Guild Wars 2

I was one of the first to start thinking that it would be great to turn all those achievement points into rewards and I was happy to finally get it. However, the result is becoming a little problematic.

Giving laurels out only for daily and monthly achievements is making all the players grind dailies. The monthly is not so much of a problem, since you can get it doing what you do regularly in 1/3 of the required time.
Casual friends I used to do quests with now spend their playing time chasing the daily achievement and that’s it. I’ve also seen situations where one person was fighting a bear for a good several minutes just to get a dodger achievement or people jumping off cliffs just so their friend could get daily healer.
While this is hilarious to watch, it’s turning the game into a grind.

I have a few suggestions for this:
1. Swap out the dailies for weekly achievements so that people don’t feel the pressure to complete a certain 0/x tasks every day and rather have it work like the monthly on a shorter leash.
2. Redo the dailies so that instead of several grind-like tasks, you have one more specific one. Maybe “help the humans in their battle against the centaurs”, which would mean you have to do events where you defend settlements against centaurs. More specific, but it would get people to spend time in the area doing what they’d do regularly until and event comes up and they’d get the daily. Maybe thin-out the dredge horde? Kill a certain number of dredge and so on.
3. Make all achievements laurel worthy. For those of us who have done most, there could be a bard NPC who would “grant us laurels for the songs of our achievements”, while others would get those in time. Everyone would have the same achievements by the end anyway and they wouldn’t have to just grind daily events, but they could play regularly and be left behind too much if they choose not to chase the daily events every day.

That’s my two cents

While I would like to see laurels granted for other things I can’t agree to the overly specific dailies such as helping centaurs. If they were to require a specific zone (or set of zones) to do a daily then people would be there and only there for the dailies. That would kind of discourage the whole “go back to low level zones” thing they’re trying to do. Plus the influx of 80s would decimate those events.

As far as the dailies are concerned, they’re still very simple to get and can be done relatively quick. I’d assume you’re friends only play for an hour or less to do their dailies then sign off?

i find myself, on days i have to work a LOT, only logging on long enough to do my dailies. i remember leaving wow, and then rift, and breathing a sigh of relief that i’d never have to grind dailies again. well, i guess the argument that will be made is we don’t have to do the dailies … but yeah. the only map chat anymore is people logging in going “events?”

about as bad as people only chatting to find out where/when the bloody dragons are spawning.

I don’t see the dailies as a grind at all, its a small portion of your time. Laurels are another currency, and most importantly there for the ascended gear. To get ascended gear you can to do fractals, and if you only have enough time daily to do a daily, there there is no way you are gonna have the time to do fractals. which only need 10 pristine fractal relics(ten days) vs. 35 laurels; so laurels are a gift really.

And dailies don’t limit your zone play which is amazing because i can continue with map completion. As for healer, go to Neebo terrace. You can rez and kill a few mobs along the way. You can make the dailies boring and grindy by killing yourself repeatedly, spam jumping a bear and sitting and waiting for a vet to re-spawn, or you can work them into your normal game play.

If you normally went after hearts, its hard to believe that you never came across events, dead npc/players, resource nodes or a lake to kill fish… so save the last 10 minutes of your game play to go to a low level area and quickly finish what you didn’t complete.

If you want the Best in slot item, you got to grind for it in an anti-grind game.

Stryfer.3978:

Giving laurels out only for daily and monthly achievements is making all the players grind dailies. The monthly is not so much of a problem, since you can get it doing what you do regularly in 1/3 of the required time.
Casual friends I used to do quests with now spend their playing time chasing the daily achievement and that’s it.

It’s the rewards, not the Laurels themselves. Mainly the Ascended amulets.

I’ve also seen situations where one person was fighting a bear for a good several minutes just to get a dodger achievement or people jumping off cliffs just so their friend could get daily healer.
While this is hilarious to watch, it’s turning the game into a grind.

Those are examples of people who want the reward as fast as possible. And in fact, I find those means to be rather sad. You could get the Dodger much easier by going to a few events and dodging some groups of mobs. The healer can be done with any of the many events that have a rotation of defenses, such as Orr, the Modniir camp in Harathi Hinterlands or the Hylek camp in Sparkfly Fen.

I have a few suggestions for this:
#. Swap out the dailies for weekly achievements so that people don’t feel the pressure to complete a certain 0/x tasks every day and rather have it work like the monthly on a shorter leash.
#. Redo the dailies so that instead of several grind-like tasks, you have one more specific one. Maybe “help the humans in their battle against the centaurs”, which would mean you have to do events where you defend settlements against centaurs. More specific, but it would get people to spend time in the area doing what they’d do regularly until and event comes up and they’d get the daily. Maybe thin-out the dredge horde? Kill a certain number of dredge and so on.
#. Make all achievements laurel worthy. For those of us who have done most, there could be a bard NPC who would “grant us laurels for the songs of our achievements”, while others would get those in time. Everyone would have the same achievements by the end anyway and they wouldn’t have to just grind daily events, but they could play regularly and be left behind too much if they choose not to chase the daily events every day.

1. You realize that by making it a weekly instead of a daily, all of the requirements would have to be scaled sevenfold? End result is not really any different from what we have now. It would relax it a bit, but not because it’s weekly, but because of the amount of work involved. It’s just not feasible to resurrect 70 dead NPCs/players or dodge an attack 105 times. And the weekly would make some of the current requirements a bit awkward, such as visiting the Laurel Vendor 7 times.
2. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but I think “Kill x things” is a lot clearer than “Help Humans with their Centaur problem”. Because let’s be honest, if I had not played a Human or explored the human low-mid-level areas, I sure as crouton wouldn’t know that Humans have a tug-of-war with Centaurs. And besides, does “Centaur” here mean Centaurs? Or Tamini? What about Modniir? Also, we already have people complaining about some of the daily achievements not being something you can do with regular play. You go and tell those people that they now have to do events in specific areas to get their dailies. I’ll just be here and watch the chaos.
3. “Grant us Laurels for the songs of our achievements”? That sure sounds like an NPC that hands out Laurels in exchange for Achievement points, or reaching specific achievements. And besides, I’m pretty sure that tying achievement points to Laurels is/has always been in the works.

the dailies are not grindy.

those people are doing it wrong.

your suggestions however will make them grindy.

I think the next patch is introducing customisable dailies

The question is how those dailies will be customized, though. Fingers crossed.

Yes I am aware of some problems regarding my suggestions, as they were just quick suggestions and not elaborated
Expanding and optimizing ideas should be left to the company.
1. You don’t have to scale it seven fold.
2. It’s just like with events, there could be a clear description. The level reduction has been optimized, and there’s several areas of several levels with dredge and centaurs. It doesn’t even have to involve them specifically.
3. Yes, that’s exactly what I meant and if there is a system in the works, that would be great. I just thought it would link laurels to our achievement points from the start. That those of us who had achievement points would get a corresponding number of laurels, while those who are yet to attain them will get them as they progress. With all the achievements in play, all of the game content is covered.

Yes, I am aware that you don’t HAVE to grind them, or that people are doing it wrong, but so far such a problem has not existed in this game. Which is amazing. Everything was so well interwoven that people just played the game without, for example, zapping everywhere asking if events are going on. There were never any numbers to chase except dungeon armor.
With the daily laurels they added 0/x numbers that people will rush to fill. Non-rushing and being casual takes about 3 hours. Even if a person speeds it, it’s still a sort of “must-spend hour”. Monthly events don’t have this problem, because you can complete them in time by just playing and doing what you would do otherwise.
In the end, if you spend more time in the game, playing and helping others, you can get top end gear. If you spend less, you won’t get top end items (like legendary weapons). Chasing numbers could end up with “I don’t have time to help that guy finish the event because I need to get my dodger in”. They’ll go and dodge bear attacks instead.
My point, so far there was little to no need for cookie cutter solutions to the numbers and now it’s starting to spread.

The only two dailies that don’t come naturally to me are the Healer and Aquatic Slayer ones. My guildmates don’t die often enough and we don’t always end up doing the underwater fractal. This forces me to chase random dead npcs and krait. Luckily, the Feb patch will fix this issue.

Overall, dailies are not a grind as many will come naturally as you play the game. I don’t even feel compelled to do my daily anymore after getting my amulet. Te monetary gains from it are modest and the vanity rewards are meaningless to me. I also don’t have alts that need an amulet for Fractals.

I’m glad to hear that I’ve just gotten worried watching people use ridiculous tricks, coming on “just for the daily” and going to work/school and rushing events from area to area. I don’t want GW2 to turn into that sort of game.

the one thing OP and others are forgetting is you do not HAVE to do them at all. Go do fractals for acended rings instead, or do like wvw’ers do and do without.

Actually, it was mentioned. Yes, you don’t need to do them, but others will and what they do will indirectly affect you. If it was only an individuals problem, I wouldn’t mind how they worked

Catisa.6507:

the one thing OP and others are forgetting is you do not HAVE to do them at all. Go do fractals for acended rings instead, or do like wvw’ers do and do without.

This entire game is optional but it doesn’t mean it should be an excuse to dismiss any opinion.

If it is unfun, why should Anet keep such a flawed design?

“Thieves are OP!” “WvW, sPvP is optional. Go do something else.”
“Simin is just unfun to kill!” “Dungeons is optional. Go do something else.”
“There is no one to play with in the PvE world.” “PvE is optional. Go do something else.”
“This Dynamic Event is buggy.” “Dynamic events is optional. Go do something else.”
“Leveling is boring.” “Leveling is optional. Go do something else.”
“Rewards is bad.” “Rewards is optional. Go do something else.”

In my opinion, people aren’t used to the new requirements. It doesn’t take any longer to get dailies now than it did before. You still need to come out of FotM or other dungeons to get variety, but you don’t for Rez or Dodge.

Once people realize that there are easier ways to get Rez than luring foes to kill NPCs (and hoping other players don’t kill the foes first or heal the NPCs too quickly), people will be more comfortable.

People will also begin to realize that there are (or will be) all sorts of ways to get ascended items.

I do the dailies because I enjoy it; if it starts feeling like a chore, I’ll stop. With the exception of higher levels of FotM, there’s nothing in the game that requires me to have ascended gear, so I don’t feel any need to “grind” for them.

A change from daily to weekly would be very good. Why should a player who can log-in only every other day for 3 hours, not be able to get the same amount of laurels than a player who can log-in every day for 90 minutes? Both play the same amount of time and log-in regularly. I does not make any sense.

The daily achievments really are a grind and I don’t like that I have to log in everyday and do a specific set of tasks in order to get tokens to buy gear with better stats. This entire idea seems to go against the idea that this game was built on. Guild Wars 2 wasn’t supposed to be a grindy game and yet here we are grinding dailies everyday so we can afford an item with better stats once a month.

You guys are all overlooking the true solution.

Step 1: Give more means of obtaining Ascended gear.
Step 2: Give more means of obtaining Laurels.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit.

By giving more options, you remove the need to do a specific thing, giving more viability. Before dailies gave laurels and laurels could be traded for Ascended gear, the very argument held by the OP could be given to Fractals – and, in fact, still can. But by creating equal-difficulty/requirement means of obtaining desired items, it feels less grindy because folks aren’t being funneled into the same activities.

Besides all this, there are means of making more laurels and making the dailies less grindy in the works already. And they’re due for this month’s update, iirc, in fact. So if you wait a couple days, your complaints should be answered.

And if they’re not, then you should complain, not shortly before the fix is expected to come and was announced long ago already.