Guild Wars 2

Hello.

Hello to all of you Guild Wars 2 players. First of all, I am a rather new player to this game. And I must say, I love it. A superb created world, so many hidden places to reach, puzzles and labyrinths everywhere.

This mmorpg has so many elements I want from an mmorpg.

But lately I stumbled across some unfair advantages given to the older playerbase. shrug it’s about the Achievement Ladders.

I played 11 years World of Warcraft, and the sole reason I played it was to hunt down all Achievements in the game. When I reached 99% of all Achievements I felt bored of WoW and before it’s expansion (Legion, september 2016) I changed to Guild Wars 2.

Good choice! Currently I am also hunting down all Achievements ingame. And I noticed that there are about 2500~ish Achievement Points which a new player cannot obtain.

The moment I realised this, I lost all motivation & dedication to play this game. I love Achievements, I love this game, but this is – sorry Achievement Hunters, no offense intended – unfair competition.

A new player for example can never reach the top of the Achievement Ladders because there are 2500~ish Points removed. That means if a new player who is interested in AP grinding will be demotivated quite fast.

Why? Fairly reasonable. Everyone hopes to reach that World Rank #1 spot even if it’s unreachable, you dream about it. You hope to chase it, and maybe one day to claim it. But with a huge gap of points not being in any of the new players reach this dream is shattered into a one thousand pieces.

In World of Warcraft, the removed Achievements are placed under a tab called ‘Feats of Strength’ so the player still can show them, he also keeps the titles, items, shinies from these Achievements. However, in this tab, the points from it are gone.

In this way old players can still show the stuff they grinded, and new players doesn’t have to be afraid of unfair competition.

Maybe many of you Achievement Hunters will be upset, angry or have a go at me why this should not happen. And from your perspective, I actually do understand.

But having such a gap is basically killing any AP Ladder competition. It’s unfair, in all it’s logical essence. You could perhaps compare it to sport. Where a football team from the Second Division promotes to the Premier League. And before they have played their 1st match, Manchester City would be 15 points above anyone else, because they simply play longer in the premier league.

In sport this never would happen, simply as it is unfair competition. And in any kind of e-sports this should not happen either.

I’m kinda puzzled if I should keep playing this game. All my soul, my mind and my heart have a craving desire for Achievement Hunting. The way this game is built is brilliant, I love it. But I am in doubt if my desire for AP Hunting can survive a demotivator like this.

Feel free to share your ideas, your concerns, or feel free to disagree and explain. Maybe I am just one man in the entire community feeling this way. Who knows?

With most kind and sincere regards
Dofty, Achievement Addict

There is no competition for AP. MMO’s aren’t about being fair. Those are my thoughts.

So it’s unfair because people who played this game 4 and a half years have 3 “exclusive” items and 3 titles more then you, a rather new player?
Maybe anet should strip seasonal AP content and all other content they worked through the years, and also remove all the, now not obtainable AP’s from players who are also AP hunters and busted their behinds to get them just for sole purpuse to satisfy you, a rather new player.

The entitlement is strong within you young padawan

The AP ladder is largely meaningless to all but the top dozen or so who use it as friendly competition between each other. The only reason to hunt AP for the majority of players is for the rewards at every 500 points. It’s a long term carrot for players. I bet the vast majority of players don’t even know the ladder exists.

The way the first year and a half of the game was designed was around temporary content. That is gone – so many of us advised against this idea, yet it was the direction they went in and consequently, those AP and the playable content it was associated with are gone and they wont come back, with the exception of some festival ones.

Fair or otherwise, it isn’t going to change and temporary AP will continue through festivals and current events. The fact remains, the situation is as it is and unless they remove the ladders entirely (which I don’t see why they would), you will have to live with the game as it is. AP is a small part of this game and largely non-competitive, so personally I wouldn’t be worrying about it

I’m not an achievement hunter myselft, but i see where you coming from. I think a fair competition is a good thing and AP should be ‘faired-out’.

Obtena.7952:

There is no competition for AP.

Obviously there is. AP are there to be gained. And the ‘I-wanna-be-the-very-best’ attitude is a good thing. Why not encourage it by giving fair chances to be the best?

Availability to be gained != competition. It’s a participation reward. That’s not competition … well, some people think it is. Even the fat kid wins the race on AP.

Oxidia.8103:

So it’s unfair because people who played this game 4 and a half years have 3 “exclusive” items and 3 titles more then you, a rather new player?
Maybe anet should strip seasonal AP content and all other content they worked through the years, and also remove all the, now not obtainable AP’s from players who are also AP hunters and busted their behinds to get them just for sole purpuse to satisfy you, a rather new player.

The entitlement is strong within you young padawan

Wow, way to completely miss the point. So I’ll start with, I’ve been playing since the first day of early access. IF I had been so inclined and obsessed, I could be in competition for that high AP. I’m not because I don’t care. My 12.5k is perfectly respectable to me, I’ll reach those absurd heights some time once there is enough extra events to boost me.

That said, he’s completely right. For the simple fact that there are Leaderboards it should be possible for anyone, no matter when they started to be able to actually compete with the leaders. It’s not. This is unfair. Unfortunately I don’t think there is a reasonable way to fix this. If you take event AP away entirely then that effect rewards associated with high values of AP and there is a finite amount of AP making leaderboards pointless. If you made it so that the leaderboards don’t accept AP from events but they still count to your score then there is still a finite number of AP available to everyone, again defeating the point of leaderboards. The only other options is scrap the leaderboards, which are stupid anyway. The only people who would likely be upset by that are the three to ten people at the very top.

Also, it wasn’t the ‘3 “exclusive” items and 3 titles more’ that he was referencing. He wants to be able to actually compete on the leaderboard for AP as a new player. While I don’t participate in AP hunting, I know many people who strive to to do everything that a game has/had and not being able to compete on a leaderboard that is still currently measuring and ranking player’s AP can turn someone off, if that’s their general attraction to these types of games.

While I don’t think it’s right to take anything away from the people who earned the limited-availability-AP, perhaps they should start a different leaderboard, or branch of the current, that only measures currently available AP. Yes it would take more effort/time on whomever designs the leaderboard, and it should be low on the totem pole if it’s the same team as the content devs (doubtful). But I feel we should still be able to appease new players who have the lust for “I Want To Be The Very Best (that I am currently able to be)”. Not alienate potential players because they can’t compete in what drives them.

this isnt wow, it isnt a race to be top dog. OP has still got the wow mindset i’m afraid (ive been there trust me) in GW2 its all about self motivation and personal achievements, not about having more points than the person standing next to you. A better way to think of achievments in any long standing game that you join later in its life is that it represents long term goals and content.

Guys, this isn’t because you personally don’t see the competition that this isn’t one for others. I personally don’t play pvp for competition, that doesn’t mean I won’t let other do so if they want.

If there was no reset in pvp, people would complain, seasons make sure that everyone has a change to start at the same level. Claiming this isn’t a competition because you don’t see it as it is pointless and selfish.
It’s also not just about WoW, Guild Wars 1 never had temporary achievements either.

Anet capped the AP points you can get daily BECAUSE of this reason. So yes, OP is right, it makes no sense that new players can’t grind AP if they want to.
And no, as a veteran you still get all the titles, all the skins, everything, you get a lot of stuff for what you’ve done over the years. Nothing is lost by doing what the OP suggests.

I am not particulary fighting for APs, but I’m a completionnist too, and not being able to complete a game 100% is demotivating (that was my whole complain about Capricorn having temporary APs).

Oxidia.8103:

Maybe anet should strip seasonal AP content and all other content

Excellent suggestion!

Or, y’know, just delete the achievement ladder. It’s a useless construct with its current design. I suppose the only good thing to come out of it is we got much better, easier dailies after all the whining from the upper .01% about “needing” to do all the dailies every day.

The issue this comes down to though is that the content associated with the majority of those achievements is gone and cannot be restored. Even if LW1 somehow comes back, it will be with new AP which is more correctly aligned with the new format.

I don’t dispute everyone should have access to the same amount of AP, just like everyone should have access to the content, but that ship sailed 4 years ago when they started shipping temporary content against so much feedback to not do it.

For them to make separate leaderboards or separate out the achievements etc is just dev time spent elsewhere. The leaderboards were never a popular idea based on the feedback at the time and if they were, we’d have other pve leaderboards, with the adventures ones you see when completing them actually meaning something. They are unlikely to put time into separating these things when the leaderboards are so low down in the overall priority of things.

MMO’s can never be completed 100%, so it really is chalking it up to being realistic about how things are based on decisions in the past that can’t be changed.

Deihnyx.6318:

Guys, this isn’t because you personally don’t see the competition that this isn’t one for others. I personally don’t play pvp for competition, that doesn’t mean I won’t let other do so if they want.

This is the problem … the OP thinks it’s unfair that he’s 4 years late to the race, so he want’s Anet to rig the competition for him, even though gaining AP is a participation reward.

In short, even if ANet agreed that everyone should be able to max their achievements regardless of skill, timing, etc, there’s no practical way they could make it happen.

That said, I’d be happy if they took down the leaderboards — I have yet to see anything positive for the community as a whole; there are individuals who are very happy with seeing their status, but on the whole, it seems to cause more crankiness than joy.

There are competing philosophies being offered here:

• Everyone should have access to everything, including AP, titles, items.
• It’s okay (or even good) to offer some things that depend on skill, being at the right place & time, or luck.

I prefer the second type of game: the first type becomes a “who has the strongest bladder and the least-intrusive RL” situation, which I find to be ultimately tedious and dull. The second means that my choices sometimes matter.

I’m okay with the idea that I won’t be around for every cool thing that happens or be able to obtain every shiny I like. I think it makes the game more interesting.

Regardless of philosophy, it’s a practical impossibility to offer most of the ~5000 AP that aren’t available to those who started this week.

• Many of AP are rooted in LS1 which can’t be brought back (or at least, it would be a ton of work).
• Others were time dependent (e.g. WvW seasons) or related to achievements based on mechanics that no longer exist (e.g. storing minis in the bank, which is no longer possible).

There are two alternatives for giving new players an opportunity to get extra AP:

• Create special achievements just for new players. This is a non-starter, because of how all existing players would view ANet spending time/energy to serve only part of the population.
• Increase the cap on daily+monthly for newer players, based on what they missed. This, too, is unrealistic, as there’s no way to ensure that everyone would have the same opportunities, without inspecting each account individually. Some veterans also weren’t around for some historical achievements and some chose to forgo them before they were retired.

I don’t see any practical way in which ANet could make this happen, even if they wanted to (and I hope that they don’t want to). I’d prefer that ANet just remove the leaderboards — I don’t think achievement scores should be competitive.

You are four years late to the party, if it was even possible for you to catch up to players who have been playing during that time it would be unfair to them. It was a fair competition from the start date, this is a race you joined late.
There are plenty of other aspects in the game to compete in even if some a lacking in structure that are more forgiving to the time delay.

Also WoW has unobtainable achievements too, I believe most are converted to something that’s not technically an achievement “feat of something” I think, but several others are not so your comparison even acts as a precedent for it.

AP is not a competition.

The leaderboard, by its very nature, makes it competitive.

Solution: have another column on the leaderboard for ‘normalized’ AP (only counts AP that’s achievable by any player today and on into the future, e.g. doesn’t include the historical stuff, nor temporary stuff like the beta PVP map achieves going on now) – sort by that per default. This of course becomes tricky if/as they “retire” stuff that wasn’t in any way flagged as temporary, and normalized AP becomes this awkward sliding scale that fluctuates (but would at least do so consistently – if yours goes down, everyone elses did too).

People who are in the top w/ historical achievements are still competing, new players know the actual target they can reach to compete. Everyone’s happy, no additional work beyond calculating/tracking the normalized AP, and people who have historical achievements still get ‘awarded’ for that by being on the leaderboard.

Alternatively: just get rid of the leaderboard.

Personally I think they should just get rid of the AP leaderboards like some others suggested. It isn’t a fair measure because people that have not been playing pretty much from day one can never catch up as also noted by others. It really only exists at this point as bragging material for the top 5 or so and little else for everyone else. If friends want to compare their AP that is easily done without the leaderboard.

Veto to the “Feats of Strength”-type change. I enjoy having my achievement points and the rewards they got me. Now, I’d be all for just ditching that leaderboard, though.

The only “problem” with the old achievements is that as we can all see newer story achievements are permanent and it’s a bit unfair that old story achies are lost while new ones aren’t. Maybe when they bring back LS1 (IF it ever happens) they can add LS1 achievements back.

The rest of them I think it’s impossible to bring back.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Veto to the “Feats of Strength”-type change. I enjoy having my achievement points and the rewards they got me. Now, I’d be all for just ditching that leaderboard, though.

I’ve made the Feats of Strength suggestion before, but only sarcastically. It riles up the Top-50 ragers. :P

For the GW2 community and the actual rewards, it’d be unfair to veterans and those with fond memories of the one-and-done events of the past.

I don’t even object to the leaderboard all that much. It’s something for some very committed players to jostle for position on. It keeps them engaged. What I highly disagree with is using leaderboards as justification for a change the rest of the community has to drag around, like the Daily cap.

To the OP: If you want motivation to play, you could be of the mindset that one day the now non-achievable points will be dealt with. That gives the Devs about 4 years to change the Leaderboards, and for you to play to rack up the Daily APs that will get you to the cap, and reach the level all the top players on the Leaderboard have.

If, after reaching the cap, nothing has changed, you can then leave, disappointed.

Good luck.

Obtena.7952:

Deihnyx.6318:

Guys, this isn’t because you personally don’t see the competition that this isn’t one for others. I personally don’t play pvp for competition, that doesn’t mean I won’t let other do so if they want.

This is the problem … the OP thinks it’s unfair that he’s 4 years late to the race, so he want’s Anet to rig the competition for him, even though gaining AP is a participation reward.

This. It’s not about who has the most AP and it’s only logical you can’t catch up to people who have a 4 year headstart.