year ago to varying levels of success. Chapter 3 is going to be an extreme departure from factions (from what I gather), but I feel Factions was necessary to provide more grounding for guild based play.

Edit: I love it how people talk about being vets-- then I look at their join date.

Fansite forums can be called "Complain Centers"

The equation usually works out like: Take the number of people that complain about something and take 95% of that away and the 5% left actually will alter their playing habits because of what their complaining about, and take that beginning number of add 200% to it, and thats how many people like it on the forum, just never post.

You can never judge something because of Fansite forums lol. When your free to post you tend to post on the whim. If you get open a few chests with bad luck, you are more likely to post "They Ruined the chest system!", or if someone beats you in RA, you are likely to post "[Whatever] is so unbalanced!".

Get the point? like 5% of all those people will actually slow down or stop playing that aspect because of it - most just want to vent over some bad experiences.

Agreed 100%

Ouch tho, I only just arrived here from TGH after they became a truely PvP elitest forum site! I still post on there, but not as much now, I kinda gave them up over the factions release weekend

Ok, I've been playing since the Prophecies beta. Thankyou for speaking for me.

there is no such thing apparant. People only post to complain..generally people do not post about stuff if they like it.

Please do not speak for me.

Seeing one's forum join date tells nothing about how much the player has actually played and since when.

What makes one a 'vet' anyways, playing the game on-off for 1.5 years or playing the game 'hardcore' for month or two, game knowledge would be pretty same for both, altho the vet would remember the 'good old days' when some aspects worked a little differently.

I myself was just about to make the same point as Kaguya, you may not have meant that as it came across... i find the term veteran far to vague.

personally the way you will play the game will dictate to an extent weather you are a veteran and the efficientcy and knowledge around the game as a whole.

generally you can tell when your playing with a veteran in a group, it is noticable even at low levels (for alts.) the join date on this forum says nothing about you as a character or a player. i joined these forums last week after viewing them for over a year, and playing the game since release of Prophecies...

was a unnecessary comment but i understand the point he was trying to make.

Please promise me you never become a quest designer! There's far more types of quests you can make besides "Fetch Item A" or "Kill Monster B". And Factions is actually a pretty good example of that in many places.

For a list of possible objectives:
-Defend place A from lots of attacking monsters
-Deliver item A within 5 minutes while going through territory filled with enemies
-Escort 10 soldiers to fight alongside with you to defeat 5 mobs in the same place
-Defend NPC A as she picks up flowers while being attacked by monster B
-Defend Item A, B and C (placed at different positions), all under constant attack
-Stalk NPC A without attacking him so he can lead to a band of monsters you need to kill

As long as one has a good imagination one can think of a good deal of unique quests. Heck, even quests with simple objectives can be made unique by only placing the enemies in interesting positions and with good patrol routes.

The problem with Kaineng City is that there's too many super simple Fedex quests where you do nothing but talk to NPCs. If you were forced to kill many interesting mobs while doing those quests it wouldn't be so bad. But having no objective besides walking back and forth... that's bad. That isn't fun at all.

Fortunately, most of the quests in Factions are a lot more interesting than that. But I really did grew tired of the fedex quests in Kaineng City.

sectus, those can ether be rendered down to ether a fed ex style or a protect and serve style.

after all, your still *delivering* the solidurs, just because they can walk themselves, dosent meant they arent being deliverd

personally, i like small simple fed-ex over long ones here you have to kill lots of monsters, but thats a persona opininon.

i would sugest that, although most can be broken down to deliver and protect and kill quests, theres more to it that can be added to make them a little different.

ever spen 4 hours doing Argle Quests on a nordock server of neverwiter, because thats the safest, and most RP way of getting from lvl1 to lvl4? all you do is go back and forth between about 5 locations, delivering various similar items and getting a recipt back, then taking them to Argyle adn getting a reward....i have done it befor in both RP and non rp style, and you know what?
i got more out of it when i RP'd....i got a new pair of magical boots (from a player who saw me going back and forth and RP'ing my tierd feet lol) and a lot of other things from the same person, simply because i had stuck with it and roleplayed it out....
if they gave you a more tangable reward at the end of a single batch of delivery quests, it might help....

or allowed for you to do unusual things with a quest...
tahe the delivery of the vanity goods, those mirrors....i can see that they want to reinforce that the emperor is a good man and not some darth bloke ^^ but do they have to do it by making the beuracrats totally idiotic and inefective?

smart people would get told what to do with those mirrors by the virst homeless person and go off to the marketplace, sell the mirrors for a reasonable amount to some rich town posh person and then go buy food, blankets and tools and take THOSE to the homeless person, then get the 3 or 4 homeless people *together* and make those blankets, food and tools get them some kind of temporary dwelling...

sure, you *could* do the original way, and get the standard reward from dumb beuro, but if there was a seccond way to do a quests ocasionally, so that there was an *alternative* version, maybe if you did ALL of the beurocrat fed-ex that way, get a hidden title of 'Friend to the People' type thing...

hidden versions of quests and a few hidden titles would be good i say

-Kill stuff.
-deliver stuff
-kill stuff and deliver people (a twist!!!)
-kill stuff
-kill stuff and later deliver
-follow something to kill more stuff (another twist!!)

I jest, the quests in Factions are great, but people don't always see these variations as interesting. My favorite is the bribe mission--pay a guy 2k and you get 10k exp. My point was, people tend to complain about quests regardless, because there really isn't all that much you can do in a side quest in you ignore the lore.

On join dates, I obviously know people play longer than they post. I guess I feel a bit more veteran than most. My join date at the guildhall was ~april 2004 before they switched forums in June. Anyone who feels like a vet, take a look at this classic thread: http://www.guild-hall.net/forum/show...hp?t=79&page=1

I cheated, I had a friend drag me into the alpha tests so I remember (barely) the old setups. I just slipped into a coma until I eventualy got myself GW:P last christmas.

So, I remember some of that stuff but I'm still a nubcake.

The missions themselves have been an improvement. They've all (so far) had their own gimmicks. I don't have a problem with the quests either. Some of them actually made me laugh... Delivering mirrors to the homeless, "They didn't need them? I didn't realise they already had mirrors. Hmm... Maybe next year we'll get them garden gnomes...".

people moan and complain on the internet, but those same people will still go and play the game. People on internet forums are known to be hypocrits.

and I have to tell you a secret, not everyone that plays GW goes to this forum.

I consider a veteran player one that HAS played for a long time, seen the evolution of the game and how the metagame has developed. Someone that plays 12 hours a day (exaggeration?) for 2 months is surely experienced but not necessarily a veteran.
As near as I can figure I've played 310 to 320 days out of the 378 days since the GW servers went live on April 27th 2005. Some days I played 5 or 6 hours (Mostly weekends) and somedays I only played for a few minutes. I've tried all aspects of the game PvP, PvP, GvG with varying degrees of success. I don't blame the game because I can't solo farm (No patience). The days I missed were mostly because of Family commitments, work and the sheer busy-ness of life.
I consider myself a veteran player but I KNOW that in the end it's not my game it's Arenanet's game. They make the decisions about what goes into the game, how it's implemented and in what order things are prioritized. These forums are for people to let them know what we don't like or do like. I will speak up if I see something is "broken" or missing but most of the time I don't jump on the Fanboy Wagon to tell them how great they are. I don't have to. I play the game and enjoy it just like I have other games before and like I will in the future when GW is done. (Not soon I hope ) I completely disagree with the statement that MOST veteran players think Factions is broken. Some may, some may not. I'm having fun, I don't expect anything more.

Ive been playing Guild Wars Prophicies for awhile now, and i just got Factions.. I dont see what ur whining about, the game is better than prophecies. A little more running, but so far ive done all the quests with henchies ( except for the battle in the sewers). The game is pretty much a success to me

well I like the missions towns, I do miss doing the mission then bonus, they should really go back to that. They story line seems a little cheesy, but darn it, I must like it, because I stayed up until 2 am last night telling myself ...one more mission...ok...this is the last one. I was having fun. I really hope chapter 3 goes back to Mission+bonus and they remove the gates.

Things to make factions better. Remove the gates, Yeah its cool the first time to make someone do all of the missions, but I have 2 accounts x12 charaters is a bit much to do every mission.

And they need to allow canthan charaters to play northern shiverpeaks/ascalon quests and allow tyrian toons to play all cathan quests.

add mission+bonus instead of this time trial crap (what if a team member lags?)

I'm not a veteran of this forum but I've played a little GW...1,328 hours over the past 10 months...and I can say I like the new chapter. I am usually playing too much to post positive comments in the forums. I think that's what you'll see here typically, people love to complain more than praise.

so here's mine
Factions still has some issues but they're working on them and as for my pet peeve...I would love to strangle every henchie to death. They charge and fight when you don't want them to. They stand still when you do need them to act. "WTH ARE YOU DOING!" reverberates in my house a lot....still fun though

This phenomena is quite easy to explain:

When you pay money, you complain more about what you get for that money.

Unless you were around for the beginning of Prophecies, you have been hearing props/complaints about FREE updates. That's why the forums were 50/50...it's rather hard to complain about an upgrade/expansion that you didn't pay a dime for. It's like complaining that your free pizza is cold.

It will be interesting to see what the climate is around here in about two months. I bet that there will be much more love for the combined GW game...