Guild Wars 2

and take your bells with you!

Really? 500 notes? not 50 or even 100. FIVE HUNDRED! (ya, i spelled it out because you can’t CAP 500)

There are 15 achievements listed in the Wintersday fest list. 4 of them are infinite and therefore do not count towards the meta achievement: the jump puzzle (which I cant do either), snowball, 30 round Toypoc and complete a bell song. Anet didn’t want those to count, but 500 notes in the bells? Ya, we NEED that one. Everyone loves Guitar Hero right? 5-yos can get perfect scores on “Thought the Fire and Flames” (I had to look it up, I dont play GH) so this should be fun, right? WRONG!!!

Look, I thought farming for 6k badges in SW to finish my biolum. legs and boots was a pain, or stacks and stacks of geodes in DryTop for bug weapons but at lest i was doing something fun and in keeping with what the game is about, killing stuff.

The bells? that is just annoying crap. And at 500, it is an amount of annoying crap that kills the entire fest for some people (I cant be the only person that feels this way) I played about 10 songs and have a grand total of 5 correct notes. It doesn’t seem to matter when i hit the key, I don’t get credit. Maybe it is the fact I, on a good day, play at 10FPS (this is also why I don’t do speed/time based jump puzzles) and so when I think it is the right time to hit the key the game says it has already passed. I had this problem getting my 10 wave jumps at Teq. Some days I have to jump way early and other days i don’t just because on some days I lag more than others.

But the point is, you (ANET) didn’t have to make it required for the meta achievement. It is a completely arbitrary decision. You could have included all 4 of the infinite achievements and only let them count once (personally I think this would have been the most fair) while keeping the number needed at something like 10 or 11. You could have given us room to skip ones that we didn’t want to do (which you have done in the past). You could have set a more reasonable goal of 50 or 100. I would grind my way to 100, 1 or 2 notes at a time if I had to.

It has only been 3 days. Plenty of time to do something to address this.

A perfect match is 300 notes played correctly. You get that achievement very quickly.

You seem to be missing the major point.

Takina.1739:

I played about 10 songs and have a grand total of 5 correct notes. It doesn’t seem to matter when i hit the key, I don’t get credit. Maybe it is the fact I, on a good day, play at 10FPS (this is also why I don’t do speed/time based jump puzzles) and so when I think it is the right time to hit the key the game says it has already passed. I had this problem getting my 10 wave jumps at Teq. Some days I have to jump way early and other days i don’t just because on some days I lag more than others.

It could be that you do not know when to play the notes. There’s very little reason for there to be lag in that instance.

Takina.1739:

You seem to be missing the major point.

Takina.1739:

I played about 10 songs and have a grand total of 5 correct notes. It doesn’t seem to matter when i hit the key, I don’t get credit. Maybe it is the fact I, on a good day, play at 10FPS (this is also why I don’t do speed/time based jump puzzles) and so when I think it is the right time to hit the key the game says it has already passed. I had this problem getting my 10 wave jumps at Teq. Some days I have to jump way early and other days i don’t just because on some days I lag more than others.

I would say the problem is your computer and/or internet connection. If you’re only getting 10fps on a good day, how on earth are you able to play any part of this game?

The corollary is that if you don’t love Guitar Hero, don’t play it. It’s just AP.

It’s funny that in the same patch where they revamped the dailies to reduce the grind for AP, they also put in an achievement like this.

I got it in 2-3 rounds which is less time than it took to do one full run of Toypocalypse.

WOW, I hadn’t considered that. Maybe I am hitting it too soon, or too late, but WAIT! I did consider that, as I said in both above posts.

Takina.1739:

It doesn’t seem to matter when i hit the key, I don’t get credit.

Admittedly, I did not spell out how many different ways I had tried to hit the notes, ranging from as they hit the outside of the ring to just as the are about to vanish under me and everywhere in between. I have focus on hitting them as they are in the blue ring, because that is what people have said I need to do. But 10 songs in and I have 5 notes shows there is still a problem.

But this is ignoring the main point of the post: why is this achievement and not some of the others being forced upon anyone who wants the meta achievement. Why did we lose the flexibility we used to get with these meta achievements (do 10 of the 15). And why does it need to be 500? We didn’t even need to kill 500 toys, and killing stuff is really what the game is about.

Teon, you would be amazed what I have been able to do at 10FPS. but quick, persion timed jumps, or it would seem bell notes, are beyond me.

well i need the laurel. So I have to play 1 song a day anyway.

and no, I’m not going after the achievment. Just saying if you do 1 a day it isn’t so bad. You probably have to do 2 if you want the achievmeent.

It’s 500 because there are 50 notes per song. I don’t remember a blue ring so I’ll have to double check in that.

Edit: Ok. For some reason I was thinking it was brown. I only just started working on the infinite for this one last night. What you do is let the orb get to the blue area and then hit the key when it kind of pops. It’s difficult to describe as I know the tunes and just hit the keys with the rhythm.

Takina.1739:

Teon, you would be amazed what I have been able to do at 10FPS. but quick, persion timed jumps, or it would seem bell notes, are beyond me.

Back in the day, I used to play military flight sims with a buddy of mine…..on an old 386 machine…..we were lucky to get 15fps…..it is doable, but man, do you ever have to anticipate things……at 10fps…..the bell choir would be the last thing I would ever try…..lol.

You’ll need to hit the key right after the “bubble” hits the inner ring you’re standing on and disappears. I’ve found that I take damage whenever I hit a note that’s still visible.

I must say though that I have no idea how you can handle playing with ~10 fps. I would probably start losing my sanity in about three seconds of play…

I tried playing AA when it came out. Loved the glider, but combat was next to impossible because I dropped to 3-5fps. 10FPS in GW2 I still do L49 Fractals, have a winning record in PvP, but things with really tight timing, forget it. Spekks Lab 2 yesterday, needed a mezer to help because the jumping has to be done to fast. I’ll never complete the JPs for Halloween or Wintersday. Not until i upgrade the computer anyway

I don’t love guitar hero but I love bell choir. So, I’ll continue to play it and be happy ANet created it.

You don’t like it? Do something else.

I don’t like the pvp mini game but I don’t moan about that. I just don’t do it.

Lothirieth.3408:

I don’t love guitar hero but I love bell choir. So, I’ll continue to play it and be happy ANet created it.

You don’t like it? Do something else.

I don’t like the pvp mini game but I don’t moan about that. I just don’t do it.

The problem is that he needs to hit 500 notes to complete the meta and get the mini.

Lets just remove every achievement anyone finds annoying or tedious then. Some people just are not good at some things. If we adjusted every meta and goal to where everyone could do it without difficulty we wouldn’t have any.

It is really not that difficult you don’t have to finish a single song. Scroll your camera to its highest point and don’t swing until that dot is all the way across the white line.

Luckily one doesn’t have to do every one of the achievements to get the meta done. One can pick and chose.

Or Simon says?

Now leave me to my bells, is not a hard achievement.

Lothirieth.3408:

Luckily one doesn’t have to do every one of the achievements to get the meta done. One can pick and chose.

Lothirieth, that is an incorrect statement.

I fell the OP’s pain as I am totally 100% inept at the bell ringing. At 60 I learned my keyboard skills from a typewriter and not a computer keyboard and although the layout is essentially qwerty the two are not the same so with something like the bells I find myself having to look at my keys and then back to the screen. My fingers may still be in the same spot but my brain has to doublecheck and thus I lose a half second here, another there and soon bomb out.

The wife on the other hand has an advantage over me as not only is she a touch typist she is also quite adept on the piano and so looking at the screen and deciding on which finger the note equates to comes easy to her.

That all said my meta is complete and I never hit a note as she finished it for me, all 500 notes, in well under an hour.

I was very frustrated with it at first, but I got in to a technique and went from 0 to 500 in about 30 minutes.

Move camera so it’s a bird’s eye view, and place fingers on 1-4 and 6-9. ring note only after it passes through the white line (Order on hotkeys is identical to order on the board)

proceed to own everything and rake in kittens of gift boxes.

Not everybody can get every reward. I don’t see why they should have to remove it from the meta to suit you. If you can’t turn down your settings to get above 10 fps in a closed instance with at most what, 11 other people, sounds like the issues run deeper than what they chose to include.

This minigame really annoys me and I’m absolutely horrible and get like 2 notes right sometimes on the hard songs, lol, but it’s not really that bad. If you get overwhelmed, just focus on playing a couple right, and you’ll do fine for the easy songs.

The main thing is to only play notes once they reach the inner circle. If you do it too early and press too much buttons it’ll damage you too much.

It’s better to play a couple of notes right than to play a bunch wrong. Basically, if you can’t play the note, don’t!

I’m already at like 100 and I am always the person at the bottom of the scoreboard at the end. And yes, make sure the camera is above you.

At first, when all failed, I resorted to just clicking and focusing on the first 5 notes. Playing a right note heals you so for easy songs, it will let you survive for the song.

Yikes, even with my horrible, horrible lag, I managed at least half the notes in my 1 go of the bells thus far.

It’s very doable, but I can understand the frustration if you have lag.

@Lothirieth: Unfortunately this is a required achievement for the meta achievement.

I find this achievement completely counter-intuitive and have never been able to complete it. When I look at the playing board I see a piano-style key board and when the sliding ball appears on the key I hit that key. I don’t wait for it to slide down to the bottom and “hit” me/disappear and THEN hit the key. That does not work for me and I find it completely counter-intuitive. Given this is a once-year thing I have been unable to break myself from hitting the key when the circle/ball is on the keyboard so in the past few years I’ve not completed it.

This year for the first time I was playing this game with my wife and she has absolutely no problem with this mini-game – I let her take over and she ran through the 500 notes in short order. Makes up for all the JPs I’ve ported her through.

This is just another example of ANet limiting choice when they really didn’t have to and nothing good was foster by doing so. They could have made it 10 instead of 11 or allowed the infinite achievements to count once or allowed the windersday dailies to count. More poor decision making on ANet’s part but I’ve kind of come to expect that from them these days . . .

Well, I suck at this kind of mini game, and I’m at 4xx/500 already, so this one shouldn’t be that bad. Consider wintersday should last for at least 2 weeks, just play one song per day will get you there…..eventually.

ps. I need to play one song per day for daily anyway, cause I am even worse at timed JP, thank goodness it’s not part of meta.

Not to try and troll you, but if you are running 10 FPS in the Bell Choir, how are you capable of even doing anything else in this game? And furthermore, there are legitimate things Anet should be spending their time on in this game. You really can’t expect them to cater to you because you apparently refuse to update your gaming rig.

Lol thats achiev for 10 minutes

I have 14,656AP. I’ve done a lot at 10FPS.

Many of you are focused on this 1 achievement as if it exists in a vacuum. It doesn’t, it is part of a larger achievement where is an absolute requirement to complete. It is not 1 of a number of options to complete. As someone above mentioned, they revamped the dailies to not only encourage people to try other things but to widen the number of options people can pick from to complete the daily. Ya, some people don’t like it because they don’t have map access to some areas or Maw doesn’t spawn in their play window and they refuse to do PvP or WvW, but they have lots of options to pick from, I think at L80 its 12 and they only need to do 3? And dailies happen every day. This is for a meta achievement that last 2 weeks and has no options as to doing this achievement and not that one. Anet wants to leave the bells in year round, Ill withdraw my argument. Then I can do a note or 2 a day and get it done without spending all my time in there. Otherwise this is a mini-game that has no connection to anything else. it is not part of a storyline, it is not part of a sequence of events. It is just something someone in ANET likes and wants to promote so they made it a required part of the meta achievement so people would do it. They didn’t do that with the other mini-games. They didn’t give people the option of completing 1 or more of the 4 mini-games. No, they singled out this 1. That is the root complaint.

(Way off topic of the OP but) …Might I suggest playing Rocksmith with a real guitar? Far superior to some dumb bells in a game. 2cents gifted2U.

Takina.1739:

I have 14,656AP. I’ve done a lot at 10FPS.

Many of you are focused on this 1 achievement as if it exists in a vacuum. It doesn’t, it is part of a larger achievement where is an absolute requirement to complete. It is not 1 of a number of options to complete. As someone above mentioned, they revamped the dailies to not only encourage people to try other things but to widen the number of options people can pick from to complete the daily. Ya, some people don’t like it because they don’t have map access to some areas or Maw doesn’t spawn in their play window and they refuse to do PvP or WvW, but they have lots of options to pick from, I think at L80 its 12 and they only need to do 3? And dailies happen every day. This is for a meta achievement that last 2 weeks and has no options as to doing this achievement and not that one. Anet wants to leave the bells in year round, Ill withdraw my argument. Then I can do a note or 2 a day and get it done without spending all my time in there. Otherwise this is a mini-game that has no connection to anything else. it is not part of a storyline, it is not part of a sequence of events. It is just something someone in ANET likes and wants to promote so they made it a required part of the meta achievement so people would do it. They didn’t do that with the other mini-games. They didn’t give people the option of completing 1 or more of the 4 mini-games. No, they singled out this 1. That is the root complaint.

I encourage you to try the method I noted above. It makes it much easier and, like I said, after some frustration with the game originally, I worked out my technique and wernt from 0-500 notes in less than half an hour.

Good luck!

I’m terribad at it, but it’s by far one of the simplest to achieve.

Place all fingers minus thumb on 1-4 and 6-9, pay no attention to your character swinging the bills and it might even help to turn your speakers off. I only takes about 30 minutes.

I actually despised this minigame until I find my own method to complete it – now i’m literally dropping into a few games for the fun of it.

I’d rather have to ring 1000 notes than have to do 30 rounds or 50 waves of Toypocalypse. I honestly just cannot stand Toypocalypse. I get so bored. However, I wanted to finish the meta, and I did it anyway.

Different people like different things. It’s unfortunate that you seem to be unable to handle this activity, but you’re going to have to just deal with it like everyone else has if you want the reward. I don’t really see the problem with having achievements from each of the activities count towards the meta. However, I can agree that having the dailies count as a replacement again would be nice (even if it was a case of three different days of Wintersday dailies equaling one meta achievement).

RoseofGilead.8907:

Different people like different things.

That’s why in earlier events there was a choice , and you didn’t need to do all achievements for meta. This time, you do.

Why should you be rewarded for something you can’t do? Bell choir is one of the activities of wintersday.

You are only missing x amount of AP and 1 mini. No big deal.

Do you have a brother/sister/wife/son that you can bribe and have them do it for you while you take a nap? That seemed to work for a few others.

Memorize the notes and play along with the song rather than the screen. It really doesn’t matter what your FPS is. Alternatively, cheat, make a macro and automate it. The notes are always the same as long as you choose the same part.

Tman.6349:

Do you have a brother/sister/wife/son that you can bribe and have them do it for you while you take a nap? That seemed to work for a few others.

Yup. My husband bribed me to do it for him.

Imagine if ANET listened to every complaint like that. Please do not blame ANET when it is in fact your hardware, your connection, or simply your inexperience in a certain part of the game.
I get that it can be frustrating to partake in an activity and be limited by your hardware. But then again, the game runs good enough on most system as to achieve 20-30 fps. Especially in a non-zerg activty such as Bell Choir which is instanced. I am fairly certain that if we were to do a survey, we’d find out that most people, after an initial learning phase of 5 minutes, are able to hit a lot of notes correctly. Just because it can’t be done while being AFK and watching a very engaging movie on your 2nd monitor, does not mean it has to go or should not be required. There is so much stuff being handed to us on a silver platter already.

500 sounds a lot, I know.
But just do Bell Choir. Two~three rounds, you’re done. Two or three rounds! That’s all it takes.

Because you play a lot of notes.

garcialak.9215:

Why should you be rewarded for something you can’t do? Bell choir is one of the activities of wintersday.

And this, agreed. You simply cannot say “Hey, I cannot or don’t want to play Bell Choir, but you know, I should still get rewarded for achieving it”. Erm, no? You just said you don’t want to achieve anything in regards to Bell Choir, so why would you get the achievement for it? You just said that you shouldn’t!

Arrow.4619:

@Lothirieth: Unfortunately this is a required achievement for the meta achievement.

It’d be very weird if it were not.

Wintersday has a meta achievement.
“Achieve all achievements associated with Wintersday.” Makes sense, right?

Bell Choir is an activity which is part of Wintersday. It is hence associated with Wintersday. It’s achievement is hence associated with Wintersday achievements and a result part of the meta-achievement.

How is this not… well… a given? I’d raise an eyebrow if this weren’t the case, because that’d not make sense.

Assume for a moment you change the context. “Hey guys! Hey guys! I want to get all WvW achievements, but I really don’t want to attack camps.” It sounds stupid, doesn’kitten If you want the achievement, you got to do the content. Be happy the achievements are as bad as they and basically award themselves just for doing the activity, sensible achievements require the player to achieve something.

A sensible Bell choir achievement for the meta would be “Play an entire round of Bell Choir, and score perfect in at least 4 songs”. There ought to be one to do a full 600 points, too, but that one is then optional as a hard mode achievement on top.

But anyhow, back to the point, it makes no sense to expect that an achievement relating to an activity part of a specific content set should not be part of that content set’s meta achievement.

2 words; masking tape.

I set up my camera facing down, I anticipated the notes hitting the center just fine and I tried to pick anything but the middle platform (too many notes IMO).

But it wasn’t until I placed masking tape on my monitor at 1,4, 6 and 9 (5 is not used) that i was at least able to do a few rounds. I always skip the hard songs regardless , but the easy ones aren’t to bad. No guarantees it will work, but it made my ability to pick the right lane much easier for me so I hope it helps someone out there.

Carighan.6758:

500 sounds a lot, I know.
But just do Bell Choir. Two~three rounds, you’re done. Two or three rounds! That’s all it takes.

For you. If you have read OP’s post, you would see that he is averaging one correct note per two songs. That’s not even 1/100 of the rate you are speaking about.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Tman.6349:

Do you have a brother/sister/wife/son that you can bribe and have them do it for you while you take a nap? That seemed to work for a few others.

Yup. My husband bribed me to do it for him.

Same, I did my husband’s as well LOL

Mireles Lore.5942:

Lets just remove every achievement anyone finds annoying or tedious then. Some people just are not good at some things. If we adjusted every meta and goal to where everyone could do it without difficulty we wouldn’t have any.

It is really not that difficult you don’t have to finish a single song. Scroll your camera to its highest point and don’t swing until that dot is all the way across the white line.

I think the camera is one of the top things to make it easier. I do it without even thinking about it now, so would have failed to mention.

The first thing I do when I get on stage is make sure the camera is pointing top down.

Astralporing.1957:

Carighan.6758:

500 sounds a lot, I know.
But just do Bell Choir. Two~three rounds, you’re done. Two or three rounds! That’s all it takes.

For you. If you have read OP’s post, you would see that he is averaging one correct note per two songs. That’s not even 1/100 of the rate you are speaking about.

If he’s doing that then he’s not even lasting a 10 seconds into every song and getting kicked out. If Anet made it so that people who had this issue could get their achievement without grind, imagine how it would be for everyone else.

Carighan.6758:

500 sounds a lot, I know.
But just do Bell Choir. Two~three rounds, you’re done. Two or three rounds! That’s all it takes.

Because you play a lot of notes.

garcialak.9215:

Why should you be rewarded for something you can’t do? Bell choir is one of the activities of wintersday.

And this, agreed. You simply cannot say “Hey, I cannot or don’t want to play Bell Choir, but you know, I should still get rewarded for achieving it”. Erm, no? You just said you don’t want to achieve anything in regards to Bell Choir, so why would you get the achievement for it? You just said that you shouldn’t!

Arrow.4619:

@Lothirieth: Unfortunately this is a required achievement for the meta achievement.

It’d be very weird if it were not.

Wintersday has a meta achievement.
“Achieve all achievements associated with Wintersday.” Makes sense, right?

Bell Choir is an activity which is part of Wintersday. It is hence associated with Wintersday. It’s achievement is hence associated with Wintersday achievements and a result part of the meta-achievement.

How is this not… well… a given? I’d raise an eyebrow if this weren’t the case, because that’d not make sense.

Assume for a moment you change the context. “Hey guys! Hey guys! I want to get all WvW achievements, but I really don’t want to attack camps.” It sounds stupid, doesn’kitten If you want the achievement, you got to do the content. Be happy the achievements are as bad as they and basically award themselves just for doing the activity, sensible achievements require the player to achieve something.

A sensible Bell choir achievement for the meta would be “Play an entire round of Bell Choir, and score perfect in at least 4 songs”. There ought to be one to do a full 600 points, too, but that one is then optional as a hard mode achievement on top.

But anyhow, back to the point, it makes no sense to expect that an achievement relating to an activity part of a specific content set should not be part of that content set’s meta achievement.

Last year, if you did the Wintersday Daily achievement (which was typically just one of the activities) it counted towards the meta. So those who didn’t like one of the 11 required options could bypass it.

Which is why I think there is such an uproar this year over having to do all of the options to get the meta instead of having the option to skip one or two.

Because last year, they could skip one or two of them.

Astralporing.1957:

For you. If you have read OP’s post, you would see that he is averaging one correct note per two songs. That’s not even 1/100 of the rate you are speaking about.

I read OPs post, but I did account for the blatant exaggeration.
Even then, the problem would not be with the number the achievement requires. Independent of whether it’s 5, 50 or 500 notes.

I really like bell choir and I hate guitar hero.

I have never learned to play the piano or any musical instruments…

This is just a fun game…. but requires good hand-eye coordination.

It may not be for you….. but you don’t have to do it.

Here is a tip though.

Play the notes after they enter the circle you are standing on.

Many players don’t realize that they are hitting the notes too early because they think they need to hit the note as it touches the line.

Wait for the note to PASS OVER THE LINE before playing it.

Hope this helps.

Carighan.6758:

Astralporing.1957:

For you. If you have read OP’s post, you would see that he is averaging one correct note per two songs. That’s not even 1/100 of the rate you are speaking about.

I read OPs post, but I did account for the blatant exaggeration.
Even then, the problem would not be with the number the achievement requires. Independent of whether it’s 5, 50 or 500 notes.

Yes, as OP mentioned, the problem (as Takina sees it) lies in players being required to do 11 out of 11 achievements, which makes those people that have problems with bells be unable to pick a different achievement, one that they have less problem with.

Before, it was possible to choose from a bigger pool (and even use dailies). This year that option is missing. Seems to go in hand with general Anet attitude of limiting player choices.