Guild Wars 2

I’m enjoying this chapter of the living story, but I’ve noticed that there are a lot of achievements for players who leech group events. This is very detrimental to cooperation, and I hope this isn’t a sign of a new direction for achievements. As a commander who is trying to help everyone succeed, these are all very frustrating.

• Bigger, But Not Faster – Successfully dodge every assault knight’s Extraction attack.
  • Players looking to get this achievement won’t join the fight until the last 10% so that they don’t have to dodge much.
• No More Tricks, Scarlet – Defeat Scarlet’s Prime Hologram without being hit by lasers or their lingering scorch marks.
  • Players just stand off to the side and leech this whole fight to get this achievement.
• In Tune – While fighting Scarlet’s Prime Hologram, never hit a hologram without the respective attunement.
  • Players hit the main hologram a few times and then leech the rest of the match because they don’t want to accidentally hit any holograms with the wrong attunement.
• Keep Your Distance – Defeat the Aetherblade Admiral without being hit by her teleport attack.
  • Players hit the Aetherblade Admiral enough to get credit and then stay out of range to get the achievement
• Light Show – Kill the Aether Cannoneer without being hit by the Aetherblade Megalaser
  • Coordinating against this boss involves kiting him into the megalaser. Players show up just for the achievement, and run away from the megalaser, preventing the cannoneer from getting hit by it. Most of those players also refuse to stop using projectiles while he is reflecting, so they constantly down the few players who are actually trying to kite the cannoneer. This results in the only players not getting the achievement are the few who actually caused the event to succeed.

It’s no worse than WvW Season 1 – telling everyone to waste supplies instead of fighting.

Seriously though, Anet need to sort out their idea of achievements… so many of them are like this, or are temporary and either difficult/out of the player’s control.

Hey! Thanks for telling me how to get those achievements I thought I was never going to get!!

Joking… Joking… I saw those achievements, and I looked at my RAM (my Boyfriend stole/borrowed 4gigs of my ram!) and the lag I have been getting when in LA for the last two events, and just said Fook it.. I’m not even going to try them

Best guide ever.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

• No More Tricks, Scarlet – Defeat Scarlet’s Prime Hologram without being hit by lasers or their lingering scorch marks.
  • Players just stand off to the side and leech this whole fight to get this achievement.

This is a terrible achievement to try to get.

Ive tried it a few times, and to continue to try to get it i would have been putting nothing into the fight, nothing to help the team. You get pinned in by the lasers so you have no way to get all the colours you need (or you might get one colour and do 33% of normal damage) sometimes you might be able to run through the middle (under scarlets legs) but when i have done that i didnt get the achi, (is that why?)

You either make a bee-line for the colour you need or it will be gone by the time you get there, sometimes a colour will disappear when you’re mere inches from it, so you run to the next place and it will disappear as you approach that one too.

This achi really does limit the damage you do, you’re pinned in then have to wait a few seconds more after the scorch mark has gone (because it still counts against you) so for the whole fight you’re doing a tiny amount of damage.

This doesn’t promote team work at all and should not be in there.

To a degree, I think it cannot truly be fixed. It’s simply not possible to perfectly “protect” every achievement against players wanting to be kittens.

And that’s the bigger issue in the end, that you’ll always have players being idiots, and you rarely have a way to do something about it (you can’t kill their chars).

What I do think should be done however is that Leeching and AFKing should be reportable offences, and combat credit should be a decaying thing.

All of the achievements can be done by using a single AoE and walking away. I got the Light Show achievement while collecting heirlooms and all I did was hit the cannoneer a few times as it chased me. 20 minutes later while on the opposite side of the map I got gold and achievement complete.

The contribution system is simply broken. If they’re going to have achievements like this, they first need to fix contribution to ensure everyone is doing a certain amount of damage comparable to the average of everyone participating. Passing the contribution check would be a requirement for any achievements.

They already do something like this. My wife never gets credit for events/champions when she plays her Mesmer or Necro and I’ll get Gold for firing off a single Barrage or dropping an Elemental as I run past to explore other parts of the map. Perhaps contribution time and player location should factor into it somehow as well. It would suck if the only people who get credit for these things are the zerking Warrior/Guardian/Thief that are up close and started the event (thereby jacking up the average damage)

Yea, this is pretty much the case. I made the mistake of actually trying on a lot of fights and as a result am still several achievements to get the meta on the last day.

The cut scene/story from this patch was cool, but the actual gameplay changes have left a pretty bitter taste in my mouth.

I think the gameplay was incredible, but I must admit that the achievement design seems shaky

Carighan.6758:

To a degree, I think it cannot truly be fixed. It’s simply not possible to perfectly “protect” every achievement against players wanting to be kittens.

And that’s the bigger issue in the end, that you’ll always have players being idiots, and you rarely have a way to do something about it (you can’t kill their chars).

What I do think should be done however is that Leeching and AFKing should be reportable offences, and combat credit should be a decaying thing.

Yes it absolutely is. Don’t make achievements in which the optimal course is to not participate. Instead make achievements that involve getting hit by things. Instead of avoiding the megalaser attack, get hit by it and survive. That’s how you fix it.

Leeching and AFKing should not EVER be reportable. They should simply not be rewarded. You can’t and shouldn’t force people to participate, but you absolutely can make it so that a lack of participation leads to nothing.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Carighan.6758:

To a degree, I think it cannot truly be fixed. It’s simply not possible to perfectly “protect” every achievement against players wanting to be kittens.

And that’s the bigger issue in the end, that you’ll always have players being idiots, and you rarely have a way to do something about it (you can’t kill their chars).

What I do think should be done however is that Leeching and AFKing should be reportable offences, and combat credit should be a decaying thing.

Yes it absolutely is. Don’t make achievements in which the optimal course is to not participate. Instead make achievements that involve getting hit by things. Instead of avoiding the megalaser attack, get hit by it and survive. That’s how you fix it.

Leeching and AFKing should not EVER be reportable. They should simply not be rewarded. You can’t and shouldn’t force people to participate, but you absolutely can make it so that a lack of participation leads to nothing.

Okay… so instead of people coming in for the last 10% of the fight, they get hit by something right away, then go into the corner and AFK. Now, you’ve simply shifted their “contribution” from the end of the fight to the start.

People who seek the path of least resistance aren’t going to change their stripes because you changed the rules. They’ll just game the system in a different way. You have fixed NOTHING with your proposed changes. Kittens will be kittens no matter what you do.

Leech Wars 2 \o/

Achievement Leeching isn’t the issue. Achievements are a simple one shot thing. Now the loot leeching that’s taking place is a REAL problem. We’ve had naked players leeching blue knight all day and all week. They know they’ll get rezzed during the fight. They are using Rangers with auto attacks to get a tag and defend themselves while afk all day. More than likely they’re using a script to auto loot too. In the past two weeks they could easily have earned over 200 gold for basically botting the knight fight. That kind of leeching is a real problem. Anet really should have had people monitoring LA to weed these people out.

The achievements do require that the event succeeds. Want to get In Tune? Sure, you can stand back and basically do no damage, but you’d better hope that very few others are going for it or else your group will simply fail to beat the Hologram.

Frankly, in any group event, some are going to be contributing more than others. Maybe one knows the fight better. Maybe someone had a long way to run, or wasn’t waiting around all day, and simply did show up late. Should they be penalised? It may be that the fully-geared LB ranger standing at 1500 and auto-attacking contributes more than the low-levelled mesmer trying every trick he knows just to get credit (trust me, I missed my share of world events when levelling my mesmer, cause things died so fast back then). And sure, people leech. But it’s unavoidable that some players are more helpful than others.

The problem is not quite in achievements. The problem is the reluctance of people to play fair. Yes, some of achievements have little issues, but not that big as you complain.
I complete all achievements, except “Six Minutes to Knightfall”, WITHOUT leeching or AFKing in the corner, despite on the huge slideshow that I have due to low spec of my PC. It’s not devs fault that some people do not know how to control their characters in different circumstances, or too lazy for this.