Guild Wars 2

Down the road, we’ll also be adding a reward structure to total achievement points, and we’ll be looking at revamping portions of existing UI to help players understand all the different kinds of content they can play and the types of rewards available. Once we have that framework in place, we’ll be able to really expand on the content accessible through the achievements system and provide you with even more new and exciting ways to play the game.

by Matt Wuerffel on January 28, 2013

Four months passed and I still have not seen any rewards from total achievement points. Was this idea scrapped or will appear eventually? Any thoughts or some more info about it? Couldn’t find any more info on the forums, but something may have been said by a dev when I wasn’t around.

Edit: As the questions were answered the topic may now be closed.

’Laurels are only earned through daily and monthly achievements (starting with the feb monthly) and will not reward for previous daily/monthly achievements completed since folks didn’t know this system was coming.

We will however introduce an expanded/new reward system in the future that will reward for other types of achievements, this system will reward previous achievement points earned. (But may require bringing back into line some infinitely repeatable achievements that would bloat/break this system)’

Only this quote by Colin.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/showposts/ColinJohanson-2394/2

So it’s another confirmation of such system and it’s 4 moths old as well… Don’t know if they’ve forgtotten about it or just throw the idea away.

I"m sure they were hoping we would forget.

They said it would happen “down the road” and “in the future”. Both are very vague but both also (to me) imply a long wait rather than something you should expect soon.

Or rather it implies that they think it would be a good idea but it’s relatively low priority and they’re not working on it now.

So just because it hasn’t happened now doesn’t mean it will never happen at all. But it also mean you shouldn’t be expecting it in the next update.

Yeah, they do talk alot about alot of content that doesn’t ever seem to come out.

Danikat.8537:

They said it would happen “down the road” and “in the future”. Both are very vague but both also (to me) imply a long wait rather than something you should expect soon.

And that’s why I’m mentioning it now (4 months later) and not sooner.

Well I guess it’s open to interpretation but when I said a long wait I was thinking more like 6 months, a year, when an expansion is added…long term. Not within the next few updates which were likely already planned out and partially completed when that statement was made.

I don’t think it’s a good practice but I think it’s a communication issue more than anything. Anet seem to think it’s a good idea to tell players about their ideas as and when they have them, and don’t seem to realise a lot of players are practically conditioned from other developers to believe we only ever hear about new content when it’s almost ready for release, definitely going to be in the game and they want to start building hype.

Just like they announced GW2 during the development of Eye of the North when they don’t seem to have gotten any further than deciding they were going to make a sequel and almost immediately some people called it a lie because they didn’t already have screen shots and went on to insist the game had been delayed endlessly and was obviously in trouble when in reality it took about as long to develop as any MMO and a lot less than several.

In my opinion you shouldn’t compare a full game development to changing a system in game that already exists. One of the reasons I wanted to remind about this is to get (not counting on it, but still) a clear answer whether the project was dropped or will be implemented.

Yeah, any news on that dear Arenanet?

Thorquist.8126:

In my opinion you shouldn’t compare a full game development to changing a system in game that already exists. One of the reasons I wanted to remind about this is to get (not counting on it, but still) a clear answer whether the project was dropped or will be implemented.

I’m only comparing the way Anet announced them. I’m not saying it will take as long or as much work, only that based on past experience you shouldn’t assume that because Anet have announced something it’s coming soon.

4 months and you’re complaining? Yea it’s a long time but most mmo’s would take a year+, and considering how much we got besides this in the last 4 months I’m happy waiting.

And there you go! Thanks for the update, Colin. =)

Why do people think achievement points are so important?? I myself dont put alot into how many I have or how many someone else has. Guess they are going to become another form of currency for the game…

Thanks Colin, hasty answer! Glad to know it hasn’t been scrapped.

It’s just players have a different definition for “down the road” and “in the future”, just like “rare chance”. Causes a lot of misunderstandings. Also most players aren’t software developers, it can take months from idea to implementation that doesn’t break something like the economy, profession balance, etc.

Wolfheart.1938:

Thanks Colin, hasty answer! Glad to know it hasn’t been scrapped.

In about 3 days to a week ppl will be acting as if its been scrapped lol.
I just hope things do not become too rewarding where its all mostly handed to you.

Wolfheart.1938:

Thanks Colin, hasty answer! Glad to know it hasn’t been scrapped.

^

Just curious: with every patch there’s a trail of smaller patches in the first 2 days after it goes live. If it takes this long to make a change go live, is it just that they didn’t make it in time or did something go wrong with testing?

And: why test on a server with development code instead of booting test servers with the actual live code + the current change to test? In general it seems like a bit more automated testing couldn’t hurt.

rootnode.9546:

Just curious: with every patch there’s a trail of smaller patches in the first 2 days after it goes live. If it takes this long to make a change go live, is it just that they didn’t make it in time or did something go wrong with testing?

And: why test on a server with development code instead of booting test servers with the actual live code + the current change to test? In general it seems like a bit more automated testing couldn’t hurt.

little patches with fixes to unforeseen bugs where deep testing isnt really needed to get a fix in place, or quick fixes to gamebreaking bugs…. not introducing new features

they test on dev code servers cuz anet can see the future of the game. dev code means they have the next 3+ months of possible patches/features in the code already, but not ready for release. its a big help to know the interactions between everything youre working on, but yeah it aint live.

Thanks for veryfing that Colin. Now my mind is at ease

insanemaniac.2456:

rootnode.9546:

Just curious: with every patch there’s a trail of smaller patches in the first 2 days after it goes live. If it takes this long to make a change go live, is it just that they didn’t make it in time or did something go wrong with testing?

And: why test on a server with development code instead of booting test servers with the actual live code + the current change to test? In general it seems like a bit more automated testing couldn’t hurt.

little patches with fixes to unforeseen bugs where deep testing isnt really needed to get a fix in place, or quick fixes to gamebreaking bugs…. not introducing new features

they test on dev code servers cuz anet can see the future of the game. dev code means they have the next 3+ months of possible patches/features in the code already, but not ready for release. its a big help to know the interactions between everything youre working on, but yeah it aint live.

I understand that. But there are some fixes that should’ve been catched by testing. Definitely.
And as for the dev code vs live code: they should test both. It’s of no use now if they test againkittenture code and not the current live code. It shouldn’t be that hard to boot a server with the currently running live code as a snapshot and then run test by test.

I appreciate the work on new rewards, I love how the laurel-system works. I don’t agree with some of the other rewards though… I feel like getting the best reward for the easiest activity (spam autoattack in Dragon Battles, farm CoF). For difficult Jumping Puzzles which often have me spend much more time than the 5min on a dragon encounter I don’t get a guaranteed rare, most of the time I get 2 greens and a blue…

I’m looking forward for the rework on the world bosses, rework on the dungeons seems to have stopped (only AC has new more interesting mechanics on bosses?!) since Robert Hrouda is now part of the living story team, or do I misunderstand some crucial point?

I wonder in which direction the new rewards go. Something which rewards skilled gameplay or something that can be grinded. Personally I miss rewards for skilled play, not everyone wants to do fractals on higher levels (not sure if fractals has a good reward-structure to be fair).

ColinJohanson.2394:

This feature is still in development and will be added to the game, yes. No ETA since it hasn’t been signed off testing wise yet, but it’s absolutely still something you’ll be seeing this year. This is part of an over-all project to update reward systems across the game, you’ve seen some of the stuff already (daily/monthly overhaul), rewards for giant boss chests in the open world, etc. Some arrives next week release (rewards for WvW ranks) and the rest will arrive over the course of 2013.

As a reminder, what we’re working on high level strategy wise can be found here:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/

We’ll update this blog post in a few months with our status so far and the plans for later in 2013. (edited to clarify we’ll update the blog)

I think that blog post needs to be updated alright Colin, just before the “In closing” section it says:

“Just because it’s not listed here doesn’t mean it’s not being worked on, but hopefully this helps give some insight into where we’re headed in the first half of 2013.”

(My emphasis) from that quote I’ve always though that the sections of the blog post you’ve linked were referring to features planned for the first half of the year and the first half of 2013 is coming to an end now. Some of those features have been delivered and some have slipped (which is inevitable) so I know I’d love to know where you’re going now and to see a revised rough roadmap of the features you’re planning on adding.

I won’t be equipping my main-hand pitchfork and off-hand torch but I would like to see some details of what will be delivered and, roughly, in what order.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Behellagh.1468:

It’s just players have a different definition for “down the road” and “in the future”, just like “rare chance”. Causes a lot of misunderstandings. Also most players aren’t software developers, it can take months from idea to implementation that doesn’t break something like the economy, profession balance, etc.

True enough, we also try to avoid putting timelines on anything due to the volatility that comes with live development, and if we’re ever wrong folks tend to not respond terribly well to it.

One of the fun things about live MMO development: all the steps that things have to go through to make it live. Generally a feature needs to be done 2+ weeks before it can go live, so it can get locked down and separated from everything else in development to be tested in isolation with the live game to verify it doesn’t function different in a server filled with development code vs. what’s going to go live. Before this lock down, the feature needs to be done with core development about 1-2 weeks earlier to allow downstream teams like localization, editing, and audio to have time to complete their work after the content teams are complete so content isn’t changing out from under them. And if any VO is used in the feature, all the recorded text needs to be completed 4+ weeks earlier than that to allow all of our localization VO partners to get all the correct staff in studio to record all the VO to match the english recording after the first batch of VO is recorded.

Most of this year we’ve been having a release once every month, which means if a feature has a lot of issues during testing and we need to make a lot of updates and pukitten back, it could be multiple months until it gets into the next one due to all the lead time required before something ships in game. The amount of steps required to get something live is pretty staggering, I just covered some of the high level steps above but there are a lot more than this.

We’ve actually been re-working this pipeline a bit lately in the background to try and speed it up (thus 2 releases in a row with 2 weeks separating instead of 4) but it still makes it really hard for us to give exact dates. A little peak behind the curtain how development works, there are around 300 folks working at ArenaNet, but a lot of them have nothing to do with building the feature, and instead provide all the support required to get that feature live. It’s why very few live games do frequent updates to their products, but we’re trying to find innovative ways to buck that trend and update more frequently.

Nice info on the pipeline. I think the main thing I’d want to know in addition to this is the timeframe for building an event using only existing assets (new would obviously increase the time).

ColinJohanson.2394:

Thorquist.8126:

Down the road, we’ll also be adding a reward structure to total achievement points, and we’ll be looking at revamping portions of existing UI to help players understand all the different kinds of content they can play and the types of rewards available. Once we have that framework in place, we’ll be able to really expand on the content accessible through the achievements system and provide you with even more new and exciting ways to play the game.

This feature is still in development and will be added to the game, yes. No ETA since it hasn’t been signed off testing wise yet, but it’s absolutely still something you’ll be seeing this year. This is part of an over-all project to update reward systems across the game, you’ve seen some of the stuff already (daily/monthly overhaul), rewards for giant boss chests in the open world, etc. Some arrives next week release (rewards for WvW ranks) and the rest will arrive over the course of 2013.

As a reminder, what we’re working on high level strategy wise can be found here:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/

We’ll update this blog post in a few months with our status so far and the plans for later in 2013. (edited to clarify we’ll update the blog)

Colin, thank you.

Question: I, as well as others in the community, are concerned about the amount of different currencies in the game. Should we expect new forms of currency to be introduced any time soon(weeks, months, this year?). I personally think that there is already too many forms of currencies that just overwhelm new players and dilute the feeling of a rare drop in an instance/open world. If there are more currencies to be added, or even if not, are there plans to deposit these currencies like collectables? We already do with items like mystic coins, but dungeon currencies, fractal relics, pristine relics just to name a few, take up quite a bit of bag space.

Thanks for any input

Hello Colin. Thank you for being so open in this thread.

People who have busy work weeks but grind on weekends will greatly appreciate the change to Laurels!

Many thanks to you, Colin, for all the updates and clarification offered. Always good to see questions being addressed.

@Pifil – The first half gives them until the end of June. Which is still a month. If they don’t update the blog in July (after the ‘first half of the year’) then grump.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’ve actually been re-working this pipeline a bit lately in the background to try and speed it up (thus 2 releases in a row with 2 weeks separating instead of 4) but it still makes it really hard for us to give exact dates. A little peak behind the curtain how development works, there are around 300 folks working at ArenaNet, but a lot of them have nothing to do with building the feature, and instead provide all the support required to get that feature live. It’s why very few live games do frequent updates to their products, but we’re trying to find innovative ways to buck that trend and update more frequently.

I completelly understand the amount of work and time it takes to implement things into the game with the less issues as possible, but it’s also true that you have made a lot of content and updates that becomes useless, and there’s so much hard work and time invested in those.
And you still make things up that go in the same direction.

Example 1: Season content gives so much work and becomes useless.
Many skins were made for special seasons like Halloween and Christmas and now you can’t even buy/sell them at TP or craft them.
Epic Jumping Puzzles and good instances that disapeared but everyone loved them.
Why don’t you make those things more meaning in the future updates, but with a “catch” (change the theme in the JPs and instances, along with rewards)
The idea of making things for special seasons is great, but if you are going to take away those things completelly, then many players will always blame you guys for not spending time on more important stuff (like creating GvG and duels asked by so many players since the beguinning).
Instead, you should create the things players are asking a lot for those special events as a way of testing it. If the feedback is good, then just give it a little touch and when the season is over release it as the new feature.

Example 2: So many changes in WvW were made…. oh wait, they weren’t, if you compare them to PVE, that has a lot of new maps, dungeons, and events, most of them become useless too after a while. Even sPVP has new maps.
WvW only gets 1 thing: balance updates. Since the beguinning, you only take and put things in the game only in the name of balancing. Even WXP is for that same purpose. The (not-so-)funny thing is, every time you try to make it better, you just give yourselves even more work to do in terms of balancing WvW.
In the beguinning, the balance was made between Players damage (skills, traits, gear, guild bónus and foods), NPCs and Siege weapons.
Then you put WXP, which means more balancing between all the things influenced by that.
Now you are making Traps.
Although I like those things, you are still creating more balance issues to be included in all the work you have to do. I’m not surprised WvW doesn’t get new maps or a radical change of the ones we have right now. I’m not surprised you don’t know how to balance “blobs” issues (like skill lag) vs smaller groups in the way. I’m also not surprised you make this “balance” updates all the time, because the amount of work the WvW team has to do is so big that they can only do minor things.
Finally you bring some things to the table: more Rewards and a new matchup. But it’s still the same, balance issues beeing the main reason for WvW biggest updates.

Example 3: Talking about sPVP, you are creating new maps that are awesome… but why keeping the Conquest Mode in all of them? You don’t see most famous PVP games getting better by creating the same thing over and over again do you?
One thing you must know as a gamer. When you feel something is repetitive in a game, you start losing interest. If the game releases new things with the same repetitive things, you start considering leaving the game. When you find another game that gives you what you want, you don’t need to think twice.
Now, take the examples of FPS games, , take the examples of MOBA games and take the examples of other MMORPG’s. With those, look for the many Modes out there that are enjoyable and think about what you have been doing, because capturing points is becoming stale and boring.
And keep in mind: if it wasn’t for the new Arenas (after 5/6 months of talking about them, and meanwhile you were creating new maps -.-") and the spectator mode, sPVP would be much worst right now. But if you continue with the same Conquest mode of capturing points when creating new maps for PVP, it won’t become much better than it is right now, because players are already a bit tired of it.

Now I greatly appreciate all the work you’ve been doing in the game, but as you can see you should focus on creating meaningfull content that has a bigger chance to stay in the game as a feature forever, instead of creating content with a very short term.

That’s just my opinion. I hope it helps.

void.6705:

Why do people think achievement points are so important?? I myself dont put alot into how many I have or how many someone else has. Guess they are going to become another form of currency for the game…

I also dont see why we need achievement points rewards. If anything, there could be titles related to them, similar to Kind of a Big Deal / People Know Me / God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals titles. Something like:

5k Achievements points = title X
10k points = title Y
20k points = title Z
and so on…

I don’t like the points for achievements in general. It makes no sense to compare it with others since they may just have more time to play the game (get more dailies, monthlies, points in general because of time). It would be the same if you’d simply link /age in the chat.

I wonder what they’ll do with those points in the future, to make them meaningful.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Behellagh.1468:

It’s just players have a different definition for “down the road” and “in the future”, just like “rare chance”. Causes a lot of misunderstandings. Also most players aren’t software developers, it can take months from idea to implementation that doesn’t break something like the economy, profession balance, etc.

True enough, we also try to avoid putting timelines on anything due to the volatility that comes with live development, and if we’re ever wrong folks tend to not respond terribly well to it.

One of the fun things about live MMO development: all the steps that things have to go through to make it live. Generally a feature needs to be done 2+ weeks before it can go live, so it can get locked down and separated from everything else in development to be tested in isolation with the live game to verify it doesn’t function different in a server filled with development code vs. what’s going to go live. Before this lock down, the feature needs to be done with core development about 1-2 weeks earlier to allow downstream teams like localization, editing, and audio to have time to complete their work after the content teams are complete so content isn’t changing out from under them. And if any VO is used in the feature, all the recorded text needs to be completed 4+ weeks earlier than that to allow all of our localization VO partners to get all the correct staff in studio to record all the VO to match the english recording after the first batch of VO is recorded.

Most of this year we’ve been having a release once every month, which means if a feature has a lot of issues during testing and we need to make a lot of updates and pukitten back, it could be multiple months until it gets into the next one due to all the lead time required before something ships in game. The amount of steps required to get something live is pretty staggering, I just covered some of the high level steps above but there are a lot more than this.

We’ve actually been re-working this pipeline a bit lately in the background to try and speed it up (thus 2 releases in a row with 2 weeks separating instead of 4) but it still makes it really hard for us to give exact dates. A little peak behind the curtain how development works, there are around 300 folks working at ArenaNet, but a lot of them have nothing to do with building the feature, and instead provide all the support required to get that feature live. It’s why very few live games do frequent updates to their products, but we’re trying to find innovative ways to buck that trend and update more frequently.

It’s truly pathetic to read such an appeasing post and then see what “thoroughly tested” means when your patches actually hit live.

Iruwen.3164:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Behellagh.1468:

It’s just players have a different definition for “down the road” and “in the future”, just like “rare chance”. Causes a lot of misunderstandings. Also most players aren’t software developers, it can take months from idea to implementation that doesn’t break something like the economy, profession balance, etc.

True enough, we also try to avoid putting timelines on anything due to the volatility that comes with live development, and if we’re ever wrong folks tend to not respond terribly well to it.

One of the fun things about live MMO development: all the steps that things have to go through to make it live. Generally a feature needs to be done 2+ weeks before it can go live, so it can get locked down and separated from everything else in development to be tested in isolation with the live game to verify it doesn’t function different in a server filled with development code vs. what’s going to go live. Before this lock down, the feature needs to be done with core development about 1-2 weeks earlier to allow downstream teams like localization, editing, and audio to have time to complete their work after the content teams are complete so content isn’t changing out from under them. And if any VO is used in the feature, all the recorded text needs to be completed 4+ weeks earlier than that to allow all of our localization VO partners to get all the correct staff in studio to record all the VO to match the english recording after the first batch of VO is recorded.

Most of this year we’ve been having a release once every month, which means if a feature has a lot of issues during testing and we need to make a lot of updates and pukitten back, it could be multiple months until it gets into the next one due to all the lead time required before something ships in game. The amount of steps required to get something live is pretty staggering, I just covered some of the high level steps above but there are a lot more than this.

We’ve actually been re-working this pipeline a bit lately in the background to try and speed it up (thus 2 releases in a row with 2 weeks separating instead of 4) but it still makes it really hard for us to give exact dates. A little peak behind the curtain how development works, there are around 300 folks working at ArenaNet, but a lot of them have nothing to do with building the feature, and instead provide all the support required to get that feature live. It’s why very few live games do frequent updates to their products, but we’re trying to find innovative ways to buck that trend and update more frequently.

It’s truly pathetic to read such an appeasing post and then see what “thoroughly tested” means when your patches actually hit live.

You should go work for them maybe you might teach them a thing or two.