Guild Wars Factions

**Lehesu** · 05-25-2006, 05:56

Spurred by a chance encounter with Louis, who has Factions? Good, bad, overpriced?

**Crandaeolon** · 05-25-2006, 17:21

I've got Factions too, bought it mainly so I could stay competitive in PvP. It's a bit different from the original - the pace is faster and it feels more compact. I wouldn't call it overpriced, but it's somewhat less value for money than the original.

Advancement in PvE is stunningly fast, character level gets maxed out very fast when compared to other games. IMO it's a good thing, since the difficulty ramps up rapidly to challenging levels, and i'm not level-grinder type. There's also a plenty of gold rewards and lots of items from collectors. For new players the ability to buy all skills from vendors might be intimidating, but I didn't mind. Makes unlocking stuff for PvP much easier. :p

Monster groups have more mixed-class critters in them than in Prophecies and are harder in general. There's also more environment effects and monster-only skills to spice things up, as well as missions with two teams of players. Even though the game is harder, it's still mostly playable with henchmen - only a couple of missions require a human group unless you're exceptionally good and/or lucky. PvE combat in general is good fantasy action.

The plot is ho-hum, standard fantasy tripe. Voice acting is bad and cutscenes are silly. Music is a stock fantasy soundtrack by Jeremy Soule aka "The Repetitive", though the theme song has a nice pseudo-oriental feel to it. Too bad Soule's muse stopped giving after that.

Environments, apart from the run-down areas of the fantasy metropolis of Kaineng, are artistic and well done. Prophecies has more environment types but Factions has overall better artistic quality IMO. Character models are nicer looking but still as stiff as in Prophecies - the game engine is starting to show its age.

PvP is still better than anything else in the business, but some aspects of it could use improvement - accessibility is a problem for new players, and Heroes' Ascent (the "Tournament") suffers from the same problems. (It encourages silly defensive and gimmick builds.) The new additions of Alliance battles and objective-based maps are fun diversions, but not for "serious" play - which is for Guild vs Guild battles. PvP balance is good and the new classes see enough playtime.

Edit: the much-vaunted "alliance" aspect of Factions is pretty much a meaningless gimmick - the war between Luxons and Kurzicks doesn't really affect anything. All characters have universal access to all content, even the elite missions now that the alliances holding major cities have understood that there's no point in holding the elite missions back from the public. Just ask nicely for a taxi, and you'll get there.

**John86** · 05-26-2006, 03:37

I have it. Find me as Hiji Pvp. Personally I find it a bit overpriced for the content it offers. By the way, Im typing this from my PSP.

**Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe** · 06-07-2006, 19:50

I got it, and I like it...

PvE is a bit faster and more action packed than Guild Wars ep I , Assassin sure looks fun, and ritualist bloody annoying, but I don't think we have seen the full extent of that extension power yet. People are still playing non optimized build IMO... Not that I'd know what a good build is anyway

Graphically, once you're past the city, it looks great. PvP wise, I think I don't know why people are playing other games.
I know I am certainly NOT looking back at RTW for fun MP value once compared to GW.

Louis,

**Lehesu** · 06-07-2006, 20:41

Finally got factions. Too busy playing through ascalon with my N/Me to make any comment.

**Navaros** · 06-08-2006, 05:36

Definitely over-priced.

I've been following the release of this very closely.

Most people beat the PVE side of the game in 1 - 3 days and the general consensus is that it is nowhere near as good or as long as Chapter 1.

Most of the end-game PVE content and almost all of the PVP content in Factions is directly copy and pasted from Chapter 1. Not even "recycled" by doing the same thing on new maps: but a direct copy and paste job. Same exact maps, which you can already access with Chapter 1 only.

Certainly it's not worth the $59.99 CAD that it sells for in Canada, which is $10 more than Chapter 1 was when it first came out.

As for PVP being amazing: I got rank 9 in December of last year (which means I did a whole lotta PVP) and personally I found PVP gets very boring after that. After you get rank 9 you don't really get any more worthwhile rewards for doing PVP hence it is highly pointless. And waiting around for a team to form is a huge pain. Waiting for 8 good players to assemble onto a PVP team together often literally takes hours of sitting around doing nothing.

Like the original was, I think Factions is highly over-rated. I'd say it's worth about a 60% score due to it's price combined with lack of content & copy and pasted content from Chapter 1.

Having said all that, there are much worse games on the market so if you're a Chapter 1 fanatic you might get your money's worth out of Factions.

**Crandaeolon** · 06-08-2006, 13:48

Most people beat the PVE side of the game in 1 - 3 days and the general consensus is that it is nowhere near as good or as long as Chapter 1.

My Canthan-born assassin has 60 hours of age after completing the main missions, and my ritualist has 32 hours - rushed very fast with the 10k "befriending" faction already on account. Neither char has done any Luxon areas, only the Kurzick side (so they're missing about a quarter to third of the explorables.) These times include elite skill capping, tagging all areas, and a moderate amount of exploration on the assassin. The Asn has mapped 66,1% and the Rit 55,2%.

I'd guesstimate that entirely new players will take around 80-100 hours on their "first time through", but veterans will of course do it in much less time. They have resources such as friends, guilds, knowledge and raw playing skill that newer players do not.

About PvE being not as good, I guess it depends. I like the increased difficulty, Factions has a nice tendency to punish for mistakes like sloppy aggroing and positioning. The end-game areas of Factions - the elite missions - have very good rewards, my guildmates made about 1 million gold each over a few completions of the Luxon elite mission.

As for PVP being amazing: I got rank 9 in December of last year (which means I did a whole lotta PVP) and personally I found PVP gets very boring after that. After you get rank 9 you don't really get any more worthwhile rewards for doing PVP hence it is highly pointless.

I'm still not rank 9 (missing a couple hundred fame), and I play PvP even more than you did.

I'm in a top 20 guild though. I agree with you that Heroes' Ascent is boring (even before rank 9...

), it's mostly cookie-cutter flavor-of-the-month fame farming and stupidly defensive holding builds, and leaves much less room for tactics and strategy than GvG does.

And point about PvP... is the game itself IMO. People don't play games like Counter-Strike, Starcraft or Total War because of in-game rewards, but because they like it. GW is one of the most demanding team games out there, with good if not great balance and a large playerbase.

And waiting around for a team to form is a huge pain. Waiting for 8 good players to assemble onto a PVP team together often literally takes hours of sitting around doing nothing.

Guild, guild, guild. Friendlist. And alliance.

**Navaros** · 06-08-2006, 16:25

Originally Posted by Crandaeolon

And point about PvP... is the game itself IMO. People don't play games like Counter-Strike, Starcraft or Total War because of in-game rewards, but because they like it.

Guild, guild, guild. Friendlist. And alliance.

Well even so, my experience playing in a top guild back in the day was that it still often takes 3 hours or more. There is always the one guy who has to finish putting his kids to bed before he can logon. Then in the interim another one's wife has car trouble and he has to go tend to that. The search for substitutes starts and that also takes forever. Then people have to start "rerolling" and find out that they are missing a needed skill. For some reason acquiring that skill "magically" ends up taking half an hour. By that point "the Guild calls" for at least one of the substitute players, who then bails on the party before it starts playing. Making it necessary to re-spend all that time finding a new replacement.

Stuff like that was a typical day for me waiting to get 8 players. I realize that mileage may vary to some extent. But I've seen this phenomenon not only with my own Guild, but also with all the Guild pugs I've joined. Which is to say, horrendous waits tend to be a systematic problem across the board and the higher the skill standard of your party, the longer that wait is.

It seems to be a fundamental problem with the principle of needing 8 skilled people to congregate together.

As for the point about PVP is the game itself: I can understand that being true in a game where PVP is inherently fun. For me, Guild Wars PVP is not inherently fun. It doesn't feel RPG-esque at all. The atmosphere for Guild Wars PVP seems "off" to me, and that makes it have no inherent fun value to me.

Maybe if they made the PVP be more "PVE-esque" or "RPG-esque", then that would be a different story.

**Crandaeolon** · 06-08-2006, 21:53

We have a couple of systems in place to make getting into games faster. The most important one is an irc-bot that keeps track of available players and when they can play (you also don't have to be logged on to Guild Wars to reserve a slot in the group), another important thing is a Wikipedia where builds are stored. The build is decided before the game, so people can prepare their chars beforehand. Roles for each player are also decided before the games start.

It takes usually 5-10 mins to get games started. A bit of organisation goes a long way, and saves everyone's time in the end.

As for the point about PVP is the game itself: I can understand that being true in a game where PVP is inherently fun. For me, Guild Wars PVP is not inherently fun. It doesn't feel RPG-esque at all. The atmosphere for Guild Wars PVP seems "off" to me, and that makes it have no inherent fun value to me.

What you're talking about implies a persistent-world game such as WoW. Instanced, even-teams PvP like GW won't achieve a "RPG feeling" like that I think, and have to draw players with other merits like a competitive atmosphere and finely-tuned balance.

One game to follow is Fury (http://www.unleashthefury.com/), though I'd imagine it's even less rpg-ish than GW.

**Navaros** · 06-09-2006, 22:51

Originally Posted by Crandaeolon

What you're talking about implies a persistent-world game such as WoW. Instanced, even-teams PvP like GW won't achieve a "RPG feeling" like that I think, and have to draw players with other merits like a competitive atmosphere and finely-tuned balance.

No doubt that WoW can do it better and the instancing is a huge handicap to GW in that regard; I guess the saying "you get what you pay for" is true.

I ended up getting Factions just because I'm bored and needed something to play (and I'm cheap so I don't wanna pay a monthly fee like with WoW), although I stick by all my previous comments in this thread.

Interestingly enough, I've found that the beach map of Alliance Battles does have an RPG-esque feel to it. At least, much more so than any of the other PVP maps in any other PVP mode. Too bad they didn't do more with the concept and that map than just a tired "capture spawn/resource points" type of deal that has been done a million times before in FPS and RTS games.

Having done the first couple of Factions missions - well I guess it would be missions #3 and #4 actually since I didn't start out on the newbie islands that Factions-only owners will go to - I must add to my comments that the environment in this game sure looks like crap. All very dull and tiresome browns and gray alley ways and practically every part of it looks the same. It's like they made one dull alley way and then copy and pasted it 10 billion times throughout the rest of the game. I find I can't play in that environment for nearly as long as I could in the Chapter 1 environments. The environment in Factions, to me, simply aggravates my senses and makes me very sleepy. All of the enemy NPCs looking identical on top of that just adds to this. I give them an "F" for the environment of the main part of the game.

To make matters worse, the main town and many other enviroments are a very aggravating maze.

Although the environment on the newbie island is very nice and the complete opposite of everything I just said. They should have stuck with that for the whole game. Makes me wonder if it's even the same people who did both environments. Maybe the Chapter 1 team did the newbie island of Factions and the Factions team did the crappy-looking environment that takes up most of the game.

**Crandaeolon** · 06-10-2006, 00:05

I don't like Kaineng city either, it's a bad choice of setting. Nobody likes to roam around in slums or sewers. They should have stuck to the well-off areas. That said, I don't think that it's poorly done; it must have been quite challenging to design, and there are some "nice tries" to make it look exotic. It's not too bad of a maze either, you can usually get from point A to point B by several different routes.

My pet peeve about the city is its apparent resistance to fires, or rather lack of it. One match could put a giant tinder-heap like that out of its misery...