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

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...