the darkside or failure of the Faction process...

as any of you that have read my posts know, i have been for the most part happy with Factions... with the exception of one area. the Faction process itself

my initial fears were realized when we saw single alliances locking other players of the game out of key areas.

and now my secondary more long term fears have been realized as well

what was that secondary fear ? glad you asked.

i saw a huge potential for this to completely turn the whole guild/alliance concept into a dark form of itself. it no longer matters if you have fun, or enjoy playing the game. to take part in the faction concept you have to become faction farmers and just antoher spoke in the wheel of a massive impersonal alliance

so what is the basis of this rant about ?? simple... we cannot find an alliance that suits us and are effectively shut out of the process.

all the better guilds that are established and trustworthy to be there in a month are in full alliances, and so far all ive found are guilds/alliances that are clearly fly-by-night run by 12 year olds that you know wont be there long term, or those that do seem mature and established either want to control how we play the game and turn everyone into faction farmers in some vain attempt to capture a spot on a map and are only interested in how many faction points we can donate... not who we are as people or how we play the game and enjoy it.

isnt the point of a guild or alliance to better the game experience ? the better guilds i see have good interpersonal relations with each other.. some genuine friendships... and i think we all know that isnt happening on a 100 person scale, let alone 1000 in an alliance, but yet that is now a necessary evil to take part in the process

instead of bots farming Droxs, we now have faction farming bots or AFKers on faction missions ... that, my friends, is sad

basing all this on faction points which are nothing more than a reward for having more time to play or farm, and nothing whatsoever to do with ability or skill in doing it... is a massive mistake. it felt that way from the beginning, and feels worse now.

im not a PvP player, but it seems to me that if your going to base it on something, at least make it skill based, not simple time consumed. make ownership of cities a reward for GvG/alliance battles... but do not make it possible to lock out the rest of the community. make it so that guilds can challenge each other for ownership .. not so that massive 1000 player farming guilds are now the order of the day. most importantly, make it so that ALL playhers have equal gameplay experience and opportunity, since we all pay the same money to play the game. small guilds should have the same opportunity for ownership as the massive ones

just my 2 cents, flame away or whatever you deem necessary in response... im a big boy, i can take it

Go take a nap, I really don't like rant threads cause all they do is spurr up commotion.

I'm inclined to agree with this perspective... however he's right. For the more casual players in alliances, there's no hope of gaining ownership of a town so the whole Faction thing, to me, is to trade for amber/jadeite and sell to the merchant for a quick profit.

On that note, however, it doesn't take long at all now for a casual player to make 10K worth of amber and unload on the trader. As much as the early game was draining my account (well, not that bad, but noticable), the alliance portion is rebuilding my gold supply!

Reading that was a bit difficult, but from what I can gather, you're bitching because you can't find an alliance for your guild.

Uh. Who cares? Why do you need an alliance?

I agree completely. I'm in a small guild and I know that we have no chance in ever gaining access to one of the "Elite Faction Farmer" missions. I'm a casual PvP player, I mainly stick to the PvE and every now and then I'll go to random or Team arena just to have some fun. I don't want to end up spending a whole day just farming around for a few faction points.

wow some of you guys jump on the bandwagon of 'oh he's bitching lets slate his words' very quickly.

He has some valid points, I am also part of a casual guild. We have our players who put in alot of time but we do what we wish. We don't follow to a specific goal at any point in time within the guild.

My issue with the alliance system is that not every member can talk in alliance chat. For a guild that doesn't care for community only careing for its own l337ness then yeah.. aliance spam is shite. What about those groups that look for building relations with other like minded people. I'm in a medium sized guild with about 60 members in it. We couldn't absorb other guilds even if we wanted to so alliance chat is really the only way we can communicate 'en mass'.

I've put alot of effort into finding like minded people and to be honest casual guilds are easily in the majority over the more l337 inclined. Its just you don't notice them because they stay within there own community, having fun doing what they want to do. The problem is that they do only last a little while as they are groups of rl friends or they don't have the logistical support to carry a guild long term (website/voice chat etc). These are the people that get damaged by the 'factions process' as described above. these people are in a much greater majority over the hardcore players and we are the ones who funded the game. Thats why his argument stands from people like us who aren't technically damaged by the 'faction process' per se. We just can't take advantage of it in anyway.

Of course the argument is those who put the effort in are the ones that should get the reward.. rightly so. However can we at least get something out of factions for our community please... we got extra content as did the hardcore players. However we can't benefit from the alliance system in the same way at all. Its fairly useless to anyone that doesn't faction farm other than the whole 'wow look at us in our big faction' thing.

feel free to argue what i say, however flames will just be ignored.

i know for a fact i will never see the inside of the uber elite area.

i also havent seen the UW.

BFD.......it is such a small part of the game i dont miss it

i am too busy having fun to fret over it.

starts running another character back to Ascalon for when i can use it there

Yeah, I've noticed what you're talking about as well, floplag. But, I've also come to the following conclusion: The elite areas are not "key" areas.

Right now, on both sides, there are Aliances that will ferry people to the Elite missions, so there's not really a need to FF. Just wait until that particular aliance retakes the capital, then ask politely for a ride. Make sure to thank the person that does it for you.

And, you want to own a town? Why? For the 20% discount on certain items?

Lastly, I can imagine several casual guilds coming together to form a casual Aliance. These groups wouldn't care about faction at all, they're in an aliance to increase the number of players and maybe even have an easy time with scrimage matches. I see it as just a way of getting more people together.

But, you're still right. I was in a guild (for a very short time) that wanted each member of every guild in the aliance to farm 5k faction every day. That number was 7k faction for the officers. I can't immagine that being any fun at all, especially for someone that hadn't even finished the game (I hadn't at that time). That guild felt broken to me, and there was a huge ammount of animosity between the guilds that was directed at those with less Faction. It wasn't much fun at all, and I'm glad I left them behind.

Elite missions are hardly "key areas".

I am a casual player and am in a small three-guild alliance that has only around 50k faction. I really don't care about whether or not I have access to "elite missions" because they're only a tiny portion of the game. There's plenty of other things to do, why let one area ruin your gaming experience?

There's no point in ranting about it because chances are if you had access you'd either farm it (which you've already stated you hate doing) or just do it every once in awhile. If you're just doing it every once in awhile then what is the freaking point of ranting about it?

Besides, Gaile has already stated they will open up an alternative method of earning access.

He is dissatisfied, and has every right to express his opinion without needing to be told to take a nap.

Generally the commotion comes from people who respond negatively to the OP's post, which is their given right to do, but it's all in the handling, and the method. Honestly, if you don't like rant threads, why do you read them to begin with?


and...


I seem to recall a very long, and tedious thread full of several rants, just by you about not even being able to access the missions unless you -were- in one of these powerhouse alliances the OP is speaking of. Of course, you later retracted your view, and left the thread /unsigned, but the fact was, you did feel that way at one point.


Why do people feel the need to instantly flame, so much in these threads?


In a nutshell, the OP is right. Even smaller, friend based guilds and alliances have become faction farms to try and keep up with the mega-alliances, and even with AN's report that soon, (read: a few months), that there will be an alternative means into these missions, I fear it will be too late. People are becoming bitter and less personal about their relations with others in the guilds. What used to be on a saturday night, "anyone want to clear out FoW", has become "5/x Amatz Basin, FF" What is the point and pride of playing a game, mmorg, or ccorg, and beating it, and aquiring nice things within it and fancy titles, if you are doing it without friends?

Even if the OP does manage to get his guild into a solid 10 guild alliance, the endless rush and headache of even trying to catch up to any of the leading alliances is daunting, to say the least. Most won't even consider your guild anymore unless you are bringing a solid 500k-1m faction per guild and then, it's only as good as long as you keep the faction rolling, slack and lose to degen every night and out you go. There is no friendship in this, at all. It is a large scale case of use whoever you can, for whatever you can, as long as it lasts and then when the purpose is over, discard it to the side and pick up the next. Just so you can have your alliances name on a town, a discount at the merchant and the ability to spam "ferry into the mission, 10k or tips"

Honestly, though, to the OP, there is much more to the game than these missions. Sure, they are challenging and exciting, but so was Tombs PVE when that first came about, before it became the "B/P looking for MM and Orders", anyhow. After spending 2 weeks farming faction for my alliance, I was left behind on several characters who essentially, have to go through the entire game with pug or henchies because of that two weeks I chose to farm faction to hold HzH, instead of playing the game with friends, outside of the alliance.

I understand that you too want to see the inside, and have the opportunity to decide for yourself how fun the area is, and how you perceive that area is up to you entirely, as key, or as just a superflous piece of fluff to occupy your time for an evening or two. I admit, it is a bit exciting to have your guild/alliance name on a large and important area of the map, like HzH, or Cavalon, but in the end, losing friends and spending hobby game time lost in flame wars between alliances, adverse opinions and faction rants is not what playing a game is all about. I thought people still played games for fun.. Maybe that's just me?

fierry does it again flaming a guys consern about what factions was made for. on the point though my guild has the same problem. we are a bunch of close friends about 10 people in the guild. we don t really care about owning towns or farming factions we just want to meet and align with other small guilds. but the problem is there are none lol they have either aligned with much larger guilds just to say they have 5 billion faction or they are 12 as you said. we have an alliance with another guild that we know and have enjoyed tc letting us in to the deep so we can expeirience an elite mission. but we are not jumping into the whole if you are small you dont deserve faction as in gaille grey had said about pvp lol(if you have no rank why pvp-her excact words lol) we are just going to patientlly await chapter 3 and hope that this pvp aspect of the game goes back to true pvp and they give the lil guys a break lol.

Do you mean to say that you are not interested in joining the two great civil wars on the two sides of the Kurzick/Luxon neighborly dispute?

Are you sure you're a serious gamer?

Ehm, what happened to the alliance that helped other players enter Elite missions? I assumed more alliances would follow this example. Or is it completely over now?

I have never been in those towns, and I probably will never come there. In a way, this is not an issue for me. I just continue being me, and GW will continue being GW.
I left the Blackblades, because they were no longer playing the same game as me. It is as easy as that. Some members here in this forum can confirm that this was the reason why I left them.
In the beginning we were a fun bunch, helping each other with items and missions, than suddenly Factions kicked in. Suddenly there were two streams in the guild. One who was still struggling in Tyria, and an other one who didn't had time to help because of doing elite missions in Cantha.
Sealing towns doesn't make a Guild grow. Just have patience

Why do "casual" players feel they deserve to go to elite missions, get in good tombs groups or anything else that requires dedication? Where does this sense of entitlement come from? Perhaps "casual players" should begin seeking goals that are more in line with their commitment level.

to those that offered something constructive.. my thanks to the rest ... well, have a nice day

this game metric was forced on us.. and is part of the game whenther we like it or not. without being part of these things there is no concievable way to ever take part in some parts of the game. that, in and of itself, is wrong. every person that buys this game paid there money and should have acces to every part of it they want to take part in

i wonder how some would feel if suddenly you have to have 1 mil gold to take part in PvP ?

do i "need" an alliance, of course not ... we will continue to play the game how we see fit.. but it would be nice to have some involvement in that aspect of the game available to all players, dont you think ?

bottom line, the entire concept has turned the game into a faction farming sweat shop, and a major grind

Are you gonna give me a refund on the game I paid for? If you think that some people have less rights than other people, go create your own game. Don't try to bully on this one!

Dzan, did you pay more for the game than i did ?

i didnt think so

save your condescension for someone that understands it, cause i dont. this is a game.. some of us have lives, and jobs, and families .. and all kinds of real world activities .. and dont have the hours to devote to this kind of BS.. yet were still asked to pay the same price ?

in fact, youve actually proven my point .. # hours played versus quality of hours played ... your whole thesis is that just because you play more hours your entitled to something im not.. with ne bearing in skill, or accomplishments, or anything else. just, time played.

maybe i learn twice as fast as you .. maybe im better than you in half the time .. maybe im not.. either way, just because some 15 year old kid has twice the time to play as a working family man does... why does that person deserve more, or less .. on the same monies paid ?

especially when most people ideas about builds and character setups dont come from thier own minds, but some post on a bulletin board to the point that you have to have certain skills to get in a group in some areas .. when in most cases its 100% unnecessary and there are many way to do it... but just because someone reads something here, they think they know something ?

that, my friend, isnt skill or knowledge, thats a sheep that wouldnt know an original thought if it bit his arse !

this is a game..... not a job, not reality.. a game, that we all payed to play

Those who bought the CE paid more than the rest. They deserve access to the Elite Missions and elite HA groups.

</sarcasm>

"these people are in a much greater majority over the hardcore players and we are the ones who funded the game" -- yes we are, and yes we did.

Most of the game purchasers are a silent majority, but silent on the forums only. Where what they say really counts is word of mouth, and it is word of mouth that determines whether game sales are going to grow or decline.

Either people complain because 1) There is no competition in PvE. or 2) Because they aren't winning the competition in PvE. You can't have it both ways. If there is to be competition, that means somebody has to lose.

Why?
Most of the holding guilds are letting people taxi to these missions.

Go to Cavalon/ HzH.
Wait for someone to say "Taxi to Elite Mission"
Invite self.
Wait to get ported.

There you go.

I have never had trouble getting into these missions when the Holders are being nice, and most of 'em are at the moment. (Ty TC!!)

Cant see what all the moaning is about really.

I have to agree with the sentiment that ff kind of sucks. I was in a large alliance that had been controlling various towns but I left my guild over ff. They basically started demanding 10k donations a day in order to stay in. This was realatively simple before Brauer runs got nerfed as you could easily do a run in 2 minutes with the right setup. I had been doing a lot up until that point, about 120 donated, but I got sick of the grind...it felt like a work camp. Then 2 of my friends were kicked one day for not meeting the requirements so I left the guild. Furthermore, control of towns means very little. Unless you own House Zu or Cavalon the benefits are basically cheaper keys. Also, you can often get into the elite mission for free depending on who is controlling it, so control of one of the big towns doesn't seem to matter much either.

But despite the fact that I don't like ff, in the end there is no demand on you to be a serious faction farmer. You can completely ignore that aspect of the game with little consequence.

You're right: it is a game. It's an RPG. Your progress is measured by accomplishments, whether that is experience points, items, completion percentage, pvp whatever.

The entire idea of the RPG genre is carrot on a stick, you are given a task you get a reward for doing it. The bigger the carrot you want, the longer the stick. You all want the biggest carrots with no sticks involved.

I paid $50 for Grand Turismo 3 when it came out. A week after the game came out I knew a guy who had every car unlocked. I didn't hardly have any. BUT WE BOTH PAID THE SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR THE GAME!!! OMG THATS SO UNFAIR RIGHT?!!?

How is that senario any different? He wanted all the cars unlocked, so he did it. This guy wants to get into r9 pugs so he got his r9. Another guy wants access to the Deep so he gathers faction for his alliance.

I didn't have the time to unlock all the cars in GT, so I settled for only buying the ones I really wanted. You might not have the time to join an alliance that requires 20k faction a day per person, maybe you should adjust yourgoals to something more realistic for your own committment level.

incorrect unienaule

choice 3, they dont want PvP overrunning PvE

if i wnated to play PvP, i would.. i dont want it as part of the PvE world. though id rather see some GvG challenge system for control of towns over the current system.. as long as they could limit others access to the PvE areas

lykan ... for me, that shouldnt be up to them. we are left at the mercy of a group that may, or may not be as benevolent as weve seen with other ruling alliances to date

As I stated in my post up there, reading the initial post was a little difficult--I did not realize he was specifically complaining about elite mission access. If this is indeed the case--this problem IS sorting itself out, now that alliances are commonly letting people into these missions. When I made my old thread, I had no idea that the community would come together in this way. While I still disagree with the whole faction farming for access thing, the situation is far more tolerable than I expected it to be, and now that Arenanet is coming up with alternative means of access, things are looking up all around.

In regards to his post, I assumed he was just complaining about not having an alliance at all--and really, save for potentially holding a city, there's very little reason to go find one to join.

Where the hell did this come from? Where did I claim to be a serious gamer?

The thing that irritates me about this (and the whole Favour thing) is that essentially, PVP is dictating where PvE players can play. That's annoying for me. It's like people being unable to play in the Hall of Heros until their district controls a PvE area in factions. Things like the Crystalline sword reward for the HoH: okay, no problem with that sort of thing, but entire areas being shut off unless people from, essentially, an utterly different section of the game are doing well is a real pest. These 'elite missions' are just another example of this... stupidity for lack of a better word. Far better to give the alliances who control them some other form of benefit, like access to a unique armourer or weaponscrafter.

For anyone who has not found the right alliance contact me... we have some serious faction farmers, but also a serious group of relaxed PvE players...

<-- that is my in-game name.

I predict we will see a colapse of the nice guilds and are going to have to start shelling out the big bucks soon, unless it's true that we will be able to get in through a seperate route. I've talked to some of these guys (TC) and they are missing out on being able to get jadite for themselves. It's a big hole in their pocket, and as noble as their cause is, they are going to splinter under the pressure. They can only go so long before they will want to actually play the game. What we will be left with is a batch of guilds who are in it for the rewards. After all, they lose money on dumping faction. I only keep 1 faction point in my guild. We'll never be able to compete being a small guild. Why waste the gold?

I don't understand this resentment towards the "casual players." There are two types of "casual" in my opinion. One is someone who doesn't play much. For some reason it is assumed that this makes them bad players. I find that attitude odd because I see people who play non-stop who might as well have a hole in the head for as much as they understand their class. And the second type plays a lot, but doesn't care to get involved in a race to NOT play the game, or who doesn't care for the company of morons. I hench most of the game, pick up on the ins and outs of the missions, and turn around and help out my guildmates and sometimes the nicer people in the community. I have made well over a million in gold over the course of the year, have several max weapons with max mods, all hand crafted trough trades and drops, and have henched some of the hardest missions in both games (including droks and gayla hatchery.) But I understand the futility of trying to compete with a conglomeration of impersonal kids (let's face it, these guilds must have a lot of time on their hands to succeed versus all the other guilds with lots of time on their hands as well... it becomes a race to prove who has the least going on in their lives.) If getting into these elite missions were skill based, I know many dozens of players scattered around the community who would be in in no time.

I have to rant a sec on what this is doing to guilds as a whole for a sec. I've seen smaller guilds lose members because some of their players want to get in on owning a town. So they look for a larger guild, and end up doing nothing but farming all day long. Farming is fine with me, but only if it actually gets you something. But friendships become strained so that people can dump faction into a guild that will never actually hold a town and they end up making nothing in return. Seems like a side effect that I bet Anet didnt plan on... the general animosity that comes with guild splitting.

One last thing (I know that it seems that I go back and forth on this post, but I can be somewhat of a hypocrite) but I remember something about Anet's plans to make each game themed. This one is themed towards competition, and others will likely not be so PvP based. Geez I can only hope. While I find the competition to be fun at times, I'm more into PvE. I like the exploration, the quest for a good drop, the camaraderie that comes through overcoming obstacles. I can only hope that Anet will not let us down, will not forget that hundreds of thousands of people bought their game for the PvE side, that they are shooting themselves in the foot by continuing to provide only PvP undates. (Fixing a bug is not a PvE update... it's fixing a mistake.)

Damn, I never have something simple to say.

Wow, so true yet so wrong.

Yes, you have to work towards a goal in an rpg, and it can take time. But if you set down your controller and walk away from GT3, you don't come back to find all of your time spent in the game erased. Because that is what happens here. If you don't spend every day farming, along with 999 other people you most likely don't even know, you can't get that nice reward. And neither do around a million other GW players. Easy to be elitist when making metaphors that make no sense.

Crap, I hate flame... but it makes no sense to me that people can't see what is wrong with a system that rewards a very small minority. If say, 1/5th of people could get into the content they payed for through right of skill I'd be behind you 100%, but this system rewards slackers... oddly enough, those who can't farm everyday are out making the money to pay for this game. Way to isolate your source of money Anet.

Like I said, you have the wrong goals. Your goals are incompatible with your means. If you want something you can't have, you have to work that out yourself.

It all boils down to entitlement, you spent $50 and you feel entitled to the elite missions. I'm sure people in the Taiwan server would like to go to the Fissure of Woe, too. If you want it, make it happen. Heaven forbid people get rewarded for effort.

Well, I'm between Guilds again.

I just tried out a Factions guild after being out of a Guild for 2 months. Needless to say, this Guild felt very cold and uninviting to me. The Guild leader started naggin me for 5k faction everyday and if I used my hard earned faction to buy Jade I got yelled at! I wouldn't exactly call myself a casual player since I play almost every night for 4-5 hours, but this is definately NOT what I want from a Guild.


The Guild had an alliance with 5 other guilds and the total faction for the alliance was a little over 100k faction. It just seems completely retarded to dump hard earned faction into an alliance that doesn't stand a chance of holding a town, especially when the other Guilds in the alliance havent invested as much faction as your own Guild.

I just want a relaxed PvE Guild that enjoys playing the game, is that so much to ask?

Here's the thing about people whining that they paid for the game and are entitled to everything: You're not. You deserve absolutely nothing but opportunity - well, maybe not even that, but you have it. You have the opportunity to play less "casually" and get what and where you want, same as everyone else. It's obvious that more time invested equals a greater grasp on the game, and mindless grinding or not, those that invest heavily get what they work for, as they should. I myself don't have the time to faction farm all day, but that's my choice, and this spoiled opinion so many people seem to have is so lame.

I'm basically just saying the same thing Dzan is saying I guess, but still.

rpg players don't want any competition in PvE. they want adventure and story. they want role playing! it is pvp players that want competition. rpg by nature are not competive. Once you compete it no longer becomes a rpg but a pvpve.

I want to be able to play the game i paid for!

DZan, apparently you cant be bothered to read or are missing the point, your own arguments dont even support your position on this.

im still waiting for some logical reason that im not afforded the same game as you for the same money ?

if we were paying an hourly fee, thats one thing, but since we paid the same price, we should get the same product

and you keep saying we have the same opportunity.. when the reality is that we dont. smaller casual guilds do not have even close to a chance to dethrone the 1000 player faction farmhouses.. and you know that as well as i do. and please dont try to tell me thats my choice to work and have a family over a game, you cant be that far gone

ill say this, if thats what GWs future is, ill be not part of it

1.) Benevolence is not unlimited. The Free Ferry to the Elite Missions will probably stop eventually, or will be intermitant at best. Therefore, having a benevolent Alliance, to which I send my Kudos, does not solve the inheirant problem. Hopefully, A.Net's "alternate access" will.

2.) We all paid for the same game, therefore we paid for the same opportunity to access all content. Before you twist the words for a stupid elitist arguement, let me finish. Opportunity being classified as the ability to access the same content throught different play styles. Skill, or Grind, preferabley skill OVER grind, as was the original intent of GW as a whole.

The point is, being "good" is barely applicable in the case of farming, and only in the sense when you do it with an original build that conquers a difficult task.

Faction Farming requires niether an original build nor is it difficult. And anyone who thinks they're "better" or "elite" because they do the same thing over and over, are wrong. In truth, they're just mindless lemmings, like every other Faction Farmer; and their arguements hold about that much value too.

floplag,

Stop. You had a great point in the OP and you've let the comments sway you away from it. This isn't about the elite missions nor whether or not you have access to them. If you are like me, you don't really care.

What it's about is that Faction is serving no purpose other than to be farmed. There is no creative way to get it. There is, in fact, no reason to get it other than to control a town and push lines that do not matter in the slightest (I honestly don't even know why we should care about those lines......they are like that stupid button on Lost).

Additionally, should a player decide they do care about getting faction and moving the lines, they are doomed to just do the same thing (mainly running a parcel to its destination) over and over if they don't want that to be all they do all night.

I don't care if I ever see the stupid elite mission, tbh. What I do care about is the fact that the only new feature we got with factions was a new thing to farm and a new reason to farm it.

I may take you up on that. I recently lost my Guild when they joined an Alliance that wanted 2-4k faction a day from me. I've been with these guys for 5 months, helping others, playing with them, and they kicked my ass out for not farming Kurzick Faction for the Alliance.

I guess by "making new friends" they meant separating the farmers from the non-farmers

Why do "hardcore" players feel that they deserve to go to elite missions, get in good tombs groups or anything else that requires dedication instead of other people? Where does this sense of elitism come from?

As for the answer to your question. Casual players expect their multiplayer games to be as accessible as their single player games. This is nothing more than demanding good gameplay, which, unfortunately, the teenagers who have never played anything but MMOs don't know anything about.

You are quite ignorant, aren't you. The entire idea of the RPG genre is to complete the story that is put in front of you. This usually involves making your character more powerful. You are confusing MMO games, which are nothing more than timesinks designed to addict players, with actual RPG games.

Please explain to us all why we aren't entitled to access the so-called "elite" missions. I could use a good laugh from somebody who is obviously a teenager (ie. a person with unlimited free time and no responsibilities).