Guild Wars 2

Hello ArenaNet, I would like to start by saying, I’ve enjoyed this game from the entirety of your betas up until now and will probably do so for a long time to come. I would also like to remark on the amazing work you guys keep pulling off as far as innovative and new material content is concerned as well as the customer support/awareness you guys provide. In addition to this, because as I’m sure most can agree that nothing is ever fully perfect at all times, I’d like to offer something that I’ve seen lots of games do but very few master, and yes…it’s as the title mentions.

Now I’m not guaranteeing everyone will like these suggestions as this is solely my oppinion at the moment, which is why I’m posting it here, so as to have helpful feedback and improvements on brainstorming on suggested notions. Lets get started.

Now I honestly believe that if you achieve something in life, you achieve it because there’s usually an ulterior motive to it. Usually it’s more than just doing it because you did it. Like say going to work/school. Normally most people don’t go to college or work just to say, “Look at me I did it! I went to college/work!” We do it, or achieve it, because there’s skills, knowledge and resources we hope to gain from it. Likewiwse, achievements should feel the same. How to do this? Well, have them:

*Give a reward of some sort that has meaning. An item, currency, tokens, a secondary option to gaining legendary materials, all of the afformentioned.

*Give a permanent stat bonus(es) increase.

*Unlock extra passive tallents or passive trees to boost character/class-specific abilities depending on the achievement.

*Benefit guilds and guild members, or server and server members upon ulocking or activation.

*Unlock faction specific access to special events, equipment, items, fun stuff.

*Unlock titles that provide your character with meaningful buffs and unlock powers that can be shared universally with others. (This can even go further as to giving special visual effects similar to legendary weapons upon activation for the individual character or the effected squad/party/collection of people.)

Any or all of these could work, and reason being why I feel it would be in the best interest for any game development department to want to do this would be because it encourages community involvement in accomplishing goals that are personal and helpful to one another. Who wouldn’t want to help someone who would be able to gain something in return for what would be accomplished for something as personal as an achievement? Something which the game would provide to all participating players. This is mainly why I chose to share this idea. Now I’m not omnipotent nor a self-appointed masterful genius, so constructive feedback from other players as well as the design team is always welcome in which you guys would think they/we could better improve this feature of an already amazing and magnificent game. Thank you for your patience, interest and time everyone.

Personally, I would like to see the back of achievements altogether. Along with DRM and season/online passes, they have come to epitomise what is wrong with current-gen gaming. Achievements are little more than bragging rights or a means to control the player experience instead of allowing the player to freely explore and play the games themselves.

/rant

Actually I was thinking more of something along the lines of a mechanic that would encourage, “LFG for ‘x’ achievement.” as a communal thing that would hopefully unify more players than sepperate/make them feel to compete against one another. Immagine people pulling together to help out one another because they both can benifit from something useful obtained in the achievement.

The problem with adding things like stat bonuses, unlockable equipment (other than skins) and additional passive talent trees as a reward is that it would cause all sorts of balancing issues, unless your intention is for these awards to remain in PvE. For PvP, it would give an unfair advantage to grinders with a lot of time on their hands over more casual players who only have a few hours a week but who enjoy PvP.

Well yes, my intentions were for PvE. Solely for that, and possibly for WvWvW but they already have things like ranking, so PvE is probably the only thing I can see this being useful for.

uknortherner.2670:

The problem with adding things like stat bonuses, unlockable equipment (other than skins) and additional passive talent trees as a reward is that it would cause all sorts of balancing issues, unless your intention is for these awards to remain in PvE. For PvP, it would give an unfair advantage to grinders with a lot of time on their hands over more casual players who only have a few hours a week but who enjoy PvP.

How do grinders get achievement points? you get achievements when you play all the content in this game ( races, dungeons, when you craft or explorate ). How you should get Points if you are grinding for weeks at the same spot. (Look at all these 1k-2k Ac-Point Accounts in front of The citadel of flame.) I would really welcome a reward for your expenditure, which really is earned, because you played the whole game to get it. You need to keep in mind, that an MMO was, is and will always be very time consuming (and that is what most players want). Look on the other side: Is it fair to set those players, who spent alot more time playing, on the same level as some casual gamers? I don’t think so :P So if you have a problem with investing hundreds of hours into such a game, you are at the wrong genre i guess.

This sounds a whole lot like the PvE skills that were unlocked in GW1, and I would rather it not exist in the game.

I REALLY don’t understand why alllll the new games have achievements and think gamers give a kitten. Build an interesting world for us to explore and tough things to kill. The conquering and looting is achievement enough. I don’t need your hollow points to validate my gaming.

kodesh.2851:

I REALLY don’t understand why alllll the new games have achievements and think gamers give a kitten. Build an interesting world for us to explore and tough things to kill. The conquering and looting is achievement enough. I don’t need your hollow points to validate my gaming.

Well then you don’t have to play games to aim for the achievements. The fact is ach. are in games for several reasons, it is a good way to track progress, find what you are missing, some are humourous and for the most part, for a lot of current gamers it is a way of keeping them interested in playing a game even after a new shiny comes out for them. Achievements do not hurt you, why would you bother complaining about something that is pretty much optional, you can avoid most of them and they don’t take anything from your gaming experience but they do add to others.

Saint Nicholas.2685:

I would also like to remark on the amazing work you guys keep pulling off [snip] as well as the customer support/awareness you guys provide.

I have to ask, is this troll thread?

Saint Nicholas.2685:

*Give a reward of some sort that has meaning. An item, currency, tokens, a secondary option to gaining legendary materials, all of the afformentioned.
*Give a permanent stat bonus(es) increase.
*Unlock extra passive tallents or passive trees to boost character/class-specific abilities depending on the achievement.
*Benefit guilds and guild members, or server and server members upon ulocking or activation.
*Unlock faction specific access to special events, equipment, items, fun stuff.
*Unlock titles that provide your character with meaningful buffs and unlock powers that can be shared universally with others. (This can even go further as to giving special visual effects similar to legendary weapons upon activation for the individual character or the effected squad/party/collection of people.)

• Why? Let’s face it, if you could get an easier Legendary by getting an achievement, it wouldn’t change anything, people would still complain about “being forced to grind”. Specific tokens should stay in those specific places, otherwise they lose their meaning. A reward akin to what we get for completing a map might be appropriate: some currency, karma, exp and some itemry related to it.
• No, no no. You should never do something like that. That’s no different from a gear treadmill.
• No, no no. Again, that’d be a treadmill where the people who play significantly more than others get better results. And that’s not fair.
• We already have that in WvW, and if you take a look at the bonuses, they’re miniscule, whereas there are HUNDREDS of people in WvW. So you would end up with something like 0.0000000000000000000000000001% more gold per achievement per player on server. And that’s not going to make you nor anyone else feel any better.
• Why should a guild get benefits from the achievements of their individual players? That just promotes guilds into grinding achievements.
• No, for the same reason as you should not get permanent stat boost.

Bad suggestions.

You need to realize something. You’re looking at the achievements from the wrong perspective. They’re not something you do for the rewards, you do them for the activity itself. The achievements are like personal challenges that you can take on. For example, you could go “kitten it, I’m going to live on 50 silver every day until I have over 200 gold”.

kodesh.2851:

I REALLY don’t understand why alllll the new games have achievements and think gamers give a kitten. Build an interesting world for us to explore and tough things to kill. The conquering and looting is achievement enough. I don’t need your hollow points to validate my gaming.

There is all sorts of different “motivators”, intrinsic and extrinsic ones, Different personalities respond to different motivators. Doing something for achievement points / collecting / score is just one of them, and for some people it really works as a motivator.

Achievement points (not the points themselves, rather the checkbox on my character sheet – my to do list) are what pushed me to complete jumping puzzles which otherwise I would have given up on, motivated me to check out new classes and crafts and maps and activities (PvP, WvW, keg brawls, costume brawls…) I just happen to be very responsive to this sort of motivator.

You might not be, but people are different. MMOs incorporate different motivators to be inclusive; there’s nothing wrong with that.

Olba.5376:

• Why should a guild get benefits from the achievements of their individual players? That just promotes guilds into grinding achievements.

What is wrong with that? It makes your guild work together to help it’s members and as long as it gives a benefit that does not give it an advantage there should be no problem with it.

Achievements are simple to set up and require no further dev time. They provide an activity to people who voluntarily choose to engage.

Adding rewards would be encouraging grinding behavior and would lessen peoples enjoyment of the game.

Bad suggestion.

If you don’t like achievements then don’t work towards achievements, and don’t try to destroy a system that a large number of people like by tying rewards to it. Laurels were bad enough.

Well, we already get reward points for completing achievements, it’s just that right now we can’t buy anything with them; it has been stated though that this is likely to change in the future and they will be put to a practical use, whatever that may be (similar to laurels, I imagine?)

uknortherner.2670:

Personally, I would like to see the back of achievements altogether. Along with DRM and season/online passes, they have come to epitomise what is wrong with current-gen gaming. Achievements are little more than bragging rights or a means to control the player experience instead of allowing the player to freely explore and play the games themselves.

/rant

Rant is right.

Achievements are ways to encourage players to do certain things and to reward them for doing them. Some of those things are things they may want to do anyways, some aren’t. You don’t need to get the achievements, so if you do it that was on you, no one made you. IF you want to freely explore and play the game yourself, no one is stopping you, and you might get some achievements for doing that too.

They are exactly for bragging right. To say, check out what I did, and to compare experiences. How exactly is that a bad thing?

I don’t think that anybody is interested in my achievements, so I don’t see how that’d be helpful to any bragging I might or might not do, but I do find it very satisfying to look at my lists and see orange bars.

They’re not there for bragging rights. I don’t suspect that, “How many acheivement point do you have? Oh I have this much! Neener neener!” comes up very often between guildmates, friends, etc.

Acheivements are time sinks for completionist players when there is no other content that interests them. They need to be retuned so that they don’t feel like a waste of time.

5,000 warhorn kills? Yea.. no thanks..

Wow I like the feedback. Not what I honestly expected, but it sure did bring to light a certain OTHER problem that seems to be the issue or concern with achievements, and that is they feel “grindy.” So far the concerns of approximately 3 people were feeling “forced grind” from my suggestion(s), of which my suggestion(s) don’t seem to cover or address a solution towards. I could be wrong and if I am, then tell me what the real issue or concern is.

Also this wasn’t intended to add grind to the game, nor make it so that you “HAVE TO” do these achievements. I don’t know where some of the responders are getting the notion that I’m trying to promote “forced achievement accomplishment.” Nothing in what I suggested says, “Players will be forced to do ‘x’ from ‘y’ suggestion.” I simply meant this to be a point towards spicing up the achievements side, which in essence are and would be (and please audience focus on this part) STILL OPTIONAL. I brought this up because like some of you which responded I also agree that achievements, for the most part, seem like lack-luster optional wastes of time. Do not get me wrong. I would still like to see the achievements remain a side option, but enticing to say the least. Heck even certain developers in console games decided to make achievements worthwile (inb4 flamewars “LOL CONSOLE ACHIEVMENTS THIS R MMO FORUM FOR MMO GAME! NOOB! NO UR PLAYSSSEZZZ”) the point still remains. If console developers (who also develop for pc might I add) can get the idea to make achievements in certain games grant you an overall rewarding bonus, then why not have something similar in an mmo? Now if none of the suggestions I have listed are to your fancy, then please, by all means try to help constructively give something in return, other than, “NO STUPID IDEA. IT SUX LULZ.” Honestly, if you’re going to do that, then why post?

None the less, the issues are still at hand. Achievements still should feel like side options that are less grindy, and should also be rewarding in some way. Personally I feel it could go beyond just the light of “and just doing it was rewarding enough,” but if others don’t feel that way, then perhaps the achievements should/could be redirected to doing things that are rather challenging, like forcefully getting your character stuck in a wall (that part was a joke), or more serriously, “downing ‘x’ bosses in 5 mins or less” instead of “do ‘x’ thing 100000000 times.” Anyways, regardless of the oppinions, I do appreciate that people did decide to comment, and I still look forward to seeing what other ideas people could come up with to make this game better. (hint: Just saying, “no (x) idea sucks, here’s why” without giving any ways to make it better isn’t constructive at all. Yes you guessed it, I’m actively requesting help from people who want to brainstorm a little.) For those that decide to post further, thanks again for your time and feedback.

Saint Nicholas.2685:

[snip] the idea to make achievements in certain games grant you an overall rewarding bonus, then why not have something similar in an mmo?

Because most MMOs, GW2 is included in that, are all about gear treadmills whether they want to be or not. This game is plagued by elitists in several places and players are already turned away from CoF if you are not in full zerk gear or you must be fractal 30+ to join fractal teams. If you put in a way to buff your stats permanently then that will be the new demand. it does not matter if it is an achievement or optional, it is in the game which means elitists will require it for all future runs. Your idea is a gear treadmill, that is why people are against it.