Guild Wars 2

There are two main things I wanted to discuss within the topic of achievement changes in the April Feature patch.

1. This month’s achievement completion
2. Reward for completing achievements

So yeah, this month; April 2014, knowing the patch was going to drop, I did all the relevant PvE monthly achievements. I completed I think, 4 or 5 monthly achievements before the patch, but the monthly did not tick off more than two, and I didn’t get any overall reward. I had thought this was due to the patch drop, where the rest of the monthlies were going to pop, and expected that I would get an instant completed monthly when the patch instigated. However this wasn’t the case. Now I have an entirely uncompleted monthly set that I have to do again just to get the reward, even though I have already completed it this month. Double the work for the same reward.. not good Anet, especially considering the time and effort those things take.

I know this is a one-off situation, but it did annoy me. I spent a good deal of game-time getting the achievements done and other than the basic points rewarded, I got nothing for that time.

That brings me onto the second point. The point reward for doing achievement appears to have been reduced significantly for monthly achievements. Perhaps this is only the way that it is shown, but in the past, monthly achievements used to give over 10 achievement points, while now it only gives 2 per tier. Perhaps this is just how it is shown, and overall the points are the same, but even if this is the case, the perceived point accumulation does seem less, and that will disincline players to bothering with them unless there is a bonus achievement point upon completion of the 4 monthlies. This is the only way I can see it really being worth the time, after all, the difficulty/time/cost of doing a tier of the monthly is certainly worth far more than double that of a daily.

As someone who spends a good amount of time in-game going after achievements, this change has sort of hit me in the nuts a bit. I like finding ways to spend the time in a game I enjoy, but I do need to feel that it is a worthwhile endeavour, rather than a grind without much reward. I have not yet completed the monthly achievements yet, since they were totally reset, so I cannot say whether the overall reward is worth the effort, but looking at the setup now, whether a real or only perceived change, it doesn’t seem nearly as appealing focusing on doing these as it used to.