Guild Wars 2

I had an interesting discussion with my guild in regards to the acquisition of Badges of Honor from WvW and how easily they could be obtained from the jumping puzzles; and since the jumping puzzle rewards are character-based, one could make a brand new character in each character slot, make their way out of the tutorial event, and then queue up for WvW for the intent of doing the jumping puzzles. And since the badges are Account Bound, all those other characters could have been made for the purpose of funding one character.

I do know that one could have the intent in leveling from 1 to 80 almost exclusively from WvW (which I have known some who have done that, and I wouldn’t mind it), but should those same low-level players have access to the jumping puzzles as well?

I think it’s a grey-area matter, but what do you guys think?

If they didn’t want this to happen they would stop it. Why should they be limited just because they’re real level is “to low” in your eyes?

I’m not saying myself that that low-level characters should be restricted in attempting the jumping puzzle. Actually, I think all characters regardless of level should be able to access and perform in WvW as they please. On the other hand, if one makes a character just to do the jumping puzzles … I think that’s where the iffy part comes in.

I guess it would depend on how many Badges you can earn via the jumping puzzle compared to spending the same amount of time engaging in actual PvP.

Are the rewards going to negatively affect the game? Other than the blueprints and badges what else do you get? Can you directly turn those into gold?

Uhhh, sure you could do that, but you realise the jumping puzzle chest rewards scale to level right? For the eternal battleground puzzle the scale is between 2-20 according to wiki, so you’d be better off actually killing enemies for badges of honor; rather than creating new characters to get 2 from the jumping puzzle.

I was under the impression they were diminishing returns, to be honest. I know I could get around 15~20 on the first character (which is usually my 80 Warrior, though today it was my 78 Mesmer) to complete it that day while subsequent characters would get less (I would do them in order my characters show up on the character select screen, which may not always be from highest to lowest in level). The lowest I got were around 4 badges from that chest. Then again, you might be right in that the rewards do scale with level. I’ll have to look into that tomorrow when the jumping puzzle rewards reset.

Phy.2913:

Are the rewards going to negatively affect the game? Other than the blueprints and badges what else do you get? Can you directly turn those into gold?

You get vendor trash items like any other chest.

If it’s a player simply using alts to do the jump puzzle and sending the badges to their main via the guild bank, then no it’s not an exploit. They don’t get much in the way of blueprints either as they are soul-bound to the alts, and the gear will be level appropriate to the alt.

The grey area of exploit vs non-exploit comes in if the player repeatedly deletes the character to do the jumping puzzle infinite times.

If someone chooses to do the jumping puzzles on 4+ alts every day, then that’s just how they want to spend their time. Personally I think it’s a lot better to get badges via kills, but some people hate PvP so much but want the Gift of Battle so the jumping puzzles end up being a popular way to get them with little player combat.

kKagari.6804:

Phy.2913:

Are the rewards going to negatively affect the game? Other than the blueprints and badges what else do you get? Can you directly turn those into gold?

You get vendor trash items like any other chest.

Most of the time— On rare occasions, like today, I got a Rare item that I salvaged and got 3 Ectos out of it. That’s mostly luck, I would imagine.

Slyther.1297:

If it’s a player simply using alts to do the jump puzzle and sending the badges to their main via the guild bank, then no it’s not an exploit. They don’t get much in the way of blueprints either as they are soul-bound to the alts, and the gear will be level appropriate to the alt.

The grey area of exploit vs non-exploit comes in if the player repeatedly deletes the character to do the jumping puzzle infinite times.

If someone chooses to do the jumping puzzles on 4+ alts every day, then that’s just how they want to spend their time. Personally I think it’s a lot better to get badges via kills, but some people hate PvP so much but want the Gift of Battle so the jumping puzzles end up being a popular way to get them with little player combat.

I do agree that I would rather do a lot more killing and less jumping, but since I’m on a server where they end up doing all the killing for me while leaving nothing left for me to kill, I’m basically left to do the jumping puzzles for badges. See attached image of my server’s dominance during the afternoon hours when I’m mostly online.

On the other hand, I think deleting your alt, recreating it, and doing the jumping puzzle again and again might be more towards the exploiting side of things.

this is no different than mining Orichalcum on all your characters everyday.

perfectly fine

This is most definitely not an exploit. With that said, knowing Anet’s history of banning, I can see them labeling it an exploit. I’d proceed with caution.

Before they added diminishing returns / lowered the drop rate of badges in WvW, this would never have been worth the time. You used to be able to aquire 5 badges just through normal play within minutes of entering the zone.

Now badges drop so rarely, jumping puzzles are indeed the fastest way to earn badges.

Whats wrong with that picture?

I personally stopped doing WvW altogether as i can kill for a few hours and only get < 10 badges. The drop rate is so low that its sucked the fun out of that portion of the game for me.