Guild Wars 2

Note: I’d like people’s opinion on the matter, that’s why I put it in this forum rather than in Suggestions forum. If you’re too lazy to read the entire thing I have a overview over my three main points in the post, from there you can see if it interests you at all.

First of all, I’m a completionist. I like to do everything in games I enjoy playing, and something that tracks your feats is always a nice addition. With a system around like that, I tend to want to get as many achievements as I can possibly get. In a lot of games achievements has made me play for hours more than I probably ever would without them being there. I may be a part of an almost extinct race as I know a lot of people who are playing Guild Wars are casual players. And you guys probably don’t care about this one bit. But then I don’t see how certain changes can affect you negatively. Feel free to tell me if my assumptions are wrong.

I’m gonna split this into 3 parts over 2 posts:
1. Achievement points with no ceiling,
2. How certain achievements are way too easy to max out
3. How certain achievements have unbalanced tiers.
These are my main issues with the current system.

1.
I usually like completing games, having all the achievements and collectibles I can get is something I usually want to do. Especially when you have that tracker that you’re trying to fill out. However in Guild Wars 2 it doesn’t feel like it’s worth anything at all, mainly because that tracker they use here is the achievement point system, and you can never reach the max value. All the regular achievements award you points and they work out just fine. This is the way I enjoy it the most, you do things once and are awareded for doing so. But with the point system that’s in place, it’s value inflates. As there’s no ceiling for how many points you can get, you can’t ever actually fill out the tracker unless you’ve gotten every daily and monthly achievement there is. If you’re late to the party that’s already ruled out. And knowing how it glitched out alot in the first month or so, I’d assume alot of people missed something. That’s not all though, there’s at least two repeatable achievements that can give you an infinite amount of points. So not even with every daily and monthly achievement can you max out the amount of points. One of the repeatable achievements awards you 2 points per 200 items you salvage. You can pretty much just buy salvageable items from the trading post and salvage it without much of a loss and stack up on these achievement points to the point where they have lost the tiny fraction of meaning they have.

I find the repeatable ones the worst kind, they give no rewards other than achievement points and for me and I guess some other completionists aswell this ruins the system entirely, I can’t see how this possibly adds depth to the system. Dailies and monthlies is another thing I’m not very fond of awarding achievement points. Although at least I can somewhat accept the fact that they do. Ideally though I wouldn’t have them award it either. But I’m sure there are alot of people who believe otherwise (I’m interested to see how many are actually for and against this).

I’m a competitive person, and that’s who I am. So initially when I play games that my friends also play I tend to try to beat their scores on the leaderboards or unlock some of those hard achievements before they do. Here the only thing I can actually compare is how many points they have. If I want to know if they have a certian achievement I’ll have to ask them about it, the points are available in your friend and guild menus even when they’re offline. I feel the points in general is something that could’ve added another dimension to the game though. At least for people like me. But with the current system, it just doesn’t work, but I really, really wish it did.

To be continued…

2.
Being a completionist myself I have nothing against grinding at all. It’s better if it isn’t obvious and I feel achievements isn’t a bad kind of grinding. I really enjoy stats that track how you play or how your last game was in numbers. Every game that has a tracker of how many times you did this or something of that sort makes it fun to compare playthroughs or between friends. And when they add a leaderboard or achievement for it I might just run around doing things I never otherwise would’ve done. That’s why I feel some of the achievements in Guild Wars 2 max out too fast. Like the kill 1000 Risen achievement. Who doesn’t have that halfway through their storyline? I sure wouldn’t mind 2 more tiers with 5000 and 10000 kills, maybe even more if we realize 10000 maxes out too quickly aswell. Sure, this can’t apply to all enemy types and I think every enemy deserves to be evaluated on their own. You don’t need the same numbers for every achievement, if certain enemy types are rarer that will make the achievement harder the natural way. You will be able to get most of these anyway by just enjoying the game and playing for long enough or across several characters. Having them all unlocked before you start your second playthrough is sort of a shame, as it removes that dimension from that playthrough. The weapon master achievements are much more balanced in that regard and as a result it’ll take a while to max them all out, but it will also feel much more rewarding when you finally do max it out. The Salvageable item achievement is also very fast to complete, but then you unlock the repeatable one afterwards, so you never truly max it out. Why not just raise the main one to a ridiculous number, like say 10000? That way you can reward people who salvage items a lot, but you don’t have to give them 2 points every 200 items they salvage. In general I wouldn’t mind if it tracked other things aswell. Like how many things you’ve crafted or other pointless things. The more the better applies to me when it comes to stats, but that’s not really an issue.

3.
As a complete opposite to the last one. Some achievements at least according to the numbers I’ve managed to dig up has a ridiculous max tier requirement going on. I’m not sure if this is actually real numbers, but if it requires you to protect everything 500000 times in WvW to max the achievements out that’s several years of playing without breaks, assuming everything works out everytime. I can’t really even see anyone pulling that off even once in their lifetime. You’ll need to hold Stonemist Castle, have people attack every 3 minutes and actually get a kill within that time period. Sounds insane to me. Also why does the second tier skip from 1 to 1000 defends? I feel like it’s hard enough to get tier 2 on most of the WvW achievements, why isn’t it balanced out more fluidly? Like defend once for the first tier, then maybe 25 or 50, possibly 100, 250, 500, 1000 and so on. That seems much more fair to me than 1, 1000, 100000, 250000, 500000 or what it’s currently set to is I really can’t find accurate numbers though, but I feel the big leaps is the main issue here. Either way, I like that it’s hard to get there, although it should at least be possible to get there without dedicating your entire playtime to that one objective. To me as long as it is actually possible to max it out it’s not the biggest issue, although it should be debated further. I would prefer it if it was more fluid though cause it makes it easier to set short term goals on the way to a tougher goal.

Thanks for reading,. I really enjoy the game and this is pretty much my only issues with it. It has been bugging me since launch so I had to get it off my chest. Enjoy the Halloween event guys and any feedback related to this would be appreciated. Whether it’s good arguments for why you disagree or if you have anything addition to add to my own thoughts. If you agree it would be appreciated to hear something aswell as I really hope I’m not the only one with these issues.

i also really spend the time to work on achievements. i was over 10k in WoW and i havent played that game for over a year.

i agree with you that the “uncapped” achievements, the achievements that give points forever, totally skew the value of your achievement point total when comparing it with others.

for example, if you see someone with 4k points……does that number reflect a person that has completed that majority of the achievements in the game and has taken a few months break and stopped playing or does it reflect someone who has done a fair amount of achievements, but plays every day and has fluffed their total with misc dungeon runs, daylies/monthlys and other uncapped achievements.

achievement points hold no value other than a badge of status for in game completion. the achievements that give points forever sort of diminish this.

I believe the daily achievements give 9 points every day. So if you go away for one day that person who hasn’t really done alot except for dailies will almost catch up the amount of points you’d get for a couple of the more content related achievements (that award 10 points each). It would’ve been nicer if they had a seperate achievement tracker for daily achievements. Like say “Daily achievements completed” or something that could eventually be maxed out. That way it wouldn’t feel as cheap, in my opinion at least.

Basically you want to beat your friends in account points, but instead of working to beat them you want them to be unable to make points?

If you can just salvage items over and over to get the repeatable salvage achievement for points, there’s no point in comparing points at all. I don’t see the enjoyment in spending your entire gametime just farming that to get as many points as possible, and while it is still a possibility I can’t see how the points are worth anything at all. In a capped system it would be worth more than it is now at least, and then comparing it with your friends would make a whole lot more sense.

Haishao.6851:

Basically you want to beat your friends in account points, but instead of working to beat them you want them to be unable to make points?

This pretty much sums it up.

niea.7504:

Haishao.6851:

Basically you want to beat your friends in account points, but instead of working to beat them you want them to be unable to make points?

This pretty much sums it up.

I don’t see your logic. If you remove the daily and monthly points, everyone is on an even playing field. How does that make someone win by not letting others get points, can I get points other people can’t get? The way it is now people who has gotten the daily achievements since day one has a massive advantage. But even that can be ruled out with some salvage item farming.

Rigel.5789:

The way it is now people who has gotten the daily achievements since day one has a massive advantage.

Exactly what is this massive advantage about which you’re speaking?

niea.7504:

Rigel.5789:

The way it is now people who has gotten the daily achievements since day one has a massive advantage.

Exactly what is this massive advantage about which you’re speaking?

I don’t think you read my original post, I don’t blame you but my main point was that as long as you can get an infinite amount of points. The point system in general will be ruled useless. If you do dailies everyday you get 9 points a day. If someone joins a month late they will never be able to get those 270 points they can never get. You have the repeatable achievements though which makes the system even more useless so if you dedicate yourself to salvaging items you buy off the trading post as I’ve mentioned numerous times already you can pretty much get as many points as you like. If you sell everything you salvage you won’t really lose alot of money either so it’s pretty much free points.

But in general, the main issue is the fact that there’s no cap, so there’s no goal to work against or any reason to compare the scores cause it doesn’t really show how much you’ve actually achieved, it could all just be repeatables or someone who logged in every day to do dailies, but very little of the other content.

I agree that daily achievements have a rather big impact on the achievement point system as a whole since these points show no real difference between completing the most annoying jump quest ever and chopping a few trees along with doing a few events.
Daily/Monthly achievements still give XP for each tier and the Mystic Coins upon completion, so they would still serve their purpose without also giving achievement points.

But after all, it’s just a number you can only brag about. Would be more of an issue if they could be used as some sort of currency.

the achievement point IS useless, because achievements are useless.

I am failing to see the issue here…

Rigel.5789:

But in general, the main issue is the fact that there’s no cap, so there’s no goal to work against or any reason to compare the scores cause it doesn’t really show how much you’ve actually achieved, it could all just be repeatables or someone who logged in every day to do dailies, but very little of the other content.

Your issue should be about the lack of title to represent your achievements, not activity points.

nowitsawn.1276:

But after all, it’s just a number you can only brag about. Would be more of an issue if they could be used as some sort of currency.

Sure, it’s not a game breaker. But for me as a completionist, trying to max out the achievement points would be like a game within the game. In the end you could say the entire game is pointless as it doesn’t award anything in real life, but that’s not entirely true. It’s alot of fun, and that’s what I feel a better achievement system could be for people who are interested in completing stuff. At the same time I can’t see how it would ruin the game for people that don’t care about completing stuff. I don’t mind the dailies and monthlies in general, I’d just prefer it if they didn’t have those type of achievements awarding points.

warmonkey.8013:

the achievement point IS useless, because achievements are useless.

I am failing to see the issue here…

To you they may seem useless, but to others they’re fun tasks to do. If you don’t like them why would it make a difference if they removed points from dailies and removed repeatable achievements?

Haishao.6851:

Rigel.5789:

But in general, the main issue is the fact that there’s no cap, so there’s no goal to work against or any reason to compare the scores cause it doesn’t really show how much you’ve actually achieved, it could all just be repeatables or someone who logged in every day to do dailies, but very little of the other content.

Your issue should be about the lack of title to represent your achievements, not activity points.

I don’t really care about the titles, cause that’s just one achievement. If they only awarded achievement points for the regular achievements (the ones that aren’t repeatable, including dailies and monthlies) that would show the combined total of things you’ve accomplished.

if you dislike uncapped achievements, well, then simply ignore them. It is as easy as that. It´s not like anet will show up at your door with a huge gift basket once you are your servers salvager supreme.

Algreg.3629:

if you dislike uncapped achievements, well, then simply ignore them. It is as easy as that. It´s not like anet will show up at your door with a huge gift basket once you are your servers salvager supreme.

I could just ignore them, but why have it that way when it could be adding another dimension to the experience? From the replies I’m getting here it doesn’t seem like anyone would mind if they actually removed the points from the dailies and monthlies or removed the repeatable achievements in general, so why is it a problem if some people would find that more fun? If you have anything constructive to say in regards to how it wouldn’t work or would make the game worse than please state that. If you don’t care whether or not it’s changed then I don’t see why people feel the need to post here. Fine, you don’t care. But I certainly would’ve liked it if they changed it.

well, you open your opinion up for discussion when you go on the internet publicly. If you cannot stand other people not agreeing with you, then do not post.

Rigel.5789:

If you can just salvage items over and over to get the repeatable salvage achievement for points, there’s no point in comparing points at all. I don’t see the enjoyment in spending your entire gametime just farming that to get as many points as possible, and while it is still a possibility I can’t see how the points are worth anything at all. In a capped system it would be worth more than it is now at least, and then comparing it with your friends would make a whole lot more sense.

Even funnier would be the hidden uncapped tinkerer achievement; Transmute 10 items and get 3×2 points, transmute another 10 and get 5 points, repeat when bored.
The good people of anet seem to have forgotten that you can get infinite transmutation resources from HoM rewards. If one gets a couple of stacks of Hom skins people could raise their points whenever they feel like it, for example when waiting for more people to join a pug for dungeons.
Note. Items can be transmuted to the exact same skin.

Algreg.3629:

well, you open your opinion up for discussion when you go on the internet publicly. If you cannot stand other people not agreeing with you, then do not post.

Then tell me which of my points in any way will ruin your game experience? Cause all I see is people who say they don’t care. Which I assume means they won’t care whether it’s changed or not. I stated in my opening post that I thought there were people here that didn’t care, but if the issue doesn’t affect you at all why even reply?

If there were something constructive coming out of your post then sure I’d be glad to listen. But I can’t really see you making any valid points.

Anyway this will probably be my last post of the night, so try to come up with something clever and I’ll check back tommorow.

I think every post here has disagreed with you?

And you took from that “it doesn’t seem like anyone would mind if they actually removed the points from the dailies and monthlies or removed the repeatable achievements in general”?!

BTT.2175:

Rigel.5789:

If you can just salvage items over and over to get the repeatable salvage achievement for points, there’s no point in comparing points at all. I don’t see the enjoyment in spending your entire gametime just farming that to get as many points as possible, and while it is still a possibility I can’t see how the points are worth anything at all. In a capped system it would be worth more than it is now at least, and then comparing it with your friends would make a whole lot more sense.

Even funnier would be the hidden uncapped tinkerer achievement; Transmute 10 items and get 3×2 points, transmute another 10 and get 5 points, repeat when bored.
The good people of anet seem to have forgotten that you can get infinite transmutation resources from HoM rewards. If one gets a couple of stacks of Hom skins people could raise their points whenever they feel like it, for example when waiting for more people to join a pug for dungeons.
Note. Items can be transmuted to the exact same skin.

I didn’t even know about that one, if that’s the case then that’s even more ridiculous. If the point system has no value, then why have one at all? They could do so much more interesting things with it.

Jestunhi.7429:

I think every post here has disagreed with you?

And you took from that “it doesn’t seem like anyone would mind if they actually removed the points from the dailies and monthlies or removed the repeatable achievements in general”?!

Now give me one valid reason why it would be a bad idea to remove the points from the dailies and monthlies? How would it affect the game in any way? You can disagree with liking achievements, I don’t really care about that. But why would it affect you if you don’t like achievements? People seem to be skipping my point here.

If someone did daily achievements everyday he actually achieved more than one who didn’t. So it’s perfectly normal for him to have more points.

To get account points you have to do things in game. It shows how active someone is in the game. This is why I called them Activity Point above, because that’s what they are.

If they were maxed, it would only show that you completed the list, not how active you actually are.

Haishao.6851:

If someone did daily achievements everyday he actually achieved more than one who didn’t. So it’s perfectly normal for him to have more points.

To get account points you have to do things in game. It shows how active someone is in the game. This is why I called them Activity Point above, because that’s what they are.

If they were maxed, it would only show that you completed the list, not how active you actually are.

A daily achievement cumulative counter would do the exact same thing, and not inflate the achievement point system. I have done the dailies every day except one so far and I don’t like the advantage that gives me pointwise. I wouldn’t mind if it was a seperate tracker but in general achievement points should show how much you’ve actually achieved and not just if you’ve played everyday and gotten a couple kills and done some events. With the current achievement set you wouldn’t be able to max it out anytime soon if they were to remove the daily and monthly points so I can’t see people reaching max points being an issue.

Anyway this is my final post of the night. I will get back to it tommorow.

Osnap, it’s 6×2 and 5.
Transmuting 20 items nets you 17 points.

Rigel.5789:

Jestunhi.7429:

I think every post here has disagreed with you?

And you took from that “it doesn’t seem like anyone would mind if they actually removed the points from the dailies and monthlies or removed the repeatable achievements in general”?!

Now give me one valid reason why it would be a bad idea to remove the points from the dailies and monthlies? How would it affect the game in any way? You can disagree with liking achievements, I don’t really care about that. But why would it affect you if you don’t like achievements? People seem to be skipping my point here.

Give me one valid reason why they should be removed?

“Someone might overtake me” doesn’t count as valid, especially as it gives no advantage and to my knowledge you can’t even view other people’s achievements.

It’s not a case of “if you like achievements you must agree with my change”, not at all.

How would it effect you if I had more achievement points than you?

I wouldn’t really care at all if people got more points than I have with the current system. It doesn’t matter one bit to me. If they removed the points for certain things the system would be more meaningful, and for me as a completionist I’d enjoy the system alot more. If it was actually possible to max it out, that would be another goal to make the game more interesting to me. As it is now I see no reason to max out all the weapon master achievements and do all the other nonsense just to get 10 points, and then have people transmute or salvage items to get the same amount of points in a few minutes. I’ve talked to people in map chat aswell and I know for sure there are more than me who enjoy trying to max things out, and as long as I don’t see a proper argument for why it would make the game worse I don’t get why people would be against other people getting more out of the game. It doesn’t seem like you guys care one bit about the system, so why does it matter if they did change it up? There’s no reason to set a goal that is impossible to achieve. I don’t care if there are a million people out there pulling it off before me, it is another reason for me to play the game after I did all the regular content, but the way it is at the moment I don’t really care much about the miscellaneous achievements. The competition bit is just something that adds to it, something that would make me want to work harder to reach my goal. If someone got there before me I would be perfectly fine with it.

But yeah, if you guys are so passionate about the current system and feels like the acheivement points currently add a lot to the game, then please state so. Cause the way it seems to me right now is that people just want to be against my opinion without really caring about the system at all and showing that they really enjoy it the way it currently is. If a majority of people thinks the current system is alot more fun than the few suggestions I had in my initial post and the one further down with a tracker for dailies and monthlies instead, then I’ll just have to accept that. But as I said, if that is the case, please do state so before telling me how these things don’t even matter. Cause to me they actually do, otherwise I wouldn’t write a 1500 word post about it.

To confirm, are believe you are a completionist but if a single number doesn’t have a cap you “don’t care much” about getting achievements?

Completionists want to complete , at the moment it is impossible to “complete” the points system. Therefore it’s in my opinion worthless to bother with it. I do still go for the content achievements, but I can’t be bothered with the weapon master achievements and the other grindy ones. The grind isn’t worth it content-wise and there’s no reason to do it for achievement points as of now, I do as a matter of fact enjoy seeing the number rise and that is why I would appreciate it if the system had a cap. Without repeatable tasks giving out points and with a cap the points would to an extent show how much you’ve completed rather than just how many times you’ve transmuted or salvaged an item, done dailies and monthlies and as a side note how much of the other stuff you’ve done. That is my opinion on the matter. I can’t be any clearer than I was in my initial post, but I assume because it was lenghty people just skipped past it. I’m not saying this cause I’m behind on dailies and monthlies, I have infact already gotten a fair amount of points from it, but I think it over time just inflates the point system and all the other achievements will just be a fraction of your total point amount after a while. I feel like it’s a shame, I don’t see the need to question me about why I like it. It’s just an opinion. That’s why I would like to see some good arguments for why changing it up a bit could make the game worse in any respect.

Isn’t the point to get the achievement?

You know, get them all as a completionist?

Again, you are only focusing on the number as if that’s the only thing that matters.

:edit:

What do you want to do, complete achievements or just get a number as high as possible?

You don’t get it. I’m not saying the achievements are the problem. I’m saying the problem here is the achievement points. I can still get achievements and that works just fine. Achievement points is an additional system which I feel at the moment is ruled useless, the entire post is about why I don’t like the way the achievement points are currently awarded. Not that I don’t like the achievements in general. If I didn’t like achievements I wouldn’t have posted in the first place. If you read my first post you’d know this by now.