Will Factions keep people playing as long as Prophecies did?

Well you said there was no bug's after Vieznuh, and A mission not finishing is a major bug, alot of ppl had that problem, after all it is a main story mission(BIG BUG), but I guess you would be happy with only five cylinders in a six cylinder engien too.

well, i might be ignorant, but ive not seen testers from factions to post..
thing is, most of that stuff is simply obvious.. if there were actually beta testers, they didnt do their job good enough.

also, 6 months development time?

enough said on the matter I think

If they had 1 person....one person....go through the missions and quests on both the Kurzick and Luxon sides, they would have realized that some of them were impossible to complete due to errors in the game.

I'm not saying they didn't test it at all because that's a silly thought. Of course they had it tested. I would have just thought having at least 1 group of people go through the game and complete every quest and mission would be a no-brainer, yaknow?

I spent hours trying to complete "Chart The Forest" with no possible way to complete the quest because the last quest star in Arborstone was blocked off and impossible to reach. That's something that I would think a beta tester just playing through the game would catch.

It's not that things went wrong within the first couple weeks.....many things just plain didn't work

you either missed my point or you have less idea of what u are saying than you think..

NOWHERE did we complain of hardware incompatibility. as such i dont see how your argument on global bla bla and how they cant fix problems on every single machine is valid, as this IS global, and the bug is simply THERE, theres no case in which the particular part of this software piece did work.. dont tell me its a minor bug, if it doesnt work at all..

so ya, thats what makes me think its rushed thru and untested

in case you hadnt heard... ANET announced over a year ago at E3 *2005* that the 1st chapter would --not-- be 6months later.

May 24th, 2005
http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cf...7 2953&bhcp=1

your 6 months dev time estimate is based on what?


Anet has 2 different dev teams

E3 2006
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/s.../670/gameID/82

I beat the game in two days, did every mission in three, I encountered no bugs. So what makes you think a tester would have? You must realize the probabilities involved in this are staggering unless you make a variable player number of several thousand. In fact prior tothe updates I got a second character through the campaign, again no issues.

I wouldn't say many, in reality a whooping two or three things didn't work and really impeded game play for some. The rest was just there for people to do later in the game; when you rush a game you tend to run into the bugs thats simply natural.

I also went Luxon at first so I had no issues with Charting the Jade Sea, so I really can't compare my experience with yours :/

Hardware incompatability? I adressed no such issue, its all software. I don't remember being given hardware with the game. If you were then good for you. Also if we bring in hardware thats just bring in more of Murphies Law, so... your point is?

Since you did bring in hardware, I would like you to go and boot up a system that will flawlessly hold up over a million players at once... I doubt you can do it. So please, don't speak of hardware issues you probably know little about.

Regarding the bug's, just too many, if it was the management rushing the dev's or the testers not getting enough time makes no difference to me as a paying customer, they where there and the product should not have been realesead, it should have been postponed until the main storyline atleast was working. I don't care who's at fault here, but someone is.

I've been reserving judgement until I've played it for a bit and got a feel for everything.

There's too many glitches that should have been dealt with before they released it, but I'm glad they're fixing them.

I like the increased difficulty level, but I hate the "gogogogogo" mentality that you need for the "beat the clock" bonus system. The Bonus missions in Prophecies was a much better system.

I also hate the fact that Factions is not friendly to the casual player. To enjoy the perks of Factions, you have to be in an alliance controlled by hard-core guilds.

The whole "factions" concept is horrid. - I don't want to choose sides. I don't want to run around doing 10 - 15 annoying little quests just to gain enough faction to move on to the next story-line mission. And I don't want to be penalized because I'm in a small guild - one that's been around since long before GW was an idea in some developer's mind, and one that I'm not about to leave.

And the guide book? A piece of junk compared to the Prophecies guide.

On the plus side, They created some very nice areas with some neat little features, too bad they put that ugly damn city right in the middle of it!

Once I get a character through it (just to say I did it), I'm DONE with it. (I may stick around long enough to get the "defender" title.)

I've finished Factions on 5 characters, 4 of which are Prophecies born. 6th character is kind of a storage mule, so doesn't get much play.

I spent 7 months playing Prophecies, the last 2 of which were occassional logins and some time wasted farming & whatnot. After the first 4 months I was pretty much bored with the game.

I've spent less than a month playing Factions, the past week of which has been mainly farming & whatnot.. already getting bored with the game. I've started collecting pointless titles, but after a few it's already losing its appeal as there's really nothing "new" to learn or gain from them.

I have one final task remaining in Factions.. one last quest to complete with my main toon, and I'll have completed all available quests.

The sad part is, I'm not a "hardcore" player. I have a full time job, a kid, a significant other, pets, hobbies, etc. For a stand-alone game that boasts as much content as its parent game, I'm sadly disappointed that this content is GREATLY lacking. If Factions contained even half the content of Prophecies it would not be so easy to complete (primary & secondary quests, and missions) in its entirety in such a short span of time.

In all likelyhood I'll be done with Factions and back to random logins within the next few days.

I sincerely hope that chapter 3 is not rushed, but rather that Factions is fixed and updated. If the problems with Factions aren't addressed prior to C3 release I won't be buying any of the future expansions.

From the issues we've had seems like Anet can't either. Your point being?

i think that the target of factions is to keep people playing it for 6 months awaiting new expansion pack

Anet shafted its loyal customers, pretty much sums it all up. As noted in my previous post on page 6, if they don't want to lose their winning formula, they need to lay off the chaper every 6 months BS. Who the hell cares if they're staggered teams? Marketing an EXPANSION as a FULLGAME is a huge slap to any company's fanbase. Hope Anet learns from their mistake instead of offering this BS of correcting the crap in the next chapter.

I'm gonna get flamed (again and once a day these days) for saying this; but Factions is short and light on content due to it's attempt at merging PvE and PvP. This is my personal opinion

Anet's plan seemed (yes seemed) to be a smart one. Integrate PvP more into the game so less content is needed. PvP is very light on content as players bring their own content; themselves. PvE on the other hand requires more work and time to develope; if done well anyway. heh

It seems to me (yes, again; seemed) that if Anet had spent less time attempting to merge PvE and PvP we would have had more content and better play on both.

Where does this idea come from? Jeff Strain mentioned that Factions was meant to bring the two dynamics closer and keep the players busy with repeatable and competitive play. Key things to note in his interviews (for me anyway) was that Factions' (not the entire GW game) new game mechanic was bringing the PvE and PvP closer. He then says that each chapter will have a new game mechanic to it. So, if Factions game mechanic was too semi-integrate the two game types and IMO it lessened the game somewhat; Chapter 3 should have a new mechanic that is different (New and different game mechanic with each chapter per Jeff Strain) and will allow for more and better content.

Just something that hopefully will cause some relief to the GW players. I've seen Factions called the sophmore slump, so maybe this is true.

I have had some fun with Factions; but I've already grown weary of it's very limited game play.

/readies the fire hoses