Guild Wars 2

“Fractal Weapon Collector.”

I can just imagine the tears now. XD

Anyway, I greeted this announcement with a mixture of great excitement and dread. On the one hand, I’m already a collector, and it has been one of my goals to slowly unlock all the dungeon armor and weapons. (I’ve already completed numerous weapon sets, such as the various Cultural weapons below T3, all the Beaded weapons, the Lionguard weapons, Ebon Vanguard weapons etc.) So, it’ll be nice to get some extra rewards on top of the collecting satisfaction.

On the other hand, I’m already addicted enough to this game as it is. >.> More goals = more time sinks. My backlog of “other games to play” is going to get even longer!

Honestly I laughed because I keep seeing people on the forums say “I want to be rewarded for my efforts” and then I see the feature pack announcement

Every Item Collections achievement has reward items in addition to achievement points.

There y’all go. Not what you were expecting? Too bad. It’s all you’re gonna get. LMAO.

I’m not really an achievement hunter but I do really like the concept of the changes.

All these new stuff is fancy and all but the point for us vets is, it’s not retroactive! So the super rare and expensive items that I acquired through hard work, sweat and blood all those years/months ago do not apply now?
ANet apparently do not care about vets and long term players. They just want to cater to the new blood and milk their cash.
I wasn’t so concerned when ANet content updates is not as fabulous as the other MMOs out there, but now with the feature updates lacking as well, I’m starting to lose faith in ANet.
It doesn’t help at all that the moment I decided to buy gems from ANet and spend it on an item, it goes on sale the very next day. It doesn’t help at all.
converts to the dark side

Bleu.5079:

All these new stuff is fancy and all but the point for us vets is, it’s not retroactive! So the super rare and expensive items that I acquired through hard work, sweat and blood all those years/months ago do not apply now?

Well some things I guess, but anything that you unlocked in wardrobe or have on your character will count, according to the post.

Labjax.2465:

Bleu.5079:

All these new stuff is fancy and all but the point for us vets is, it’s not retroactive! So the super rare and expensive items that I acquired through hard work, sweat and blood all those years/months ago do not apply now?

Well some things I guess, but anything that you unlocked in wardrobe or have on your character will count, according to the post.

Even wardrobe unlocks is a new feature that wasn’t retroactive. I have to collect all those rare items again. I’m not a hoarder. Great, now I have to tough through dungeon runs again to collect tokens for those dungeon armor/weapons.

Bleu.5079:

Labjax.2465:

Bleu.5079:

All these new stuff is fancy and all but the point for us vets is, it’s not retroactive! So the super rare and expensive items that I acquired through hard work, sweat and blood all those years/months ago do not apply now?

Well some things I guess, but anything that you unlocked in wardrobe or have on your character will count, according to the post.

Even wardrobe unlocks is a new feature that wasn’t retroactive. I have to collect all those rare items again. I’m not a hoarder. Great, now I have to tough through dungeon runs again to collect tokens for those dungeon armor/weapons.

Sorry to hear that. I’m just saying that for this particular feature, it is largely retroactive for what your progress is now.

Bleu.5079:

All these new stuff is fancy and all but the point for us vets is, it’s not retroactive! So the super rare and expensive items that I acquired through hard work, sweat and blood all those years/months ago do not apply now?
ANet apparently do not care about vets and long term players. They just want to cater to the new blood and milk their cash.
I wasn’t so concerned when ANet content updates is not as fabulous as the other MMOs out there, but now with the feature updates lacking as well, I’m starting to lose faith in ANet.
It doesn’t help at all that the moment I decided to buy gems from ANet and spend it on an item, it goes on sale the very next day. It doesn’t help at all.
converts to the dark side

What makes you think the game even remember everything a character once owned? Do you know how much wasted space that would take up on servers?

So essentially you get achievements for being a hoarder?

Mastermavrick.2439:

Atlas.9704:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

>Spoon Collecting

Sold

Somewhere, out in the Shiverpeaks, is a Norn dressed in all blue.
He runs around screaming his battlecry SPOOOOOOOON!

=D a Tick reference much love sir.

I try to please, especially when hearing news about the live action show coming back.

Ayrilana.1396:

So essentially you get achievements for being a hoarder?

Yep. And it sure makes this old hoarder happy.

And from ANet’s side, it gives players more hooks to keep them playing, and will help increase demand for mats.

I think this will bring out the Skritt in all of us.

I am a hoarder extraordinaire and I love getting achievements so this sounds just perfect for me. Bring it on, I say

Nope because those of us who stopped playing a while back because of the constant lack of features and imbalance, requested in the suggestions forum multiple times, for non-violent activities that would sit well with the casual and RP crowd. And while players like the OP often forget that we are here and are a large part of the community, the developers haven’t forgotten that and I for one am thankful they added this activity and new skins two things this game has needed for some time now.

tigirius.9014:

Nope because those of us who stopped playing a while back because of the constant lack of features and imbalance, requested in the suggestions forum multiple times, for non-violent activities that would sit well with the casual and RP crowd. And while players like the OP often forget that we are here and are a large part of the community, the developers haven’t forgotten that and I for one am thankful they added this activity and new skins two things this game has needed for some time now.

By your own admission you’re a large part of the audience that has essentially left. Since you’ve left, you pretty much cease to be part of the audience.

It’s much better to hold the customers you have than to maybe get back customers you’ve lost. Particularly if getting those people back might lose you the customers you have.

Grind Wars 2 definitely needed some more grind.

I’m sure there’s a ton of people out there who are excited for this “feature”, but it’s definitely under-whelming for a Week 3 announcement to say the least.

Underwhelming to you….not so much to others. You see, not everyone wants the same things! =)

Flytrap.8075:

Grind Wars 2 definitely needed some more grind.

I’m sure there’s a ton of people out there who are excited for this “feature”, but it’s definitely under-whelming for a Week 3 announcement to say the least.

Under-whelming to you, maybe. Lots of people seem to think this is a good annoucement. My wife is thrilled. Something like this was a feature in Rift, one of the few things she misses from that game.

It seems I’m not the only one uneasy about GemStore skins interfering in the achievements after all…

I hope we get a kitchen for our home instance when we complete the spoon collection box.

Eager to see how this goes, I guess the collections will be different levels of scavenger hunts, RNG fests, legendary goldgrinds and others, so many people should get something from this if they like completing things. I just pity the soul who sets himself the goal to get every achievement ingame (apart from humanly impossible WvW achievements).

Varezenem.2813:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Side tangent: With all this little scavenger type hunts, does anyone else feel like they might be laying the ground work for something… bigger? Possibly reconditioning us for additional exploration? Cause I’m really starting to feel like this is all a set up for something….bigger.

No doubts about that they even mentioned it on the post.

The Future

This is certainly not the last you will be seeing of Item Collections. We have many more in the works, some that stand alone and some that are deeply tied to the Living World. We are very excited for this new system and what it will bring to the game going forward. We had a lot of fun designing and building it, and we hope you have as much fun playing it. So get out there, explore the world, and find that last piece of loot!

Lol…not what I meant. Of course they are going to continue to build on this new system via LS. That’s a given. Think bigger.

Nothing for me. I just get stuff I want. Collecting is far too tedious and boring. But it isn’t a bad addition. Just not what I want.

To be honest, I feel that this “announcement” is part of the previous one, and belonged with it. I don’t see anything “different” from it:

“Here, collect these” … “Here, have achievements for ‘collect these’”, I’m a little disappointed in these (and many features announced), but I will wait and see, and experience the patch before I make my own judgement on the matter

Paradox.1380:

khani.4786:

Well since I"ve already been working to unlock every single dungeon armor and weapon skin……this is right up my alley.

Oh man I thought I was the only crazy person to do this. I am about half way there.

Since they have put out the wardrobe I have become a collecting Junkie… this update has me sooo hyped.

Also, I am loving the Spoon Collecting. It reminds me of my late Grandma (RIP mama), because she had a decorative spoon from every state from what I can recall. I am personally gonna be going out to hunt them in particular. What a great little kitchy thing.

I have every armor & weapon from AC and CoF, need about 10.5 more paths of CM and TA, probably around 12 more paths of SE, 18 more for HoTW……but then I need 110 or more paths of both CoE and Arah. o.o

CoE will be easy because I"m not afraid to pug there when guildmates don’t want to do it…but Arah, ugh. I love Arah but I still don’t know it well enough to be confident enough to pug it.

I am really excited about this change. I horde some things, but not everything. I will examine the rewards and determine to collect based on that. I’m hoping there are some unique mini’s, some cool toys, an unlock for the home instance. Fun things that I can actually use and show off.

Armor and weapon skins are cool, but in the end I have a look that I love and more skins probably won’t change that. This is one instance where I really love games with mounts. You can always design cool new unique mounts as rewards and since you can change mounts at any time you can always show them off.

khani.4786:

CoE will be easy because I"m not afraid to pug there when guildmates don’t want to do it…but Arah, ugh. I love Arah but I still don’t know it well enough to be confident enough to pug it.

I’ve completed the light and heavy Arah armor sets and I’ve only done each path once for the dungeon master title, all I had to do was grit my teeth and dive into PvP reward tracks. Two and a half more trips through that reward track and I’ll have enough to start and finish the medium set, and more than enough weapon chests to unlock all the weapons as well.

Don’t have to play too religiously either, I just do my three matches for dailies.

Pandaman.4758:

khani.4786:

CoE will be easy because I"m not afraid to pug there when guildmates don’t want to do it…but Arah, ugh. I love Arah but I still don’t know it well enough to be confident enough to pug it.

I’ve completed the light and heavy Arah armor sets and I’ve only done each path once for the dungeon master title, all I had to do was grit my teeth and dive into PvP reward tracks. Two and a half more trips through that reward track and I’ll have enough to start and finish the medium set, and more than enough weapon chests to unlock all the weapons as well.

Don’t have to play too religiously either, I just do my three matches for dailies.

I may have to do some of that. I finally got the balthazar backpiece unlocked so I’ll probably work on the dungeon tracks now. I PvP so rarely though because everything else seems more fun to me. But the three daily matches though that might make it a bit easier.

October 2012: We have all these open world zones that the devs spent huge amount of effort making but that the overwhelming majority of people are avoiding.

Answer: Living Story. Put new temporary content (achievements) in the same old zones to try to make use of all the effort that went into making those zones.

September 2014: We have all these craftable items and heart/karma merchants that the devs spent huge amount of effort making but that the overwhelming majority of people are avoiding.

Answer: Collectibles Achievements. Now there is a reason for people to craft and buy all that junk that nobody wants and visit those lonely vendors. Yay! Now you will actually want to make that Front Line Stew recipe (once) or buy that useless +7 toughness accessory from the heart vendor.

Coming Soon: We have all these NPCs scattered throughout the world that the devs spent huge amount of effort making but that the overwhelming majority of people are avoiding.

Answer: NPC Dialog Achievements. Talk to every NPC in Tyria. Yes, I collect people.

Summary: The devs spent 90%+ of their pre-launch effort on stuff that they thought would be great but that turned out not to be what the vast majority of players wanted to do. They are putting new wrappers on old content and selling it with achievements.

Astral Projections.7320:

Izaya.2906:

It would be interesting to see what they award for collecting all legendaries lol.

2 greens. 1 blue. ^^

Oh, this is probably going to be the truth. Thats all we normally get.

Tasty Pudding.3764:

Answer: NPC Dialog Achievements. Talk to every NPC in Tyria. Yes, I collect people.

I would rather have classic quests than npc dialogue achievements. Shouldnt be that hard, just connect it with the events..

Vayne.8563:

Bleu.5079:

All these new stuff is fancy and all but the point for us vets is, it’s not retroactive! So the super rare and expensive items that I acquired through hard work, sweat and blood all those years/months ago do not apply now?
ANet apparently do not care about vets and long term players. They just want to cater to the new blood and milk their cash.
I wasn’t so concerned when ANet content updates is not as fabulous as the other MMOs out there, but now with the feature updates lacking as well, I’m starting to lose faith in ANet.
It doesn’t help at all that the moment I decided to buy gems from ANet and spend it on an item, it goes on sale the very next day. It doesn’t help at all.
converts to the dark side

What makes you think the game even remember everything a character once owned? Do you know how much wasted space that would take up on servers?

The fact that if you have the achievement already unlocked for say owning cultural armor pieces. i know a few people that bought and owned all of the tiers of human cultural armor, but don’t have it anymore, and when the wardrobe came out they weren’t given the skins for it even though their account clearly shows they bought and wore all three sets. That’s a lot of gold for Anet to ignore.

skullmount.1758:

Astral Projections.7320:

Izaya.2906:

It would be interesting to see what they award for collecting all legendaries lol.

2 greens. 1 blue. ^^

Oh, this is probably going to be the truth. Thats all we normally get.

No, they will also give you a title. maybe. That no one will know what its for but you.

So, this week was heralded as containing things veteran players would like. Which seems to be collection achievements.

Seriously Arena Net, we already have tons of achievements why waste development time on more? Surely you guys are not that hard up for ideas.

tigirius.9014:

Nope because those of us who stopped playing a while back because of the constant lack of features and imbalance, requested in the suggestions forum multiple times, for non-violent activities that would sit well with the casual and RP crowd. And while players like the OP often forget that we are here and are a large part of the community, the developers haven’t forgotten that and I for one am thankful they added this activity and new skins two things this game has needed for some time now.

This is an MMO called: Guild WARS. WARS. There is fighting. Lots of it. You want to run around and collect things? Pokemon. oh wait, no that has violence in it too. What’s the other one? The farm game, harvest Moon? I think you collect stuff there too. Seriously. There are PLENTY of non-violent things to do in this game already. We don’t need to run around and collect things to get titles in this game. i bought it to run around n Tyria and fight things, preferably harder and harder things as maps open up. Instead there is still tons of map hidden and unreachable 2 years into this game. Its bad enough I am going to have to sit out of most of the rest of this Living Story when it comes back up again just so I can play it all in one go so it feels like a substantial bit of new content.

So many things still broken since launch, and they spend resources on something like this …. sigh

This will not keep the vets I know playing. On the contrary, it will drive them away that much sooner!

What a waste …

Getting new skins/titles/rewards for playing the game isnt that bad for vets. I’m excited to see what they have in store.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

The fact that if you have the achievement already unlocked for say owning cultural armor pieces. i know a few people that bought and owned all of the tiers of human cultural armor, but don’t have it anymore, and when the wardrobe came out they weren’t given the skins for it even though their account clearly shows they bought and wore all three sets. That’s a lot of gold for Anet to ignore.

That’s because the cultural armor achievement does not track which skin was bought: it does not differenciate between light,medium and heavy. Which means that when the wardrobe came out the software had no way to know which skin should be unlocked, thus unlocking none.

bri.2359:

So many things still broken since launch, and they spend resources on something like this …. sigh

This will not keep the vets I know playing. On the contrary, it will drive them away that much sooner!

What a waste …

What makes you think that the people that worked on this system are the same people that would work on fixing broken things?

Thanks for this new feature, while it has a high ‘facebook content’ level and might not be for everyone, I still welcome this as an addition to the game. I like how it might provide veteran players with ‘personal quests’ trying to find and complete collections, while at the same time offer a richer play environment for new players (if there remain collectibles after a normal play through remains to be seen, but there seemed to be various long term goals in there as well).

If the next feature is a rebalance of the scale-down functionality to make sure Vets can have a decent fight while they scour the world for collectibles, that would make it even better…

Say what you want, this will keep people busy for a while. At least until the next patch/LS

I’m actually a bit curious on how gem store collection achievement would be so bad. I mean I know it could be considered ‘paid collections’, but you can buy gems with gold, as in, without needing cash. Sure its easier with cash but you can still get those free.

I personally would like to see SOME gem collections (As long as they are not limited time ones)! Ex. Charr backpack collection and rewards a armored Rytlock backpack? Not good with coming up with rewards but you get the point!

Because it makes the achievement leaderboards pay to win. Its much faster to buy stuff from gem shop directly than farming the gold for it. Especially now that key farming will be nerfed it will likely cost 5x as much gold per skin as before.
The miniature achievements in the past were bearable for AP hunters because you could just lend them from a friend for a minute to get the AP or buying the whole set for like 300-500g was possible. Now add 16+ sets of gemshop weapons to it and you get an idea.

But isn’t that the case regardless? Gem payers can exchange for gold too. Easier to buy gold than it is to get gold.

People are most likely gonna go for those spirit weapons, that are insanely expensive. Can’t we all just consider those like 800 gem armors a 100+ gold effort? I mean payers will pay regardless and ruin the fun for themselves. Me personally I would rather earn those things, including the gem store items because thats actually possible.

Well, there is the fact that gem-store stuff is limited time only pretty often, so working towards it via gold-to-gem conversation isnt an option for most people..

Not saying there should be limited time collections. There’s a lot of stuff that can be a collection that is there for good. Like I said there’s the option of a charr backpack collection. Also those fuzzy hats could be one as well. You know, collections possible all the time.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Vayne.8563:

Bleu.5079:

All these new stuff is fancy and all but the point for us vets is, it’s not retroactive! So the super rare and expensive items that I acquired through hard work, sweat and blood all those years/months ago do not apply now?
ANet apparently do not care about vets and long term players. They just want to cater to the new blood and milk their cash.
I wasn’t so concerned when ANet content updates is not as fabulous as the other MMOs out there, but now with the feature updates lacking as well, I’m starting to lose faith in ANet.
It doesn’t help at all that the moment I decided to buy gems from ANet and spend it on an item, it goes on sale the very next day. It doesn’t help at all.
converts to the dark side

What makes you think the game even remember everything a character once owned? Do you know how much wasted space that would take up on servers?

The fact that if you have the achievement already unlocked for say owning cultural armor pieces. i know a few people that bought and owned all of the tiers of human cultural armor, but don’t have it anymore, and when the wardrobe came out they weren’t given the skins for it even though their account clearly shows they bought and wore all three sets. That’s a lot of gold for Anet to ignore.

Didn’t answer my question though.

Okay cultural armor had an achievement, but even that doesnt’ tell you what you owned. Because you can get that achievement without buying every cultural armor. I know because I did.

So the achievement doesn’t specific which stuff you bought. Only that you bought 6 pieces from each tier from each race.

Polorapknight.5869:

But isn’t that the case regardless? Gem payers can exchange for gold too. Easier to buy gold than it is to get gold.

People are most likely gonna go for those spirit weapons, that are insanely expensive. Can’t we all just consider those like 800 gem armors a 100+ gold effort? I mean payers will pay regardless and ruin the fun for themselves. Me personally I would rather earn those things, including the gem store items because thats actually possible.

Currently the impact of being a gemshop whale is very limited on the AP leaderboards. Sure you will have stuff like 5 legendaries and one duplicate legendary faster, but by the time you are anywhere close to top 25 you have enough gold anyway to make those. At least that was the case for me (rank 19 EU). Never ever traded gems to gold so far.
Some of the old gemshop sets already cost a fortune because anet increased their cost from 1 to upto 3-7 tickets. I am not a key farmer and found 9 scraps so far from random key drops / doing personal story the normal way. Thats not enough to buy even one of the triple digit amount of Black lion key weapons.

I hope there wont be any gem shop set achievements or at least give no AP. I am fine with it giving titles or something though.
Equally bad would be the aether path skins from twilight arbor, tequatl skins and fractal skins because those are a pain to get / much RNG.

Malediktus.9250:

I hope there wont be any gem shop set achievements or at least give no AP. I am fine with it giving titles or something though.
Equally bad would be the aether path skins from twilight arbor, tequatl skins and fractal skins because those are a pain to get / much RNG.

THAT I think would be a nice midway settlement. I honestly wouldn’t mind not getting any achievement points for going for gem store stuff, but at the same time still get rewarded for any effort I put into getting gems for some stuff via gold to gem transfer.