Please, please, please A-net. Stop the linear. It destroys the fun of having twenty roads you can follow. I loved the feeling when I had completed prophecies only to learn that there was another way to yak's bend, and I had missed two missions at the start. Naturally, I went back and redid them.
Factions has destroyed this feeling. I get the idea that I am following orders (YES SIR!) rather than wandering. In Factions, the control over YOUR story is basically none.
Viewpoint A. (this may not apply to you): Dude!! Totally wrong, I mean there's quests that aren't required, there's your wandering.
-Incorrect. The quests in Factions just add to the gripe. None of the quests feel like prophecies. Sure, prophecies had a few fed-ex, but these were well-thought out quests. One of them, right after you finish dragon's lair, simply takes you back to three desert cities. One of the 15 attribute quests starts with "I want you go visit my sister in the mountains" and ends with a laughable excuse. Factions feels like a mocery of Prophecies, becoming the bad, destroying the good, and mutilating the great.
Viewpoint B. (this may not apply to you): Well, uh, I'm too lazy to read all that text, but I finished Factions in two days with my preorder and a group of wammo guildies.
-Exactly. Factions gives the ability to follow the straight-line path directly to the end. Prophecies gives you the ability to do this, but once you've followed the path, you can go back to the jungle, and capture my elite. Factions feels like it encourages you to use henchies, I never see "LFG for skill capping" anymore.
Viewpoint C. (this may not apply to you): Good writing, but I don't understand what you want.
-I want a change in Chapter 3. I want
-non-linear plotline. Maybe even a chance to make in-mission decisions which can move you to a different outpost depending on how you handled a situation.
-More teamwork for elite skills. Henchmen are terrible cappers, but after an hour of "LFG for skill capping", I've realized how many people were able to zoom through the storyline. In prophecies, you could go to citadel. Go there today. I bet there will be 1-2 people looking for skill capping groups. To compare to Factions, go to an area outside Melandru's Hope, where one or two elite skills reside. Do you see ANY lfg skill capping? No. All you see is "LFG faction farming".
Pathetic. Thank you if you had the time and took the time to read all that.
B
