Guild Wars 2

(For the tl;dr people my suggestion is in the second last paragraph)

For many AP hunters like myself there’s a lot of psychology behind the need to compete on the AP boards. I’ve always been a completionist, and this being the first MMO I’ve played since launch I have a lot of investment in this game.

When the game was first launched the philosophy behind daily achievements was that you could play however you wanted and attain a small daily reward and small AP boost for doing so, the only real requirement was to play at least 30-60 minutes for that day. Back in those days I could do all the dailies in ~30 minutes then had plenty of time to do what I wanted, the 5 AP per daily was perhaps a bit much, though I don’t necessarily agree how dailies have evolved over development.

Dailies were eventually changed to 1 AP each and made more specialized, diverging from the idea of playing how you want to achieve these. A few examples include daily kills being attached to a specific area of the game, meaning I could no longer do all my achievements in WvW where I enjoy playing most. At first there was about eight, something I tolerated and could do in a little over an hour if memory serves, but more dailies are continually added with time to where we now have 12-14, plus the 4 PvP ones as well. The time commitment to attain all these achievments has steadily climbed from 30 minutes to anywhere from 2-4 hours depending on the difficulty of the dailies for that day.

The result of this 2-4 hour daily AP hunt is really starting to burn me out, to remain competitive on the boards I can no longer play the game how I want. By the time I’m done getting all the dailies I no longer feel the desire to play and just log out until it’s time to do the dailies again… I don’t WvW as much as I used to, and the dailies burn me out so much that I don’t ever feel like knocking out any of the permanent achievements I still don’t have.

Now to further compound this new PvP dailies have been announced specifically attached to Arena play. Yes I could stop playing hotjoins and do the general PvP achievements at the same time I do the Arena ones, but Arenas by their nature take considerably longer than hotjoins. I expect that what used to be 30 minutes for the PvP achievements will now take closer to an hour to complete. This is my speculation of course but it will still further add to the time needed to complete all dailies.

I can feel myself burning out on this game, yes I could technically just stop doing dailies and play how I want but the completionist in me just can’t ignore that dailies tab in my hero window.

So, with all that said, here is my suggestion and one I believe is very doable with mechanics already used in the game:

Add a daily meta for the daily PvE and PvP achievements, similar to how the Living Story have meta achievements. Attach 5 AP onto the metas, then have all the dailies give 0 points. For non-AP hunters this means nothing really changes for them, but for AP hunters this means that you no longer need to do all the dailies, returning to the philosophy of playing how you want to get your daily reward. AP hunters will still do both the PvE and PvP daily metas, but this process shouldn’t take more than an hour compared to the 2-4 hours we currently have to dedicate daily.

This change would go a long way to saving many AP hunters sanity, and allow us to actually play the game how we want while still competing.

This seems like a really good idea. I’m a person that just does the 5/5 for the laurel (and anything after that is a happy accident) and it seems like something that would keep both types of players happy. I like having a large pool of “choices” as it motivates me to spend more time on various alts. The only downside I can see is that if I’m very close to a chest I couldn’t push a bit and get points that way, but that is a very little concern and not a big deal at all (I just wanted to think through all the implications), at least not to me personally.

I think it’s an idea that would only benefit everyone, so why not ?

Full Agree!! Copy some thoughts of my topic – “more dailies, are you kidding me?” and we all good.

As much as I support a cap for daily AP, I think limiting it to 5/day (10 total with PvP and PvE) is a bit too much. Having more AP available is helpfull for people that want to rush their next achievement chest by doing more dailies than they use to. I’d prefer having something like 10AP/day in PvE and 5AP/day in PvP, keeping the requirements for the daily chest.
Or there could be something a bit more complex, like limiting the number of AP obtainable through dailies in a given time, for example 70AP/week for PvE. This would give more flexibility for players that want to rush some AP on 3-4 days, while keeping the overall grind to a reasonable level. This would also allow people to skip a day with no consequence AP-wise (you’ll still lose the chest).
A very important point imo: the cap should be strictly limited to the AP, not diminishing the XP reward.

Nobody has ever suggested that you will be able to achieve everything in a reasonable amount of time. I used to be like you, with the mentality that if i dont obtain everything I’m missing something. This is just not a completion-ist game like games of previous generations. Rewards will only continue to expand and you will spend more time doing things you rather not be doing.

There is already a meta its called the daily chest. And like every other meta in the game you can earn AP beyond what is required of it. Making daily AP a flat rate only serves to lower AP hunters competitive edge and give newcomers less means to pass people up that don’t farm all the dailies after the chest.

Sorry, but you not wanting to have to grind out dailies is not reason to take away incentive and reward for the people that do so you don’t feel compelled to do them. You are just going to have to get over missing a few points and maybe falling behind.

I am not high on the leaderboard but I would like to be able to grind out a few extra points a day to unlock chests since I can not be there everyday to complete the daily. People feeling like they don’t want to be compelled to get those extra points is not a good enough reason to take them away from players like me.

You being burned out on getting them is you playing how you want to, nothing FORCES you to get every AP point. Thats you “playing how you want” to be high on the leaderboards and putting in the effort for it. If you are burned out to the point you don’t want to do that anymore you should stop and do things you enjoy. That is what playing how you want to play means, it does not involve changing the game to make it easier on your completion-ist style. You can’t have your cake and eat it to… that is what people asking for caps expect.

ANet set the precedent for this already with limiting the Agent of Entropy achievement so that people couldn’t unduly stack their achievement score with meaningless points.

The daily achievements are the very definition of meaningless points.

I agree that the daily achievement points should be capped at 5, and going even further, I would support removing achievement points from the dailies altogether, since they really aren’t achievements in any sense of the word.

Vick.6805:

The daily achievements are the very definition of meaningless points.

I agree that the daily achievement points should be capped at 5, and going even further, I would support removing achievement points from the dailies altogether, since they really aren’t achievements in any sense of the word.

I 100% agree with you and the OP.
Boards are meaningless for people that did not join the game on the first day. I started 7 months ago and have 10k AP, but I have definitely no hope of being at the top of the leaderboard.
I think anything temporary (dailies, monthlies, living story) should not reward AP. If you want this game to be competitive with a leaderboard, at least make it fair for everyone.