Guild Wars 2

Give people that hit 5 years a toggleable embroidering around their nameplate. So when people target them, they see a red dragon around around their nameplate

I don’t know. A guy creates a character on day one. Takes four years off, but his character is still there. He’s played the game for one year and gets something like that.

They should do that when someone has played for 10,000 hours or something.

I don’t like it. I’d much prefer to keep nameplate clutter to a minimum because otherwise it just looks like a mess and it’s difficult to pick out the relevant bits.

Maybe they could give us the circles some NPCs have around their picture, that wouldn’t be too obtrusive. (This could tie into Vayne’s idea of making it a reward for hours played, scale up from the basic circle to the jagged purple legendary one.)

But something like a red dragon around the whole nameplate just sounds distracting and messy to me.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

It’s more likely to be a repeat of this year—with another choice of backpack—for the next four years. Hopefully, there’ll be additional rewards.

But I do like your idea.

Considering the backpack was just one of many things we got this year, and we’ve never had just a single item I think it’s safe to assume there will be other things next year too.

They did this with the character portrair, viewable in a party, in Lotro. Looked really good and was a nice way to show of your veteran status. It slso updated year on year, so your portrait border grew with your length of service.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t know. A guy creates a character on day one. Takes four years off, but his character is still there. He’s played the game for one year and gets something like that.

They should do that when someone has played for 10,000 hours or something.

If it was linked to hours played then all the AFK runners who run into walls all day would benefit over real players who actually play.

Ok I Did It.2854:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t know. A guy creates a character on day one. Takes four years off, but his character is still there. He’s played the game for one year and gets something like that.

They should do that when someone has played for 10,000 hours or something.

If it was linked to hours played then all the AFK runners who run into walls all day would benefit over real players who actually play.

How about a minimum hour to AP ratio, after a period of 4000 hours is reached. That way the bots who have too little AP wont get the portrait. And give me that elitist argument, because I cannot believe that a player wont have a decent amount of AP after playing a while because there are plenty of autonomous achievements for just completing all the stories, dungeons, fractals etc etc

This year I did the same thing I did the other 3 years, I trashed it all because as usual it was all useless trash. I miss the GW 1 birthday gifts were it really felt like rewards.

Hybarf Tics.2048:

This year I did the same thing I did the other 3 years, I trashed it all because as usual it was all useless trash. I miss the GW 1 birthday gifts were it really felt like rewards.

What made the GW1 gifts feel more like a reward?

It was always a mini pet or a tonic, every single year.

Danikat.8537:

Hybarf Tics.2048:

This year I did the same thing I did the other 3 years, I trashed it all because as usual it was all useless trash. I miss the GW 1 birthday gifts were it really felt like rewards.

What made the GW1 gifts feel more like a reward?

It was always a mini pet or a tonic, every single year.

Those minis and tonics were from a random pool of minis/tonics for that year, with each year worth progressively more. It was fun having that as a surprise, for one. These could then be sold to other players for some bank or kept on the toon that earned it to have a cool and rare mini others saw. Getting eight mini Queen Jennahs in GW2 that only needed to be account bound once was incredibly underwhelming as a first year present. I couldn’t even put the stupid thing up one the broker, so I just trashed seven of them. I would love if they would incorporate the mini rewards in for future birthdays. I cared about getting them. I don’t care about getting another Experience Scroll that would boost a character to Level 20 or 40 … all of mine are already 80 after four years.

Christina.7926:

Danikat.8537:

Hybarf Tics.2048:

This year I did the same thing I did the other 3 years, I trashed it all because as usual it was all useless trash. I miss the GW 1 birthday gifts were it really felt like rewards.

What made the GW1 gifts feel more like a reward?

It was always a mini pet or a tonic, every single year.

Those minis and tonics were from a random pool of minis/tonics for that year, with each year worth progressively more. It was fun having that as a surprise, for one. These could then be sold to other players for some bank or kept on the toon that earned it to have a cool and rare mini others saw. Getting eight mini Queen Jennahs in GW2 that only needed to be account bound once was incredibly underwhelming as a first year present. I couldn’t even put the stupid thing up one the broker, so I just trashed seven of them. I would love if they would incorporate the mini rewards in for future birthdays. I cared about getting them. I don’t care about getting another Experience Scroll that would boost a character to Level 20 or 40 … all of mine are already 80 after four years.

They weren’t worth progressively more — all ‘new’ things are worth more because they are new; all uncommon things are worth more because demand outstrips supply. The difference with the minis/tonics in GW1 is that they were tradeable, whereas GW2’s gifts are not.

The 3rd & 4th birthday GW2 presents allow everyone to select dyes worth (at times) 500 to 1,000 gold, which represents much greater value to one’s account than most people received in GW1 — remember most people received white or blue minis, which only had value for the first 5-6 months after they first became available. Even purple and some gold minis don’t hold much value over time.

Only highly-coveted minis & tonics in GW1 retained value.

What made gifts seem valuable in GW1 was that it was random (which offers its own sort of excitement) and had trade value. What makes gifts “more valuable” to many of us in GW2 is that you get to select your own (at least for 3rd & 4th) and they represent huge potential savings.

They were worth progressively more due to the fact that far fewer players were in the pool of “fifth year birthday”, etc., which spiked the price (http://buildwars.forumotion.com/t411-gw1-price-list-minipets-and-everlasting-tonics). You might be right about the dye in gw2, but frankly those 500-1,000g dye don’t really excite me when I can hardly see a difference between half of them. Some people might like it, which is great, but for those that don’t, it would be nice to see different ideas incorporated. GW1 birthday presents were popular, and the excitement of not knowing exactly what you’d get was half the fun. Yet another experience booster to Level 20/40 is frankly underwhelming.

Another reason why minis in GW1 were valuable was their relative scarcity. In GW2 it rains minis, so only the rare ones have any value; not to mention that a ton of them are account bound. ANet ruined minis when they made soooo many of them, so easily obtainable and most as account bound.

+1 to that. I completely agree.