Guild Wars 2

With the introduction of rewards for achievements, I am wondering if there will be any attempt to balance the amount of achievement points that activities reward.

Many of the rewards are very unbalanced when measured against each other for the amount of time or skill they take to complete – WvW rewards in particular seem particularly time consuming when compared to PvE rewards:

For example to earn 6 achievement points you can either defend Stonemist castle 1,000 times or buy a set of tier 1 armour.

There are lots of other examples and perhaps prior to introduction, the team should take this opportunity to rebalance things.

I would agree with this to a point. I think the devs believed that SM would change hands frequently, which just is not the case. I know on our server we usually dominate and pretty much hold SM the entire time, it changes hands maybe 3-4 times in a week. At attacking it a bunch for the achievement, say 1000 captures would take years.

That was only one example of the top of my head, there are many more but perhaps another obvious one is: to earn 5 points you can either equip a legendary weapon or revive 10 people.

I can get 30ish points from winning 150 spvp matches on my necro.(few days – weeks of playing) Or run CoF p1 a few times and use the money to salvage 200(x18) items and get 36 points(might take a few hours at most)!

Ugh, this I actually just made Sunrise last night, and 5 achievement points for months of work seems so cheap. At least give us something for each step like creating each gift rewards 5 points, its not like you can farm those easily. It does tend to cater to the easier things in the game giving the most points, which is completely backwards if you ask me.

Living world activities also seems to reward very high amounts of achievement points compared to permanent content, so the problem of people complaining that they are unable to get every available achievement is also likely to get worse unless it is balanced before this goes live.

Reymis.2158:

Ugh, this I actually just made Sunrise last night, and 5 achievement points for months of work seems so cheap. At least give us something for each step like creating each gift rewards 5 points, its not like you can farm those easily. It does tend to cater to the easier things in the game giving the most points, which is completely backwards if you ask me.

Did you honestly make Sunrise for the achievement points?

Seriously, the reward of a legendary is the legendary itself, not the little points that come along with it.

I think the problem here is that people are putting too much stock in what the achievement points will net us. I know with the HoM we got some really cool stuff, and that is what I hope this will be, but no one is going to be thrown Legendary type items. I wouldn’t get your hopes too high. It will more than likely be really cool and something to work toward, but not earth shattering.

Iason Evan.3806:

I think the problem here is that people are putting too much stock in what the achievement points will net us. I know with the HoM we got some really cool stuff, and that is what I hope this will be, but no one is going to be thrown Legendary type items. I wouldn’t get your hopes too high. It will more than likely be really cool and something to work toward, but not earth shattering.

I take your point, but your missing mine – it’s the comparative amounts awarded for different activities that I see as the problem. When you compare all of the achievement points available in the game, the number of points awarded for each achievement do not reflect the time/effort or skill each takes when compared to others.

I agree on the OP and would add that daylies and monthlies should be worth much less too. Or give those a seperate area for rewards…

I always dreamed of a system where achievements from permanent content could be separated from the total value coming from dailies and so on. There is a lot of ppl, loving the game, and its challanges, but cannot afford an hour or even a half every single day to finish a daily. Thus way, even trying hard to finish all the achievements doesn’t rly makes u any better than a person that just jumps in for 30 min every day to finish his daily…

The solution that would actually satisfy me would even be showing permanent achievements in brackets next to the total number, like AP: 9204(2372). That would actually be something imo, and that would be the thing that would make me finish all achievements just for the sake of those point, cus now they have no value, atleast for me

Why is everybody taking for granted that you will be actually spending your AP anyways? That won’t happen, so don’t worry about your precious spot on the leaderboards. As I said before, it’ll most likely involve a token system or rather function like the Hall of Monuments.

Daroon.1736:

With the introduction of rewards for achievements, I am wondering if there will be any attempt to balance the amount of achievement points that activities reward.

Well they are reworking the UI, they may rework some of the rewards as well. A lot of the more difficult to obtain ones (mostly WvW ones as you said) really should be adjusted for the amount of time they take.

Daroon.1736 does have a good point though.

WvW related achievement points are harder to obtain when compared against PvE achievement points.

to balance this, i think there should a lot of new easier to obtain WvW related achievement points.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_vs_World_
at the moment … all those … well … seems need to take a lot of time to achieve …

nothing much else to add though.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Daroon.1736 does have a good point though.

WvW related achievement points are harder to obtain when compared against PvE achievement points.

to balance this, i think there should a lot of new easier to obtain WvW related achievement points.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_vs_World_
at the moment … all those … well … seems need to take a lot of time to achieve …

nothing much else to add though.

most of those would take roughly 694 days of non stop playing and using 10 minutes per objective of only focusing on towers or keeps(keeps usually taking over 20 minutes). They need to pull their heads out of them dark places and actually intelligently design stuff instead of throwing darts at a board.

One more reason to leave your smaller server. At lower tiers you are very good to have 15 000 kills. WVw achievements need 250 000 kills. That means around 15 more years for me. All WvW achievements can somehow be done in top tiers. Rest can just dream on. I’ll start look for constant battle tiers.

Leaving your server for achievement points? Wow, haha, that’s pretty petty and really shortsighted. You’re not going to be earning achievement points even in tier 1. There isn’t suddenly more dolyaks and more towers getting flipped. You’ll get more kills but that’s 250k kills for 51 achievement points (31 of those are for 50k), which takes such a long time you ain’t gonna be gettin any other achievement points.

Just get your achievement points from doin the monthly event and and show some community building on your home server.

It really is ridiculous. I got 148 achievement points from playing 148 games in PvP (I am rank 12). To get an idea of how active I am in WvW, I’ve captured 3.5k objectives, 2.8k supply camps, 600 towers, 140 keeps, and 4 stonemists (I don’t do much EB) and have only 101 achievement points.

Achievement points in this game sounds more like a system to measure HOW the game is being played rather than actually reward players who really spent their time on a long term adventure, exploration, battle, event or whatever objective they do for a really HARD TO ACHIEVE deed.
What is the point for Daily achievements? this is ridiculous. You guys should learn and improve things. Take WoW as an example of how Achievements System should work.
They look awesome. Every achievement you get give you the feel of a real achievement, not an obligation on a daily basis to earn some laurel.

Want to reward people for anything they do? ok thats fair enough, but you could spend time on WvW for example and earn achievement points for really great achivements, and lots of it.

100% world exploration? Lots of point and a Title to make you feel a little bit rewarded at the least.

What would be the motivation for one to get achievement points if not to be differentiated from the average player? I can spend a lot of time exploring the world or investing in a huge task, just to get a little bit points. On the other hand, one can simply do daily quests and earn the same points? oh….no, thats not right.

Daily quests should earn you LAURELS, GOLD, ITEM REWARDS, KARMA etc NOT ACHIEVEMENT POINTS. It sounds like you are trying to make “one more day playing the game is an achievement”

Starting with this new system’s release, achievement points will turn into a “currency”. This is just absurd.
people will FARM achievements for the rewards. Please don’t let this happen

They have never said achievement points will become currency.

Hermes.7014:

They have never said achievement points will become currency.

The release notes strongly suggest that achievement point rewards will be tiered similar to HOM in GW1 and while this may not be a currency in the truest sense of the word it is yet another form of ‘currency’ for obtaining items in-game.

I have no strong feelings on the debate regarding dailies as Anet clearly wants players to be playing the game regularly, but I feel inclined to agree with brunobyof.3541 that if additional rewards are now being offered for achievements, laurels would be a more appropriate reward for the dailies at least.

Irrespective of any of the above, I have yet to see any solid argument against my original point that there is a gross imbalance in the amounts of points rewarded when comparisons are made against the time/effort or skill each existing achievement currently takes.

The team has more important things to ‘balance’ than little achievement points, even in games like WoW it wasn’t balanced, you get the same achievement points from falling off a stupid cliff as you get from defeating the end boss on the hardest mode.

The way achievement points are designed isn’t about which achievements are more important, it’s about how many of those achievements a person does. Why? Because the importance and value of an achievement is subjective to each and every player, a player like me doesn’t give 2 kittens about legendary items but i do value my progress in WvW.

You shouldn’t be seeing achievement points as the reason you get your legendary, the legendary is the reason you got it, the achievement points are just there because you (person A) achieved something different from person B.

Tobbygnome.6793:

The way achievement points are designed isn’t about which achievements are more important, it’s about how many of those achievements a person does. Why? Because the importance and value of an achievement is subjective to each and every player, a player like me doesn’t give 2 kittens about legendary items but i do value my progress in WvW.

A very valid point but in a sense it only strengthens my argument. Given that WvW achievement point rewards are perhaps the ones which are most out of synch with the others in terms of the amount of time and effort they take to earn – why shouldn’t you as a player who enjoys WvW be given a reward which equates to the time and effort you spent playing? WvW rewards which may make your game more enjoyable were specifically mentioned for the system and given the difficulty of amassing achievement points in WvW, the imbalance in the system is not rewarding your efforts.

Balancing the points is indeed a secondary request. Thats not so important.
But putting rewards for achievement points sets a new scenario in which daily quests should not make part of.
An achievement should be earned for an achievement, not for any dayli basis gameplay. Well, sometimes you can earn some point by long term simple gameplay, like finishing the personal story, fully exploring an area or the entire world. But not for gathering the same blueberries everyday for 1 year….

I dont understand why people are so terrified of the idea of reducing the AP from dailies.
The system is obviously flawed. Dailies shouldn’t give more AP than a maxed slayer achievement or weapon mastery.

If its broken it needs to be fixed end of story, calculate your losses and move on.
Seriously I haven’t seen this amount of illogical arguments since I left the LoL community.

Because thinking achievement points equate to the amount of time and effort you put into the game is exactly the opposite way of thinking about them. There is no ‘balancing’ achievement points because achievement points were never designed to be ‘balanced’ at any stage in the system.

If you want lots of achievement points, you go do a bunch of easy random different things that you’ve never done before, not the same thing x500 times a day.

Why don’t we just leave aside the meaning of the word “achievement” and think of those points another way?

The rewards should be tied to the achievement points, not the ones you get from dailies.

Doesn’t it seem wrong that you can get the maximum achievement point rewards without ever actually having achieved anything just by doing enough dailies?

Thats exactly the point ZudetGambeous.
The actual system should be named differently, something like:

“persistent points” – meaning you play the game a lot, or for a long time, and thus, have more points.

or

“Activity Points” – Meaning you do a lot of things while playing instead of just standing there chatting with people, and thus, have more points.

Achievement point don’t fit with this kind of thing

brunobyof.3541:

Thats exactly the point ZudetGambeous.
The actual system should be named differently, something like:

“persistent points” – meaning you play the game a lot, or for a long time, and thus, have more points.

or

“Activity Points” – Meaning you do a lot of things while playing instead of just standing there chatting with people, and thus, have more points.

Achievement point don’t fit with this kind of thing

I think we are awarded enough for dailies already. Gold, Karma, achievement points, Coins, Experience, Laurels. No single activity in the game rewards as much as dailies do.

The point of this system is supposedly to award achievements, which it currently won’t do unless dailies are removed. If the devs want to reward dailies more they would have called this a daily reward system mk2, but I don’t think that’s what they were going for by the sound of it.

So, you basically want to make it impossible for PvP or WvW-only people to ever unlock the rewards?

There are extremely few ways to get achievement points in WvW, other than daily/monthly, and those that you can get takes ages.
Same with PvP really.

lordkrall.7241:

So, you basically want to make it impossible for PvP or WvW-only people to ever unlock the rewards?

There are extremely few ways to get achievement points in WvW, other than daily/monthly, and those that you can get takes ages.
Same with PvP really.

That is a separate problem entirely. The solution should never be to let one problem mask another, that’s just poor game design.

WvW points should be reworked to be more feasible and less time consuming, however I don’t expect WvW only people to unlock all the rewards. It is an achievement reward system. If they ignore 90% of the game and only play 10% of the game then they should only get 10% of the rewards from the system. Only a player who earns points from all aspects of the game should have enough achievements to unlock all the rewards.

if you could earn 100% of the rewards from only playing a tiny portion of the game then it wouldn’t be much of an achievement system. A solution would possibly be to separate the rewards into WvW/PvE/PvP so you need to unlock a certain number of points in each category in order to unlock the rewards for that category.

lordkrall.7241:

So, you basically want to make it impossible for PvP or WvW-only people to ever unlock the rewards?

There are extremely few ways to get achievement points in WvW, other than daily/monthly, and those that you can get takes ages.
Same with PvP really.

No man, thats not what we want. If you like to spend your time in GW2 playing only WvW, it should be ok, and there you should be properly rewarded as well as a player that only do PvE or any other that do both.

The thing is: Different tasks should reward you different things. Daylies are completely different from achievements, and completely different from WvW kills for example or taking keeps

There are few ways on WvW yes, but there you should be able to earn some things that PvE-only players will never unlock, and vice-versa.
It should encourage people of doing every kind of gameplay.

If not this way, people won’t have fun completing a difficult task just to have it done, because there will be other ways to earn these same points, but much easier, losing the meaning of achievement,you understand it now?

There are lots of people who spend huge amounts of time doing boring things just to have a “differential” from the average players, something to make them feel a completionist, or a powerfull or active player, or a really adventurer player.

But with the actual system of rewards for daylies, this goes to trash and turn achievements into something trivial like earning gold or karma, where you just need to do the same things you like, or the things that you can do faster, and have a lucrative activity in-game. But wait, there is already several ways of doing this!

Can I add my humble thoughts to this?

I’m a player that currently has 4,3k achievement points and I’ve noticed that the rate in which you gain achievement points slows down a lot from 3k on. Players with 3k+ achievement points have a great deal of the easy achievements completed and are now bound to doing the rather kittenes, that cost a lot of effort and money to complete.

Again, as with the WvW ranks they will give us the rewards for these achievements retro-actively… which means players with a high amount of achievement points will have a very hard time actually getting any reward at all, because all the easy achievements have been completed by them.

I will create a new thread about this and hope people see the truth in these words and decide it is not for the best they make these rewards retro-actively. My suggestion: make the achievement points a currency instead of ‘gaining stuff while getting them’. Players have played this game from the start and gathered achievement points, it’s only fair that they get their due, without having to do the extra hard achievements.

Thanks for reading and hope you agree.

Most achievements are fine, and the ones with absurd numbers like Weapon Master aren’t really intended that you sit around specifically trying to complete them (more just an incidental reward for using particular weapons over time that you would eventually automatically complete), but yes, the WvW achievements and the titles that go along with them are all but unattainable for the average player, and it may very well take YEARS for even the dedicated ones to finish any of those categories.

Other things like why the “consume food” achievement caps at 800 but the “drink things” one takes 100,000 (for exactly the same amount of points) are kind of baffling (and killing 1,000 giants for the giant slayer category when there are like… 2 giants that count and they’re both champions? Egad.), but for the most part I don’t really see a problem with how things are weighted.

This isn’t a zero sum game people – yeah, there are folks like me with crazy achievement point totals, and the wording of this announcement does seem to indicate that I will in fact get more rewards than you will, but you have to remember that the reason for that is I HAVE MORE POINTS. Which you can get – if you have 4.3k or so and play regularly, you will eventually get to where I’m at now; I’ll have long since got an even higher number that you will pretty much never ever ever be able to catch up to unless I die or stop logging in, but the point is that my having more achievement points than you do doesn’t prevent you from getting ANY rewards at all.

People with ridiculous achievement totals would just get the reward tiers unlocked FASTER, they don’t somehow prevent the non-overachievers from getting rewards. As for the complaints about how WvW achievements are weighted (and how ridiculous the numbers are for completing them), I sympathize, but only to a certain point – if you’re one of those folks who thinks they should only ever have to WvW and that ANet shouldn’t expect them to have to do anything else, but of course you also want to be rewarded like the folks who, you know, do the other things, well that’s just silly (they do need to add a reliable and not “one-off” method for getting ascended back items that isn’t fractals still, but that’s another matter).

i agree that some of the higher wvw tiers should give more achievement points. however, in the case of newer players vs older players and dailies, i think the system is perfect.