First off, I would like to state that I very much appreciate the work that ArenaNet put into reworking the achievement system, and while not perfect, it was a step in the right direction.
Secondly, please read this entire post!
I posted this on Reddit as well – some extra discussion on the post HERE
Moving forward, I would like to see the achievement system continue to grow and be refined. As of present, I find many things within the achievement system poorly implemented, not thought through all the way, or completely off putting.
As is the nature of MMO’s, not every aspect is for every player, however, I believe it is a mistake to approach any aspect of a game with this knowledge, and simply write off a specific group of players by never allowing them the opportunity. With an ever increasing amount of achievements points, a majority of which can never be obtained again, the current system does just that.
Beneath this, you will see many proposed changes, fixes, and additions. Some of these are, in my opinion, much needed changes for achievements moving forward. These suggestions aim to make achievement points impactful and desirable, while still giving all players the option to achieve every possible point. That being said — Many will not.
!Warning! This is a very crude list of ideas (from minor to major, QoL changes and everything in-between)! This is not a complete list, it grows nearly every day!
Achievements:
Additions
- Add a tab for Tier and Total tracking under Recently and Nearly Completed.
- All achievement rewards, with the exception of consumables should be added to your Unlocked Rewards within the Achievements tab once obtained. Any rewards with stats, such as the Fervid Censer, should have their skin added to your Unlocked Rewards once obtained.
- Announce to Chat – Announce achievements to Party/Guild on completion, this aids the social aspect of achievements, and I love seeing what my guildmates are achieving. Only announces achievement at 33%, 66%, and 100% milestones if applicable (Agent of Entropy – 100, 200, 250).
- Option to disable broadcasting/viewing.
- Option to remove achievements from showing in Nearly Completed.
Changes
- Placement of a hard cap on achievements, currently the cap keeps growing daily, not allowing new players the chance to ever catch up.
- I would like to give mention to THIS reddit post. I believe the visual update we were given with the reworked achievement window was a misstep by ArenaNet.
- Create a new tab for permanent, annual releases, or in the case of Super Adventure Box – biannual.
- More difficult achievements need to reward more points. Crafting a Legendary should not be worth 5 achievement points, the same amount I currently make from my daily.
- Normalize achievement points. Many achievements give an even amount of points, however there are many others that give an odd amount of point (Slayer – 16, Dive Master – 18, etc…). Keeping it even looks more pleasing, besides, if something gives you a single achievement point (or 3), was it really an achievement? To add onto this, not every tier of an achievement needs to award points!
- Reduce, remove, or find a better implementation of the current “statistic” achievements.
- Slayer(PvE) along with Weapon Master and to some degree, WvW achievements are poorly implemented. What do these achievements really do? They show how long one has grinded and/or played for; they are a statistic. When (well if, if the day ever comes) I reach 5000 shield kills, you know what I’ll say? ”Glad that grind is over.” I understand, in the spirit of Guild Wars 1, why these grindy achievements exist. Thirst slayer, for example, is fine. Killing an enormous amount of enemies with, in the case of a warrior, a single target skill is not engaging, and most importantly, not fun.
Daily and Monthly
- Ideally, the Daily and Monthly achievements shouldn’t award players any points, do you really consider these daily chores to be “achievements”? However, the way the system works currently forces players to log on and finish their dailies if they don’t want to fall behind. My proposed solution would be to put a hard cap on achievement points awarded through dailies and monthlies, somewhere between 1000 and 2500, and leave it at that. This gives players incentive to log on and complete their dailies and monthlies (because laurels apparently don’t do that?), but puts a hard cap on achievement points so that everyone (even knew players) have the ability to earn all achievement points.
(edited by Miggetmagic.1689)