Guild Wars 2

TL;DR: Break the Been There Done That title/achievement into five distinct achievements with a meta.

Here’s something odd: You can explore Southsun, but not get credit for the title/achievement. On the other hand, you *have* to fully explore the same WvWvW map three times to get it.

Why? Well, simple. The achievement/title was designed to encompass the beginning part of the world. As new zones were added, they couldn’t change the achievement, so they were ignored.

I find that a sad fact, especially if new zones are added. Instead, let’s change the achievement. It’s currently 20 points for this, so let’s split the achievement into five achievements each worth 4 points. Getting all the waypoints gets you 4 points. Getting all the vistas nets you another 4. If you do everything but the hearts, you’ll gain 16 points, and gain the final 4 from the hearts.

But really, while the title is nice, world completion really is an achievement that should give points. I’d suggest making the meta tracking this worth 30. Compared to the Living World, these are still difficult points to get! It would still be a small amount of points if you had to give out these points again by changing the achievement.

And if you keep the number of these things constant as you get new zones, it’ll allow you to create new content or change the world in a fundamental way by changing out hearts as time goes on, if you ever plan on doing that. Just go to the nearest 50. For hearts, this would be 300, for example.

For the world completion bar on the map, there’s a couple of obvious choices, each with varying pros and cons, but I’m sure Anet internal can figure out which is best.

Technically, the 3 borderland maps are identical as you say, however there is a major difference when it comes to actually exploring those maps from different starting positions. When you’re on an enemy borderland, it is generally tougher to get the map completion than on your own map. Prior to the random map rotation this was even much more challenging. Now the challenge is slightly less, but still requires a certain degree of patience on the player’s part to achieve since you either have to wait for your world to take enemy strongholds or you have to wait until your world eventually starts out in those areas. I found it both frustrating but also very fun and without it I probably wouldn’t have had much interest in actually playing in WvW.

As for breaking up each component into individual achievements, I don’t think it’s necessary, plus the real challenge is overcoming your dislike of getting vistas, or doing the hearts or finding all the PoIs and WPs before actually earning any points. Each component by itself doesn’t seem so bad but putting them together creates a slightly higher level of ‘difficulty’, if you will.

I do however agree that new map segments that get added should have their own map completion achievement for instance, Southsun Explorer. I’m sure that when an expansion is released eventually, there will be a separate map completion for those new maps with possibly new end game rewards or map completion rewards. Possibly pieces that are needed to make a legendary from a new set of legendaries with different crafting requirements and materials than what we currently have.

Prior to the map rotation is prior to today. It was harder…sure, but now it’s easier. And that patience at the moment is just jumping through WvW once a week for three weeks. You don’t have to go to the enemy borderland’s territory, you just have to go to your own.

While this carrot got you into WvW, the majority will either see it as PvE scrubs scrubbing around (WvWers) or as an unwanted trek into a place where other players are encouraged to stop you from getting a 98% PvE title (PvEers), annoying all players in the process.

When I jump into WvW, I don’t like the fact that I have to cap PoIs and Vistas and leave the zerg, hurting the team — especially when there are queues, and you are blocking somebody else from being effective. And that feeling that you are hurting your side sucks.

As far as the ‘real challenge’, you can get 10 or 15 achievement points ignoring any one of the five parts. With this change, you can get exactly 16. The difference is miniscule…the points for the title are miniscule compared to the effort involved. There’s really no added difficulty between having a single achievement and a meta achievement that requires all sub-achievements. You’d still have to do effectively the same amount of vistas/hearts/PoIs/WPs/skill points to gain the title.