Guild Wars 2

While I personally don’t mind mini-updates with living story with added content to the game, with new achievements and all, I also feel very stressed out at times of completing all of the achievements before the time runs out, especially with contents like dungeons or mini-games which either are way too hard, too flawed or having too high set of goals. On the recent updates, with the Dragon Bash and from there, it’s felt more like a grindfest than time-passing entertainment. More like a job than relaxation. And I thought one of the principles of Guild Wars 2 was NOT about being a farming MMO?

My point is, this makes me near unable to invest the time I got between work/school and whatnot to do other things in the game properly. And I know that many would agree. Of course, there are those who may have way more time over to spend hours in the game, but I digress as I would like to speak for a certain group of GW2 players anyway.

So, is there any consideration to perhaps pace down the living story updates alittle, giving some relief for players to invest on other gameplay besides the Living Story, especially for completionists like me?

One of the tricky things that Arenanet needs to balance is providing enough content for the gamers that play heaps and yet not overwhelming those who play less. Perhaps the answer is to change how it does achievements.

Most people look at the achievements and feel ‘I need to do all of them’. If set up that way it raises a problem for Arenanet that there is no way they can structure the Achievements to fit both types of players. Maybe the answer is to do something like seperate the Achievement sets into to catagories, say normal and advanced. The normal list hold all the relatively quick and story related LS steps while the advanced hold the more time consuming and hard.

If these lists can be displayed seperately on the UI it will have the psycological effect of giving completionists a sense of accomplishment at completing a achievement set without keeping the more time intensive players from having things still to work towards.

I think the solution would simply be to make the releases monthly as opposed to every two weeks. Stuff like the BotFW content was perfect for completing over the course of the month, but having only two weeks to do the Cutthroat Politics or (especially) Sky Pirates of Tyria content was insufficient. If the “4 weeks, then 2 weeks” release schedule is set to continue, then ANet should adjust the achievements so the mid-month release achievements are much quicker/easier to obtain.

every two weeks is good! but they need to tone down the achievements you need to do in the living story. thats all.

they should add new achievements in the world which have no time restrictions, they can be difficult ones, so you can earn achievement points and dont need to grind the living story.

Thing is, most of the achievements are silly grinds. The Southsun Survival one is a good example. Several others have nothing to do with the new content (the kite baskets hidden in jumping puzzles or mini dungeons). If you take out a lot of the recycled content achievements and reduce the unecessary grind of the silly ones, there is very little meat to the Living Story updates.

It’s not a problem that the pacing is too fast, it’s that they’ve artificially inflated the content with grind and recycled stuff and slapped a time limit on it to make it an achievement. If they were producing lots of new content with all new gameplay achievements without large grinds to complete them I’d agree the pace is too fast. Unfortunately the amount of new gameplay is disproportionate to the amount of grind in the achievements.

I personally think fortnightly updates are too fast and I feel stressed by them. It’s like “2 weeks to get all these achievements, gogogogo, now another 2 weeks of achievements, gogogo, you better finish them all before the next series in 2 weeks”. Monthly would be perfect. Or a fortnightly update which was just a smaller story development of the month’s main story.

I think its fine as it is. The current living story was easy to complete in a couple of days and there has been nothing to do since (personally). The mini-games lost their gloss after the grinds for the respective achievements. I understand people have different oppinions, but in terms of pacing, 2 weeks is much better than a month. (I cannot fathom having this current living story for a whole month.)

The balance still needs to be found for time needed to complete achievements. The BotFW achievements are around for a month yet,cutthroat politics is around for 2 weeks. its the 2 week achievements that I am finding difficult due to the time needed. (i.e 6 days to do Evon & Kiel dailies) & time gated achievements.

I spend about 1-2 hours a day playing yet i feel like I’m forced to do the Politics stuff and not other achievements due to the time frame involved.

I agree the pace is too fast, I play 2-3 hours per day and I have trouble completing these achievements and then poof, they’re gone. Great example, the other day I went looking for an aetherblade cache only to realize, boom, no more aetherblades, they’re gone.

We need another 2 weeks, its just moving too quickly right now for anyone who has an actual life outside of their computer room.

I think Arena Net overcompensated, again. See people were saying that a one month schedule was far to long for the amount of content needed, so they felt like they should speed it up. Which they did. But they also added achievements that would take longer to complete, either by grind, length or time lock (daily). Sure, someone who wants to complete all of them would need to put more time than before to complete them, others would still finish in two days (barring time lock) and yet others would feel just right.

I am not saying either of these play styles are better than others but the biggest reason not everyone is happy is because it’s all temporary anyways.

I get that people feel like they want to have this badge of exclusivity, but with this temporary content, most feel like they need to play this game on someone else’s schedule. Ala, job.

Maybe if Arena Net made titles for completing meta achievements in the time frame but still included the content and achievements for those who maybe just can’t play that month due to other reasons.

Bah, I’m rambling now. This has probably already been said elsewhere before.

I agree, mostly because of achievements.

At this point all those time consuming (and in some cases hard like the aetherblade dungeon ones) on a very limited time (2 weeks is nothing) feel like work. In fact I was (and I am) in the middle of a lot of work and despite I am a completionist (GWAMM in GW1) I had to left the dungeon ones undone. Now I have a lot of work to do too and I’m thinking about leaving all of Kiel’s achievements undone because I have timw for only one of the candidates and I really want to complete all content but I can’t.

The way they’re rushing living story and adding a huge lot of achievements that you have just 2 weeks to complete is ridiculous. If you’re gone for a secons you miss a lot of content. Making you work toward a tasklist on a very limited time frame (lack of time+long or hard content is the main point) feels like going to work instead of playing a game.

Again, I was a GWAMM and I have no problem with hard and time consuming tasks. The problem is when they’re on a limited time frame.

For starters I would erradicate all the “do this x times” achievements (this was one of the things they wanted to avoid, and it makes no sense to make me perform a sexy dance in front of a lot of burning efigies that gives no benefit just because it’s an achievement).

I would eliminate all the minigame achievements too. If you want everyone to try all the minigames, puy a nice reward on them, but forcing people to try all minigames (I like a lot many of them, but not all) and spend a lot of hours (the amount of points for some of them is crazy, forcing you to play them multiple hours that you can’t afford, they should be done in 20 minutes at much, so only the ones that like them stay on the minigame) on them is a bad way to add achievements too.

The biggest problem I’ve been having with the 2 week cycle has been getting in a group to do the group events and achievements, I usual finish most of the other achievements in a few days. Hopefully when/if they get a group finder out it will make it less frustrating.

I really do find Anet’s commitment and fervent passion for this game laudable. They have certainly shown that they’re in for the long haul and want to keep the experience fresh. In light of all this, I share the same sentiment as many of you. Having new content to explore all of the time is great, but it’s temporary nature and emphasis on achievements leaves me stressed as well.

I see those achievements and cannot help but feel I must complete them before time expires. This feeling has become intensified due to the fact that achievements now provide tangible benefits. When I log in these days, I no longer feel I can revel in the freedom to work on whatever I want. Of course I still have this freedom but there’s always that pressure telling me to make sure my daily is completed, work on meta achievements, and hit the main world events. If I want to do a daily fractal or dungeon on top of all this, it starts taking 3-4+ hours to make sure the stuff I can only do once per day has been completed.

I really can’t say I blame Anet for all of this. I’m not forced to do any of the daily things or go for the meta achievements, but I personally feel some anxiety if I miss out and that’s an issue I need to work on for myself.

In the end though, I’m not sure for how much longer I will continue to play. I’m an avid gamer and I want to be able to enjoy and support other great games that come out in the future, but I can’t feasibly do this while keeping up with GW2 with a 40hr/week job. I don’t want to have to choose but I may have to soon.

Agree, a big risk of burnout!
- make mini-games count as part of daily
- looking forward to the mini-dungeons.

Would really like to see a new level 80 non-Orr map to explore!