Guild Wars 2

Ohoni.6057:

Why exactly is it bad game design?

I explained that above.

Grind =/ bad game design.

Ohoni.6057:

Then don’t do it. Or would you prefer that Anet puts it locked behind some ultra challenging thing that relies on a player’s personal skill?

It doesn’t have to require great skill, it just has to involve player engagement. It needs to be something that players actively enjoy doing, and so far I haven’t heard anyone say that they actually really ENJOY doing this one, just that they don’t mind it so much, or that it’s a better alternative to skill challenges that they cannot complete. Neither of these mean that it’s good content.

Good content is content people ENJOY DOING, content that makes them happy as they do it. It doesn’t need to require any great skill, it can be something that anyone can do, but it needs to keep them engaged at all times.

When designing content, you should either make it something that can be completed in relatively few repetitions, or something that is fun enough that you’d want to keep doing it over and over, without any cumulative reward forcing you to do so.

How many people have delivered at least five apples to Hal AFTER completing the achievement? If the answer is zero, then that is not an activity that players should be forced to do more than five times to acquire a reward.

Not everything in this game do all players enjoy. There are some things that certain players enjoy and other things that another group of players enjoy.

I think there are an awful lot of Mastery Points that I would not consider fun. I’m guessing some players would agree. On the other hand, others enjoy the challenge, grind, cost, whatever.

Again, different content for different folks.

Grind =/ bad game design.

By definition, yes it does. If you’re grinding, it’s because someone has seriously kittened up. Now “repetition” is not always “grind,” it’s only grind if you aren’t enjoying it. But yes, if you’re doing something repeatedly beyond the point that you’re having fun, then it is bad design and they should fix it.

Not everything in this game do all players enjoy. There are some things that certain players enjoy and other things that another group of players enjoy.

And again, that is fine, so long as the players who do enjoy it can do it, and the players who don’t can do something else instead, and NOT have to give up on specific rewards. If there are specific rewards that a player would miss by giving up on the activity, then “to each their own” no longer applies. And no, the game is by no means perfect on this, but that is reason to fix the other parts that are broken, not to excuse adding new broken elements.

I’m really not seeing the reason we can’t gather the apples and put them in our backpack. Holding one at a time seems . . . silly.

I would be willing to pay the circus folk a few thousand Unbound Magic or whatever to teach me to juggle 3+ apples per trip.

Ohoni.6057:

Grind =/ bad game design.

By definition, yes it does. If you’re grinding, it’s because someone has seriously kittened up. Now “repetition” is not always “grind,” it’s only grind if you aren’t enjoying it. But yes, if you’re doing something repeatedly beyond the point that you’re having fun, then it is bad design and they should fix it.

By your definition. Grind is very much a part of every MMO. If you have an issue with grind then you’re seriously playing the wrong genre. Not everyone will find everything enjoyable. People also happen to have vastly different thresholds.

Ohoni.6057:

Not everything in this game do all players enjoy. There are some things that certain players enjoy and other things that another group of players enjoy.

And again, that is fine, so long as the players who do enjoy it can do it, and the players who don’t can do something else instead, and NOT have to give up on specific rewards. If there are specific rewards that a player would miss by giving up on the activity, then “to each their own” no longer applies. And no, the game is by no means perfect on this, but that is reason to fix the other parts that are broken, not to excuse adding new broken elements.

Not everyone will find everything in the game enjoyable. There will be some things that players do not like. Some people do not like jumping puzzles. Should those then be removed because they’re “bad design”? After all, someone doesn’t like them and according to you that makes it bad design.

There are specific rewards with raids, WvW, PvP, and so on. Not everyone will enjoy all of them. Does that mean those are bad design too? No.

Not everyone will find everything in the game enjoyable.

True.

There will be some things that players do not like.

Also true.

Some people do not like jumping puzzles. Should those then be removed because they’re “bad design”?

No, but players should be able to ignore them if they know they do not enjoy them, and have alternate means of acquiring any rewards found within them. Players who do not enjoy jumping puzzles should never have reason to do jumping puzzles instead of other content, while players who do enjoy jumping puzzles should be able to have fun doing them.

After all, someone doesn’t like them and according to you that makes it bad design.

No, it’s only bad design if you’re given reason to do the content whether you enjoy it or not. If it’s good design, then you can always choose to do something else without missing out on a specific reward. If the Hal achievement were not tied to a Mastery point, of which there is a limited supply, then it would fall into “to each their own” category, and so long as some people enjoyed it (which we STILL have not seen anyone who claims they do) then it would be serving a valid purpose. But so long as people have no choice but to complete it if they want that Mastery, then it must appeal to everyone in the game, and is bad design if it fails to do so.

Again, if you’re given two paths to a given goal, and you deliberately choose the path you don’t enjoy, then that’s on you. But if there’s only one path to that goal, and you don’t enjoy it, then that’s on them.

Since there are more Mastery Points than needed to max all Masteries, 1 MP falls into the optional category. Something like, say, Legendary Weapons. Now many players have objections to engaging in any kind of PvP, so WvW is something they do not wish to partake in. Yet, if they wish this optional ‘reward’, they must.

Same case here. And for the record, I enjoy these kinds of repetitive content. I doubt I am the only one out of tens, even hundreds, of thousands. It may be a minority, but nevertheless, it’s there.

Since there are more Mastery Points than needed to max all Masteries, 1 MP falls into the optional category.

No, because too many of the existing Masteries are locked behind other abominable tasks, like getting gold on adventures, or clearing ALL story achievements in a given chain. As of right now, I have picked up roughly exactly enough mastery points to buy the last HoT mastery I needed (the last Nuhoc, one, obviously), but haven’t even started on the raid-based ones, and the next LWs3 mastery will likely cost 3-5 more points, so I’d rather have a surplus than have to farm mastery points when that comes out.

Now on the flipside I have like 300-400 Hero Points left over on my main, so if we were arguing about an achievement that awarded nothing more than a few hero points, even 50 Hero Points, then I’d agree, there are plenty of fish in the sea. But in the current “economy,” mastery points are worth too much to just pass up with a clear heart.

Something like, say, Legendary Weapons. Now many players have objections to engaging in any kind of PvP, so WvW is something they do not wish to partake in. Yet, if they wish this optional ‘reward’, they must.

And that’s something that should change too, two wrongs do not make a right.

Same case here. And for the record, I enjoy these kinds of repetitive content. I doubt I am the only one out of tens, even hundreds, of thousands. It may be a minority, but nevertheless, it’s there.

And that’s fine, they can have it, it could perhaps give you a respectable reward each time, or for completing it several times in a day, enough that you feel rewarded for doing it, but little enough that people who really did not enjoy it could do something else and feel equally rewarded. They could even keep the exclusive title attached to it, I suppose, but not a Mastery Point.

I don’t want to take the activity away from you if you genuinely enjoy it, but clearly a LOT of people definitely do not enjoy it at all, and yet the reward attached is putting pressure on them to complete it regardless, and that is poor game design. Players should feel rewarded for doing the things that they enjoy doing, this is not work, it is an entertainment project, and it succeeds or fails not on how much time it takes people to complete things, but on how much time they spend having FUN.

And we are back to: “I wish all Mastery Points were this easy.”

Perhaps, the Devs will find your arguments compelling; perhaps not. It’s really not that big of a deal. I imagine it will soon (er or later) be completed by most, and then forgotten. Kind of a tempest in a teapot sort of thing. /shrug

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Ayrilana.1396:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Ayrilana.1396:

It takes about two hours to do. Not exactly fun but you’ll eventually “zone out” after a dozen or so when it becomes automated.

Like doing a 2 hour race in gran turismo. If zoning out if part of it, then I feel it’s kind of a failed achievement, as your not really achieving anything. Other than becoming a zombie.

Well the achievement is completely optional. You don’t need it to complete the meta.

You can do the meta with out doing that one, only need 23 out of the 26, but it is a valid complaint. Spending 2 hours doing one thing that gives you nothing but a title is a little in my book.

I have no intention of do any thing in any game that is that.mind numbing.

I hope ANet sees this as feed back, not a well they don’t have to do it.

But if you want to ride to there defence when its not needed, carry on.

It’s actually 23 out of 31 for the Meta. And, it’s not just a Title, but a Mastery Point, as well.

Regardless, I think there’s a place for this kind of thing because some players enjoy repetitive tasks like farming. Perhaps, they don’t do it all at once, so it’s not as ‘mind-numbing’ or ‘boring’. Who knew?

Yea, when I first went to Ember Bay I knew I would be doing things there for a while so I didn’t try to do this event in one day. I bring an apple or two and stop when I feel like it. Eventually it will be done, and no grinding required! If it was actually required to do the whole thing in one session, I definitely wouldn’t do it.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

And we are back to: “I wish all Mastery Points were this easy.”

Perhaps, the Devs will find your arguments compelling; perhaps not. It’s really not that big of a deal. I imagine it will soon (er or later) be completed by most, and then forgotten. Kind of a tempest in a teapot sort of thing. /shrug

Seeing as the mastery points where supposed to be the “new level” system as apposed to a new level cap, they should be very easy to get. Would people feel it is ok to level there toon, but can get to the next level until they do X,Y and Z. I’m on the last level of all but the raid mastery’s. I can sadly say I’ll never have those last levels as I do not want to reply mission after mission getting everything so I can fill them out, and don’t even start me on the core ones. I’m never going to be able to make HoT legendries.

Mastery’s should be just level or get the points, not both. Forcing people to do content they do not want to do to get the “new progression for your character” is bad design. I don’t like adventures, not one bit. But I’ve had to do them. I know as some point I’ll not be able to progress with the new line as my surplus of points will run out, unless ANet keeps adding way more than I need.

Some will see this as just “my problem” and that mastery’s are not needed to play the game, that is all true. But if the new maps are anything to go by, if you don’t have them, getting around is going to be alot harder.

Grind =/ bad game design.

Ohoni.6057:

By definition, yes it does.

It’s really difficult to take anything you say after this seriously. By definition, grinding isn’t bad design; it’s just grind. Now, I hate grind and go out of my way to avoid it, but I know lots of people who look forward to easy tasks that can be repeated endlessly for rewards because they find it relaxing.

Bad design is when something can’t be completed as intended, when it frustrates its target audience, when it damages the game’s or the development company’s ability to operate.

Producing stuff that some enjoy and some hate isn’t “bad” design, it’s just design; it’s a choice that you or I might not make, but it’s not inherently “bad.”

In case it’s not clear, I also find achievements like this dull and I’d prefer if the game never added anymore. Running a dozen apples would have been a certain sort of fun for me; running four dozen is not four times the fun… for me.

But, I’m not the only player and my interests diverge with others sometimes. The game is vast and big enough to accommodate all sorts of players. The best thing is for ANet to add lots of stuff, with as much variety as possible, to give all of us a lot of things we find fun.

It is, in fact, good design to offer variety — the more people who play, the more they can deliver more content to all of us.

Say that you hate it (as I have done), but don’t insist to others that it’s bad design because many of us hate repetitive tasks.

And we are back to: “I wish all Mastery Points were this easy.”

And we’re back to “‘easy/hard’ is not the issue here, it’s fun/not fun.” Nobody is suggesting making this achievement harder, just making it less grindy.

Perhaps, the Devs will find your arguments compelling; perhaps not. It’s really not that big of a deal. I imagine it will soon (er or later) be completed by most, and then forgotten. Kind of a tempest in a teapot sort of thing. /shrug

Which is true of any customer feedback and literally goes without saying.

Seeing as the mastery points where supposed to be the “new level” system as apposed to a new level cap, they should be very easy to get.

Exactly, the points themselves should be relatively easy, it’s the XP gain to open up the skills you spend the points on that is the “new leveling system.” The problem with making the points a hassle to get is that you can only get each point by doing one thing. I mean, I have been playing regularly on HoT maps since it came out, and yet hadn’t gained a single mastery point in about eight months before the LWs3 ones dropped. If the one thing a mastery point is attached to is outside your wheelhouse, then no matter how much you play elsewhere you’ll never get that one. Any sort of progression system needs to respect players interests, and give them plenty of alternative options for progressing. If you want XP or gold, sure, there are some places that will be more efficient to get them fast, but you can do anything in the game and earn them at least a little bit.

It’s really difficult to take anything you say after this seriously. By definition, grinding isn’t bad design; it’s just grind.

Then what would you classify as “bad game design,” if not “content that takes time and effort to complete without providing equivalent entertainment value?”

That, to me at least, is synonymous with a game failing to do its job.

Bad design is when something can’t be completed as intended, when it frustrates its target audience, when it damages the game’s or the development company’s ability to operate.

The first and last are more issues of implementation than design, and I believe the one in the middle applies 100% to the issue at hand.

Producing stuff that some enjoy and some hate isn’t “bad” design, it’s just design; it’s a choice that you or I might not make, but it’s not inherently “bad.”

Agreed, but when you factor in that it has a specific reward attached that cannot be easily ignored, that is when it becomes an element of bad design, because it gives reasons for people who fall outside the “some enjoy” camp to do it anyway. For “some like it, some don’t” to apply, those that don’t must be free to do other things without missing out on desirable rewards.

But, I’m not the only player and my interests diverge with others sometimes. The game is vast and big enough to accommodate all sorts of players. The best thing is for ANet to add lots of stuff, with as much variety as possible, to give all of us a lot of things we find fun.

I’m not sure you’re getting this, so let me create a more extreme example of the issue I’m describing. Let’s say there was a quest. It required you to jump through a small jumping puzzle, not so intricate and complex that it was actually fun or interesting to do more than once, but just complex enough that you actually had to pay attention to what you were doing and could not just auto-pilot it, and takes about three minutes each time.

Now, let’s say that there was an achievement for completing this jumping puzzle (without any tricks or exploits) not once, not ten times, but a hundred times (roughly fifteen hours in total).

Now, let’s say that the reward for this achievement was a free Legendary weapon, one which just happens to be for your favorite character’s favorite type, and that you personally think is the most awesome looking weapon that ANet’s ever designed. And this is the ONLY way in the game to get this particular weapon, although there are obviously plenty of other skins in the game.

Would you see this as a perfectly acceptable situation, or would you prefer that they make changes to this situation in some way to allow you to get the weapon you wanted while avoiding this puzzle, or to make the puzzle completion a more enjoyable experience to more people?

You aren’t supposed to finish it in one day.

Chingiz.9167:

You aren’t supposed to finish it in one day.

This is like my complaints of the Desert Borderland. Why in the heck would I WANT to play on a map with a theme that is dead and barren, day in and day out? A map with God awful music droning in and out, over and over, no less. Grabbing an Apple in Queensdale and running to give it to someone once a day fine, sure, whatever.

Someone at Anet is far too morbid and Goth in their artistic taste to realize that that crud is niche for a reason. Stop shoving your cup of suffering in our faces.

/rant

For now, I’m grinding it out and getting done so I don’t have to go back to Ember any longer.

I don’t understand. There are some Mastery Points that I don’t like, and some I do. And, you know what? There are players that feel just the opposite to how I feel. The ones they don’t like, I do; the ones I don’t like, they do.

So, what is your solution? The Devs can hardly please every player, as players have different ideas of what is fun, and what is not. As stated before, there are more MPs than needed, so there are options for the players to pick and choose among the offerings. You don’t like this one; I prefer it to others. You can choose other MPs to earn that I don’t like. Yay! Win/win.

You aren’t supposed to finish it in one day.

And that’s also not the point. If it were in some way time gated, like you could only deliver one apple per day, then that’s fine (I’m aware that there are some limits to how many you can deliver). The problem is that you still have to repeat it 50 times, and that’s about 40 times too many.

Now with some quests, “you don’t have to finish it in one day” is a fine response, like if it’s “kill 5000 destroyers,” obviously you don’t have to grind them all out at once, but the thing is that destroyers are all over the place, and you don’t have to grind them all out in one place, you can just kill a few here and there as you go about your business. “kill 1000 giants,” on the other hand, there are only a handful of giant spawns in the world, and chances are you could play for decades and never get that one unless you deliberately made the effort to farm it.

The same is true here, it doesn’t matter whether you clear it in one day or a thousand days, you will never clear it unless you go back and forth from Hal at least 50 times, which may not be what you’d prefer to be doing.

I don’t understand. There are some Mastery Points that I don’t like, and some I do. And, you know what? There are players that feel just the opposite to how I feel. The ones they don’t like, I do; the ones I don’t like, they do.

True, but that doesn’t mean that none of those things could use improvement, or that the fact that they haven’t been improved is somehow justification for never improving anything else.

So, what is your solution? The Devs can hardly please every player, as players have different ideas of what is fun, and what is not. As stated before, there are more MPs than needed, so there are options for the players to pick and choose among the offerings. You don’t like this one; I prefer it to others. You can choose other MPs to earn that I don’t like. Yay! Win/win.

The problem is that there are not enough MPs out there, given how many of them are tied behind abominable goals. The easiest solution would be for them to add a LOT more MPs to the game, at least ten to fifteen more scattered around the world behind various activities. In their current state, however, every MP matters, and any MP that could be made more fun and engaging to players, rather than A. a total chore, or B. an impossible challenge, would be an improvement on the game.

Sounds great to me. A 3 minute jumping puzzle done 100 times to get an awesome Legendary instead of spending 1000s of gold and spending hours doing map completion in either the HoT maps or core Tyria and spending hours in WvW? Sign me up!

So you would rather spend 15 hours playing through a deliberately tedious jumping puzzle than to actually play the entire rest of the game? That’s pretty depressing. Ok, what if it took 40 hours to complete? Or 100? Or 300? Or 1000 hours? At what point would you say “you know, there could be a better way to do this, maybe.”

It seems like the finish line keeps moving farther and farther away in this discussion.

I hope your suggestion (whatever it is, specifically) is implemented. Good luck.

(To the Devs: I don’t have a problem with the Hungry Hal achievement and Mastery Point. As far as I’m concerned, add lots more just like it! Thanks.)

Ohoni.6057:

You aren’t supposed to finish it in one day.

And that’s also not the point. If it were in some way time gated, like you could only deliver one apple per day, then that’s fine (I’m aware that there are some limits to how many you can deliver). The problem is that you still have to repeat it 50 times, and that’s about 40 times too many.

Now with some quests, “you don’t have to finish it in one day” is a fine response, like if it’s “kill 5000 destroyers,” obviously you don’t have to grind them all out at once, but the thing is that destroyers are all over the place, and you don’t have to grind them all out in one place, you can just kill a few here and there as you go about your business. “kill 1000 giants,” on the other hand, there are only a handful of giant spawns in the world, and chances are you could play for decades and never get that one unless you deliberately made the effort to farm it.

The same is true here, it doesn’t matter whether you clear it in one day or a thousand days, you will never clear it unless you go back and forth from Hal at least 50 times, which may not be what you’d prefer to be doing.

I don’t understand. There are some Mastery Points that I don’t like, and some I do. And, you know what? There are players that feel just the opposite to how I feel. The ones they don’t like, I do; the ones I don’t like, they do.

True, but that doesn’t mean that none of those things could use improvement, or that the fact that they haven’t been improved is somehow justification for never improving anything else.

So, what is your solution? The Devs can hardly please every player, as players have different ideas of what is fun, and what is not. As stated before, there are more MPs than needed, so there are options for the players to pick and choose among the offerings. You don’t like this one; I prefer it to others. You can choose other MPs to earn that I don’t like. Yay! Win/win.

The problem is that there are not enough MPs out there, given how many of them are tied behind abominable goals. The easiest solution would be for them to add a LOT more MPs to the game, at least ten to fifteen more scattered around the world behind various activities. In their current state, however, every MP matters, and any MP that could be made more fun and engaging to players, rather than A. a total chore, or B. an impossible challenge, would be an improvement on the game.

Sounds great to me. A 3 minute jumping puzzle done 100 times to get an awesome Legendary instead of spending 1000s of gold and spending hours doing map completion in either the HoT maps or core Tyria and spending hours in WvW? Sign me up!

So you would rather spend 15 hours playing through a deliberately tedious jumping puzzle than to actually play the entire rest of the game? That’s pretty depressing. Ok, what if it took 40 hours to complete? Or 100? Or 300? Or 1000 hours? At what point would you say “you know, there could be a better way to do this, maybe.”

There are plenty of mastery points. If you got all mastery points unlocked you have 35 HoT and 18 Tyria mastery points to spare.

There are plenty of mastery points. If you got all mastery points unlocked you have 35 HoT and 18 Tyria mastery points to spare.

Yes, but if you don’t have all mastery points unlocked then you have zero to spare, and plenty of the existing mastery points are unreasonable to obtain. There are not enough reasonable mastery points to unlock all existing masteries, much less if we consider that future new mastery points may not keep pace with new abilities.

You need 124 total points to unlock the existing HoT masteries. There are currently 160 available points, so yes, theoretically there are 36 to spare. Unfortunately,

14 of those are inside the raid, out of reach of non-raiders.
10-16 of them are locked behind Adventure silver/gold challenges that are typically considered extremely difficult

4 more are locked behind completing all story mission achievements in the HoT sets, at least a few of which are very challenging such that even if you complete the majority of them, you won’t get those masteries.

Several others involve fighting mobs who cannot be soloed, and that groups almost never challenge, making them hugely inconvenient to target.

1 of the other ones in Rising Flames involves a jumping puzzle that is universally considered cruel and unusual (even by those who like it that way).

and of course Hal.

So even just counting the currently available masteries, there really is no huge surplus for most players. If we factor in that the next episode will likely add a new mastery tier that costs even more, every last available point matters.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not sure you’re getting this, so let me create a more extreme example of the issue I’m describing. Let’s say there was a quest. It required you to jump through a small jumping puzzle, not so intricate and complex that it was actually fun or interesting to do more than once, but just complex enough that you actually had to pay attention to what you were doing and could not just auto-pilot it, and takes about three minutes each time.

Now, let’s say that there was an achievement for completing this jumping puzzle (without any tricks or exploits) not once, not ten times, but a hundred times (roughly fifteen hours in total).

Now, let’s say that the reward for this achievement was a free Legendary weapon, one which just happens to be for your favorite character’s favorite type, and that you personally think is the most awesome looking weapon that ANet’s ever designed. And this is the ONLY way in the game to get this particular weapon, although there are obviously plenty of other skins in the game.

Would you see this as a perfectly acceptable situation, or would you prefer that they make changes to this situation in some way to allow you to get the weapon you wanted while avoiding this puzzle, or to make the puzzle completion a more enjoyable experience to more people?

I personally would find this infinitely preferable to many of the achievements in GW2. Since there is no reason you have to do the event in one go, or over consecutive play sessions, it can be as grindy or not as you like.

This is what eventually persuaded me to try for Legendaries: after 4 years of casual play I have accumulated enough that they seem to be closer to my reach. And I know I am not forced to complete them within any particular timeframe, so there really isn’t any grind.

Getting back to Hal – the problem isn’t that it’s grindy. The problem is that Hal is a jerk. I’m a PACT commander, not a servant for a lazy bum. Get your own apples.

Lol.

Inculpatus has a point. As soon as someone doesn’t object to your idea you move the goalposts waaaay over.

Because the point is that everyone has a point at which an activity becomes too objectionable to bother. I’m trying to determine that that point is for him. That requires moving the goalposts until there is resistance.

Well . . . it’s slow going, but I’ve added it to my daily rotation. Should be done in or around a week. I’ve seen worse achievements in the game.

/sigh, again and again and again and again and again with this response, I feel like I’m delivering apples. . .

So again my response is that the total time to complete the achievement has NOTHING to do with my objections to it.

Nothing.

It could take a day, it could take six months, it could take five years, that has nothing to do with my objections here.

I personally would find this infinitely preferable to many of the achievements in GW2.

And so would I, but “better than some of the existing achievements” should not be the standard to go by, since many of the achievements in the game are just plain awful (seriously, the cultural armor collection?). The standard should be "is this the most fun achievement that IT can be.

What’s wrong with the Cultural Armor Achievement? I’ve been working on it over the past few months; am about 70% complete. It’s just something else to do in-game. You can’t really expect everything to be heart-stoppingly exciting, can you? There’s more to keeping a game viable than just one person’s standard of game play.

I am not sure why I keep posting here; the Devs will do as they think best. You may be disappointed, or get what you want, or others may be disappointed, or get what they want. Unlikely that all will be pleased, no matter what the Devs provide.

There’s always the option to skip any content one finds distasteful/boring/not-up-to-par. It’s a game. An optional pastime.

Best of luck!

Because the point is that everyone has a point at which an activity becomes too objectionable to bother. I’m trying to determine that that point is for him. That requires moving the goalposts until there is resistance.

What you’re doing is attempting to shore up a weak argument by adding more hours until “there is resistance.” You can make anything too grindy by adding extra hours, terms and conditions, including lying in the shade and being fed bonbons by an attractive person of your choice.

[OMG. Not more bonbons (he said). I’ve been fed 100 hours worth of bonbons and still have 900 hours more to go. Being fed bonbons is soooo grindy.] :/

If your argument is sound than you don’t need to change the underlying terms. Shoring up your argument with those extra hours only exposes its weaknesses as it shows it couldn’t stand by itself without those extra props.

Since you can’t defend your argument without having to shore it up to ridiculous lengths then your argument is too weak to stand by itself and its not worth it to me to continue (although I’m sure you’ll keep trying).

What you’re doing is attempting to shore up a weak argument by adding more hours until “there is resistance.” You can make anything too grindy by adding extra hours, terms and conditions, including lying in the shade and being fed bonbons by an attractive person of your choice.

Yes, and that’s exactly the point I’ve been trying to make. A lot of people have been posting “this does not hit my limit, therefor it’s fine.” Well a lot of other people have been saying “this already does hit my limit, so I’d like some changes made somewhere.” The first group do not negate the difficulties raised by the second. The entire point is to discuss what should take place once those limits have been crossed.

If your argument is sound than you don’t need to change the underlying terms. Shoring up your argument with those extra hours only exposes its weaknesses as it shows it couldn’t stand by itself without those extra props.

That assumes that the example is the point, rather than the tool. The example itself is meaningless. I was attempting to form a shorthand for “a task that is so tedious even you would not put up with it,” and clearly I missed the mark on the specifics, I greatly underestimated the tedium he would enjoy, but the example itself is never the important part, the intent behind it is, which is why if the example does not properly represent the intent, then the example needs to change, it does not mean that the intent itself was flawed.

The amount of time op spent arguing, he could have completed the achievement and mastery point already

Ohoni.6057:

This is also not a useful response.

Actually, it’s entirely apt: you find it worthwhile to repeatedly post in an attempt to convince others of your point of view. You don’t just copy & paste, you quote and respond point by point to a lot of different people’s ideas. You have dedicated hours to this thread — that is something that other people would find horribly onerous, for any of a variety of reasons.

So why aren’t you willing to accept that not everyone agrees with you that Hungry Hal is horribly onerous?

Of course you shouldn’t do the achievement if you feel it’s too boring — that’s exactly why I haven’t attempted gold in most of the adventures. I don’t like them; I wish they weren’t in the game. But all the same: I understand that others do like them and others are very pleased to have content like that in the game, which allows them to gain AP and mastery points.

And of course it would be convenient if there was a more substantial surplus of mastery points, but it’s not as if it’s essential to gameplay to unlock every single tier of every mastery. I’ve played the game for months without unlocking the last few, as I’m saving my mastery points for whenever the game adds something that will make things more interesting for me.

tl;dr since you don’t find it “grindy” keep posting to this thread (without every ‘maxing’ the achievement), why aren’t you willing to accept that some people don’t find things like Hungry Hal “grindy”?

You asked this question and you got your answers. Sorry you didn’t like them, but there’s no need to be so hostile.

Many of the answers were very polite and well reasoned, but a lot of them are along the line of “it doesn’t bother me, so it doesn’t matter if it bothers you.”

So why aren’t you willing to accept that not everyone agrees with you that Hungry Hal is horribly onerous?

I have never contested that point. There are some people that will like just about anything. My point has been that I firmly believe that the vast majority of players of this game would believe this to be a weak achievement. At best it’s something that people wouldn’t mind doing, and in many more cases it’s something that leaves people with a significant negative impression. I’m far from the only person to point this out.

Of course you shouldn’t do the achievement if you feel it’s too boring — that’s exactly why I haven’t attempted gold in most of the adventures. I don’t like them; I wish they weren’t in the game. But all the same: I understand that others do like them and others are very pleased to have content like that in the game, which allows them to gain AP and mastery points.

But again, nobody is talking about removing any content. The content gets to stay. Like with the Adventures, keep the adventures, just make it more plausible for the average players to get gold on the more insane ones. That doesn’t take anything away from those who can currently get gold, Leyline Run is one of the easiest Adventures to get gold on and there are still players routinely shaving milliseconds off their times.

You see problems and say “well, whatever, I’ll go elsewhere.” I see problems and say “that could be better! Let’s do that!” If your method works for you, fine, but it’ll never work for me. I want to leave things better than I found them.

And of course it would be convenient if there was a more substantial surplus of mastery points, but it’s not as if it’s essential to gameplay to unlock every single tier of every mastery.

Were you unaware that if you max out your masteries then you start to gain spirit shards from gaining XP? With the amount of XP I’ve picked up since Bloodstone Fen came out, I would probably have picked up dozens of spirit shards by now, but instead I have none because I don’t have the MPs to max out the existing lines. That is a massive feeling of waste.

tl;dr since you don’t find it “grindy” keep posting to this thread (without every ‘maxing’ the achievement), why aren’t you willing to accept that some people don’t find things like Hungry Hal “grindy”?

Again, not disputing that. I’m just saying that I do find it grindy, and a lot of other people do too, and I’d like to see changes made to it that would make it less grindy, ideally in ways that would not harm any enjoyment of people who, for whatever reason, enjoy feeding Hal apples.

Ohoni.6057:

You see problems and say “well, whatever, I’ll go elsewhere.” I see problems and say “that could be better! Let’s do that!” If your method works for you, fine, but it’ll never work for me. I want to leave things better than I found them.

No, that’s an incorrect restatement of my opinion. I do not expect all of the game’s content to appeal to me. I think the long-term health of a game is improved when there are all types of things in the game, with different levels of appeal to different sorts of players.

You keep insisting that it’s not good enough now and I’m saying it already is ‘good’ for the people who like that sort of thing, which clearly doesn’t include either you or I.

‘Hungry Hal’ is a classic FedEx/DSL quest: get a thing, take it to someone. I’ll never find those ‘fun’ whether I have to make a delivery a dozen or four dozen times. I accept, however, that some people do find them to be fun — my understanding is that they like that it’s low risk, that progress is assured, that it’s something they can complete over time, and that it’s paired with an important reward.

My question remains: why is that so hard for you to believe, especially when you’ve demonstrated that you enjoy the same sort of experience by repeatedly posting in this thread the same (restated) idea?

No, that’s an incorrect restatement of my opinion. I do not expect all of the game’s content to appeal to me.

You’ve been pretty clear on that and I’ve never claimed otherwise, but you extend that to mean “and this content does not appeal to me, so that’s fine and I’ll leave it alone.” I believe that while this applies to some cases, in other cases the better solution is to make changes that would cause the content to appeal to MORE people. “It doesn’t appeal to me and that’s ok” is not always the best possible outcome.

You keep insisting that it’s not good enough now and I’m saying it already is ‘good’ for the people who like that sort of thing, which clearly doesn’t include either you or I.

And I don’t think there’s enough evidence to support that claim. There have certainly been more people expressing that they actively dislike it than are saying that they actively like it, I think it stands to reason that improvements could be made that would cause more players to feel more favorably towards it than there currently are. I don’t think there are any players out there who if the Hal achievement were made less grindy would go “well that’s it then, I’m done with this game if they’re going to make the Hal achievement less grindy.”

‘Hungry Hal’ is a classic FedEx/DSL quest: get a thing, take it to someone. I’ll never find those ‘fun’ whether I have to make a delivery a dozen or four dozen times. I accept, however, that some people do find them to be fun — my understanding is that they like that it’s low risk, that progress is assured, that it’s something they can complete over time, and that it’s paired with an important reward.

And I assert that the reward is too important to ignore, while the task is to tedious for most players. If some players want to do a repeatable fed-ex quest of this type, that’s fine, but it should not gate access to a Mastery Point for everyone else. The reward should be more generic in nature, such as a small reward each time you complete a delivery (infinitely), or a reasonable generic reward, like an exotic weapon or a gold or a stack of Petrified Wood or something if you deliver 50 times. For players that want to do that sort of thing, they can and they’ll get something nice at the end. For players who have no interest, they can skip it and get that same level of reward doing other available tasks.

My question remains: why is that so hard for you to believe, especially when you’ve demonstrated that you enjoy the same sort of experience by repeatedly posting in this thread the same (restated) idea?

And again, it’s not that I don’t “believe” that side exists, it’s that I don’t believe that their existence is justification to not improve this achievement.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

‘Hungry Hal’ is a classic FedEx/DSL quest: get a thing, take it to someone. I’ll never find those ‘fun’ whether I have to make a delivery a dozen or four dozen times. I accept, however, that some people do find them to be fun

I think this is a crucial point about Hal – thank you for making it. Hopefully anet will read this. I’m one of those people who enjoy delivery quests, when they’re done well. I’ve played them in other games, such as Simpsons Hit ‘n’ Run. The difference is, in those games you’d have multiple delivery locations in different spots, usually with a time limit to get there. The excitement was trying to find your way through the environment to a new location as fast as possible, using any shortcuts available like jumping your car through a building in Simpsons.

The problem with Hal is that it’s one location, one repetitive delivery task with no particular challenge. It’s grind of the basest, laziest nature. It feels like it was literally thrown in there to waste time with no particular care for player enjoyment.

Ember Bay offers so many great ways to travel: ley lines, thermal vents, waypoints, gliding. These could have been used to fantastic effect if Hal were a proper delivery quest. Imagine if he moved after every apple, showing you his next location and giving you a time limit to get there by any means you chose.
Or if there was a vendor that gave you a hint to his location and you had to find him in a wild goose chase.

Literally any other way of structuring this quest would have made it seem more meaningful and less grindy that it does now. I finished it several days ago but it was like ho-hum, moving on. It wasn’t hard. It wasn’t enjoyable. It was just meh.

This isn’t hard..its just irritatingly dumb. The location where he just sits is meant to be an irritating climb…day after day, hour after hour…I wish I could just hit him with that apple and knock him down the cliff face to those Jade armors he seems to be the only one who can sit where they are and not get hit anyway. You like it? More power to you. I hate it. So I’ll miss another mastery point…keep em….if it means this type of thing you can have them. I’d rather NOT ever get that mastery point if it means doing this.

The location where he just sits is meant to be an irritating climb…day after day, hour after hour…I wish I could just hit him with that apple and knock him down the cliff face to those Jade armors he seems to be the only one who can sit where they are and not get hit anyway.

I will give you a tip that makes things easier. If you’ve completed the circus story step, you can talk to the Ringmaster to teleport high in the cliffs. You can casually glide down from there to Hal. If you don’t have that unlocked, you can use the magma tube south of the Sloth stage which launches you towards the Mursat, just hold jump after launching to start gliding ASAP, and then head back the way you came a bit, and you should easily land right next to him. Still a hassle, but a bit less of one.

Laurie.1698:

This isn’t hard..its just irritatingly dumb. The location where he just sits is meant to be an irritating climb…day after day, hour after hour…I wish I could just hit him with that apple and knock him down the cliff face to those Jade armors he seems to be the only one who can sit where they are and not get hit anyway. You like it? More power to you. I hate it. So I’ll miss another mastery point…keep em….if it means this type of thing you can have them. I’d rather NOT ever get that mastery point if it means doing this.

You don’t have to climb at all, here’s the trick: Get your apple. WP to the circus. Run over to the nearby lava tube pointing west, the one nearest the wp. Hop in. Let it fling you into the next tube; when that one fires you, spin your camera towards Hal’s ledge and hold space bar until your glider deploys, then glide to Hal (lean techniques help for a faster glide, stealth gliding for avoiding attention of random Jades up there, and advanced gliding so you don’t run out of endurance).

Ayrilana.1396:

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

Ayrilana.1396:

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

I really hate this achievement. Not only does it take 2-3 minutes per apple, running back and forth over and over again, but there’s not even enough apple trees to do it in one day, so you have to come back the next day, and the next. So so sooooooo grindy. I don’t want to feed the lazy bumb, I want to push him off the cliff?

Oh, that would be cool! Make an alternate achievement, where if you press f while you don’t have an apple, you get the chance to send him to the grave. I mean seriously man, I’ve got a couple gliders in my backpack, take one and go get your own apple your lazy bumb!

You can hop to another map instance. It takes about 4 instances to complete it. It may also work by swapping to another character but I didn’t do it that way.

It’s still way too grindy. Making something long, overly repeditive and tedius does not make it hard, just makes it annoying. Achievements like this are what people hate about MMOS, and only serve to incite player irritation. There’s just no need for so many apple runs.

Really no different than a lot of achievements that Anet creates. Wait until Halloween and Wintersday.

Thus, it’s worth highlighting that as a problem, not a feature. There isn’t even an economical reason to blame, as there would be for the Wintersday boozefest or candy corn. Bad design deserves to be exposed and shamed.

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

Ayrilana.1396:

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

I really hate this achievement. Not only does it take 2-3 minutes per apple, running back and forth over and over again, but there’s not even enough apple trees to do it in one day, so you have to come back the next day, and the next. So so sooooooo grindy. I don’t want to feed the lazy bumb, I want to push him off the cliff?

Oh, that would be cool! Make an alternate achievement, where if you press f while you don’t have an apple, you get the chance to send him to the grave. I mean seriously man, I’ve got a couple gliders in my backpack, take one and go get your own apple your lazy bumb!

You can hop to another map instance. It takes about 4 instances to complete it. It may also work by swapping to another character but I didn’t do it that way.

It’s still way too grindy. Making something long, overly repeditive and tedius does not make it hard, just makes it annoying. Achievements like this are what people hate about MMOS, and only serve to incite player irritation. There’s just no need for so many apple runs.

Really no different than a lot of achievements that Anet creates. Wait until Halloween and Wintersday.

Thus, it’s worth highlighting that as a problem, not a feature. There isn’t even an economical reason to blame, as there would be for the Wintersday boozefest or candy corn. Bad design deserves to be exposed and shamed.

“I don’t like it” is not bad design.

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

Ayrilana.1396:

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

I really hate this achievement. Not only does it take 2-3 minutes per apple, running back and forth over and over again, but there’s not even enough apple trees to do it in one day, so you have to come back the next day, and the next. So so sooooooo grindy. I don’t want to feed the lazy bumb, I want to push him off the cliff?

Oh, that would be cool! Make an alternate achievement, where if you press f while you don’t have an apple, you get the chance to send him to the grave. I mean seriously man, I’ve got a couple gliders in my backpack, take one and go get your own apple your lazy bumb!

You can hop to another map instance. It takes about 4 instances to complete it. It may also work by swapping to another character but I didn’t do it that way.

It’s still way too grindy. Making something long, overly repeditive and tedius does not make it hard, just makes it annoying. Achievements like this are what people hate about MMOS, and only serve to incite player irritation. There’s just no need for so many apple runs.

Really no different than a lot of achievements that Anet creates. Wait until Halloween and Wintersday.

Thus, it’s worth highlighting that as a problem, not a feature. There isn’t even an economical reason to blame, as there would be for the Wintersday boozefest or candy corn. Bad design deserves to be exposed and shamed.

“I don’t like it” is not bad design.

Agreeing with bad design does not make it good design.

Study a few basic game design principles, and you’ll see why this is lazy, lousy execution.

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

Ayrilana.1396:

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

I really hate this achievement. Not only does it take 2-3 minutes per apple, running back and forth over and over again, but there’s not even enough apple trees to do it in one day, so you have to come back the next day, and the next. So so sooooooo grindy. I don’t want to feed the lazy bumb, I want to push him off the cliff?

Oh, that would be cool! Make an alternate achievement, where if you press f while you don’t have an apple, you get the chance to send him to the grave. I mean seriously man, I’ve got a couple gliders in my backpack, take one and go get your own apple your lazy bumb!

You can hop to another map instance. It takes about 4 instances to complete it. It may also work by swapping to another character but I didn’t do it that way.

It’s still way too grindy. Making something long, overly repeditive and tedius does not make it hard, just makes it annoying. Achievements like this are what people hate about MMOS, and only serve to incite player irritation. There’s just no need for so many apple runs.

Really no different than a lot of achievements that Anet creates. Wait until Halloween and Wintersday.

Thus, it’s worth highlighting that as a problem, not a feature. There isn’t even an economical reason to blame, as there would be for the Wintersday boozefest or candy corn. Bad design deserves to be exposed and shamed.

“I don’t like it” is not bad design.

Agreeing with bad design does not make it good design.

Study a few basic game design principles, and you’ll see why this is lazy, lousy execution.

Many games have quests that are simply fetch quests. Are those bad design then? Not everything in a game will everyone enjoy. This achievement isn’t mandatory for anything so players have the choice to skip it if it doesn’t appeal to them. People claiming bad design would have had more grounds had that not been the case.

Ayrilana.1396:

Many games have quests that are simply fetch quests. Are those bad design then?

Not-good game designs can still be used quite often. Either because the content is old (as with WoW) or because the designers needed a fast (some would say ‘lazy’) approach to generating content.
I hesitate to call fetch quests as a whole “bad” design, simply because they’re a staple of every RPG ever. But they’re not “good” design, either. They’re fairly passive, un-engaging tasks that exist to expend time and give the illusion of progress.

Hal is actually bad design because of the repetitive nature of it. Doing it once might have been rewarding a clever/perceptive player for recognizing the apples and finding the NPC. But that’s where the novelty and reward end, until the roundabout task is repeated another 49 times.
If Hal’s dialog changed with each apple, perhaps that would have been sufficient intermediate reward for bringing him more, but all that happens is a little tick mark on the achievement tracker. It could have been an opportunity to expand on lore, but it wasn’t used that way.
If Hal had changed positions after each delivery, at least players would be going to different locations, possibly one iteration requiring to survive carrying the apple across the map to get to him. But that didn’t happen either.
If the achievement only required 10 deliveries, there probably wouldn’t be much grousing at all. Task repeated to the level of competence and no further. Instead, it takes a reasonable number and magnifies it fivefold, into the realm of pointless drone-work. Nor does adding on an extra 40-49 iterations add anything to the gaming experience. It adds nothing.

A moving Hal would have at least gotten us exploring the zone and limited the iterations to a reasonable number.
A Hal that pined for various cooking recipes would have gotten us to use Chef recipes and the Trading Post, possibly for an extra petrified wood or unbound magic reward.

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Many games have quests that are simply fetch quests. Are those bad design then?

Not-good game designs can still be used quite often. Either because the content is old (as with WoW) or because the designers needed a fast (some would say ‘lazy’) approach to generating content.
I hesitate to call fetch quests as a whole “bad” design, simply because they’re a staple of every RPG ever. But they’re not “good” design, either. They’re fairly passive, un-engaging tasks that exist to expend time and give the illusion of progress.

Hal is actually bad design because of the repetitive nature of it. Doing it once might have been rewarding a clever/perceptive player for recognizing the apples and finding the NPC. But that’s where the novelty and reward end, until the roundabout task is repeated another 49 times.
If Hal’s dialog changed with each apple, perhaps that would have been sufficient intermediate reward for bringing him more, but all that happens is a little tick mark on the achievement tracker. It could have been an opportunity to expand on lore, but it wasn’t used that way.
If Hal had changed positions after each delivery, at least players would be going to different locations, possibly one iteration requiring to survive carrying the apple across the map to get to him. But that didn’t happen either.
If the achievement only required 10 deliveries, there probably wouldn’t be much grousing at all. Task repeated to the level of competence and no further. Instead, it takes a reasonable number and magnifies it fivefold, into the realm of pointless drone-work. Nor does adding on an extra 40-49 iterations add anything to the gaming experience. It adds nothing.

A moving Hal would have at least gotten us exploring the zone and limited the iterations to a reasonable number.
A Hal that pined for various cooking recipes would have gotten us to use Chef recipes and the Trading Post, possibly for an extra petrified wood or unbound magic reward.

So anything that is repetitive is bad design? Even in a genre that often requires it? This achievement is not different than other forms with the exception that it can be done solo. It’s still a single achievement that isn’t required. There are players that enjoy these type of activities. There are other players that do not.

Ayrilana.1396:

So anything that is repetitive is bad design? Even in a genre that often requires it? This achievement is not different than other forms with the exception that it can be done solo. It’s still a single achievement that isn’t required. There are players that enjoy these type of activities. There are other players that do not.

Earlier in this thread

Study a few basic game design principles, and you’ll see why this is lazy, lousy execution.

I’m not here to do all your homework for you. Claiming “it’s not required” does not excuse bad design. And, other forumites have made suggestions on how this achievement could have been improved.
Someone else pointed out in another thread (in forum/reddit, I forget exactly where) that just because a “few people enjoy it” doesn’t mean it couldn’t be made more engaging and evoke more positive feedback from a larger population of players.

Yes, MMOs survive by creating repetitive content. MMO developers cannot create content fast enough, so they rely on the replayability of their content to keep players engaged. But grind for grind’s sake, just to stall reward acquisition, is a cheap excuse to include it.

Also earlier in this thread

It adds nothing.

Hungry Hal adds nothing beyond its mastery point and some AP. Anything could have gone in its place. Map completion would have been a more worthy task for a mastery point and some AP. At least the currency grinds in HoT maps give a reason to interact with the broad expanses of the maps and participate with other players. Hungry Hal’s achievement bogs a player with a pointless hour of pathing the same cycle for no other reward. Are there any “Good Apples” still feeding poor, lazy(ily designed) Hal? I’d be surprised if that number exceeded zero.

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

So anything that is repetitive is bad design? Even in a genre that often requires it? This achievement is not different than other forms with the exception that it can be done solo. It’s still a single achievement that isn’t required. There are players that enjoy these type of activities. There are other players that do not.

Earlier in this thread

Study a few basic game design principles, and you’ll see why this is lazy, lousy execution.

I’m not here to do all your homework for you. Claiming “it’s not required” does not excuse bad design. And, other forumites have made suggestions on how this achievement could have been improved.
Someone else pointed out in another thread (in forum/reddit, I forget exactly where) that just because a “few people enjoy it” doesn’t mean it couldn’t be made more engaging and evoke more positive feedback from a larger population of players.

Yes, MMOs survive by creating repetitive content. MMO developers cannot create content fast enough, so they rely on the replayability of their content to keep players engaged. But grind for grind’s sake, just to stall reward acquisition, is a cheap excuse to include it.

Also earlier in this thread

It adds nothing.

Hungry Hal adds nothing beyond its mastery point and some AP. Anything could have gone in its place. Map completion would have been a more worthy task for a mastery point and some AP. At least the currency grinds in HoT maps give a reason to interact with the broad expanses of the maps and participate with other players. Hungry Hal’s achievement bogs a player with a pointless hour of pathing the same cycle for no other reward. Are there any “Good Apples” still feeding poor, lazy(ily designed) Hal? I’d be surprised if that number exceeded zero.

I’m not going to “study basic design principles” when you haven’t established that it is bad design. Grind is not bad in MMO’s and actually intended. It’s one single achievement that isn’t required. “Bad design” is thrown about quite a lot and used as a phrase to gain support for the connotations that it brings.

Pretty much every suggestion to an alternative resulted in it being less of a grind which brings the issue that people have being that it is a grind. Welcome to MMO’s! I can make a list of a lot of achievements in this game and call them bad design simply because they involve grind. Fortunately, skipping this achievement if you do not like it will not cause you any harm. Now if it was required for the meta achievement, then you could potentially argue otherwise.

There will always be things that appeal only to a certain segment of the player population. I’m pretty sure that there are some players that do not like the infinite achievements that we see every Halloween and Wintersday. There are players that enjoy them and it keeps those activities active. None of those achievements are bad design. They’re just something made optionally for a segment of the player population that happens to enjoy them.

It’s not grind for grind’s sake just to stalk rewards. It’s a single mastery point and title that isn’t required for the meta. All of the other rewards that you can obtain from the release also do not hinge on the player completing this achievement.

The achievement doesn’t have to be done in one sitting. A player can casually turn in a few apples as they do their dailies and cclkplete it over a week or two. There are other ways they could have done that but that is the same for every single achievement in the game.

Ayrilana.1396:

I’m not going to “study basic design principles” when you haven’t established that it is bad design. Grind is not bad in MMO’s and actually intended. It’s one single achievement that isn’t required. “Bad design” is thrown about quite a lot and used as a phrase to gain support for the connotations that it brings.

Except I already have identified the bad design principles that have gone into that achievement. So have several other players. It’s not my fault some would choose to ignore evidence for the sake of being argumentative. Nor is it the first time I’ve seen positions laid out that way. So when the words “bad design” come out, you can bet there’s a reason. It’s subjective, of course, but there’s a reason.

It’s not grind for grind’s sake just to stalk rewards.

Actually, it is.

It’s a single mastery point and title that isn’t required for the meta. All of the other rewards that you can obtain from the release also do not hinge on the player completing this achievement.

The achievement doesn’t have to be done in one sitting. A player can casually turn in a few apples as they do their dailies and cclkplete it over a week or two. There are other ways they could have done that but that is the same for every single achievement in the game.

Again with the “but you don’t have to” trope. It’s lazy. The question that should have been asked was “How could this failed achievement been made more engaging?” Instead, the question that was asked in development was “How much of this monotony can we expect players to choke down without a revolt?” They miscalculated at 50.

And yet, the main question has been dodged at least twice.

What has been added by the extra 49 unnecessary iterations?

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

I’m not going to “study basic design principles” when you haven’t established that it is bad design. Grind is not bad in MMO’s and actually intended. It’s one single achievement that isn’t required. “Bad design” is thrown about quite a lot and used as a phrase to gain support for the connotations that it brings.

Except I already have identified the bad design principles that have gone into that achievement. So have several other players. It’s not my fault some would choose to ignore evidence for the sake of being argumentative. Nor is it the first time I’ve seen positions laid out that way. So when the words “bad design” come out, you can bet there’s a reason. It’s subjective, of course, but there’s a reason.

It’s not grind for grind’s sake just to stalk rewards.

Actually, it is.

It’s a single mastery point and title that isn’t required for the meta. All of the other rewards that you can obtain from the release also do not hinge on the player completing this achievement.

The achievement doesn’t have to be done in one sitting. A player can casually turn in a few apples as they do their dailies and cclkplete it over a week or two. There are other ways they could have done that but that is the same for every single achievement in the game.

Again with the “but you don’t have to” trope. It’s lazy. The question that should have been asked was “How could this failed achievement been made more engaging?” Instead, the question that was asked in development was “How much of this monotony can we expect players to choke down without a revolt?” They miscalculated at 50.

And yet, the main question has been dodged at least twice.

What has been added by the extra 49 unnecessary iterations?

You have identified what you feel is bad design. What someone feels is bad design doesn’t mean that it is bad design. All it means is that it doesn’t work for what they prefer. That is all. Unless you can find a list of design principles taught by a credible in stylization as to what is bad design, all you’re going on is your biased opinion. Most things would be considered good design so unless you can present evidence to the contrary that are not based on personal opinions. Nothing will change that.

No. It is not grind for grind’s sake to stall rewards. It’s a single achievement that isn’t tied to any meta as being required. I guess the WvW achievements are bad design since they’re stalling the rewards. I guess the fractal weapon collection/achievement is bad design because it’s stalling the reward.

It being optional is very much a valid argument. It’s a standalone achievement for those that enjoy doing that type of content and will be rewarded with a MP and title to show for their effort. I seriously doubt it being more engaging would really have changed your position. If it were to have the player go to 50 different locations on the map for various reasons, you and the others would still be complaining. It comes down to simply that you don’t like the grind.

Ayrilana.1396:

You have identified what you feel is bad design. What someone feels is bad design doesn’t mean that it is bad design. All it means is that it doesn’t work for what they prefer. That is all. Unless you can find a list of design principles taught by a credible in stylization as to what is bad design, all you’re going on is your biased opinion. Most things would be considered good design so unless you can present evidence to the contrary that are not based on personal opinions. Nothing will change that.

Well enough. The achievement exhibits no elements of good design:

• Engaging task
• Furthering story/lore which is essential to the RPG experience
• Variation
• It barely adheres to alternate variable reward schedules, and that only exists because it has multiple achievement steps with gradually increased spacing in between recognition.

With the absence of good, that only leaves bad. Maybe neutral or “necessary evil”, which are acceptable in small doses or after sufficient scenary changes.

If you’re arguing for those who love to zone out to running around and farming things, you do them a disservice by supporting content with a poor reward scheme. Those players could be farming somewhere farm more productive than wasting time feeding Hal the Ingrate.

It is not grind for grind’s sake to stall rewards. It’s a single achievement that isn’t tied to any meta as being required. I guess the WvW achievements are bad design since they’re stalling the rewards. I guess the fractal weapon collection/achievement is bad design because it’s stalling the reward.

A deliberately obtuse exaggeration. WvW achievements are gained in the normal course of play, while participating in the exact goals of WvW. Same with Fractal achievements. They are woven into the multi-faceted aspects of playing through the broader content.
Hal is a single, monotonous task repeated far more than it should have for its entertainment value.
It’s sad that comparing WvW/Fractal achievements even exists.

I seriously doubt it being more engaging would really have changed your position. If it were to have the player go to 50 different locations on the map for various reasons, you and the others would still be complaining. It comes down to simply that you don’t like the grind.

Wrong.

A moving Hal would engage the players by encountering him in different locations. A moving Hal would get players to explore the zone more. A moving Hal would have given players a laugh as we find him in increasingly impossible locations while still carrying that godsbesotten flaming apple.
But he didn’t move. Players are even offering to help him move, mostly by shoving the lazy bum off a cliff and telling him to glide and get his own ruddy apples.

And if you’re arguing for bad design just because the players not wanting to grind an unappealing task for an hour sounds like “entitlement” to you, at least be honest and say it directly. Don’t give carte blanche for blatant padding of monotony.

Also, third time ducking the main point, and once after it was explicitly asked.
What has been added by the extra 49 unnecessary iterations?

Many games have quests that are simply fetch quests. Are those bad design then? Not everything in a game will everyone enjoy. This achievement isn’t mandatory for anything so players have the choice to skip it if it doesn’t appeal to them. People claiming bad design would have had more grounds had that not been the case.

A fetch quest is not automatically bad design. This fetch quest is bad design, for the numerous reasons mentioned already in this thread.

Now one way that this could have been designed better, is to not make the trees ever regenerate, and require you to deliver him one apple from each. That would be a valid quest, because each tree would offer a somewhat unique experience, how do you get to it? But this current one, where even if you hit up every tree, you need to do so about 5 times or so, is just pointlessly repetitive.

And as for the “things HAVE to be repetitive” argument, this isn’t how you do that. For repetitive content, the rewards should be per-repeat, not “per completion of a dozen repeats.” The latter forces you into continuing to repeat content you do not enjoy in order to get the eventual reward, whereas the per-repeat rewards you each time you complete it, but after each repetition you get to decide whether it’s something you want to continue doing. The map dailies are a good per-repeat reward that encourages repetition.

And as for the “if you don’t like it, you don’t have to do it,” there is a Mastery Point attached, and we’ve already gone over why that makes it ineligible for “if you don’t like it, you don’t have to do it.”

I can make a list of a lot of achievements in this game and call them bad design simply because they involve grind.

And if so, that only proves that those achievements could use some work too, not that Hal is fine as it is. Nobody is making the argument “this game is absolutely perfect and does absolutely everything right, except this one achievement.” The argument on the table is “the Hungry Hal achievement could use some work, regardless of any other factors.”

Ayrilana.1396:

You have identified what you feel is bad design. What someone feels is bad design doesn’t mean that it is bad design.

And by that reckoning, what you feel about it doesn’t make it good design either.

It’s certainly lazy design, and I was one of those who said so earlier, and also one of those who suggested he could easily have moved around, allowing us to make use of all the wonderful travel options in EB. This isn’t bad design because it’s a fetch quest. As I pointed out, Simpson’kitten & Run had plenty of them and they were fantastic.
This is bad design because it’s obviously lazy. There’s no subtlety to it.
The legendary journeys were also a fetch quest but they were complex and made use of every facet of the game. This makes no uses of the map it’s in. Literally anything in its place could have had greater thematic, lore, storytelling, gameplay, enjoyability engagement value.

What boggles me is why you keep defending this so much? There is literally no harm to suggesting that it needs improvement. You’ve probably finished this achievement already, as have I, but my impression of it was that it wasn’t hard, wasn’t challenging and was eminently boring. Is that the impression we want of the game?

Most telling is what you yourself wrote four days ago:

Ayrilana.1396:

It takes about two hours to do. Not exactly fun but you’ll eventually “zone out” after a dozen or so when it becomes automated.

Not exactly fun…. you’ll eventually “zone out”….

Does that sound like good design?

EDIT: typo

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

You have identified what you feel is bad design. What someone feels is bad design doesn’t mean that it is bad design. All it means is that it doesn’t work for what they prefer. That is all. Unless you can find a list of design principles taught by a credible in stylization as to what is bad design, all you’re going on is your biased opinion. Most things would be considered good design so unless you can present evidence to the contrary that are not based on personal opinions. Nothing will change that.

Well enough. The achievement exhibits no elements of good design:

• Engaging task
• Furthering story/lore which is essential to the RPG experience
• Variation
• It barely adheres to alternate variable reward schedules, and that only exists because it has multiple achievement steps with gradually increased spacing in between recognition.

With the absence of good, that only leaves bad. Maybe neutral or “necessary evil”, which are acceptable in small doses or after sufficient scenary changes.

If you’re arguing for those who love to zone out to running around and farming things, you do them a disservice by supporting content with a poor reward scheme. Those players could be farming somewhere farm more productive than wasting time feeding Hal the Ingrate.

It is not grind for grind’s sake to stall rewards. It’s a single achievement that isn’t tied to any meta as being required. I guess the WvW achievements are bad design since they’re stalling the rewards. I guess the fractal weapon collection/achievement is bad design because it’s stalling the reward.

A deliberately obtuse exaggeration. WvW achievements are gained in the normal course of play, while participating in the exact goals of WvW. Same with Fractal achievements. They are woven into the multi-faceted aspects of playing through the broader content.
Hal is a single, monotonous task repeated far more than it should have for its entertainment value.
It’s sad that comparing WvW/Fractal achievements even exists.

I seriously doubt it being more engaging would really have changed your position. If it were to have the player go to 50 different locations on the map for various reasons, you and the others would still be complaining. It comes down to simply that you don’t like the grind.

Wrong.

A moving Hal would engage the players by encountering him in different locations. A moving Hal would get players to explore the zone more. A moving Hal would have given players a laugh as we find him in increasingly impossible locations while still carrying that godsbesotten flaming apple.
But he didn’t move. Players are even offering to help him move, mostly by shoving the lazy bum off a cliff and telling him to glide and get his own ruddy apples.

And if you’re arguing for bad design just because the players not wanting to grind an unappealing task for an hour sounds like “entitlement” to you, at least be honest and say it directly. Don’t give carte blanche for blatant padding of monotony.

Also, third time ducking the main point, and once after it was explicitly asked.
What has been added by the extra 49 unnecessary iterations?

Hmm, it’s claimed above that this content offers only a poor reward. Then, why all the angst. Just ignore it, and let those that feel the reward and the effort required worthwhile experience it.

If, as others claim, it’s a valuable reward (MP), then I posit it is worth the effort. Perhaps, that’s “What has been added by the extra 49 unnecessary iterations(?)”

Hmm, it’s claimed above that this content offers only a poor reward. Then, why all the angst. Just ignore it, and let those that feel the reward and the effort required worthwhile experience it.

It doesn’t say that.

If, as others claim, it’s a valuable reward (MP), then I posit it is worth the effort. Perhaps, that’s “What has been added by the extra 49 unnecessary iterations(?)”

It is worth acquiring. That doesn’t mean that it is a fun or valuable gaming experience. Two other Mastery Points in this patch can be earned by walking up to them and hitting “f.” It’s not like there is some high bar for what a player “should” jump through in order to earn a Mastery Point, and they just had to add dozens of repetitions to the quest to make it worth awarding a Mastery Point. They could have made less repetitions, they chose not to, that’s on them.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Ayrilana.1396:

You have identified what you feel is bad design. What someone feels is bad design doesn’t mean that it is bad design.

And by that reckoning, what you feel about it doesn’t make it good design either.

It’s certainly lazy design, and I was one of those who said so earlier, and also one of those who suggested he could easily have moved around, allowing us to make use of all the wonderful travel options in EB. This isn’t bad design because it’s a fetch quest. As I pointed out, Simpson’kitten & Run had plenty of them and they were fantastic.
This is bad design because it’s obviously lazy. There’s no subtlety to it.
The legendary journeys were also a fetch quest but they were complex and made use of every facet of the game. This makes no uses of the map it’s in. Literally anything in its place could have had greater thematic, lore, storytelling, gameplay, enjoyability engagement value.

What boggles me is why you keep defending this so much? There is literally no harm to suggesting that it needs improvement. You’ve probably finished this achievement already, as have I, but my impression of it was that it wasn’t hard, wasn’t challenging and was eminently boring. Is that the impression we want of the game?

That is true, that my opinion does translate to being a fact just as I have stated that others’ don’t as well. The reason I keep posting is because that some people are going beyond it just being their opinion and instead treating it as fact with the usage of “bad design” and now “lazy design”. It’s one thing to simply dislike something but it’s another to assume that there’s something inherently wrong with it.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Most telling is what you yourself wrote four days ago:

Ayrilana.1396:

It takes about two hours to do. Not exactly fun but you’ll eventually “zone out” after a dozen or so when it becomes automated.

Not exactly fun…. you’ll eventually “zone out”….

Does that sound like good design?

EDIT: typo

As stated above, there’s a difference between something being “badly designed” and someone’s opinions about it. I personally didn’t find it the greatest of achievements like many others including the infinite ones during the holidays. However, my personal opinion has no bearing as to whether it is good or bad design.