Guild Wars 2

So, assuming you decided to make a legendary weapon yourself, you’d normally need to grind to get a series of items and gifts, including the Gift of Battle which costs 500 Badges of Honor.

Am I the only one left absolutely flabbergasted that ArenaNet has decided to hand out free badges through the achievement rewards system? What about those of us who had to grind WvW to get these? Most people already have more than enough achievement points to get hundreds of free badges without EVER having to do any WvW! It’s like randomly handing out specific dungeon tokens to people who don’t have the faintest idea what a dungeon is!

Not only is this unfair, but I also think it will decrease WvW participation, as most people will already have the badges they need.

Yep I have like nearly a thousand now (had a stack or 2 from actually doing you know WvW. I’m actually at the point where I dont want to open any more chests incase they decide to remove the Badges and put something more useful in that I might miss out on if I keep opening them!

So Anet Time to remove them and put something better in. Thanks

I’ve done like no WvW and I now have well enough for the gift. While I won’t say no to free badges I too was pretty amazed at this decision. Now I definetly have no reason to go WvW, and they’re trying to get people out there…But then I thought, if you hand out some freebies some people will buy some stuff, wet their apetite. They’ll run out of badges and need more…Admittedly, it’s a silly reasoning but it’s the only plausible :p

First of all it’s not randomly handed out. It is rewarded through ACHIEVEMENT chests. Personally I think this was a wonderful idea considering there are players who don’t care for PVP that are forced into PVP for a legendary weapon that they will never use in PVP. Getting achievements is a much better investment if time than running around zeroing for weeks. You have no reason to complain. If YOU. Want YOUR badges through WvW then play WvW but don’t bash a new method because it wasn’t around when you were farming.

Zorby.8236:

I’ve done like no WvW and I now have well enough for the gift. While I won’t say no to free badges I too was pretty amazed at this decision. Now I definetly have no reason to go WvW, and they’re trying to get people out there…But then I thought, if you hand out some freebies some people will buy some stuff, wet their apetite. They’ll run out of badges and need more…Admittedly, it’s a silly reasoning but it’s the only plausible :p

Well, it wouldn’t be a totally silly reasoning if they handed out 50 badges in total for instance, if they really really had to! But hundreds!?

I’m not against handing badges with the chests, but I think it’s been done in a absurd quantity. I’ve got 300 badges. I’m not gonna rant about how I got my 500 for the legendary just killing people because I suck hard at JPs, because I had fun getting those badges anyway, but the main problem is that badges have a very limited use in the game.

this is so stupid, first, for the gift of mastery you also need the gift of exploration, that means map completion, even wvwvw map.
second, you could grind badges by jumping and if you are lucky you don’t even need to fight while jumping.
so what’s the point of this rage towards the badges of honor?
have you the slightest idea of how many things a player need to craft a legendary?
500 badges it’s really nothing and most of all no new player will have those anytime soon.

Honestly, I don’t think it’s bad that they’re throwing this many tokens at us. It’s simply bad because we’re getting them all immediately.

Remember, these rewards are taken out of context for us players that have thousands of AP.

Try to look at these rewards for players just starting the game. It’ll take them a while to hit 100 and by then they might be still figuring out they’re “mains” profession. Hence: starter chest with gathering tools and a bag (also more boosters then other chests).

Now, they’ve been playing for a while, probably about 50-100 hours at this point. They finally made it to 500 achievement points. Oh, what’s this? We just got this new thing called Badges of Honor and Blueprints? Maybe I should figure out what to do with them.

Introduction to WvW complete (not really because most players won’t actually do that, but… whatever).

Now, you’ve been playing for nearly 100-150 hours. Note: By now, if you’ve been sticking to one character, you should be nearing 80 if not 80 already. You’re at 1,000 Achievement Points. My favorite weapon is X, so I get Zenith X skin. Oh, I also get some more of that WvW stuff, and what’s this? A PvP Chest? Let’s figure out how to use that!

Insert introduction to sPvP.

From there, it becomes a routine reward, but it’s not something players get everyday.

Remember, if you count living story, you get ~900 AP every month (assuming you do EVERYTHING). This means that you get 1 chest every other week, give or take a few days. So getting 100/200 Badges of Honor (average 150 per chest, not including the super crazy chests that will probably give 300+) every 2 weeks of hardcore grind wars 2 (getting every achievement, INCLUDING WVW DAILY ACHIEVEMENTS) is quite reasonable.

Also keep in mind that the final chest, for now, is at 10,000 AP.

So, all in all, the Badges of Honor are ridiculous when being gained on a daily basis due to the retroactive part of this system, but when taken in the correct context of the system, it’s reasonable.

tl;r: Chests give an average of 10.7 Badges of Honor per day if you do every daily/monthly.

You make an excellent point Esplen

People can and should (in my honest opinion) apply my point to these chests in general.

No, they are not causing inflation. Yes they do give a lot of gold, but they give it over the course of a long time.

So then why not give you all your retroactive chests on day one?

Well, I went over this in another thread, which can be found here.

If you are going to read that, keep in mind that 90% of players have less than 4000 achievement points, so my point is slightly nullified.

However, to reiterate the point I wrote of over there, if this chest (and things like Celestial Armor/Charged Crystal Quartz) was/were obtainable immediately with no delay upon the day of the patch, then inflation will occur. This is pretty much guaranteed.

Why?

Demand. Demand for T6 mats would rise pretty high. Currently, T6 demand has stabilized to what it was before the patch, but on the day of the patch (with the new Zephyr Reward Chests) the price of T6 mats skyrocketed to ~700% (looking at you, Gossamer, looking at you).

Imagine if people were also able to make Celestial armor immediately.

Imagine if people were to get free gold off of chests to fuel their drive for items.

The prices would have jumped and probably would stay high for a lot longer due to a lot of players wanting mats and some players wanting it now versus others waiting it out, and then caving in and buying.

Anet did a smart move with the time-gating. In regards to the Charged Quartz time gating, if there was no time-gate on that, then there would be no point to the home instance node (which has a chance of giving a Charged Quartz). In regards to the Achievement Chests… well, it’s nearly impossible to get 500 points in a single day, so unless you link a fully HoM’ed GW1 account, you’re not going to be a candidate for 2 chests in one day, which means this time-gate doesn’t affect players after this mad-rush of chests.

Just some more food for thought.

yeah, some common sense would benefit us all

ok Gnat how about this: I only like to do wvw and spvp but I want legendary, since I don’t want to have ANYTHING to do with pve world I demand alternative way of getting required items without leaving spvp and wvw. With your reasoning that would be only fair if it was possible.

I love the common complaint of “I had to do it the wrong way, so everyone should be forced to do it the wrong way too!”.

Less grind is good people.

That said, as others have mentioned, context is important. You’re only getting these many badges this quickly because we’re receiving our achievement rewards retroactively. If you got these rewards any slower then even more people would complain, rightly so, of ridiculous and unnecessary time gating for its own sake.

i.e.: Get off your kitten.

The only thing you can’t get from wvw is the dungeon gift and map completion.

Nutshel.7264:

ok Gnat how about this: I only like to do wvw and spvp but I want legendary, since I don’t want to have ANYTHING to do with pve world I demand alternative way of getting required items without leaving spvp and wvw. With your reasoning that would be only fair if it was possible.

I completely agree with you, that there should be a PvP alternative for legendary acquisition, or a legendary skin for you locker. I think there should be a way to supplement PvE exclusive items to build a legendary in PvP, with equal difficulty.

I will always advocate against tying a player down to a specific form of content to achieve an item that is not exclusive to that content, especially in a game where cosmetics is end-game. The reason I take such a hostile tone with OP is because he is clearly upset because other people who have put in work are being rewarded in a way that is different, and what OP perceives as easier, and getting similar rewards. That is strictly self-interest and holds no weight against his reward system. In fact, he can now even get more rewards, so he should have nothing to complain about.

People that accuse others of receiving handouts are most often those who are seeking handouts, and threads like this prove it time and time again.

Keep in mind that these are awarded to the account and as mentioned before are coming faster due to needing to catch up with the number of achievement points.

Once it reaches the point that the backlog is gone, the badges will come more slowly for a new player and combined with needing badges for alts, you will still have to supplement the achievement chests with wvw obtained badges.

OP you never had to participate in wvw to begin with, you could get 500 badges just from doing the jumping puzzles. I think it will be better this way, less cause to go to wvw because you NEED meaning more who are there will be those who actually WANT to be there and therefore should be better for it.

Here’s my opinion on the Badges of Honor being given in the achievement chests…

I’m not happy about the strict PvE players being able to accumulate the number of badges required for a Gift of Battle in just a couple of days, and here’s why:

If a strict WvW player decides they want a legendary, they are forced to complete the entire world map for the Gift of Exploration, forcing them out of the way that they would like to play the game. More specifically, if said player decides that they want Kudzu, then they are forced to farm 500 Deadly Blooms from Twilight Arbor to get the Gift of Thorns. So, the strict WvW player is forced to complete not one, but two, daunting tasks just to get the legendary weapon Kudzu. The PvE player, no longer has to be taken out of their element to get that legendary, all they have to do is log in…

Now, I can understand the arguments saying that giving the Badges of Honor in the achievement chests will help to keep PvE players out of WvW, but I look at the Badges as rewards for participating in WvW, just like the tokens are rewards for participating in dungeons.

asperbianca.3196:

Here’s my opinion on the Badges of Honor being given in the achievement chests…

I’m not happy about the strict PvE players being able to accumulate the number of badges required for a Gift of Battle in just a couple of days, and here’s why:

If a strict WvW player decides they want a legendary, they are forced to complete the entire world map for the Gift of Exploration, forcing them out of the way that they would like to play the game. More specifically, if said player decides that they want Kudzu, then they are forced to farm 500 Deadly Blooms from Twilight Arbor to get the Gift of Thorns. So, the strict WvW player is forced to complete not one, but two, daunting tasks just to get the legendary weapon Kudzu. The PvE player, no longer has to be taken out of their element to get that legendary, all they have to do is log in…

Now, I can understand the arguments saying that giving the Badges of Honor in the achievement chests will help to keep PvE players out of WvW, but I look at the Badges as rewards for participating in WvW, just like the tokens are rewards for participating in dungeons.

Map completion

So it seems you have a problem with the push of PvP players to explore PvE, not the fact that PvE players are getting badges, which is oddly enough where you are placing the problem. As previously stated, I agree that there should be a method for PvP exclusive players to acquire legendaries.

I also believe, however, that if such a system was to be implemented, PvP exclusive legendaries would have to be separate (possibly account bound) from PvE as to not infiltrate the economy which would unarguably have a larger impact on PvE play compared to PvP play.

If you had no problem with the previous method of acquiring badges (strictly PvP/JP) then I see no reason to make such a fuss over it now, especially considering the badges aren’t being “given away for free”. people are being rewarded for their achievements. If that is what bothers you then you too are posting solely about self-interest.

Another factor that has been stated multiple times is the fact that these chests being given daily are only the norm until the system catches up with itself. It is a retroactive effect, and once it catches up, the badges will slow at a dramatic rate.

I understand that the chests are retroactive, but I don’t think that a scrict PvE player, who has never entered WvW, should be given the badges that they never would have obtained to begin with.

I don’t have a problem with the crafting of a legendary requiring a strict WvW player to go out of their way to acquire the necessary items to craft said legendary. I do, however, have a slight issue with making the Gifts of Battle effortless for the strict PvE player.

The Badges of Honor were intended as rewards for WvW, not achievement points. If the argument that the Badges are being given as rewards for achievement points, then why not give the dungeon tokens as rewards for achievements as well? Why not make the gifts that require those tokens as easily accessible as the Gifts of Battle are?

I would not be opposed to having PvP/WvW only legendary weapons implemented, but I am opposed to the idea of having the Gifts of Battle practically handed out to those who have done little to nothing to earn them.

Gifts of Battle are effortless for anybody. WvW gives over 100 badges an hour…

Yea, assuming you WvW, not just logging in and getting a chest for practically doing nothing.

Moar food for thought: that wvw gift for legendary isn’t the only thing you can get for all those badges… the token cost for armors alone is similar to that of dungeons, over 1000 for a full set, AND you can get all the crafted stats at 80/exo quality, plus your pick of the litter from all the skins that are otherwise a rage inducing hunt for hearts or grinder on the wiki. (saves big on transmutation crystals if you go for those skins)

Yup, which brings the Badge to an even higher value than the dungeon tokens…

asperbianca.3196:

Yup, which brings the Badge to an even higher value than the dungeon tokens…

Except that the gear also costs gold, so it balances out.

Esplen.3940:

Lots of stuff, wanted to shorten my post.

I think it is a technical limitation of why we don’t get all the chests at once.

As I understand it, a player had tried to bank the world boss chests and was only able to bank 4 and lost any others. I don’t think people would be happy with loosing any of the nicer chests.

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Esplen.3940:

Lots of stuff, wanted to shorten my post.

I think it is a technical limitation of why we don’t get all the chests at once.

As I understand it, a player had tried to bank the world boss chests and was only able to bank 4 and lost any others. I don’t think people would be happy with loosing any of the nicer chests.

I never once considered trying to “bank” boxes like that, but yea… a limit of 4 would make me unhappy because from box #1 i had 16 in queue… and a 4 limit would mean i dont get 5g here in about 30 minutes xP

Actually, there is a “box bank” after 4, it autoloots the oldest chest for you.

I tested with dailies and world bosses. It’s the same thing with mail (to some degree). If there is character specific mail that has loot and you get too many, it will autoloot it.

Right now there is only one mail which will get autolooted and it’s for Digital Deluxe. You can force the autoloot by completing hearts and not looting the money off of that. You will autoloot at ~12 hearts.

Inimicus.7162:

Moar food for thought: that wvw gift for legendary isn’t the only thing you can get for all those badges… the token cost for armors alone is similar to that of dungeons, over 1000 for a full set, AND you can get all the crafted stats at 80/exo quality, plus your pick of the litter from all the skins that are otherwise a rage inducing hunt for hearts or grinder on the wiki. (saves big on transmutation crystals if you go for those skins)

Most of those skins trade on the tp for like… 2 silver…

Great ANet, so now you decided to give free badges of honor to every pve player who doesn’t even know what wvw is, just to make sure they get their useless shiny legendary.

So where are the free FotM tokens for ascendary rings?

As someone who enjoys organized WvW I like the fact they are giving out the badges. This mean the people who actually want to WvW can get in more/less queue. So stop with “I got my badges through actually WvW this makes me better than you” or the “Its not fair I had to spend some time in a place I was going to be spending all my time anyways.” Just enjoy the fact more of your guild can be in at once with less queue because less people need to be there.

chedder.6302:

As someone who enjoys organized WvW I like the fact they are giving out the badges. This mean the people who actually want to WvW can get in more/less queue. So stop with “I got my badges through actually WvW this makes me better than you” or the “Its not fair I had to spend some time in a place I was going to be spending all my time anyways.” Just enjoy the fact more of your guild can be in at once with less queue because less people need to be there.

This is actually a really good point that I didn’t consider. Giving away these badges is a great way to thin the legendary farmers from WvW that don’t contribute, but only farm kills for badges.

To be completely honest, I am happy that they threw the free badges at PvE players. It means that when we’re playing wvw, we can look at a group of players and expect them to play better because they want to be there, not because they are farming badges for a carebear item.

Also, getting 500 badges of honor was never difficult, even when badges dropped less. Just zerg a few days and you’d have it in no-time. WvW players have TONS of badges laying around, and we spend them like crazy.

Player Character.9467:

Gifts of Battle are effortless for anybody. WvW gives over 100 badges an hour…

wow… I must play the game horribly wrong! I WvW around 2hrs per week. I’m LUCKY to get 10 badges per week. How do I play in order to earn 100 badges per hour?

Also if it only takes an hour to average 100 badges, that means someone only needs to play WvW for 5 hours to get enought badges for the gift of battle. So what’s all the fuss about awarding badges for around 5 hours of content? Let it go everyone…. people that get badges from achivements are only skipping 5 hours of WvW content anyway right?

doomfodder.2906:

Player Character.9467:

Gifts of Battle are effortless for anybody. WvW gives over 100 badges an hour…

wow… I must play the game horribly wrong! I WvW around 2hrs per week. I’m LUCKY to get 10 badges per week. How do I play in order to earn 100 badges per hour?

Also if it only takes an hour to average 100 badges, that means someone only needs to play WvW for 5 hours to get enought badges for the gift of battle. So what’s all the fuss about awarding badges for around 5 hours of content? Let it go everyone…. people that get badges from achivements are only skipping 5 hours of WvW content anyway right?

Simplest method, run with the zerg and tag tag tag.

While all the free badges are taking up bank slots, there are more then just the gift you can buy with badges. There is a whole vendor that will sell exotics for a bit of cash and badges. If you go this route its almost 1k badges for just the armor not even talking about having multiple weapons sets.