Guild Wars 2

I’ve recently been completing a lot of story achievements in HOT and noticed some annoying inconsistencies in how achievements are handled. This may be a problem with story achievements in central too, but I haven’t done those lately so I’ll just talk about HOT.
This isn’t a complaint per so. There’s nothing earth-shattering here. I’m getting through these and will continue to do so no matter what. I don’t think it’s even worth addressing in HOT, but I wanted to mention it for consideration before the next expansion as a design situation to think more carefully about. Achievements are a big part of the game and a lot of fun, with some niggling issues:

1. CHEEVOS THAT DON’T INDICATE PROGRESS

Most recently, I completed the Chak Killer – Expert/Master cheevos in Tangled Depths. The problem with these is that they require you to kill 15/50 chak respectively but they don’t show you how many chak you’ve killed. You can put them in your cheevo watch panel and they’ll always say 0% until the moment you’ve killed enough chak. This makes you wonder if the chak you’re killing are registering and is inconsistent with other cheevos which do show progress. This may be because the achievements themselves display only an unfinished state (0) or finished (1), without the stages that many other cheevos have. Why not display x/50 chak on the cheevo? Additionally, there’s no mention of how many chak you need to kill anywhere in the game – I had to find it on Dulfy, which seems a strange omission.

2. THE WAYS IN WHICH CHEEVOS SHOW PROGRESS

Of the achievements that do show progress, some show it merely in the cheevo display in your hero panel, some show it in the yellow icon on your buff bar ….and some, if I remember correctly, have an additional buff in your buffs bar that shows progress. The consistent thing would be if the yellow cheevo icons always listed progress. They already disappear if you become ineligible. It makes sense they’d give you all the info you needed.

3. CHEEVOS THAT STAY AFTER FINISHING

There are some cheevos (I think the Dark Path one in Roots of Terror is one) whose yellow icon stays on after you’ve already gained them, giving you the impression there’s something else to be done. A little confusing. And it gets even more confusing because there are…

4. CHEEVOS THAT DON’T APPEAR UNTIL SOME CONDITION IS FULFILLED

Like ‘Clearing house’ in Buried Insights, which doesn’t become available until after Taimi switches on the power. I worked through that mission with baited breath, wondering if I’d done something to disqualify myself early on.
If you’re going to hide cheevos like this, why not show them in gray or overlay a little lock or something to indicate that they’re waiting to be unlocked?

5. CHEEVOS THAT DON’T REGISTER

I mentioned in (1) that I wasn’t sure if a cheevo was registring my killing of the chak – this is a real concern because, as in the example of “Clearing house” from Buried Insights, the task you’re doing may register some actions but not others, even though they look the same. In Clearing House, you’re supposed to destroy 23 defenses. Four of those are turrets that are underwater. I destroyed 23 turrets and golems that I found on land, and discovered that four of them didn’t register as kills. It was only when I found the four underwater ones that the cheevo completed. However, the turrets that didn’t register didn’t look any different from other turrets that did register. It took a guide from Dulfy (again) to find what I was missing. It detracts from the fun and challenge of exploration when you’re doing what you appear to be asked but the results are inconsistent.

6. CHEEVOS THAT MOCK THE STORY

So the PACT commander and his battle-hardened team fight their way across SW, VB and AB and arrive at a chak pit in TD at the end of Roots of Terror. Seeing the pit filled with over 50 chak, the commander turns to his team and says: “Well, we’re not getting through there guys.” Like, we’re an awesome team and all but this is too much for us. We need to go another way.

He then proceeds to jump into the pit and wipes out 50 chak single-handed to get the cheevo.

I had a good laugh after I recovered from the almighty face-palm I gave myself. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad the Chak Killer cheevos were there – I enjoyed them. In fact, when we arrived at the pit I was all ready to jump in and get to work, and it was disappointing to see my toon talk about turning tail. Maybe this was an opportune moment for a branch in the story line or at least the illusion of one with some kind of story choices. At the very least, the scenario could have been handled better without requiring a complete 180 from the commander that makes him seem either cowardly (if you don’t do the cheevos) or a leader who doesn’t trust his team (if you do the cheevos). I don’t know. It was just a funny moment. I enjoyed the silliness.

As I said, these aren’t show stoppers. I’ve enjoyed the HOT story achievements more than the central ones I remember doing ages ago. That’s a good sign and I’m hopeful the next expansion will have even better achievements to complete. Now I’m diving back into the jungle to continue those cheevos!

The buffs only show you achievements that you are eligible to receive. Any achievement that actually requires you to finish the instance to receive will continue to tell you that you are eligible for it even after you finish the requirements. Likewise, achievements that require a special starting condition will sometimes not show until that condition is met because until it is you won’t be eligible for it (though I agree its kind of random which buffs show up at the start of instances and which ones don’t).

For your other complaints, the chak killer is the only HoT story achievement that doesn’t show progress iirc, and for your last point it doesn’t mock the story. You fought your way across SW with a full team facing enemies you knew how to fight. You fought your way through VB with most of your team with you at all times, again fighting mostly mordrem enemies (which you are familiar with) with some local saurians. Same thing with AB. Yet in the instance with the chak killer achievement, you have never seen a chak before and its just you and Bram. Not to mention that if you go exploring more in TD and DS you will notice that at the bottom of the pit there is an entrance to a chak hive. For the purposes of the instance its closed. But to your character and Bram it could very well be open lorewise and hundreds more chak could come pouring out to join the fight. On top of that even, you never fought ~60 tough enemies at once with your group in any of those other maps, yet that is approximately how many chak are in that pit.

Hello again OriOri,

OriOri.8724:

The buffs only show you achievements that you are eligible to receive. Any achievement that actually requires you to finish the instance to receive will continue to tell you that you are eligible for it even after you finish the requirements.

What about cheevos that don’t require you to finish the instance yet remain? Dark Path is, I think, awarded as soon as you get past the dark path yet the instance hasn’t finished. And it remains after it’s earned.

OriOri.8724:

Likewise, achievements that require a special starting condition will sometimes not show until that condition is met because until it is you won’t be eligible for it

Yes, that’s what I said too. I was just suggesting it would be clearer if it were indicated as locked beforehand. What would you think of that kind of display?

OriOri.8724:

For your other complaints, the chak killer is the only HoT story achievement that doesn’t show progress iirc

Complaints? Lol. Okay. So, if this is the only cheevo (actually two – expert and master) that doesn’t show progress (I’ll have to take your word for that), where does that leave us? Is there a minimum number of cheevos that must not show progress before it’s allowed to be mentioned? As with all my ..uhm ..complaints.. I’m just noting this curiosity down in case it helps with achievements in a future expansion.

OriOri.8724:

..and for your last point it doesn’t mock the story. You fought your way across SW with a full team facing enemies you knew how to fight. You fought your way through VB with most of your team with you at all times, again fighting mostly mordrem enemies (which you are familiar with) with some local saurians. Same thing with AB. Yet in the instance with the chak killer achievement, you have never seen a chak before and its just you and Bram. Not to mention that if you go exploring more in TD and DS you will notice that at the bottom of the pit there is an entrance to a chak hive. For the purposes of the instance its closed. But to your character and Bram it could very well be open lorewise and hundreds more chak could come pouring out to join the fight. On top of that even, you never fought ~60 tough enemies at once with your group in any of those other maps, yet that is approximately how many chak are in that pit.

I’m not sure what point you’re making here. You’re agreeing with the story that it’s too much to handle – yet the cheevo requires you to do just that. Maybe mocking is the wrong word. It’s at least contradictory. As you say.. you’ve never fought ~60 tough enemies at once with your group… and yet suddenly you’re able to fight them solo?
Clearly, cheevos aren’t supposed to be within the lore of the story, and that’s fine. It was just a hilarious turn-around on the part of the commander.

Anyway, thanks for your time.

I agree with the OP completely. The story achievements are riddled with inconsistencies that create an artificial difficulty that doesn’t help the game at all. This is a well thought out post, Zolar. I hope Anet sees it.