Guild Wars 2

I’m hesitant about how the new achievements were described in the blog posts. I’m not freaked out without knowing the full details, but the impression I got from the blog was that the new LW-connected achievements were designed to 1. not be possible to clear on your first playthrough, forcing you to redo the content multiple times, and 2. would be “more difficult” than existing ones, which is hard to guess at since some existing ones are very easy, but others are already plenty hard. I would not want to see achievements in the game be something that only “elite” players are capable of overcoming.

I would not want to see more achievements that require the level of skill/luck as some of the Gauntlet achievements, or the ones connected to the LA Aetherblade base dungeon, nor would I want to have achievements that you cannot complete on your first playthrough if you meet the other requirements. That was one thing that bugged me about some of the achievements tied to the Kessex Hills LW updates, where you might have to beat a given boss once, and no matter what you did it would not unlock a certain achievement, and then you had to beat them a second time and on that second time you could get an achievement for beating it in a certain way. If you beat ti right the first time then you should get the full achievement for it.

The way I read it is that achievements will be less grindy (i.e. kill 250 things), and more challenge based (i.e. kill this boss without getting hit by this attack).

I can’t understand the desire to be able to get all of the achievements on a first play through. They are called achievements, not freebies. They are meant to be an accomplishment, a show of ability to play the game. Sure, you should be able to get some on your first play through, but definitely not all of them.

You’re also not the first I’ve seen today worrying that the achievements are going to be too hard, because you don’t consider yourself an elite player. My question to you and others like you is this: Do you have zero desire to become a better player? Achievements should be used to help players play the game better, and to be honest the skill cap in this game isn’t that high. The differences between the “elite” players and players who don’t consider themselves as such is simply the ability to dodge, learn from mistakes, listen to others, read the tooltips/wiki, and research a build.

The way I read it is that achievements will be less grindy (i.e. kill 250 things), and more challenge based (i.e. kill this boss without getting hit by this attack).

I’ll just point out that I HATE “kill this boss without getting hit by the attack” achievements, because unless you’re very lucky they tend to require replaying it a bunch of times, doing everything right 90% of the time, but then you make one mistake or just get a bad combination of circumstances that cause you to get hit and have to redo the whole thing over again. I much prefer the achievements that run along the lines of “dodge the enemy’ attack 5 times” to “dodge the enemy’s attack every time,” because at least in the former, if you don’t get it on the first try, all the effort you put into that encounter still counts towards eventually completing the achievement.

I can’t understand the desire to be able to get all of the achievements on a first play through. They are called achievements, not freebies. They are meant to be an accomplishment, a show of ability to play the game. Sure, you should be able to get some on your first play through, but definitely not all of them.

Well, I don’t mean that they should just be handed to you, that you should get them without even trying, just that achieving them should be POSSIBLE if you do things right on the first try. I mean, imagine a scenario, you’re fighting a boss. The boss makes ground waves. There is an achievement for just beating the boss, and also one for “activate the glowy sphere before killing him.” Now, to my mind, the “right” way to implement this is that you fight the boss, you activate the glowy sphere, when the boss dies you get both the “kill the boss” AND the “glowy sphere” achievements. You should not have to go back in and kill the boss a second time to get the glowy sphere achievement, particularly since your second try may not go as well as the first. If you get it right, you should get credit.

They should also avoid achievements that are pure grind, like “beat the boss ten times.”

Do you have zero desire to become a better player?

Yes.

I have a desire to only be the player that I am. If I improve then that’s nice, but if I don’t, that’s fine too. I want content where I can improve on it, but I don’t want to have to improve in order to get credit for it. I mean, if there’s a boss fight and I manage to get through it without getting hit by an attack, then yay! Just accomplishing that without any outside acknowledgement would be good enough for me, but if I’m doing the boss fight and do get hit, then I don’t want my reaction to be “doh, I’ve just wasted this entire run and have to do it again if I want the achievement.”

I’m not terrible, I have most of the Gauntlet achievements, only missing the ones related to Liadri, the T3 Gambit ones, and the Ooze one, I’m in the 90th percentile overall (and that’s without any WvW or PvP ones), but there are a lot of achievements over the years that I’ve just had no interest in, and would hate to see them take over the LW achievement lists. A good example of what not to do would be the achievements related to the original Atherblade Retreat dungeon, which all seemed to focus on everyone doing everything perfectly or receiving zero credit.

They said they would be harder than the Season 1 achievements.

Considering many of these ‘achievements’ were devoted to simply showing you the content and so required things like watching a cut scene or entering a new activity 3 times I don’t think you have anything to worry about.

I have a desire to only be the player that I am. If I improve then that’s nice, but if I don’t, that’s fine too. I want content where I can improve on it, but I don’t want to have to improve in order to get credit for it. I mean, if there’s a boss fight and I manage to get through it without getting hit by an attack, then yay! Just accomplishing that without any outside acknowledgement would be good enough for me, but if I’m doing the boss fight and do get hit, then I don’t want my reaction to be “doh, I’ve just wasted this entire run and have to do it again if I want the achievement.”

I’m not terrible, I have most of the Gauntlet achievements, only missing the ones related to Liadri, the T3 Gambit ones, and the Ooze one, I’m in the 90th percentile overall (and that’s without any WvW or PvP ones), but there are a lot of achievements over the years that I’ve just had no interest in, and would hate to see them take over the LW achievement lists. A good example of what not to do would be the achievements related to the original Atherblade Retreat dungeon, which all seemed to focus on everyone doing everything perfectly or receiving zero credit.

I’m not going to argue with you that having zero desire to become a better player is wrong, because its not. Its perfectly acceptable. But I am going to challenge your view that getting achievements for doing content is what verifies whether you are “Getting credit for it” or making it worth doing. Its understandable that you feel this way, because that is what the meta-achievements have led people to believe. Complete the meta, get the top tier reward for achievements, you can feel like you’ve finished the content.

I’ve been running the Boss Blitz pretty consistently, but haven’t touched or tried to get any of the “Kill X centaurs” achievements. Some I have gotten incidentally, but I don’t feel like I didn’t get credit for the Boss Blitz’s I’ve run just because I didn’t get all the achievements for it. The rewards from completing the event or boss itself is and should be enough, the achievement is just icing on the cake.

I do agree that the Aetherblade dungeon achievement is poor design, achievements shouldn’t be reliant on performance of a group as a whole, it should be a test of individual accomplishment and skill. Missing out on an achievement because someone in your party messed up is a recipe for disaster.

I also agree with Danikat, it sounds like you won’t have much to worry about. I have the Liadri achievement and 1 or 2 of the gambit ones, but aside from that we are pretty close to being on the same skill level. Maybe there will be a couple achievements that will be out of our reach at first, but I would assume we won’t have a problem getting most of them.

I’ve been running the Boss Blitz pretty consistently, but haven’t touched or tried to get any of the “Kill X centaurs” achievements. Some I have gotten incidentally, but I don’t feel like I didn’t get credit for the Boss Blitz’s I’ve run just because I didn’t get all the achievements for it. The rewards from completing the event or boss itself is and should be enough, the achievement is just icing on the cake.

And I’ll offer you the same courtesy of “if that’s how you want to play it, that’s fine too.”

I’m just saying that I would feel disappointed if a large amount of the new achievements ended up in the category of activities that I feel aren’t worth the hassle, like I described above. You can’t convince me that I should feel fine about that. I understand that in the new model I won’t have to complete the achievements to unlock at least some of the LW rewards, but they did indicate specific rewards tied to specific achievements, and I would not want to have really cool rewards tied to “out of my hands” achievements, and even if they offered no reward at all it would bum me out to not clear most of the achievements.

One thing I liked with the Labyrinthine Cliffs was that you could get up to 52 skyshards, but only needed 40 to complete the achievement. One change that I’d like to see to that though would be to keep tracking it after 40, so like you are collecting them, you hit 40, you get all the achievement points you’ll ever get from it, but then you get one of the remaining 12 and it shows “41/40.” Currently you can’t even activate the other skyshards once you’ve cleared the achievement for it.

It could be cool if they had a “defeat the boss three times” achievement, but then if you defeated the boss ten times, because reasons, it would read “10/3” on the tracker, just so you’d always remember that.

I would also hope that if a LW update offers maybe 50 total achievement points, they would break those up so that the really “hardcore” achievements would only offer 1-2 points each, while the more common ones would offer the 5-10 points each for clearing them, otherwise it would become almost impossible for the less hardcore skillz players to earn the higher tier achievement rewards in any reasonable timeframe. The rewards for completing hardcore achievements should be that you completed the hardcore achievement, not that you got a bunch of phat lootz on top of that.

I don’t really see an issue with the new structure, since the new Living Story is permanent and players have all the time in the world to attempt the achievements at a time of their choosing. Trying for some of the really difficult achievements like Light Up the Darkness or the “don’t get hit by lasers in the Aetherblade Retreat” within 2 weeks was really stressful; now players can just wait until their skills improve, or they find a like-minded group (instead of PUGs that aren’t interested in it at all) and keep on working at it till they get it.

If an achievement is just not to a player’s taste (e.g. it’s SAB, and they HATE jumping puzzles), well, they can always acquire AP in another fashion. If one day they happen to change their mind, then the content will still be there waiting for them.

I don’t really see an issue with the new structure, since the new Living Story is permanent and players have all the time in the world to attempt the achievements at a time of their choosing. Trying for some of the really difficult achievements like Light Up the Darkness or the “don’t get hit by lasers in the Aetherblade Retreat” within 2 weeks was really stressful; now players can just wait until their skills improve, or they find a like-minded group (instead of PUGs that aren’t interested in it at all) and keep on working at it till they get it.

I have no interest in face smashing a wall though. If I can’t get an achievement like that after a few tries, I have no interest to keep trying over and over for no reward. The things I want to keep doing over and over are the things that I have down so that I complete them each time, not the stuff I keep failing at. I have better things to do with my time than to keep failing.

If an achievement is just not to a player’s taste (e.g. it’s SAB, and they HATE jumping puzzles), well, they can always acquire AP in another fashion. If one day they happen to change their mind, then the content will still be there waiting for them.

Yeah, but that assumes that there are other methods. The dailies only offer a max of 8 per day, and they’ve even put a hard cap on those, so if the majority of LW points end up coming from annoyingly difficult activities then where would the “alternate source” be?

Again, maybe it won’t be that way, I’m not prejudging, I’m just hoping for some confirmation that it won’t be, or that if that is their plans that they will reconsider.

The thing is, I do like failing repeatedly until victorious! I feel like you have only looked at this from one point of view, and that is yours. Queens Gauntlet achievements were used as an example, and I didn’t get those 5 gambit ones either last year, because I was kitten . I’m better at the game now and I got them this year. It still took me a number of tries, but this is what I enjoy. I like to have some goals in a game that give me a sense of accomplishment.

What I expect you will see is a bunch of achievements to your taste, that you can get quite easily, and a couple that will require effort. These achievements are for other people, you wont have to do them. I don’t even expect they will carry any sort of reward/title and I don’t even mind. If you can’t fore-go 10 achievement points towards your next chest of nothing special so I can have some goals to work towards, then it’s a little bit selfish to be honest. The game is for all players, and so long as the rewards are attainable by all, you really have nothing to be complaining about.

edit:
I never realised kitten wasn’t allowed. I don’t see Butch and Marceles in Pulp Fiction being at all worried when they “bring out the kitten!”
“the Kitten’s sleeping”
“Well then I guess you’re gonna have to go wake him up, aren’t you?”

When you constantly run into failure at something, do you also take the time to reflect and puzzle out what went wrong? Sometimes all it takes is changing your build or your strategy slightly to turn failure into success. The Gauntlet is a perfect example of this; no single build is capable of defeating every single opponent. You will need awareness of the capabilities of your opponent, and then tailoring your build or strategy to counter their strength.

As an example, it took me 70+ tickets to beat Liadri last year. The first 10 times I basically faceplanted against her, after which I’d finally worked out the mechanics of her two phases. Then it took me another 10 or so attempts to finetune a build to counter her abilities (good sustain + ranged + conditions). Then maybe another 20 tries to get a good memorization going. By this point I could see myself steadily getting better and better with each attempt, so I knew it was only a matter of time. To speed things up, I used some food/nourishment and a few boosters I had from opening Black Lion Chests, and I eventually beat her. The entire process was long and undeniably painful at parts, but by the end I’d vastly improved my skills and had a renewed appreciation for knowing how to observe your opponent and utilising your game knowledge to overcome them.

Liadri is an extreme example on the difficulty scale (most of the other opponents were beaten in < 5 attempts), but it highlights the learning and growth process much more clearly. I doubt that the achievements in S2 alluded to will all be as tough as Liadri (some might be, but they will likely be the exception rather than the norm); more than likely each story chapter will be like an entire category of the LS1 achievements. Some will be attained fairly easily, others will take some attempts. A few may be extremely difficult for those who like a challenge.

There’s 12 Daily tasks now, unless you’re excluding PvP/WvW. PvP is actually a pretty good source of AP; the two dailies are extremely easy to complete, and most of the PvP permanent achievements can be worked toward over time.

i like the move to make them more difficult.

right now, they are easy enough that i feel obligated to do them….but they are kind of meaningless outside of advancing my achievement point total. they don’t measure much….and most reward nothing other than the points.

making the new achievements harder and adding rewards to them seems better……if they actually end up being a good measurement of skill.

The thing is, I do like failing repeatedly until victorious! I feel like you have only looked at this from one point of view, and that is yours.

Well, you can still do that, nobody’s telling you that you can’t, all I’m saying is that there shouldn’t be any significant rewards tied into it. I mean if you want to, say, defeat Tequatl without taking a single hit, then that’s a fine goal to have, but the game should not give any significant reward for that so that players who don’t want to do that feel compelled to repeat it over and over until the get it right. If you want to do it then you can do it over and over as many times as you like, you don’t need extra candy to entice you into it.

One activity I find a lot of fun is Claw of Jormag phase 1. A lot of players will say “oh, but that’s so easy,” because sure, you can pretty much faceroll it and it will still advance to phase 2. But I like to actually PLAY it, using the channel-cancelling on the charzooka to heat shield whenever it roars, timing dodge rolls to avoid falling ice and avalanches, trying as best I can to get through the entire round without taking any damage. But of course I do tend to take at least a little each time, and it would drive me CRAZY if there were actually an achievement or a reward of any kind that required me to actually get it perfect, but just being able to attempt to do it perfectly, and to have my reward be the satisfaction of a job reasonably well done, that I can do for months at a time.

The Gauntlet is a perfect example of this; no single build is capable of defeating every single opponent.

I used a single semi-tanky Guardian build to beat all the gauntlet opponents on the first to third try, most of them with their achievements, except for Liadri, and really altering my build would make very little difference aside from slightly speeding up the last phase, since Liadri is mostly about keeping constantly on your toes and not tripping once. I know exactly how to beat her, I just find it tedious and uninteresting gameplay. I dislike any content with one-hit KOs, and while in a literal sense Liadri is more of a two-hit, in all practical terms if you take a hit you’re gone.

There’s 12 Daily tasks now, unless you’re excluding PvP/WvW.

Of course I am. I don’t do PvP stuff, I don’t have the time or the interest in them.

It also felt like they were foreshadowing that there will be an even furthur reduction of AP gains per story.

The beginning season of LS1 was about 250+ AP and by the end of it it trickled down to barely 100.

Zaxares.5419:

The Gauntlet is a perfect example of this; no single build is capable of defeating every single opponent.

what.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/fotfw/Guardian-Three-Tiers-of-Gauntlet-Achieve/first#post4081518

The problem with this perspective is that it operates on the conceit that ‘I deserve a medal’ instead of ‘I can try to earn a medal’. As an artist it’s something I see in art contests all the time. People who can’t draw or paint complaining that an art contest rewards good art and expecting to be catered to. Nobody is entitled to have every achievement. But everyone is entitled to earn every achievement. That’s why they’re achievements. They’re not attendance prizes, they’re supposed to reward an expression of dedication, effort, or skill. And, unfortunately for some, the things we want to earn are sometimes out of our reach at first and need to be worked towards.

You said yourself you have zero interest in becoming a better player, but you’re also upset at the possibility that LS2 is going to contain challenging achievements that might be outside of your skill level. That’s… kinda selfish. And it punishes players who are at a higher skill level by making their skills pointless just so that you don’t have to improve on yours.

There will undoubtedly be achievements aimed at every skill level, just as there already are. There will be achievements you will get, and some you won’t. And that’s okay. There will be some that other people won’t get, and you will. And that’s okay. There will be some that only a few people will get, and some that everyone will get. And that’s okay too.

Besides. There is a fundamental difference between LS1 and LS2 that can explain the difference in the expectations and difficulty of the achievements.

LS1 was temporary, bi-weekly content. LS2 is permanent forever content.

The achievements for LS1 were mostly easy because players had to complete them within the two weeks that the content was live. They were never intended to define the skill expectation of the game in general. LS2 is perma-content with no time limitation on its achievements, so players have an indefinite amount of time to work towards them.

Ohoni.6057:

If I can’t get an achievement like that after a few tries, I have no interest to keep trying over and over for no reward.

My problem with this attitude is that you’re not the only player in the game. Unfortunately, one of the prevailing attitudes among players is that GW2 is turning too casual. There are those of us who do enjoy a challenge, and have been throughout the history of gaming. Why shouldn’t we get content to suit our tastes as well? If you ask me, achievements are an ideal way to deliver. Casual players such as yourself will not miss any story content, and can still get all rewards associated with the story. If you run out of things to do, you could always come back and take a swing at the more difficult tasks. Meanwhile, “hardcore” players will have a more challenging target to hit with a worthwhile reward. That was really the whole idea behind game achievements in the first place, before they turned into the modern world’s “log in for 5 points!” crap.

Charak.9761:

Zaxares.5419:

The Gauntlet is a perfect example of this; no single build is capable of defeating every single opponent.

what.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/fotfw/Guardian-Three-Tiers-of-Gauntlet-Achieve/first#post4081518

Ummm, dude. That’s two builds.

Darkchief.5468:

The way I read it is that achievements will be less grindy (i.e. kill 250 things), and more challenge based (i.e. kill this boss without getting hit by this attack).

I can’t understand the desire to be able to get all of the achievements on a first play through. They are called achievements, not freebies. They are meant to be an accomplishment, a show of ability to play the game. Sure, you should be able to get some on your first play through, but definitely not all of them.

You’re also not the first I’ve seen today worrying that the achievements are going to be too hard, because you don’t consider yourself an elite player. My question to you and others like you is this: Do you have zero desire to become a better player? Achievements should be used to help players play the game better, and to be honest the skill cap in this game isn’t that high. The differences between the “elite” players and players who don’t consider themselves as such is simply the ability to dodge, learn from mistakes, listen to others, read the tooltips/wiki, and research a build.

I think you’ll find that even though hard content in past MMOS set a higher standard than GW2 it was all related to the player base and I believe a lot of Guild Wars 2 players are much more casual than ever before. I don’t mind a basic grind but some stuff in the Queens Gauntlet is far too hard. Its not just to do with intelligence or IQ or research but it can be to do with reflex simply as often a challenge comes down to accurate dodge and interrupting at the exact right time.

I know I don’t want to be repeating stuff for evermore. As I get older I want my rpg games still fps or third person action but less to do with dexterous and reflex skill and more to do with build, strategy and choices like in pen and paper.

Also its not players to blame for the direction this game is taking but Anet who in the end make all the decisions and one decision is to try and keep everyone happy. Other games use various difficulty modes and that seems to work. Otherwise maybe Anet should just choose who they really want to focus on.

I hope for more challenging achievements. The top acheivement reward chests can be earned with current game content. bi weekly carrot on a stick achievements would be nice so there is something to go after once we finish the story part.

The problem with this perspective is that it operates on the conceit that ‘I deserve a medal’ instead of ‘I can try to earn a medal’. As an artist it’s something I see in art contests all the time. People who can’t draw or paint complaining that an art contest rewards good art and expecting to be catered to.

Not exactly. It’s more like “I don’t think there should be medals if not everyone can get them.” Yeah, I’m pretty much looking for a participation prize, I’m looking for achievements that act as markers that I engaged in a certain type of content and got through it. I don’t think there’s much to be gained by having systems that set some players out as being “better” than other players because they enjoy different types of experiences in the game.

If something is a contest, like an art contest, then sure, reward the people who do best at it, I just don’t believe that a cooperative MMO should be viewed as a “contest.”

And it punishes players who are at a higher skill level by making their skills pointless just so that you don’t have to improve on yours.

It doesn’t even a little bit. They would receive no less rewards than anyone else. It just doesn’t reward them EXTRA for having those skills.

LS1 was temporary, bi-weekly content. LS2 is permanent forever content.

The achievements for LS1 were mostly easy because players had to complete them within the two weeks that the content was live. They were never intended to define the skill expectation of the game in general. LS2 is perma-content with no time limitation on its achievements, so players have an indefinite amount of time to work towards them.

That makes no difference whatsoever. If I can’t complete it in the first two weeks, I’m unlikely to complete it in the third, or the tenth, or the hundredth week. I’m unlikely to even attempt it in the third week anymore. I mean, content like the Aetherblade Retreat, I did it the first 2-3 days of the patch, completed it a few times but never got a few of the achievements, and then decided that was enough of that and moved on to other content. If it had remained permanently available I still would never have entered it between then and now, because I’d gotten all I was likely to get out of it. Conversely, I ran the Holo-Scarlet encounter every single night it was available, several times, usually, because almost every time we were able to actually complete it and get fairly rewarded. And this was even after completing the relevant challenge achievements within the first couple tries.

Having the content be available permanently makes it more convenient for players that don’t want to have to log in and play every week, but it does nothing to make the achievements more accessible for players who do already play regularly.

My problem with this attitude is that you’re not the only player in the game. Unfortunately, one of the prevailing attitudes among players is that GW2 is turning too casual.

GW2 has ALWAYS been casual. If anything it’s become far LESS casual over time with the introduction of content like NuTeq, Triple Threat, Marionette, Blitz2.0, etc. Players that had no interest in a casual game left within months of the launch of the game, you can hear them on boards for games like Wildstar whining about how casual GW2 is, and they are NEVER coming back. The good news is, GW2 doesn’t need them, it’s been running fine on the players that ENJOY a casual experience and don’t want a “hardcore” challenge, and the worst thing ANet could do is to cater to an audience that they do not have at the expense of the audience they do. The game would be better off driving away every single remaining player that “wants a challenge” than if they drove away the casuals who “just want to have fun.”

Ohoni.6057:

GW2 has ALWAYS been casual. If anything it’s become far LESS casual over time with the introduction of content like NuTeq, Triple Threat, Marionette, Blitz2.0, etc. Players that had no interest in a casual game left within months of the launch of the game, you can hear them on boards for games like Wildstar whining about how casual GW2 is, and they are NEVER coming back. The good news is, GW2 doesn’t need them, it’s been running fine on the players that ENJOY a casual experience and don’t want a “hardcore” challenge, and the worst thing ANet could do is to cater to an audience that they do not have at the expense of the audience they do. The game would be better off driving away every single remaining player that “wants a challenge” than if they drove away the casuals who “just want to have fun.”

but if you are truly a casual player (and i’m far closer to one than i am a challenge-seeker), you won’t care about completing the difficult achievements……..you’ll be more than happy with the very easy to achieve dailies and monthlies and weapon-masters and fashion and mob kills, etc etc etc. the fact that some of the living story achievements will take more skill/practice/time to complete would hardly be a deterrent.

Since you will have all the time you want this time arround to finish everything (instead of a 2week period) it’s ok even if it’s something harder than usual.

I mean i still haven’t finished my 17th achievement from the TA aetherblade path (the one who need to kill the boss before the minions) and i don’t care cause its there for me to do it whenever i feel like it.

but if you are truly a casual player (and i’m far closer to one than i am a challenge-seeker), you won’t care about completing the difficult achievements…….

I don’t care about completing them, I do care, however, if completing them is require to unlock loot, achievements, and titles. Basically, if the task itself is something that interests me to do, then fine. If the task itself doesn’t interest me at all, but there is no particular reason to do it beyond “it is there,” then fine. If, however, I have no interest in the task, BUT some really cool rewards are attached to completing it, then I might feel compelled to try.

It’s like with the Triple Trouble encounter, it’s challenging content, that’s fine, but it also offers a bunch of unique rewards, and that is not cool given how difficult it is to find a map that can make it possible. Think about other content though, like when NuTeq came out and people were competing for the best speed-run times. That offered no additional reward over just completing it, and yet people still had fun with the challenge. I’m all for the game setting challenging goals for people, so long as they don’t offer incentives that would cause people who have no interest in that challenge to miss out.

I think we can at least agree though, that if these additional challenges do not offer any rewards beyond the occasionally AP or two, then it won’t be a big deal.

Since you will have all the time you want this time arround to finish everything (instead of a 2week period) it’s ok even if it’s something harder than usual.

Time is not a factor. Time has nothing to do with anything, it’s a skill/luck-check, not a time-check. It doesn’t matter whether they give two weeks to complete it or two decades, if the hassle needed to complete it is not fun, it’s not fun.

Ohoni.6057:

I don’t care about completing them, I do care, however, if completing them is require to unlock loot, achievements, and titles. Basically, if the task itself is something that interests me to do, then fine. If the task itself doesn’t interest me at all, but there is no particular reason to do it beyond “it is there,” then fine. If, however, I have no interest in the task, BUT some really cool rewards are attached to completing it, then I might feel compelled to try.

It’s like with the Triple Trouble encounter, it’s challenging content, that’s fine, but it also offers a bunch of unique rewards, and that is not cool given how difficult it is to find a map that can make it possible. Think about other content though, like when NuTeq came out and people were competing for the best speed-run times. That offered no additional reward over just completing it, and yet people still had fun with the challenge. I’m all for the game setting challenging goals for people, so long as they don’t offer incentives that would cause people who have no interest in that challenge to miss out.

I think we can at least agree though, that if these additional challenges do not offer any rewards beyond the occasionally AP or two, then it won’t be a big deal.

Since you will have all the time you want this time arround to finish everything (instead of a 2week period) it’s ok even if it’s something harder than usual.

Time is not a factor. Time has nothing to do with anything, it’s a skill/luck-check, not a time-check. It doesn’t matter whether they give two weeks to complete it or two decades, if the hassle needed to complete it is not fun, it’s not fun.

So you’re saying you basically want every title, armor, weapon, and any other possible reward in the game handed to you with little to no effort? That kind of goes against the entire concept of a reward, and your idea of “I don’t think there should be medals if not everyone can get them” is a just another way of saying “if I can’t get it, no one can.” Selfishness like that isn’t going to garner you much sympathy, and it’s an attitude you should have left behind back on the playground. If the game requires something of you to earn a reward that you’re not interested in doing, or you feel you’re unable to do, then just don’t do it. If you want the reward badly enough to put in some persistence for it, go for it.

Otherwise, tough luck. As they said on the livestream, giving more opportunities for a core part of their player base to have personal, skill-based reward systems is something GW2 needs. It’s healthier for the game as a whole.

So you’re saying you basically want every title, armor, weapon, and any other possible reward in the game handed to you with little to no effort?

I think a reasonable amount of effort is reasonable. I think an unreasonable amount of effort is unreasonable. So far, the living world content has been mostly reasonable effort equals reasonable reward, I’m certainly not advocating that they make anything easier. My concern comes from their comments about making things “more challenging."

If the game requires something of you to earn a reward that you’re not interested in doing, or you feel you’re unable to do, then just don’t do it. If you want the reward badly enough to put in some persistence for it, go for it.

Right, that is exactly the sort of choice I don’t want to have to make. “Have fun” OR “get the thing I want,” having to choose shouldn’t be necessary.

Ohoni.6057:

I think a reasonable amount of effort is reasonable. I think an unreasonable amount of effort is unreasonable. So far, the living world content has been mostly reasonable effort equals reasonable reward, I’m certainly not advocating that they make anything easier. My concern comes from their comments about making things “more challenging."

And there’s a major portion of the player base that feels that there are no rewards in this game that require a reasonable amount of effort, and everything up until now has been unreasonably easy. Luckily, it sounds like ArenaNet is finally doing something to address this.

Ohoni.6057:

If the game requires something of you to earn a reward that you’re not interested in doing, or you feel you’re unable to do, then just don’t do it. If you want the reward badly enough to put in some persistence for it, go for it.

Right, that is exactly the sort of choice I don’t want to have to make. “Have fun” OR “get the thing I want,” having to choose shouldn’t be necessary.

The fact that you don’t think you can have fun unless you’re getting every reward handed to you with minimal effort is the core of the issue, I think.

And there’s a major portion of the player base that feels that there are no rewards in this game that require a reasonable amount of effort, and everything up until now has been unreasonably easy.

Yeah, but if so, what are they doing here? This is clearly not the game they’re looking for. Better to cut them loose than to disgruntle everyone else because the cool new loot is locked behind content they don’t want to deal with. Let those “hardcore” players switch to a game that is actually about hardcore content.

And again, if ANet really wants to implement hardcore content, that’s fine too, so long as they don’t attach any significant rewards to it. If people want to do it, they can, they just don’t need bonus candy for being able to complete it.

The fact that you don’t think you can have fun unless you’re getting every reward handed to you with minimal effort is the core of the issue, I think.

I think you completely missed the point I was making there.

What do you mean, “What are they doing here?” They’re here for the same reason you are. They enjoy the game, they have fun playing it. And just because the game is lacking in “hardcore” content at the moment doesn’t mean that ArenaNet didn’t intend for this game to appeal to hardcore players. ArenaNet originally aimed for the Explorable dungeons to be hardcore and clearly didn’t anticipate just how quickly players would tear through them. Adding in difficult achievements is actually a very small step in the right direction. The game still needs a slew of legitimately difficult content.

I’m not seeing “everyone else” being disgruntled by ArenaNet finally adding in challenging achievements and rewards associated with them. But if you’re right and this really will be alienating all those people you say, I’m sure they’ll be flooding into the thread agreeing with you soon enough.

As far as missing your point, I don’t think I did. You said you’re worried about having to choose between “having fun” or “getting the thing you want” which implies the two are mutually exclusive. You also alluded to being upset at the idea of other people getting rewarded for skilled play if you’re unable or unwilling to put in the effort to get the rewards yourself. You’re worried about “exclusionary achievements,” and yet you’ve fully admitted in the thread that you’re the one doing the excluding through your own attitude. How is this ArenaNet’s issue? I’m still not seeing why they should pander to you over someone who wants to be rewarded for actually achieving something in the game, outside of your baseless assumption over how many people share your attitude.

What do you mean, “What are they doing here?” They’re here for the same reason you are. They enjoy the game, they have fun playing it.

Then they can continue doing so, without trying to change the game into a different sort of game where only the ‘leet are entitled to rewards. If they enjoy GW2 for being GW2 then that’s awesome. If they can only enjoy GW2 if it had “more hardcore content” then they can enjoy other games that already have that.

And just because the game is lacking in “hardcore” content at the moment doesn’t mean that ArenaNet didn’t intend for this game to appeal to hardcore players.

It’s nearing two years in. If the game doesn’t have plenty of “hardcore” content yet then it wasn’t intended to, and they should not switch horses mid-stream.

The game still needs a slew of legitimately difficult content.

Why? The game works plenty fine without it. The minority of players who really demand that stuff and are still playing are clearly fine with the way the game currently is, they just need to make more content of the style that made GW2 great. There are plenty of other games out there for the players that demand more “legitimately difficult content” from their games. I just want FUN content, and so far most of the content that has received praise for being “legitimately difficult” has been the least fun content in the game.

I’m not seeing “everyone else” being disgruntled by ArenaNet finally adding in challenging achievements and rewards associated with them. But if you’re right and this really will be alienating all those people you say, I’m sure they’ll be flooding into the thread agreeing with you soon enough.

I doubt it, most of them are just playing the game, and if the time comes that they do become disgruntled, they’ll just wander off rather than making a fuss about it.

As far as missing your point, I don’t think I did. You said you’re worried about having to choose between “having fun” or “getting the thing you want” which implies the two are mutually exclusive.

They aren’t always, but you’re advocating that they should be. If they put “stuff that I want” locked behind “legitimately difficult content,” then I will be left with only two choices: A. To slam my head against the “legitimately difficult content” until I complete it and receive the reward that I wanted, or B. go do other content that I do enjoy, and give up on ever receiving that reward. I would prefer an option C. go do the content I enjoy, and also receive that reward, because it’s not contingent on doing unfun content. The NuTeq and Triple Trouble rewards are bad enough, they don’t need more like that.

If people do consider “legitimately difficult” content to be fun, then they’re welcome to play it all day, every day, but players who do not find “legitimately difficult content” to be fun should not be bribed into it by fancy rewards, or punished for not enjoying it by missing out on those rewards.

Tbh, as long they are not farming achievments (Likely the activites achievment), they will finallly be REAL achievments. I mean, hard to get, and solo to get. I have great expetations about it.