Guild Wars

[bfg00]

After seeing Regdren's post I thought I would find out how many people have played GW and what their take on it was.

I play GW (both Prophecies and Factions) regularly and have for the past year.  It's alot of fun, while I do belong to primarily a PvE (Player vs. Environment) guild (Rise of the Forsaken), we are trying to step up our PvP play as well (we have been doing GvG for a while but our goal is to get in the top 200 guilds).  I will agree with Regdren on everything he said though, he is dead on in his assessment of GvG tactics.  Also he is also right about the time commitment if you want to be on the top of the GvG Ladder.  However you can scale back your time commitment and do other PvP things (Random Arena, Alliance Battles, Team Area, Hero's Ascent), PvE things or just GvG for fun.  I generally only play for 2-3 hours a day and more on the weekends, and I know for a fact that if our guild wanted to go for the top 20 we would have to put in alot of more time into PvP which none of us have. Still GW is a blast, I enjoy the fact that there isn't alot of grind in the PvE and with a little practice you can get pretty good at PvP (not superawesome or top player but competitive).

[MMX]

Isn't a lot of grind in PvE?  Has that changed since I last played?  The whole fiasco with bots?  Giant boots, flesh golems, and ettins in northern kryta? (the latter being probably the only mobs I was any good at farming, also which of course were easily the least efficient for farming XD)

Griffons outside of Droknar's Forge?  I still remember the silly "protest" NA players were staging in the international districts against Asian bots who would just plain run from the storage NPCs to the exit and back.

Last I checked, farming was a serious problem if you wanted anything worthwhile.  And those new rune traders they added were worthless.  I guess it's just because I'm mostly PvE though; I remember back when even PvPers had to play PvE to get their unlocks.  Now they can just spend faction.  Good for them, on that.

Anyways, my experience:
Bought the game about two weeks after release, played for three months... stopped for six months, came back for another three months, played in the Factions previews and stuff, then stopped playing again.  Let me just say, Factions feels like the game we should have gotten in retail.  The whole game in general now... it took them 365 days+ to get where they are now?  I guess I'm just a little frustrated...
Anyone else feel pre-searing Ascalon is 10x a more enjoyable experience than any location post-searing... or all of them COMBINED?  That always shocked me after the searing.  It was just ugly everywhere;  and not pretty ugly, ugly ugly.

Anyways, me not being a normal human being, and generally quite bitter, means the players I do happen to team up with often leave after a short while.  It's just a personality thing.  Thus I never got into PvP or GvG much.  And don't you dare say random arenas.  Those things aggrivate me more than the HA tourney.  All PvP is ruled by FotM builds and team builds, except for Random which is basically four Warriors (me being one of them) versus three warriors and one priest and the four warriors getting raped in the face.  The amount of time needed to be spent in order to be "competitve" in GW is as much as any other MMO.
And PvE basically boils down to farming greens till your blue in the face, and the average player (me) will probably never see more than one green.  Or they are very, very patient.

OH god, henchmen... that reminds me.... you know, forget it.  I have so many reservations about Anet and frustrations with Guild Wars that I don't think I can even get into it here... besides, it's been a couple months and my memory is pretty poor, and I don't wanna complain about anything that might have been fixed since earlier this year.  Besides, I don't want to turn this thread into a total flamefest on poor GW, it had some good aspects... I think.

[bfg00]

PvE Grind: I was leaving out farming (I don't farm at all) and sticking to doing the missions.  If you do the missions there is little grind and it isn't much of a problem to get good stuff, maybe not the best but still decent equipment.

Bots: They are continuing to crack down on bots, but this is a problem with any online game.

Henchmen:  Yes the henchmen are inept.  This is why its helpful to get a Guild team together for hard missions or quests.  Otherwise you will have to figure out how to use the henchmen with all their flaws.

Environment: Actually I really liked all the environments except for Post-searing Ascalon.

Game Dynamics: I will admit the game has changed alot from its first release, and Factions is in the process of changing too.  I do however like the fact the Anet tends to listen to player input and does a good job of rebalancing and dealing with bugs, there are exceptions though.

[MMX]

PvE Grind: I was leaving out farming (I don't farm at all) and sticking to doing the missions.  If you do the missions there is little grind and it isn't much of a problem to get good stuff, maybe not the best but still decent equipment.

Decent?  I wouldn't say so.  Sure maybe for the first half of thegame, but by the time you get to southern Kryta, Crystal Desert and the Southern Shiverpeaks, you will probably (well maybe not you, per se) end up going back to af ew areas to see if you can either work up some dough to buy those nifty armors/get the new materials at the same time, or at least hope for a good drop.

And that's anotehr thing (or maybe exactly what I'm talking about) -- there's pretty much no point of crafting weapons.  All the NPCs in towns are useless except for the rune trader, the storage npc, the armor smith, and maybe if there's a collector in there.  Okay that's like 4:5 NPCs but the whole point is the guy whos ells weapons is useless.  And collectors.  Until you get to the desert there's no point to even seeing them; the armors are always bland/generalized items that don't even give the full armor bonus, and the weapons suck too.  And the smithed weapons are even worse.  The whole game youb asically stash gold so when you get to the southern shiverpeaks you can buy your 15k armor sets, and then later hopefully have enough to trade with some other PC who overcharges all his items just to get a decent weapon. (thus why my habits of collecting EVERYTHING finally paid off ^^)

Not sure if Factions is the same way, I haven't played since the preview event.
(btw not complaining about bots, just reminiscing)

But anwyays, just plain doing PvE you'll be done with the missions and quests in a week or two.  At least in "Prophecies".  Not to mention I'd rather not since I do not favor Anet's storytelling technique or the GW story in general ^^  Not their fault, it just never clicked with me.

And yeah, Anet listens to the community.  The most whiney, trollish portion of the community.  XD
j/k of course.

[kaervar]

aye .. i be new to this place of awsomeness but i too play guild wars i am new (under a month) but i would like to get into pvp or gvg but i too play when all mear mortals have summited to sleep as i requier only 3 or 4 to function on at least a basic level (no pod-raceing) but i can never deal with looking for a team or guild that is good enough and will exept me

i i felt same way about post ascalon  it was dumb and 5Ux0r5 to teh max wher as factions is alot better and im barely into it yet (only a lv 7 char)

[bfg00]

I guess I never had a problem with having crappy armor and usually I had a decent weapon.  Usually I used my skills and gameplay to bypass my equipment defects.  Then I got the 1.5k armor at Droks and it was fine and a max damage weapon.  It's not hard to bypass weapon and armor problems you just have to use the right skills and be able to adapt.  Usually I go from Ascalon to Droks through the primary game using the Ascalon armor then I buy the really good armor at Droks.

As far as finding Guilds, you can party with people in Pick Up Groups and if you run into good people bug them to join their guild.  Or you can start your own (which is what my brother and I did).

[Regdren]

I'm with bfg regarding equipment. You don't need any super-rare items to complete Prophecies. I haven't played factions, but I doubt that would be too different. I admit that I had money problems during my first playthrough, but that was because of horrible item management. My mistake was to be a pack rat, hoarding things that I thought might possibly be useful in the future. This filled up most of my iten slots, even after the upgrades. Yeah. I made a lot more money once I cleared out enough backpack spaces to carry everything I found while traveling. As long as you don't make any foolish purchases, getting what you need to finish the game is not a problem.

The really powerful, expensive items are for people who want to take their PvE characters into PvP games. You see, anyone can make a PvP character with the best equipment around. Sure, there are weapon add-ons and runes that aren't immediately available, but with a bit of patience you can unlock everything you need for a decent build with faction. PvE characters don't have that luxury; in order to be on equal footing everything must...be...PERFECT! The price difference between Major Vigor (+41 hp IIRC) and Superior Vigor (+50) is absurd compared to the difference in effect. But in PvP, any disadvantage could be the one that loses the match for you.

It seems a little unfair, but trust me...it's worse the other way around. This is going to be a longish story so bear with me. Remember when the Lieutenant's Helm was nerfed and turned into a starting PvP equip? I'll elaborate. The helm was a warrior equip only found in one shop in PvE. It cut the duration of hexes in half. IN. HALF. It was obviously designed for PvE use. But in PvP, hexes are the biggest balance against Warriors going forward and beating the crap out of everything else.That single advantage was so strong that people made PvE Warriors, played through Prophecies, got complete sets of perfect PvP-competitive equipment with add-ons and all...just to use those helms. It was absurd. But the top teams all had very warrior-heavy builds (some has as many as six in a team!), every last one of them wearing one of the stupid things. That piece of PvE equipments changed the nature of fights in the World Tournament that year. The moment the next patch came, the helms were nerfed to 20% hex duration reduction and became available to PvP characters. And in case you didn't know why before, now you do.

My post went a little off-topic, but hopefully it explained a few things. Thanks for reading it.

[MMX]

I know all about Lieutenant's Helm.  Gah, that reminds me.

I bought it for the explicit purpose that I didn't want it to turn into another HoD Sword type of item.  Where they suddenly stop selling it altogether and the assholes horde the goddamn thing.... +5 EN... no penalties.... *sniff* Who cares if it's like -1max damage GOD I WANTED ONE OF THOSE A LONG TIME AGO.

Well not really, but since I was always fond of Ascalon Armor (which is also gimped to shit because you only need one piece of Ascalon armor... everybody else takes teh boots or something, and then the rest as either dragon or gladiator) so I thought the free EN might have been a good idea...


So yeah like a week after I get the LHelm they nerf it so I was like "gaaaawwwwddamnit"  =D
I'm almost strictly PvE, btw.  Though I dabble in Random when I'm feeling lucky.


Oh and another thing, unlocking stuff for PvP was a lot harder before they had those Bal priests.  And let's be serious here, PvP couldn't be competitive unless you unlocked them.  Of coruse that's not a big deal now, considerign the inclusion of faction and faction points.
It's more or less the lack of content.  Like most PvE games in MMOs and otherwise, the main game is short (it was short.  Very short) so what else can you do beyond that?  Go hunting for loot?  Well you may not want to but it's pretty much teh only thing left to do.  And what happened most of the time?  You go two months with barely finding a gold that's even better than your average blue while every farmer and his mother has a complet set of everything.

Plus there is great discrimination against packrats like me XD (yes I ended up selling them too, but to this day I do not have a complete set of 15k armor, still missing two sets (since my main was a warrior they get another 15k helm to go with their set, otherwise it would just have been one missing))

But really, a lot of the time, for a newbie (which I think is the ideal perspective to go about looking for balance in any game) you would feel the near-necessity to collect those silly collector items.  Sure, most of the collector items were useless (which brings up the whole "why are they in the game in the first place" question) but every once and a while you'd find a really great, or worthwhile item from a collector and then NOTHING THAT DROPS IT WOULD DROP IT FOR YOU so you'd end up buying it from somebody else.  It was just so utterly random.  And they always took up space. And bags and belts and runes of holding were just big time and money wasters (not much in the long run but seriously what was the purpose?)

But really it all doesn't matter, since collectors and weaponsmiths are NOT the way to go to get weapons.  it was very clear right from the start, I think even the devs said this, that the one and only way to get decent items was from monster drops.  And basically, I'm just not a lucky person.  I'm a very UNlucky person.  I guess I was just born under that star.  By the time I did find a decent weapon, I remember it had an ebon shaft and wasn't all that great - so I stuck a shocking haft on it and next thing you know the next area I head to suddenly has a whole bunch of mobs resistant to lightning.

I dunno, I don't mean to be mean or anything, I just think you guys are coming off as too soft on GW and Anet.  Or maybe I'm just biased because I played a Warrior and basically their only job in PvE was to sit still and tank and have their life meter jerk up and down continually until the stupid Priest henchmen runs into melee and gets herself killed (GODFUCKINGDAMN YOU ALESIA) and then you die instantly; and if you don't, then you just sit there like a lightning rod whacking away with your sword or axe (shocking haft made it an irony) while your Mage and Ranger friends ar ejust sitting back spamming all these neat skills while all you have are dumb carbon-copy adren skills.
>_>
<_<

[bfg00]

Okay, maybe we are being a little soft on them.  There are some problems with GW (henchie AI's, a little short (it usually takes me 24-30 hours to beat prophecies on a character, useless skills) but I still enjoy it.

Bags/Pouches: Use them to hold drops until I get to town and sell them.  Also I was using them to hold stuff for Guild Storage (like materials and weapons and stuff).

15k Armors: The only way I got these was from saving my cash and by buming some off my brother.

Money: I haven't every had any major cash flow problems unless I was trying for the 15k's.  This is probably because I didn't get run anywhere, I just fought my way through the game, you naturally build up a considerable wad of cash by the time you get to Droks.  Plus it helps to have multiple characters going through the game.

Alesia: I hate her too.

[MMX]

I guess that's fair.

[frost]

I was under the assumption that Guild War was fairly easy to lvl in.

Got a question for all of you. If I want to play Guild Wars do I need to buy both Guild Wars, & the Expansion? or doese the Expansion come with the oringal Guild Wars?

[Regdren]

They're both full games, so you can buy Factions and play without needing to get Prophecies (the original). There are some skills in one game that are not in the other, and vice versa. Also, if you get both you can take characters from one campaign world to the other, or so I'm told. Does that help?

[MMX]

They are not expansions, they are both standaline games, and so will the next campaign which i believe is called "nightfall".

But because every campaign comes with the "core" factions (Warrior, Ranger, Monk, Elementalist, Necromancer, Mesmer) I would suggest you buy Factions since it comes with two additional classes (so will all the other future campaigns).

When you have more than one campaign you can bind them to the same account (you can also bind them to two separate accounts but you can't undo this, ever) when this happens you can play as any of the classes on that account, for which you own a campaign of, plus are able to train all of the campaign's skills, and can visit any of the campaign's locations.  You start with four character slots for a single campaign, and +2 slots for each additional campaign.  It costs $10 to add additional character slots, which can be purchased in Anet's online store.

I'd definitely say go with Factions.
Post-searing Ascalon looks like ass anyways -- all of it.  Especially after you come from Pre-searing.  God I missed Pre-searing Ascalon.

[bfg00]

Pre-Searing is awesome, the newbie island in Faction is like it and some of the Guild Halls are like it too.

[MMX]

Yes, the Wizard's Isle and whichever Factions Guild Hall that comes from the Factions training area tileset.  I kept annoying the shit out of my guildmates to get the Wizard's Isle but they were like "bah it's too plain" and wanted the silly Druid's Isle instead U_U

Pre-searing Ascalon >>>>> silly vine-bridge and neat brook-moat.

[bfg00]

True and I prefer to GvG in the Wizards/Warriors template halls than the other ones.

[MMX]

True and I prefer to GvG in the Wizards/Warriors template halls than the other ones.

D'oh, that's right -- it was Wizard's, not Warrior's.  Warrior's was the one based off of primitive Cantha? (back before they fleshed out the Factions campaign, and the Canthan continent along with it)

Granted, Wizard's, Warrior's, and Hunter's(based off Kryta) Isles all had nigh-identical layouts (couple differences, like in one you could not traverse from one entrance to the keep to the back entrance and vice versa, and some other rminute differences - but it had catapults!)  Though I always had a soft-spot for the Frozen Isle, because I always had a softspot for ice and the Icy Ground effect =) (which is one of the reasons I liked Marhan's Grotto so much; also because the awesome-looking -- but ultimately gimped -- 15k Ascalon armor was obtainable there)

[bfg00]

True that.  The worst hall to play in though is the Jade Isle.  I hate that place so much.