Guild Wars 2

I couldn’t help but think when I heard there will be leaderboards for achievement points, that only people who have been playing since launch or close to it have any chance. The reason is that there are achievement points for dailies. It is impossible for people to catch up on daily achievement points, as long as the people at the top keep doing them. I don’t know if that is intended, but if I understand what the implementation is going to be, there is basically no reason for most people to bother with it.

Again, my issue isn’t that it is, to some extent, just a measure of time spent playing, but rather that it’s going to largely (or even entirely) just be a chart of people who bought the game at or very near launch who did all of the dailies and monthlies. (I mean, people can “catch up” on other achievements.) Personally, not being dedicated enough to ever even bother trying to be at the top,, I am rather indifferent about the whole idea in general. I just think that trying to climb the PvE leaderboards is going to be a moot point for most players who would otherwise care about them if dailies (or other achievements that are only available for a limited time) factor into them. New players will literally have no chance.

You should see the guys that exploited the repeatable achievement points to get 20k+

Congratulations.

You’ve just described every game with a leaderboard ever.

TSW? You aren’t going to be getting as many kills / missions ect done than someone who played at launch.
CoD? You aren’t going to be racking up as many kills as someone who played at launch.

Would it have changed if they introduced the leaderboard at launch? Nope.

As long as they don’t add any advantage over other players, it’s fine.

Ya, why should a newcomer have a chance at overall game achievement points? You wanna start tomorrow and be #1 of alltime by next week or something?
How should someone who has been playing religiously for 7 months not have an advantage…

TheDaiBish.9735:

Congratulations.

You’ve just described every game with a leaderboard ever.

TSW? You aren’t going to be getting as many kills / missions ect done than someone who played at launch.
CoD? You aren’t going to be racking up as many kills as someone who played at launch.

Would it have changed if they introduced the leaderboard at launch? Nope.

As long as they don’t add any advantage over other players, it’s fine.

No, the difference with those games is that a deficit could always be made up by playing for more hours. There is a hard cap on achievement points, and some of them can only be earned for a limited time. That does not apply to any of those other situations you described, as far as I can tell.

Boo hoo, latecomers have plenty chance, old players don’t play forever. Everyone quits eventually :p

If you are dedicated you should have an advantage. Who knows maybe the leaderboards might also have sections for monthly/weekly as well as all time.

Murderin.8269:

You should see the guys that exploited the repeatable achievement points to get 20k+

They put a cap on those with this patch, as I understand it. (It applies retroactively.) In fact, if people could still do that, this topic would be a moot point.

Signet of Forums.4397:

Murderin.8269:

You should see the guys that exploited the repeatable achievement points to get 20k+

The put a cap on those with this patch, as I understand it.

Not sure how that helps, they already did it and now people can’t do it to catch up.

Signet of Forums.4397:

Murderin.8269:

You should see the guys that exploited the repeatable achievement points to get 20k+

The put a cap on those with this patch, as I understand it.

Yep, went from 25k down to 6k. Wish I would have been doing to dailies now.

Risingashes.8694:

Signet of Forums.4397:

Murderin.8269:

You should see the guys that exploited the repeatable achievement points to get 20k+

The put a cap on those with this patch, as I understand it.

Yep, went from 25k down to 6k. Wish I would have been doing to dailies now.

Oh they actually removed the points from you? That is pretty lame.

Personally, I rerally hate the whole leader board thing. This was supposed to be a friendly cooperative, game. Will it now turn into a stupid competition over points?

I think I will ignore the boards completely and try to tolerate the braggarts.

Garambola.2461:

Personally, I rerally hate the whole leader board thing. This was supposed to be a friendly cooperative, game. Will it now turn into a stupid competition over points?

I think I will ignore the boards completely and try to tolerate the braggarts.

I wouldn’t worry about leaderboards so much. There is nothing impressive about playing a game more than someone else.

Anyone that brags about that is just sad.

Murderin.8269:

Oh they actually removed the points from you? That is pretty lame.

Kind of bummed tbh. But it was inevitable, it was either that or make all achievements unlimited (something I would have loved).

C’est la vie.

Signet of Forums.4397:

No, the difference with those games is that a deficit could always be made up by playing for more hours. There is a hard cap on achievement points, and some of them can only be earned for a limited time. That does not apply to any of those other situations you described, as far as I can tell.

The deficit can only be made up if the people at the top of the leader-board stop playing. There’s no way you’re going to catch up to someone who has racked up over 100,000 kills in CoD or TSW just by playing ‘more hours’ if they continue to play.

Same with GW2. If the people at the top of the leader-board stop playing, you got a chance to catch up over time, since there will still be limited time events that’ll award Achievement points. If not though, then you don’t have a chance. Exactly like every other game with a leaderboard that doesn’t reset.

And sure, you could say reset all achievements, but you’ll get the same situation of someone who is playing now, to someone who’ll start playing 7 months from now.

I see your point OP.
In my opinion achievement system is broken. It rewards time not achievement by itself. I wish them to be more like ‘I know every aspect of game – world, mechanic, etc’ instead of ‘I spent soooo maaany time here’. Only seasonal events should differ newcomers from vets.
“Big numbers are for small-minded persons”

Garambola.2461:

Personally, I rerally hate the whole leader board thing. This was supposed to be a friendly cooperative, game. Will it now turn into a stupid competition over points?

I think I will ignore the boards completely and try to tolerate the braggarts.

Yeah, as I said, I kind of don’t care about them, especially for PvE. I just think if they are going to be there, there should at least be something to work towards for anyone who does care about them. If most of the player base (correctly) thinks, “Well, no matter what I do in the game, I can never be at the top,” that just makes them even more pointless.

people kittened over and over again to have leaderboard and now people is kittening over and over again to not having…

they shouldn’t listen to the forum crowd when they make decisions. seriously

Signet of Forums.4397:

I couldn’t help but think when I heard there will be leaderboards for achievement points, that only people who have been playing since launch or close to it have any chance. The reason is that there are achievement points for dailies.

Yes, there are achievement points for dailies. Just as there are achievement points for holiday content (unless it will be repeatable next time it comes around – but i’m pretty sure at least some will remain unique). In general, those are a drop in the bucket compared to other achievements you can get. Technically it may give old players an advantage, because they can get old daily chievement points on top of those other achievements, but i doubt there’s anyone that has all of them maxed out (and if there will be someone in the future, then they’ll be old players themselves by that time).

So… you don’t have to worry. It is a potential point advantage, but it’s not one that cannot be overcome by putting more effort into the game.

And old players will always have advantage simply due to the fact, that they already put a lot of time into the game. The game is still young now, but if someone were to join few years from now, then the game time advantage would become so huge, that overcoming it would be a purely theoretical option anyway.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Signet of Forums.4397:

No, the difference with those games is that a deficit could always be made up by playing for more hours. There is a hard cap on achievement points, and some of them can only be earned for a limited time. That does not apply to any of those other situations you described, as far as I can tell.

The deficit can only be made up if the people at the top of the leader-board stop playing. There’s no way you’re going to catch up to someone who has racked up over 100,000 kills in CoD or TSW just by playing ‘more hours’ if they continue to play.

Same with GW2. If the people at the top of the leader-board stop playing, you got a chance to catch up over time, since there will still be limited time events that’ll award Achievement points. If not though, then you don’t have a chance. Exactly like every other game with a leaderboard that doesn’t reset.

And sure, you could say reset all achievements, but you’ll get the same situation of someone who is playing now, to someone who’ll start playing 7 months from now.

No, it could also be made up in those other games if those players play less. Contrast with dailies, which are more about frequency of play, rather than duration. I mean, that is kind of the whole point of dailies (but not necessarily of achievement points).

Signet of Forums.4397:

No, it could also be made up in those other games if those players play less. Contrast with dailies, which are more about frequency of play, rather than duration. I mean, that is kind of the whole point of dailies (but not necessarily of achievement points).

Touche.

But even if the top players play less, you’re going to be hard pressed (if not down right impossible) to catch up to someone who has been playing 7 months before you in any reasonable amount of time, regardless of if they increase the time they play, or the guy at the top reduces the time they play.

Since there’s no [img] tag…

Imagine an image of Spongebob sitting in a box drawing a rainbow with his hands with the caption Who cares.

You should of loved GW2 sooner.

As it should be. Why should you have the same achievement points as the guy who has played longer (and probably more dedicated) than you?

Could always have a monthly leaderboard as well as lifetime.

If the only reason you’re doing achievements is the leaderboard, I don’t know what to tell you.

I do things because I want to do them. Where I am on the leaderboard is meaningless. For example, someone who does SPvP and WvW and PVe will always have more points than me. I don’t SPvP or WvW that much, even though I do the dailies every day.

And yeah, I get the achievements I can, because it’s fun for me. Most of them I dont’ really try for like the weapons stuff, or kill 1000 devourers. I know in time I’ll have all of that.

But yeah, I don’t think there’s no reason to do achievements because you can’t top the leaderboard. After all, there are hundreds of thousands of people playing this game….there’ll only be one guy on top of the leaderboards.

Achievements in these games are generally made for players to give them something to do. Not being at the top of the list won’t invalidate them for a lot of people.

Vayne.8563:

If the only reason you’re doing achievements is the leaderboard, I don’t know what to tell you.

I do things because I want to do them. Where I am on the leaderboard is meaningless. For example, someone who does SPvP and WvW and PVe will always have more points than me. I don’t SPvP or WvW that much, even though I do the dailies every day.

And yeah, I get the achievements I can, because it’s fun for me. Most of them I dont’ really try for like the weapons stuff, or kill 1000 devourers. I know in time I’ll have all of that.

But yeah, I don’t think there’s no reason to do achievements because you can’t top the leaderboard. After all, there are hundreds of thousands of people playing this game….there’ll only be one guy on top of the leaderboards.

Achievements in these games are generally made for players to give them something to do. Not being at the top of the list won’t invalidate them for a lot of people.

Nowhere did I say there was no reason to do achievements if you can’t make the top of the leaderboard. I said the PvE leaderboard will offer little of value to even most of the players who care about such things, as it presents them with an unattainable goal. I am not one of those players. I’m just interested in the features that actually are in the game actually having some purpose more than seeing who has done all the dailies and monthlies since launch. Frankly, I would not care if the feature was not in the game, but if it is there, I think that it should at least be compelling to more than a handful of people.

A leaderboard for PvE is a joke. Mabye there should be leaderboard for fractals ranks, but the rest is just a matter of how long you’ve been playing.

As far as I can see PVE leader boards will have absolutely no purpose beyond allowing a minority of players to brag about how many points they’ve got more easily.

Anything which makes that more meaningless and therefore something they’re less likely to brag about is a good thing IMO.

As yet we don’t know exactly how the leaderboards will be worked out. Judging by some of the quotes Anet have made, all those old infinite achievements have now been capped (at least for points).

As for the dailies and monthlies I would I would have thier points seperate, so for instance you would do the leaderboard on none repeatable achievement points: sooner or later a number of people would have the upper limit of possible points. They would all be at the top of the table; I would then have a secondary achievement score for the repeatable dailies and monthlies…

This way new players could still show that they have done all of the game just not all the dailies since release. A compromise.

So what? They’ll probably eventually, if not already, have durations such as week leader, month leader, year leader, etc. just like almost every game that has leaderboards.

I agree it kinda stinks that late comers will nvr have the option to catch up. That said, I do believe that the leader boards will replace legendaries in terms of perceive prestige.

This topic reminds me of the same, old argument, how in GW1 certain player circles would shut themselves from the wider player audience by HoH rank or stacks of ectos/gemsets/armbraces one could show in the trade window, when recruiting for their guild or filling gaps in their team for pvp match/pve instance.

The thing is, leaderboards or not, public or voluntary, discrimination will always take place, mostly as an organisational tool for quick & risk-free PUGgging, and secondarily as an attitude and culture of whole sub-demographic of players, that will always resurface and pursue difficult goals deemed by most as not worth their time or effort.

What kind of players are we talking about? Achievers, but of course. They pursue pointless goals measured by tangible numbers, to distance themselves from the rest. The more difficult a feat, the better achiever will feel, because ultimately this ugly legendary axe or stupid title has "value" only because almost no one bothers to get it! What we get is a parasite, that will use every opportunity and measure to reach his goal, for as long as it doesn’t pass his arbitrary pain threshold - because noone and nothing matters, only the goal itself.

"Pearls before the swine, baby. Ends justify the means. Always."

Then we have the classic conflict: social friction. Examples are many:

a) Elitist player that wants to be above & get the better off other players in his party/guild, by maximising own progress and slowing down progress of others in discrete manners (leadership abuse, role/profession abuse, trying to stay ahead of the curve in the hierarchy’s food chain).

b) Elitist guild party or faction that wants to get ahead of their own guild, using it’s resources while giving comparatively less in return.

c) Elitist guild that wants to be above & get the better off general player population, by reaping the most benefits for it’s group, and limiting the access to proverbial "pie" for everyone else, including rival guilds.

...

Eventually, the mentality of comparatively smaller group of players that know exactly what they want and take no half-measures, begins creeping into the very social fabric of game itself. Common folks quickly pick up the idea that "dog eats dog" and unless you’ve got numbers & wealth to show for your playing time, you have no right to your own opinion.

In the very end folks believing in intrinsic value of things found in the game, or simply values outside the game, decide to either leave the game immediatelly or struggle, thinking they can copy-cat a player mentality that is obviously alien to them, and not something they preach either in games or in real life.

MMOs as a game have their own struggle, too - developers daily face this ordeal, of having a social game with, often deliberately, unsocial game culture. As many of you likely remember, Guild Wars 2 was advertised primarily as a social game for many types of gamers, that will supposedly tag along and have fun in mainstream activities, or stick to their niche and not cause unnecessary social friction.

The behaviour developers want: sociable players, social/emergent content. However, what is the game’s culture? As most of you have guessed, social/emergent content has been deemed a failed experiment, and is being consequently replaced by structured content with structured rewards.

Daily achievements - log in every day and complete a set of mundane tasks, regardless of how you wanted to actually play, or you will miss your laurel. You will miss your laurel - someone’s opinion of you will be lower, either because of your achievement score, or the quality of gear you’re using - and you’re more than sure that very person won’t be happy with you in a PUG or guild setting either.

Bad news for you - even if these people don’t play with you, they get to take game’s economy for granted, diminishing value of your time and effort put into the game in terms of getting in-game rewards, for as long as you stick to your mentality instead of going with the flow and running that cof p1 for 10 gold an hour.

Daily achievements, monthly achievements, titles, ranks, experience, legendary weapons, ascended gear. May I ask who needs these except for achievers? These are all numbers, or mostly numbers with the kind of grind that doesn’t justify the effort if player’s only motivation are aesthetics. Quite a world of difference if that motivation is power and status, however, preferably by introducing more powerful gear or stat bonuses for attaining ranks and titles.

Social/emergent content: why go to random places and socialise with people, if there is only one dungeon worth running with the only motivation being greed, you have to complete your dailies asap and then do some guild missions so the kitten guild leader will stop yelling at you in guild chat for slacking off?

Sociable players: why even attempt to be sociable, if the game’s culture is to shut up and grind laurels, ectos, rares. Game’s system rewards goal-oriented, achiever mindset. Time efficiency, cost efficiency, organisation, structure, titles, hierarchy. Optimal builds, optimal professions. Is there any consideration in this mess for an individual?

Socialising, where? Lemming rush in cof p1 so I can pat you in the back for finishing the dungeon 1.1 second faster? You see guys, this is the reason why you’re bleeding players, the silent majority what won’t even bother to come here and write up why they’ve left. But you aren’t just "bleeding" players, to replace them with others - you’re bleeding your social hearts, explorers, roleplayers, tag-alongs, casuals and more mature people that kitten well know where is a game’s place in their own private life.

The irony of all this, is the broader audience that you want to have as a developer for your game, the worse game’s culture will be off, ruining your original goal of sociable game for varied player demographics. As it is now, this game’s culture and development policy is in stark contrast to it’s target demographic from before launch. Alternatively, the target demographic were achievers while extended demographic was everyone else, counting on the box sales to go up and people to leave if they do not like it, since they already paid for the priviledge to complain & leave.

Murderin.8269:

Risingashes.8694:

Signet of Forums.4397:

Murderin.8269:

You should see the guys that exploited the repeatable achievement points to get 20k+

The put a cap on those with this patch, as I understand it.

Yep, went from 25k down to 6k. Wish I would have been doing to dailies now.

Oh they actually removed the points from you? That is pretty lame.

lol you complain that if they have 20k people wont catch up then someone with 25k pops in and says ya they dropped me to 6k, and you reply with thats pretty lame lol…..

A perfect example of someone moaning just for the sake of hearing their own whiny voice.

I made the same post several times in the suggestions. And this from the makers of GW1!! Are you kidding me?

Look at how in the final days of GW1, with the hall of monuments, people were playing 24/7 to get achievements. When someone had 38/50, you knew that it was someone who actually achieved something. Someone who did missions in hard mode, someone who completed endgame instances, and it meant something. And everyone was so jealous of “champion of the Gods”.

Best part, I know people that did it in 6 months. They bought the game, put in 800 hours of total play time and got 50/50. And this is years after the release. It still takes a long time (800 hours), but everyone has the chance to get there, no matter when they join and even if they have jobs and real lives and can’t grind dailies every day. So, why throw a perfectly good achievement point system out the window in favour of one where lots of gold + salvage kits = agent of entropy and a million achievement points.

Demosthene.2195:

Some stuff.

I… I… Don’t know what to say…

Everything I just read is what has always been quietly resonating in the back of my mind for pretty much every online game I have ever played, but only now that it has been explained to me do I really understand it. Though, even with this added perspective, I continue to ask myself more and more often:

What is the point?…

To which I cannot find a sane answer for.

I have been playing religiously since pre-release, being a good player (hehe) and everything but sometimes I just couldn’t do daily ’cause I was away or making a small break.

Result is, I have missed only like 10-20 dailies overall, but I have plenty of “real achievements” so please give me a chance to compete with the one who have completed every single daily!

We shouldn’t be judged on our “daily-nerdmeter” but on what we have actually done with our available time in the game.

This is another aspect of you get what you Pay for. Games like WoW have their leader boards tied to content seasons. So if your an old member you still have to long term achievements and if you scored high on an old leader board you still have that. However new people to the game will have the same potential to be on the leader board for the current and subsequent seasons. Your status is based on you and your ability, not how long you have played the game. Far more competitive environment.

Just another thing to divide the community, par for the course so far. Fix the kitten bugs.

McSlappy.1372:

This is another aspect of you get what you Pay for. Games like WoW have their leader boards tied to content seasons. So if your an old member you still have to long term achievements and if you scored high on an old leader board you still have that. However new people to the game will have the same potential to be on the leader board for the current and subsequent seasons. Your status is based on you and your ability, not how long you have played the game. Far more competitive environment.

WoW pvp is based on gear, not ability. And spare me the “You have to have skill to get the gear, lulz” All it takes is time, not skill.

omg, where is the problem? i have a lot of points, but i dont think they are important… they are not deviding anything… points are there the hole time, nothing new… only point is, that we few high-point-players- with-no-rl can match witch each other ^^ so no point for complaining… points were always there… and didnt mean anything… i remind u all of cof runs with 5k+ plp…
im looking forward to the leader, its kind of fun, but I miss 1-2 points every day ^^ hope to be in the top 500 anyway

(sry, kinda drunk… hope my english dusnt suck so hard ^^)
btw, 6,7k here ^^

killcannon.2576:

Just another thing to divide the community, par for the course so far. Fix the kitten bugs.

You mean there have been no bug fixes at all. The patch notes of this latest patch didn’t include any bug fixes? Really?

I don’t think that adding leaderboards is work intensive enough to stop other people from fixing bugs. These are unrelated problems.

They keep adding jumping puzzles and the newcomers will surpass my points rather quickly, even though I always do my daily.

Vayne.8563:

killcannon.2576:

Just another thing to divide the community, par for the course so far. Fix the kitten bugs.

You mean there have been no bug fixes at all. The patch notes of this latest patch didn’t include any bug fixes? Really?

I don’t think that adding leaderboards is work intensive enough to stop other people from fixing bugs. These are unrelated problems.

You mean there are bugs that are as old as launch? You mean that with every patch a batch of new bugs pop up? I don’t care how work intensive leaderboards are or not. They’re fluff, plain and simple, and watch in a couple months if people aren’t saying they are divisive to the community because it will breed some form of elitism. Who the hell cares what joe blow has as achievements, they’re usually used as a personal road map, not an e muscle located somewhere in the lower abdominal area.

Are you truly saying having another coder or 10 on bugs is unnecessary and that this was?

DONT FORGET ABOUT THOSE POINTS YOU GET FOR PLAYING GW1 !!!!OUTRAGEOUS! A.NET FORCES PLAYERS TO PLAY THEIR OLD GAME.

OH AND THEY HATE CASUALPLAYERS!

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

killcannon.2576:

Just another thing to divide the community, par for the course so far. Fix the kitten bugs.

You mean there have been no bug fixes at all. The patch notes of this latest patch didn’t include any bug fixes? Really?

I don’t think that adding leaderboards is work intensive enough to stop other people from fixing bugs. These are unrelated problems.

You mean there are bugs that are as old as launch? You mean that with every patch a batch of new bugs pop up? I don’t care how work intensive leaderboards are or not. They’re fluff, plain and simple, and watch in a couple months if people aren’t saying they are divisive to the community because it will breed some form of elitism. Who the hell cares what joe blow has as achievements, they’re usually used as a personal road map, not an e muscle located somewhere in the lower abdominal area.

Are you truly saying having another coder or 10 on bugs is unnecessary and that this was?

I’m saying they have a team to fix bugs, they have a team to create new content. Both are necessary. And really, I’m not even disagreeing that this is divisive and the game would be better off without it. But you know, I’ve played a lot of MMOs and they change constantly so bugs are created constantly. This is true in all MMOs. So having an extra person on bugs won’t stop new bugs from happening. And too many chefs spoil the broth. Sometimes throwing more people at a problem only slows things down. It’s not always the case of adding people being more efficient.

The problem is for every person who hates these leaderboards, there’s someone who’s looking forward to them. I’m not. I could care less. But some people are. Should they have nothing in the game for them?

There’s a leaderboard?

The point of that sentence is that many of us simply do not care. If there’s someone who has every achievement point possible running around bragging about it, or showing off his shiney new title, I truly do not give a kitten.

I play this game because I enjoy it. Not because I want to play tag with someone who has more points than me. I have played since launch. I am sure that someone who starts tomorrow will eventually pass me up in AP.

And again, I truly do not care. Funny thing is that there’s a lot of “me’s” out there.

emikochan.8504:

Boo hoo, latecomers have plenty chance, old players don’t play forever. Everyone quits eventually :p

If you are dedicated you should have an advantage. Who knows maybe the leaderboards might also have sections for monthly/weekly as well as all time.

This.

The Diablo 2 ladder was the same thing, and the top changed all the time.

Allowing dailies to infinitely count doesn’t make sense compared to their stance on salvaging. Salvaging was basically an achievement for how much gold you spent while dailies are an achievement for how many days you actively played, assuming you do them.

Points from salvaging greatly eclipsed everything else, but the same thing is going to happen to dailies. The only difference is ArenaNet can control how fast they’re obtained. 5 dailies is already worth some of the hardest achievements in the game, so if they’re going to rank people by points, why should the guy that has never done a daily but has all the hardest achievements be ranked lower than the guy who’s done nothing except the daily. The same problem comes up in other aspects of the game – you’re not rewarded based on effort – but the average player probably prefers it that way.

Leaderboards are meant to give you a reason to fight for the top spots. That purpose is lost however when you know you’re guaranteed to fail, since it’s not possible.

I imagine however that achievement leaderboards will be scrapped or made part of a larger board, if it’s not like that already. Leaderboards based solely on achievement points sounds like a quick “throw it in” move until something more complex can be made. Also, achievements don’t fluctuate enough. A lot of people would eventually be tied for #1 if dailies didn’t count, and a stagnant leaderboard isn’t fun.

I would still rather see the leaderboard be about ‘achievements’
A guy with all legendary or a WvW title/high pvp rank should be at the top not someone who logged in each day and did all the dailies..
And about newcomers, its not just about the leaderboards its the whole system. In other games you can have fun trying to get all the achievements, its an extra part of the game which makes doing other stuff such as exploration more fun. Here there is an invsibile 2k+ points that aren’t obtainable making the system pretty useless.

I cant catch up with some in my guild cos i missed quite alot of dailys so things like grinding 5k shield kills/giants kills/extra legendarys for 5 point seem broken and worthless.