Guild Wars 2

Hello ArenaNet and any player reading this!

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, so now I’ll suggest it and see if I’m alone in this. I apologize if this has been posted a million times already, I tried to search the forums for achievements and oddly enough found nothing. Anyway…

MMORPGs have been the game genre I’ve played the most, and I absolutely love this game for shaking things up and making us see exactly what we’ve been missing this entire time! Unfortunately it kinda works the opposite way as well, and while there is very very few areas I can point out that grabs my attention, the Achievement system is the biggest sinner:
I’ve always loved achievements, and I simply can’t get enough of it. Hunting obscure achievements is some of the most fun I’ve had in games. However, in Guild Wars 2 I find a severe lack of both achievements and some quality-of-life options for the achievement panel. To name some of them:

Make the achievement panel hotkey-able
It is very frustrating having to go through hero panel every time, and I don’t see why this has to be at all. While I was searching the hotkey editor I noticed that this is the same for most, if not all, sub-panels in the game – they are simply not hotkey-able. I think it would give the game a much better flow, interface-wise (I’m just calling it interface, I don’t know if there’s a better word for these panels), in the game, if the players were able to choose their hotkeys for the sub-panels as well. The fewer clicks needed, the happier I (and hopefully many other players) will be!

Make the achievement panel remember what you were looking at
This, I feel, is especially important, as I check the achievement panel every time I’m not doing anything (i.e. running from one place to another) but I have to close down the window when I get into a fight or change zone, and it is veeery tedious to go through the entire ‘rotation’ every time: Hero panel —> Achievement panel --> whatever menu I was in —> submenu --> scroll down to the achievement —> Click on the achievement to be able to see what I need in total across all tiers of the achievement. Which brings us to the next point:

Make it easier to see the total amount of progress needed across all tiers
I’m not gonna write much here, as I noticed a thread yesterday suggesting the same, and Chrury (the author) pretty much hit the nail on the head:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Achievement-Progress-at-a-Glance

Allow us to link achievements
This one is a bit more… delicate, as I see both positive and negative sides to it. Let’s start with the negative so you’ll hopefully forget them when you finish the post:
There’s a chance (sadly a very real one) that the tendency from a certain other very big MMORPG will come here, namely the elitist attitude linked with linking (hehehee) achievements. I really dislike the entire elitist atmosphere, and I would much rather play with a bunch of cheerful noobs than pessimistic kittens that’ll do whatever it takes to suck the enjoyment out of everything (sorry for the rant).

HOWEVER, as I enjoy bragging about doing obscure achievements almost as much as hunting them, I miss the ability to link an achievement to my guild or friends saying “YES, I FINALLY DID IT! <achievement>”. This will also help people remember achievement names, so I don’t have to explain in detail what the achievement was all about. This grows even better when you finish killing one million dolyaks and can link you freaking YAKSLAPPER title to EVERYONE!

While we’re on the subject of linking stuff in chat, we really lack the ability to link stuff from the chat, from the trading post, vendors, basically anywhere that is not our inventory or equipped gear.

We need more random achievements
As I said earlier, I very much enjoy running around hunting achievements. It seems, though, that the majority of the achievements in Guild Wars 2 requires hours upon hours of farming to complete. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good thing they’re in the game, as many of them run ‘in the background’. However, when most of the achievements are like this, it takes most of the fun out of hunting them, as I personally (and I know I’m not alone in this) do not enjoy farming the same thing over and over with the goal so very very far away, with little to no visible progress.

I know I’ll probably not be very popular with the WvWvW community by saying this, but I very much like the addition of WvW seasons with achievements. And before everyone starts raging, I do still sit on TS and follow the commander and don’t go off alone for no good reason! But it makes it much more enjoyable to sit in WvW for hours on end, when I have a goal more than ‘just’ winning (as I do not personally tip the scales – I can easily be replaced by any other) or the insanely impossible usual WvWvW achievements.

What I feel the game needs, is more achievements like those in the Explorer tab: The scritt burglar ones, the ones where you feed a random NPC gryphon, read plaques throughout Lion’s Arch, read the entire series of a book in-game, clean every poster in a city in the same day. These are the achievements I enjoy the bleep out of!
I’ve even thought of some that I think could definitely be implemented:

Can’t touch this
Avoid taking damage from 6 attacks with a single dodge.

The amount of attacks is just a filler, but it is an achievement that really should be implemented in a game that uses this dodge system.

The bear and the maiden fair
Enjoy the fuzzy company at the campfire.

There’s a bear sitting at a campfire in one of the Kryta zones, and I almost fell out of my chair laughing when I first saw it. It should definitely be an achievement to sit down next to it (it might be necessary to make it friendly, so that it doesn’t try to eat you).

Everything’s under control!
Survive (something) with less than x% hp

This could be from fall damage, one of the temple events, or it could even be dodging 6 attacks with one dodge while your hp is less than the threshold.

Buh-bye
Push x players to their death

This one is for PvP, where you simply have to push people over an edge so they die from fall damage.

Lord of the Dance
Break out into dance with one of each race/class

Using the /dance * function.

King of the Mountain
Ascend to the highest point on Mount Maelstrom

Witty title about rainbows
You spotted the rainbow!

Put a rainbow somewhere at a specific time of the day.

Free falling
Weeeeeeeeeeee splat

Fall and die from some high point in the world

Serial picnicist
Share a picnic with each of the classes/races

This one would require a picnic basket to be implemented in the game, though. Doesn’t have to be a picnic basket, it can be a wineglass and you make a toast. Serial toaster, wouldn’t that be nice?

A drink with the queen
Make a toast for the queen

Same as above, but with the queen in Divinity’s Reach (or with each of the major people in the world, Caithe, Rytlock, Eir, etc.)

Stop hitting yourself
Make x enemies kill themselves

This can be done using either projectile reflect or retaliation.

Pet whisperer
Tame every type of pet in the world

This is a ranger only, and I think there should be some class specific achievements as well, more than just doing specific personal story chapters. For example an engineer one, Hot stuff, where they have to kill one of each kind of enemy with the flamethrower.

Temple master
Defeat every temple in Orr

Pretty self explanatory.

Size doesn’t matter
Defeat every world boss (perhaps in a day)

Anyway, this was all the points I could think of just now, thank you for reading and congratulations to anyone who got through it all, sorry for the massive wall of text! Please leave comments regarding the topics (no hate on the WvWvW part)!