Guild Wars 2

Artanis.4963:

No, the collection as means of acquisition was the “derandomization”.

It seems like everyone who compares this skin to Nightfury forgets the rest of the collection exists. There’s an item you buy, and there’s three items you craft. That’s where the gold cost belongs.

I’m not sure whether you are familiar with the concept of derandomization, so I’ll give a short example: instead of having a 0.01% chance to get an item for an action (e.g. opening a container) you get a guaranteed token and once you have 10,000 tokens you can trade them for the item. That’s exactly what changed from Halloween to Wintersday.

I neglected the other parts of the recipe/collection, because there was not much of a structural change.

At least once you got that bottle you were done with it. The drops from the dungeon were easily farmable during that timeframe. And the bottle wasn’t even that costly for a good part of that festival (i had bought it for 70 gold when the full recipe wasn’t out yet).
The actual grind was getting enough flax for the linseed oil…but that was something that you could do at your leisure, even during multiple months.
Something you can’t do with drinks.
It would be different if there was something to replenish the supply (like, having those activities in the rotation). But what will likely happen is that prices will spike and people will give up after having spent good amounts of money (or potential money, as they could have sold them instead).

Macilien.3078:

The thing I disagree with is the theory that ANet makes you grind. The decision to grind is yours not theirs. Nothing stops you from playing as you want during Wintersday and buy the drinks you miss if you want the skin or sell them if you rather make some gold.

In fact getting 10k drinks is pretty much the derandomized version of getting the Batwing Brew for the Halloween skin and I find it much more preferable as it spreads out the benefits and doesn’t limit it to a few lucky people.

There are several ways to grind in this game, but it’s always the players’ choice to do it. Most things can be obtained by playing as you like and then trading for them, but if you really want to remove even the option to grind, you can use diminishing returns much stronger by reducing the average drop of every activity by 10% every few repetitions, I just doubt that this would be very popular.

Well obviously the decision to grind is yours. As a player, you don’t have to do anything in the game. It’s always your choice.
However, I think people are just dissatisfied with how this event was implemented. Half the fun of an achievement or reward is in the process of getting it. You get a sense of accomplishment when done and the prestige of displaying the fruits of your labour. Yes, you can simply just buy the drinks and skip the grind, but that seems to diminish the value of it. If there is an achievement, I want to achieve it not simply purchase it,

I enjoyed making my legendary weapon. I enjoyed making mawdrey and my spinal back piece. Those still required a grind but the they were fun to work towards. This shoulder achievement is not. I’ve done the winter JP close to 500 times, I’ve amassed 6000 presents and I’m still only half way to the needed 12k. It’s been exceptionally boring and tedious. At this point, although it’s feasible for me to complete, I just don’t want to do this anymore. It’s not fun, it feels like work, actually worse than work cause that at least gives me some variety.

It’s not the end of the world and anet certainly isn’t obligated to do anything for the holidays let alone offer a new skin. They could make the drink requirement 30k if they wanted. But as players, I think we should offer our feedback about the experience. In this case it’s been generally negative.

Solstace.2514:

However, I think people are just dissatisfied with how this event was implemented. Half the fun of an achievement or reward is in the process of getting it. You get a sense of accomplishment when done and the prestige of displaying the fruits of your labour. Yes, you can simply just buy the drinks and skip the grind, but that seems to diminish the value of it. If there is an achievement, I want to achieve it not simply purchase it,

I enjoyed making my legendary weapon. I enjoyed making mawdrey and my spinal back piece. Those still required a grind but the they were fun to work towards. This shoulder achievement is not. I’ve done the winter JP close to 500 times, I’ve amassed 6000 presents and I’m still only half way to the needed 12k. It’s been exceptionally boring and tedious. At this point, although it’s feasible for me to complete, I just don’t want to do this anymore. It’s not fun, it feels like work, actually worse than work cause that at least gives me some variety.

It’s not the end of the world and anet certainly isn’t obligated to do anything for the holidays let alone offer a new skin. They could make the drink requirement 30k if they wanted. But as players, I think we should offer our feedback about the experience. In this case it’s been generally negative.

For me it is fun to set myself a daily goal and it is satisfying to meet it and in my eyes it is far better than hoping (mostly in vain) for a random drop. Of course if you just drop gold on it upfront it’s far less satisfying, but that’s not the only way to do it, you can set yourself a partial goal and then buy the rest.

That is my specific problem with it.
One player can actually farm for massive hours or be exceptionally talented in the JP
and another can buy it.
When other players see it though, they “know” you bought it instead of achieving it.
Ad in the JP bots and they are convinced.

If it wasn’t part of the meta reward then it wouldn’t have been an issue.

Why is it that this community is up in arms over “grinding” things like elite specializations and mastery xp, but when you have an actual “do this a thousand times to get this item” it’s suddenly okay?

Tumult.2578:

That is my specific problem with it.
One player can actually farm for massive hours or be exceptionally talented in the JP
and another can buy it.
When other players see it though, they “know” you bought it instead of achieving it.
Ad in the JP bots and they are convinced.

And then there’s this.

We just got a system to acquire legendary precursors with little to no randomization involved, because buying them off the trading post is not legendary.

Future legendary weapons don’t have precursors in the loot tables, and can’t be sold on the trading post, because buying a legendary weapon is not legendary.

Why? Because there’s been a general discontent over players just buying these items, to the point where any prestige that should have been attached to them is corrupted beyond redemption. You look at an Eternity, and you don’t feel anything, because, well, credit cards.

So, Winter’s Presence. How many people bought it? How many people bot it? Because of ten thousand drinks, it’s not prestigious. Just like the original legendary weapons, prestige now just means wealth or plastic.

I just got the shoulder skin yesterday. I didn’t buy a single item from the trading post for it. I did the jumping puzzle lots and lots of times (completed the infinite achievement 59 times to get enough drinks from gifts).

I didn’t get it for prestige or to show off. I got it because it looks nice. I don’t care what other people think about it.

Whether someone payed a lot of gold to get the items from the TP, or earned it through hard work, is nobody’s business. People who complain about someone having a prestige item are just jealous. I do agree though, people who bot/hack/cheat to get such sought after items don’t deserve to have them.

The funny thing is I looked forward to getting the shoulder skin so I could stop farming the JP. When I got it I was like “what now?”. I was so bored I didn’t know what I wanted to do in the game so I decided to keep farming the JP LoL. Well I do have around 10k out of 100k drinks towards the Thirst slayer achievement. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Community#Thirst_Slayer I could make some gold off the drinks but decided I’ll use them and sell everything else.

After I got the shoulder skin I figured I’d get the T1 and T3 Norn cultural armor (I already had the T2). I spent over 70 gold on it and realized none of it I wanted to use. I decided to buy the Braham’s armor set, Lawless gloves and boots, from the gem shop and go with that instead. So I wound up with 22g left after getting the cultural armor and felt dumb for wasting all that gold. But on the bright side I completed the achievement for soul binding 18 pieces of Norn cultural armor which bumped me up to just over 8k achievement points.

Edited for typos.

Who knows. Hopefully next year there will be some new skin for 1.000.000 drinks. People will love it for that great prestige and great looking.
:)

Artanis.4963:

Why is it that this community is up in arms over “grinding” things like elite specializations and mastery xp, but when you have an actual “do this a thousand times to get this item” it’s suddenly okay?

I’m pretty sure the people who were okay with one kind were okay with the other. Both camps are filled with the kind of folks who have nothing better to do than repetitively slog through the same thing for days on end.

To play devil’s advocate though, the HoT grinding was not only Anet’s attempt at content padding, it also gave the game a sense of progression again. Sure, most of it wasn’t making you that much more powerful but it was the kind of stuff that most are used to having to build up to.

I’ve said this in other threads on the subject so why not repeat it here.

Halloween shoulder needed you to either farm/buy thousands upon thousands of ToT bags and open them to get the one ultra rare item drop. Or you could spend a lot of gold and buy it directly off the TP.

Wintersday shoulder needs you to either farm/buy thousands upon thousands of gifts and open them for ultra common items that you need 10,000. Or you could spend a lot of gold and buy these items directly off the TP to get 10,000.

So in reality both events were extremely similar in obtaining their respective shoulder piece than different.

It’s therefore obvious that ANet did not want these “rewards” to be like the Living Story achievement rewards which were obtainable without the need to play the content exclusively for the entire event, unless of course you are a beast with the JP and you could put in large number of hours doing it without getting fatigued. Of course if you had such skills in JP or Bell Choir that you legitimately earned the number of presents likely needed, forgoing the should piece would earn you a huge pile of gold. Point being it’s out of reach by most by just doing the activities.

Still can’t get past the stupid moronic melt under your feet snowflakes. For the third year running. How anyone does, despite evidence to the contrary, is beyond me. Farm it? I’d like to just get to the second stage.

Shame on ANet for gating the WP collection behind something that not everyone can do. Not everyone is a JP god. And it would have been nice to know that the WP collection was set up that way, UNLIKE ANY OTHER COLLECTION THAT I AM CURRENTLY AWARE OF, so that I could have NOT wasted any time or money on it.

The drinks and candy canes were also rather out of control. 10000 of anything should NOT be an achievement slated for 3 weeks… more like 3 months, if not 3 YEARS. Kinda like the WvW achievements. Pretty much an all around EPIC FAIL, so far as I am concerned. And it MUST be said, that’s pretty rare here in GW2. Maybe NEXT year sanity, reason, and common sense will prevail. I certainly HOPE that they will.

Bah Humbug.

Nightshade.5924:

Still can’t get past the stupid moronic melt under your feet snowflakes. For the third year running. How anyone does, despite evidence to the contrary, is beyond me. Farm it? I’d like to just get to the second stage.

Shame on ANet for gating the WP collection behind something that not everyone can do. Not everyone is a JP god. And it would have been nice to know that the WP collection was set up that way, UNLIKE ANY OTHER COLLECTION THAT I AM CURRENTLY AWARE OF, so that I could have NOT wasted any time or money on it.

The drinks and candy canes were also rather out of control. 10000 of anything should NOT be an achievement slated for 3 weeks… more like 3 months, if not 3 YEARS. Kinda like the WvW achievements. Pretty much an all around EPIC FAIL, so far as I am concerned. And it MUST be said, that’s pretty rare here in GW2. Maybe NEXT year sanity, reason, and common sense will prevail. I certainly HOPE that they will.

Bah Humbug.

I can not give enough +1 to this post. This is also what I think.

Nightshade.5924:

Still can’t get past the stupid moronic melt under your feet snowflakes. For the third year running. How anyone does, despite evidence to the contrary, is beyond me. Farm it? I’d like to just get to the second stage.

Shame on ANet for gating the WP collection behind something that not everyone can do. Not everyone is a JP god. And it would have been nice to know that the WP collection was set up that way, UNLIKE ANY OTHER COLLECTION THAT I AM CURRENTLY AWARE OF, so that I could have NOT wasted any time or money on it.

The drinks and candy canes were also rather out of control. 10000 of anything should NOT be an achievement slated for 3 weeks… more like 3 months, if not 3 YEARS. Kinda like the WvW achievements. Pretty much an all around EPIC FAIL, so far as I am concerned. And it MUST be said, that’s pretty rare here in GW2. Maybe NEXT year sanity, reason, and common sense will prevail. I certainly HOPE that they will.

Bah Humbug.

I can not give enough +1 to this post. This is also what I think.

Charrbeque.8729:

I just got the shoulder skin yesterday. I didn’t buy a single item from the trading post for it. I did the jumping puzzle lots and lots of times (completed the infinite achievement 59 times to get enough drinks from gifts).

I didn’t get it for prestige or to show off. I got it because it looks nice. I don’t care what other people think about it.

Whether someone payed a lot of gold to get the items from the TP, or earned it through hard work, is nobody’s business. People who complain about someone having a prestige item are just jealous. I do agree though, people who bot/hack/cheat to get such sought after items don’t deserve to have them.

The funny thing is I looked forward to getting the shoulder skin so I could stop farming the JP. When I got it I was like “what now?”. I was so bored I didn’t know what I wanted to do in the game so I decided to keep farming the JP LoL. Well I do have around 10k out of 100k drinks towards the Thirst slayer achievement. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Community#Thirst_Slayer I could make some gold off the drinks but decided I’ll use them and sell everything else.

After I got the shoulder skin I figured I’d get the T1 and T3 Norn cultural armor (I already had the T2). I spent over 70 gold on it and realized none of it I wanted to use. I decided to buy the Braham’s armor set, Lawless gloves and boots, from the gem shop and go with that instead. So I wound up with 22g left after getting the cultural armor and felt dumb for wasting all that gold. But on the bright side I completed the achievement for soul binding 18 pieces of Norn cultural armor which bumped me up to just over 8k achievement points.

Edited for typos.

You’re now farming jp for drinks and using them for the Thirst Slayer achievement??? Totally doing it wrong. With how much the Wintersday drinks are, you could sell just 1 drink to buy 50 more drinks that count towards Thirst Slayer.

Can you forge-craft the Essence of Snowfall, Essence of Mischief, and Magnanimous Obsidian Crystal after Wintersday is over, or will those recipes stop being usable in the forge?

For next year;

Whatever you do please do not copy paste Wintersday yet again, more content, not just fake content like achievements.

Show Lions Arch some love and our woefully under used personal instances!

And most importantly make achievements attainable by humans not robots.

I just completed Winter’s Presence without buying a single drink from the TP. I wanted to see if it could be done using only the karma I made from the JP and the meta and the gifts from the bugged JP. I wanted the skin but didn’t want to buy it so I grinded it…..

I like the skin it’s very cool looking but asking players to pull these feats off during a holiday isn’t very GW in my opinion. Today I did the final 1,500 drinks…. Fifteen hundred. This skin could’ve required 1,500 total. This burnt me out. Maybe you needed player hours up during the holidays, maybe you are combining the JP playtime with PvP to fool yourselves into thinking players love the tournament, who knows.

It’s time for me to turn off GW2 for a bit, (I’m not quitting) I need a break. In the future try to remember why many of us bought this game.

I do like the skin kudos to the design team.

Yeah, the 10k drink achievement was ArenaNet’s way of giving us the………cold shoulder. Get it? LoL

Yeah it was worth it, but an annoying grind. The shoulder skin seemed fitting for my Norn.

I just completed this achievement last night.

I originally started the achievement without looking at the imbiber portion.. once I had sunk a large amount of resources into the shoulders, it turned into a “oh know what have I done…” I realized too late that I’d have to do some serious grinding to get it done (yes there where spreadsheets, jumping puzzle analysis and math involved.. again something that shouldn’t be needed to play a game….).

I would like to add that the level of grind kind of ruined my gameplay experience on the jumping puzzle and bell choir.

Some background:

I have never participated in the wintersday puzzle beyond the first year where it was too buggy to work (snowflakes broke under me too fast due to lag)

I have loved the bell choir and played it each year.

This year I had to learn the jumping puzzle, and it took me quite a bit of time.. however once I had a pattern that could yield reasonable returns (about 8-10) my progress on the puzzle stopped. For example, I saw a few nice moves where people would dodge roll on the final section to get past the last boulder by racing to the last peppermint, I even saw someone inner corner jump by the blowing snowman to get around a boulder and I was thinking “wow I should try that”.. but then the grindmonkey on my back kicked in and my play/experimenting with the jumping puzzle took a back seat to taking that safe/predictable path to get my set # of presents if I was going to have any chance at getting the achievement.

I gave up looking at other paths, learning neat “tricks” and what I would consider playing/refining with the puzzle just to slog out the presents I needed…

Bell choir became a similar thing… I typically try to get as close to perfect as possible and there’s one or two spots in the songs that are weird and I always get wrong (even though it looks right). This year it was more about getting through the content and not perfecting it… I gave up caring (in fact I left the sound off when doing the bell choir.. because it made the slog easier and less chance I would screw up by an audio miscue.. again the whole grindmonkey on my back) It no longer became an attempt to get as close to 600 as possible, I was content to run with barely enough crap to get through (the huge amount of grind/time I spent on it meant that at some point I just stopped caring about playing the thing and just wanted to get it done…).

I finished last week with about 5K drinks (which the achievement tracker cruelly noted as being 90% complete… HA! lies!) … so I had to grind a lot this week to even have a chance to make it.
I spent most of this week every evening (around 4-6 hours) grinding the jump puzzle, bell choir and orphan running to get the gifts/karma I needed. About the 3rd day in it became more of a chore than a pleasure ( my middle finger was actually getting quite sore holding down the mouse look button)

I know if a similar thing presents itself I won’t do it again. (presents HA! Pun-ny!)

I left a different MMO for this type of no-life grinding and this experience just served as a reminder of why I left those games…

I did spend currency (about 90 gold + an ascended shoulder’s worth of cloth I sold on the TP to get drinks to try to catch up when I fell behind..) so I had to give up on some long term goals to make this one happen… I can always grind the cloth again… but not before a long break from this game…

All in all I would say it wasn’t worth the aggravation.

Aedelric.1287:

For next year;

Whatever you do please do not copy paste Wintersday yet again, more content, not just fake content like achievements.

Show Lions Arch some love and our woefully under used personal instances!

And most importantly make achievements attainable by humans not robots.

Sorry, this will always be the case with annual events. Doubly so for ones that occur about the Christmas/New Year. Other than tweaking, like wisping other players on the JP (like what was done for the JP during Halloween) or adding a new skill in snowball PvP. Perhaps they will “fix” whatever that prevents your party from entering an instance of an event together. But if you want something totally different, nope.

I would rather have their PvE content team work on stuff that can be done year round rather than four weeks.

If the requirement was 1000 drinks there would have been a few complaints but generally accepted. It’s purely the arbitrary grind number that some idiot decided to pull out of a hat that ruined this Wintersday.

Any of you people who think ANet is reading this thread and reconsidering their policy of having crazy grind and requirements for special holiday items is living in a fantasy world, and it’s not Tyria.

Gwynefyrrdd says HI!

The drop rate from Trick-or-Treat Bags is estimated to be around 0.0005%; this is roughly equivalent to 1 Mini Gwynefyrdd for every 200,000 bags opened.

Gaile Gray.6029:

(Snip)
One of our statisticians just checked the drop rate, and there is no error in the drop rate — it truly is dropping as designed.
(Snip)

ANet wants this sort of grind/requirement. They’ve been doing it since Guild Wars 1 with the Mini Polar Bear. They truly want these items to be restricted to only a few.

You can complain, but their history says that they aren’t going to reconsider.

Merry Wintersday

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Any of you people who think ANet is reading this thread and reconsidering their policy of having crazy grind and requirements for special holiday items is living in a fantasy world, and it’s not Tyria.

Gwynefyrrdd says HI!

The drop rate from Trick-or-Treat Bags is estimated to be around 0.0005%; this is roughly equivalent to 1 Mini Gwynefyrdd for every 200,000 bags opened.

Gaile Gray.6029:

(Snip)
One of our statisticians just checked the drop rate, and there is no error in the drop rate — it truly is dropping as designed.
(Snip)

ANet wants this sort of grind/requirement. They’ve been doing it since Guild Wars 1 with the Mini Polar Bear. They truly want these items to be restricted to only a few.

You can complain, but their history says that they aren’t going to reconsider.

I got Gwynefyrdd as a drop which was pretty cool but since I was after the Tonic it still wasn’t satisfying. Crazy right?

Just want to vent my frustration at this particular item being locked behind the JP! For the last 2 weeks I’ve completed it twice…One day after 4 hours I just had it.
I completely stopped playing. I have had absolutely no desire to continue with any of the Wintersday festivities any more.
JP in this game are usually never a requirement, I mostly skip over them and have completed them at least once for map completion. But not without having to get my mindset on being extremely frustrated.
That being said, as a GW fan of the first game and still not too sure about GW2, I’ve become disheartened with the game I’ve loved all these years and the freedom to choose what you want to do without the fear of feeling you need to catch up. I’ve quit games that felt like it was a full time job. I already have one.
For you JP fans that it comes easy for, Kudos to you! But I can’t help feeling a large loss that I won’t be able to complete “goals” I’ve set for myself in this game, including some bad experiences from the HoT exp., but that’s another day.
I hope Anet reconsiders this option next year and possibly extends some other choices to the JP challenged!

Lillith.5724:

Just want to vent my frustration at this particular item being locked behind the JP! For the last 2 weeks I’ve completed it twice…One day after 4 hours I just had it.
I completely stopped playing. I have had absolutely no desire to continue with any of the Wintersday festivities any more.
JP in this game are usually never a requirement, I mostly skip over them and have completed them at least once for map completion. But not without having to get my mindset on being extremely frustrated.
That being said, as a GW fan of the first game and still not too sure about GW2, I’ve become disheartened with the game I’ve loved all these years and the freedom to choose what you want to do without the fear of feeling you need to catch up. I’ve quit games that felt like it was a full time job. I already have one.
For you JP fans that it comes easy for, Kudos to you! But I can’t help feeling a large loss that I won’t be able to complete “goals” I’ve set for myself in this game, including some bad experiences from the HoT exp., but that’s another day.
I hope Anet reconsiders this option next year and possibly extends some other choices to the JP challenged!

Totally agree.
My ping is hardly ever under 400 . Timed jumping puzzles and avoiding are two things I suck at. They don’t fit an online game.
There needs to be an alternate route.
I’m hitting the wall at the JP, mastery (Don’t knock yourself out) and PVP.

chemie banger.9624:

Totally agree.
My ping is hardly ever under 400 . Timed jumping puzzles and avoiding are two things I suck at. They don’t fit an online game.
There needs to be an alternate route.
I’m hitting the wall at the JP, mastery (Don’t knock yourself out) and PVP.

Interesting so I shouldn’t of been able to complete the jp while purposely trying to lag myself?

Contrariety to popular thought process no you SHOULD NOT receive a trophy stating great effort when your team came in last place with you in the outfield playing with the bees.

echo.2053:

chemie banger.9624:

Totally agree.
My ping is hardly ever under 400 . Timed jumping puzzles and avoiding are two things I suck at. They don’t fit an online game.
There needs to be an alternate route.
I’m hitting the wall at the JP, mastery (Don’t knock yourself out) and PVP.

Interesting so I shouldn’t of been able to complete the jp while purposely trying to lag myself?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_eOEh4Zd_Y

Contrariety to popular thought process no you SHOULD NOT receive a trophy stating great effort when your team came in last place with you in the outfield playing with the bees.

Did you have a chance to learn it without lag before?

chemie banger.9624:

echo.2053:

chemie banger.9624:

Totally agree.
My ping is hardly ever under 400 . Timed jumping puzzles and avoiding are two things I suck at. They don’t fit an online game.
There needs to be an alternate route.
I’m hitting the wall at the JP, mastery (Don’t knock yourself out) and PVP.

Interesting so I shouldn’t of been able to complete the jp while purposely trying to lag myself?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_eOEh4Zd_Y

Contrariety to popular thought process no you SHOULD NOT receive a trophy stating great effort when your team came in last place with you in the outfield playing with the bees.

Did you have a chance to learn it without lag before?

wouldn’t it be easier for someone who experiences it on a reg basis versus someone who doesn’t? I would of thought you’d adjust by now.

With most of the game blocked by your ping….what exactly entices you to play- out of curiousity?

I choose to learn the winter jp when it was first released and was actually a race against time. It wasn’t as relaxed as it was now, you had to race to get past the presents because they didnt respawn after popping.

Was bored or was I being creative?!

echo.2053:

chemie banger.9624:

echo.2053:

chemie banger.9624:

Totally agree.
My ping is hardly ever under 400 . Timed jumping puzzles and avoiding are two things I suck at. They don’t fit an online game.
There needs to be an alternate route.
I’m hitting the wall at the JP, mastery (Don’t knock yourself out) and PVP.

Interesting so I shouldn’t of been able to complete the jp while purposely trying to lag myself?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_eOEh4Zd_Y

Contrariety to popular thought process no you SHOULD NOT receive a trophy stating great effort when your team came in last place with you in the outfield playing with the bees.

Did you have a chance to learn it without lag before?

wouldn’t it be easier for someone who experiences it on a reg basis versus someone who doesn’t? I would of thought you’d adjust by now.

With most of the game blocked by your ping….what exactly entices you to play- out of curiousity?

I choose to learn the winter jp when it was first released and was actually a race against time. It wasn’t as relaxed as it was now, you had to race to get past the presents because they didnt respawn after popping.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nya90KdUXQc

Yeah I can’t make myself decide any quicker. When you see something onscreen you already have 400+ms less to decide what action to take .Then the execution back. Plus there is some unknown location problem.
Lightning tether always stops me completing sanctum sprint coz it throws me off it’s target.

I play for AP champ boxes and nodes atm.

chemie banger.9624:

echo.2053:

chemie banger.9624:

echo.2053:

chemie banger.9624:

Totally agree.
My ping is hardly ever under 400 . Timed jumping puzzles and avoiding are two things I suck at. They don’t fit an online game.
There needs to be an alternate route.
I’m hitting the wall at the JP, mastery (Don’t knock yourself out) and PVP.

Interesting so I shouldn’t of been able to complete the jp while purposely trying to lag myself?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_eOEh4Zd_Y

Contrariety to popular thought process no you SHOULD NOT receive a trophy stating great effort when your team came in last place with you in the outfield playing with the bees.

Did you have a chance to learn it without lag before?

wouldn’t it be easier for someone who experiences it on a reg basis versus someone who doesn’t? I would of thought you’d adjust by now.

With most of the game blocked by your ping….what exactly entices you to play- out of curiousity?

I choose to learn the winter jp when it was first released and was actually a race against time. It wasn’t as relaxed as it was now, you had to race to get past the presents because they didnt respawn after popping.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nya90KdUXQc

Yeah I can’t make myself decide any quicker. When you see something onscreen you already have 400+ms less to decide what action to take .Then the execution back. Plus there is some unknown location problem.
Lightning tether always stops me completing sanctum sprint coz it throws me off it’s target.

I play for AP champ boxes and nodes atm.

interesting. well its possible to do with 800-1k ping you just have to do it a mere 3 times.

also don’t forget to say bye to claire

Finished my wintersday presence, since i do have a wife and a kid, i ended up spending 300g to buy the last 3-4k i needed, mind you that was WITH help of 2 of my friends who sent me their daily presents they got from Karma.

Also i was extremly dissapointed that the item does not work with my Crystal Nomad outfit which is the WHOLE point i was going for it…

Also make it a special slot so i don’t have to take off a PART OF MY GEAR in order to look nice…

Poorly thought out Anet, poorly thought out….

echo.2053:

chemie banger.9624:

Totally agree.
My ping is hardly ever under 400 . Timed jumping puzzles and avoiding are two things I suck at. They don’t fit an online game.
There needs to be an alternate route.
I’m hitting the wall at the JP, mastery (Don’t knock yourself out) and PVP.

Interesting so I shouldn’t of been able to complete the jp while purposely trying to lag myself?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_eOEh4Zd_Y

Contrariety to popular thought process no you SHOULD NOT receive a trophy stating great effort when your team came in last place with you in the outfield playing with the bees.

I had the misfortune of doing the puzzle in an area with high latency internet connection and there’s some big differences between your connection and what I saw.

For example, I often had the snowflakes being drawn 1 at a time, whereas you look to have them drawn in blocks of 4 (could be my graphics card).

The boulders were moving very smoothly (they were very jittery where I was doing it).

Other players were also hopping around a lot (I didn’t see lot of bouncing when you where in a group, not that you were in a group very often)

It wasn’t impossible to do, just less tolerant of timing errors (for example the snowball at the end often pulled me off because of rubber banding)

not sure if trying to lag out your connection is the same as having a bad connection (looks like you had a normal ping around 200 or so) Your framerate doesn’t look to have suffered due to lag, whereas I found the framerate drop to be pretty annoying (much better now that I’m back home)

If you have the winter shoulders, you can lag out your framerate by hitting clear preview in the preview panel (the snowflake pattern gets bugged and draws multiple sets at once… which is a cool effect and can also massively drop your framerate) If you really wanted to test what a bad framerate can do to you….

Thanks for another insanely expensive addition to the game! Great job! I’m sure all the people spending 1k gold on this single piece of armor are super pleased at their elite status. Them and the bots should throw themselves a party on the devs dime.

Who thought 10k drinks was anywhere remotely near reasonable? Were people not enraged enough at finding out how expensive night fury was?

Can anyone explain what the point of adding content the vast majority of people can’t afford is? Why did this become the grindiest game in the world?

Ironwill.5389:

If you have the winter shoulders, you can lag out your framerate by hitting clear preview in the preview panel (the snowflake pattern gets bugged and draws multiple sets at once… which is a cool effect and can also massively drop your framerate) If you really wanted to test what a bad framerate can do to you….

Just been playing with that, soooo hope they don’t fix this but. But sadly they will (PS ANet, pls fix some other bugs instead)

I guess if you bought it all it would be expensive in terms of gold. I have a guildie who has the skin and didn’t spend one copper on getting it. YMMV

Yup guildies did the JP for theirs, I sold all my presents and made a lot of money So yeh thanks devs ^^

HipposWild.7185:

Thanks for another insanely expensive addition to the game! Great job! I’m sure all the people spending 1k gold on this single piece of armor are super pleased at their elite status. Them and the bots should throw themselves a party on the devs dime.

Who thought 10k drinks was anywhere remotely near reasonable? Were people not enraged enough at finding out how expensive night fury was?

Can anyone explain what the point of adding content the vast majority of people can’t afford is? Why did this become the grindiest game in the world?

Given that i basically used winterday content to earn my winter’s presence i am quiet satisfied. Gold is the great equalizer in this game in that it allows you to put effort into different activities and make gains in others. For those who hoard gold it was easy for them to buy the skin, but in doing so they shifted wealth to gold poor and more time rich players. Furthermore, people who bought the skin put time into the game in otherways to be able to achieve the result- unless they bought gems but hey if they bought gems at least people got some gold-gem exchange boost from it.

All of this said, i don’t think that 10k was the most reasonable number for the achievement but it was certainly doable given that comes out to 450 presents a day. Even being conservative that comes out to able 2-3 hours of play a day for equivalent gold return as doing wintersday content. This means that if you focused on minigames and events tied to the holiday and its skin you could get it. For a “status” item that amount of time investment kind of makes sense (that’s about 70 hours total).

To address your final point, there should be content out of reach of most players. exclusive skins allow people to set goals, and invest more resources in the game. The vast vast vast vast vast majority of content in this game is easily accessible and achievable- a few items every few months that only a few have keeps the whales, achievement hunters, and other hard core players going is good in my opinion. Most games in the MMO scene thrive when they have a varied playerbase.

Finally completed the jumping puzzle 3 times and got the festival achievement. Now I just need to find another 8500 holiday drinks, so I should be able to get the shoulders in half a decade or so at present rates.

Hey, anet, could you keep the karma vendor around and have them sell 100 presents a day for 100 karma each? Or have the Pact Supply Network Agent do it? That would make it possible to get 10,000 presents in 100 days for a million karma. Alternatively, make the drinks craftable. Or have different thresholds for the Festive Imbiber title and the Masterful Toast. Do something to create a non-grindy path to this achievement.

I grinded for 2 legendaries, for 3 elites, thank you but no more grinding.

It’s kittened, because none of the minigames introduced in the event are even remotely fun enough to grind like this.

Ironwill.5389:

echo.2053:

chemie banger.9624:

Totally agree.
My ping is hardly ever under 400 . Timed jumping puzzles and avoiding are two things I suck at. They don’t fit an online game.
There needs to be an alternate route.
I’m hitting the wall at the JP, mastery (Don’t knock yourself out) and PVP.

Interesting so I shouldn’t of been able to complete the jp while purposely trying to lag myself?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_eOEh4Zd_Y

Contrariety to popular thought process no you SHOULD NOT receive a trophy stating great effort when your team came in last place with you in the outfield playing with the bees.

I had the misfortune of doing the puzzle in an area with high latency internet connection and there’s some big differences between your connection and what I saw.

For example, I often had the snowflakes being drawn 1 at a time, whereas you look to have them drawn in blocks of 4 (could be my graphics card).

The boulders were moving very smoothly (they were very jittery where I was doing it).

Other players were also hopping around a lot (I didn’t see lot of bouncing when you where in a group, not that you were in a group very often)

It wasn’t impossible to do, just less tolerant of timing errors (for example the snowball at the end often pulled me off because of rubber banding)

not sure if trying to lag out your connection is the same as having a bad connection (looks like you had a normal ping around 200 or so) Your framerate doesn’t look to have suffered due to lag, whereas I found the framerate drop to be pretty annoying (much better now that I’m back home)

If you have the winter shoulders, you can lag out your framerate by hitting clear preview in the preview panel (the snowflake pattern gets bugged and draws multiple sets at once… which is a cool effect and can also massively drop your framerate) If you really wanted to test what a bad framerate can do to you….

I was indeed trying to lag my connection by streaming 8 videos while playing the game. It was not normal for music to start 31 seconds after hitting play whcich at that point you’ll also note that the level stopped and then suddenly loaded at once. When On the big peppermint one player was running to the right and then snapped back to the center. Classic symptom of lag is when you see everyone else running in a line.

I tried to remain with the group but even I was in disblief how all of them were killed at the same exact point. Almost died running off that end thinking that didn’t just happen.

Internet connection has absoluetly zero impact on Fps. If your having fps drops your playing at a graphic level higher than your cpu/gpu handle. Just because there is a highest setting availabledoesn’t mean that’s what you should click.

My normal ping without music is 70, with music is 80-90.

Unpopular opinion here but I shall share mine anyways:
I finished the collection including the 10k drinks without buying any. I actually really liked this collection, it was like a little legendary journey for me, something to work towards through the holidays. The joy when I finally finished my last round of drinks and I had snowflakes falling around me! I love it!

I ended up farming the jumping puzzle for gifts even tho I suck at jumping puzzles. I’m really bad. Terribad. But I’m a masochist and I had decided I will finish this collection on my own, without making my wallet weep and I kept going. After few days of raging at the buttcapes and max sized norns blocking my view, I managed to get the timing in my muscle memory and jumping became a lot easier. Luckily I landed into a few bugged maps that made farming faster. I found action camera helpful and I noticed other players were sharings tips in reddit for shortcuts and runs became smoother.

Only thing I would change about this would be the jumping puzzle itself. Since it’s a PvP map, next time reduce the amount of people per map or allow us to turn all the toon models into basic models (Or even better, maybe turn us into quaggans or skritts, or tiny wisps so you can actually see where you are jumping?). It’s really infuriating to start over and over because you ended up in a map that has 10 charrs and 10 norns and you have no idea where you are in that mess.

echo.2053:

I was indeed trying to lag my connection by streaming 8 videos while playing the game. It was not normal for music to start 31 seconds after hitting play whcich at that point you’ll also note that the level stopped and then suddenly loaded at once. When On the big peppermint one player was running to the right and then snapped back to the center. Classic symptom of lag is when you see everyone else running in a line.

I tried to remain with the group but even I was in disblief how all of them were killed at the same exact point. Almost died running off that end thinking that didn’t just happen.

Internet connection has absoluetly zero impact on Fps. If your having fps drops your playing at a graphic level higher than your cpu/gpu handle. Just because there is a highest setting availabledoesn’t mean that’s what you should click.

My normal ping without music is 70, with music is 80-90.

Just for fun I loaded into the puzzle with maxed out graphic settings (i.e. the appearance setting vs. performance in the graphics options.) I could barely mouse turn fast enough to get past the first set of snowflakes.. the mouse response was so slow I couldn’t run the puzzle…
I wonder how many people are having problems simply because of graphics performance.
Interestingly enough when I changed my graphics settings to best performance, it actually reduced some of the options lower than I had previously run it (the snowflakes lost their colouring and became a dull matte).

Anyone that’s having problems should probably change their graphics to performance while inside the puzzle because it’s not the same as when in town.

lag can totally affect your graphics display, I’ve seen it happen in bell choir where all the notes get drawn at once or notes are drawn out of sequence…Not sure if streaming multiple videos at once can cause upload packet problems which the server would use to verify your position and keypresses about the only way to test that would be to route traffic through a second server PC and lag it out (still might not drop packets)

the worst case of lag on the jumping puzzle I found was when I got out of sync and was waiting for the next snowflake to show up and the server decided that I was much further behind on a snowflake that had popped (I can only assume that a few position update packets got dropped and never made it to the server)… so while waiting for the next snowflake I simply fish flopped on my current snow flake (the knockdown when the presents pop) until the snowflakes caught up and broke underneath me…

Talking about wintersday achievement… 10k drinks re pretty expensive, and not fun to farm.

JP is useful both for karma and gifts ( and still sometimes a do some runs ), but what about having fun?

That’s what i’m talking about… if you want to spread achievement all over the season duration, just make something like the grinch one ( do a thing X days over XXdays ).

clarkcd.6532:

I guess if you bought it all it would be expensive in terms of gold. I have a guildie who has the skin and didn’t spend one copper on getting it. YMMV

Yes I also didn’t pay a single copper for it. Well actually I did buy like 20 mystic coins and a few packs of Snowballs as I was missing a few of those for last collection item.
But I did not buy a single drink. However I am very good at jumping puzzles so it wasn’t hard for me to farm Winter Wonderland as I often end up the top scorer.
But I also realise not everyone is in the same situation so I understand the frustration with acquiring this skin. TBH I never cared about it myself I wanted the “Spirited Drinker” title so obviously after getting it there was no reason not to finish the collection.

HipposWild.7185:

Thanks for another insanely expensive addition to the game! Great job! I’m sure all the people spending 1k gold on this single piece of armor are super pleased at their elite status. Them and the bots should throw themselves a party on the devs dime.

Who thought 10k drinks was anywhere remotely near reasonable? Were people not enraged enough at finding out how expensive night fury was?

Can anyone explain what the point of adding content the vast majority of people can’t afford is? Why did this become the grindiest game in the world?

Winter’s Presence is a premium skin with a premium price, comparable to similar premium skins from Halloween (the original prices for poly-luminescent jewels ran 400-1,000g, Queen Bee has traded for more than WP, …).

There continue to be more reasonably priced Wintersday-themed skins, including the outfit, princess wand, the tonics, etc.

MMOs always need premium skins, since people devalue their own enjoyment of stuff that everyone else has or is too easy to get.

HipposWild.7185:

I’m sure all the people spending 1k gold on this single piece of armor are super pleased at their elite status.

I’m not sure how much I spent, but my goal was to never get under 1k gold and I had 1.2k gold before the wintersday and I got it and I still have over 1k, but yeah … I’m super pleased with my shoulder piece

It’ll cost about 686G to buy the 10K drinks. Not unreasonable.