Hi,
Like a lot of fellow veteran and/or dedicated players, I happen to be an AP hunter. Right now I’m not very happy with the state of AP in the game : on the one hand, objectives are high and on the other hand we’re in a very long AP-drought … that I hope at least ends with HoT release.
Goals
Well, hunting AP is fun for itself but the overall score is tied to rewards, which sets sorts of goals.
- Full armor : you need 30K AP to fully unlock an armor
- Titles : datamined titles reach up to 60k AP
The AP drought
In addition to the non-addition of new content, hence nearly no new AP to gain in months, none of the basic achievement tracks have made it through 3 years of hunting (except WvW achievements in their current form, of course …).
Also, new AP rewards introduced since the last months of 2013 have been very tightfisted.
Lastly, AP hunters have been out of things to do for a long time now, outside of dailies.
Top achievers and AP over time
Top achievers are reaching 29k. In fact, a single player is over 29k (Kast.4053 is now the only owner of a pinnacle skin in the game) and a few are close to it (4 EU players and 2 NA players between 28900 and 28999).
Not being one of them (I’m far behind with 24k due to not farming dailies), I don’t know if they reached the 15k daily limit yet. If not, they’re probably very close to it, so we can safely assume that, after 3 years, top achievers gathered a grand total of 14K AP outside of the limited daily source. This includes both base game achievements, and all the living story, festivals and other temporary achievements.
My opinion
I think that being a top achiever for 3 full years should be enough to get the armor, without a need for a few more months or an expansion.
I also think that it would be reasonable to make the top goal (currently “Uncontrollable Achiever” title) attainable for said top achievers withing 5 years.
Both would still be longer for less dedicated people like me.
With the current situation, the first one is failed (top achievers missing 1100-1200 AP on 3rd anniversary) and the second is very unlikely (assuming expansions and living story bring as much as base + past temporary, it will take 10 years for Kast to reach 60k). Unless the daily limit is changed, but this is unlikely and ihmo would be bad : 15k AP is high enough and takes more than 4 years for a new player, while a lot of old players will be happy to hit it.
Conclusions
Please
- Increase the AP rewards introduced between late 2013 and now, at least to the point where current top 10 achievers immediately reach 30k (+ whatever they gained between 3rd anniversary and today).
- No more AP droughts like the current 10 (!) months. This should please everyone as this is closely tied to content drought. Maybe don’t announce next expansion 10 months in advance saying that things are going to happen fast ?
- Make sure that future expansions (including HoT) along with in-between festivals and LS, bring enough AP over time to at the very least do as much as base game + what we got over the past 3 years, over time. In other words, give us wayt to make at least 5k/years (6k for 1 mini-chest/month). And at best to let top-achievers reach 60k title by 5th anniversary (which, unless my 1st point gives much more than expected, would make 15k/year … nice : 1 skin each month)
- 1 AP achievements should not exist anymore. Go back to the old 2012/2013 way of estimating how much an achievement is worth.
Eowyn
(edited by Eowin Of Rohan.2619)