Guild Wars 2

When you played the “Echoes” chapter, you could get a second (and third…) shoulder piece for playing with an alternate character.
I have played the “Paths” chapter with a second character now and did not get a reward chest with a glove.

Did you experience the same? Is this intentional or is it a bug?

Playing with an alt was a good alternative to grinding yourself to 2000 crests to complete the set. I am not excited to see that option go away.

i’m disappointed about this too :/ i had hoped to get another box on a secondary character play through. i hope it’s a bug.

Thank you for the heads up. Definitely won’t be replaying it till we get some info.

Yeah I agree. I hope this is a bug and not intentional, considering it was that way on the last patch. Why would they change it like this now in the middle of the set?!

Could we get an official word on this??

This way you can just unlock them doing the maze in the new map, which opens after the breach and it’s FUN (we had lot of fun laughing about the pacmans in the teamspeak)

Yeah, I just ran through it with an alt as well and was very annoyed! Really hope this is a bug and gets hot fixed!

Edit: Hopefully a bug, but I think I know why this happened. In the Tangled Paths, the chest with the gloves is a reward for completing “Tangled Paths Episode” in the achievements. The original episode had it as a mission reward.

I dont think it is a bug, but you should complain about it so that arenanet gets it out of their head that this is a good idea.

I can understand why they did it, but I don’t like it. I’m fine with farming 1000 bagdes per chapter, but 2000 is just too much. Anet should add a third, alternative form of obtaining it (if they haven’t already).

Seems like I’ll have to replay the previous chapter with TWO alts instead of one. I’m afraid of wasting my 1000 badges on the last shoulder piece I need, when Anet’s new direction wants to force us to farm as many badges as possible. :/

Essence Snow.3194:

Thank you for the heads up. Definitely won’t be replaying it till we get some info.

I’ll agree with this. Good to know in advance.

Has anyone posted in the bug forum? We might get a response there.

Invictus.1503:

Yeah, I just ran through it with an alt as well and was very annoyed! Really hope this is a bug and gets hot fixed!

Edit: Hopefully a bug, but I think I know why this happened. In the Tangled Paths, the chest with the gloves is a reward for completing “Tangled Paths Episode” in the achievements. The original episode had it as a mission reward.

At work so I can’t check what achievements are or how the LS mission rewards are.
Yeah, was mission reward. If this is now the achievement rewards, it won’t be bugged. It was a lot better last patch with us being able to redo the LS on alts. Now there’s no incentive to do it again on alts, because I’m sure the other mission rewards won’t be able to justify it (like last patch’s woulda been without the carapace incentive).

skullmount.1758:

Essence Snow.3194:

Thank you for the heads up. Definitely won’t be replaying it till we get some info.

I’ll agree with this. good to know in advance.

Has anyone posted in the bug forum? We might get a response there.

Won’t matter. They’ve likely already seen this thread. If they don’t respond in this one then they likely won’t respond to another one.

I’m told you can get it as a reward from doing the Labyrinth after Breach starts.

“I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again.’ That’s great. We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun. We want to change the way that people view combat.”

DiogoSilva.7089:

I can understand why they did it, but I don’t like it. I’m fine with farming 1000 bagdes per chapter, but 2000 is just too much. Anet should add a third, alternative form of obtaining it (if they haven’t already).

Seems like I’ll have to replay the previous chapter with TWO alts instead of one. I’m afraid of wasting my 1000 badges on the last shoulder piece I need, when Anet’s new direction wants to force us to farm as many badges as possible. :/

If you take a look at BogOtter’s vlog here, you see him playing on a test server (prior to “Echoes”) and featuring the carapace skins. According to the description (which clearly says: e.g. “episode 7”) we should get two skins in episode 7 (pants & shoes) and two skins in episode 8 (head & chest) which would double the amount of crest grind he have to undergo to unlock a complete set.

The armour chests via story mode on alts in Echoes allowed us to get an alternate form of acquisition, but if Anet takes that away from us, they have created a very intense chore to tie people to the map and do events repetitively again and again and again.

Well if you take a look at the achievement panel, you get the gloves from completing the episode in an achievement. In echoes, you got it from the mission reward. So no, it isn’t a bug. It doesn’t even seem like a bug

Gorani.7205:

DiogoSilva.7089:

I can understand why they did it, but I don’t like it. I’m fine with farming 1000 bagdes per chapter, but 2000 is just too much. Anet should add a third, alternative form of obtaining it (if they haven’t already).

Seems like I’ll have to replay the previous chapter with TWO alts instead of one. I’m afraid of wasting my 1000 badges on the last shoulder piece I need, when Anet’s new direction wants to force us to farm as many badges as possible. :/

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

If you take a look at BogOtter’s vlog here, you see him playing on a test server (prior to “Echoes”) and featuring the carapace skins. According to the description (which clearly says: e.g. “episode 7”) we should get two skins in episode 7 (pants & shoes) and two skins in episode 8 (head & chest) which would double the amount of crest grind he have to undergo to unlock a complete set.

The armour chests via story mode on alts in Echoes allowed us to get an alternate form of acquisition, but if Anet takes that away from us, they have created a very intense chore to tie people to the map and do events repetitively again and again and again.

I can understand why they don’t want people to skip the entire map by just playing with alts, but the alternative we’re getting is justa massive, frustrating grind. I really hope they create a third, equally reliable way to get more carapace skins.

zallis.2138:

Well if you take a look at the achievement panel, you get the gloves from completing the episode in an achievement. In echoes, you got it from the mission reward. So no, it isn’t a bug. It doesn’t even seem like a bug

That. They removed the Carapace chest from the rewards from the mission completion and put it into the achievement chest you get for completing the story segment. You only get achievement chests once, because all achieves are account-bound and not character-based.

Definitely not a bug. At most, its an oversight, someone mistakenly put the chest in the wrong spot.

But my money is on it being intentional. They realized that it was too easy for people to get all 3 of them by running the story on their alts and that was making the rewards in Silverwastes feel a bit underwhelming. I mean, besides the Carapace armors, there’s not a whole lot to trade Bandit Crests in for other than generic loot. Sure, there’s the Sinister stat recipes, but those aren’t going to appeal to everyone. So the fact that people were using the story and their alts to bypass one of the main items to shoot for in the Silverwastes was leaving many without much reason to amass Crests.

The other option for the gloves is the PvP reward track, but that for alot of people is also boring/unpleasant. I don’t mind grinding for the other pieces I guess since I only want heavy and light but I think its a shame we can’t just repeat it on alts :/ hopefully they’ll see feedback and reconsider but I wont get my hopes up

Meanwhile, a player like me barely had the time to get 1000 badges, so trying to hit 2000 from now on every two weeks (and 4-5k? starting episode 7-8?) is going to be a nightmare.

This is stupid idea it takes long enough to get 1000 when you only get 5-10 from most event many people don’t have 10hours to spend to get 1 armor piece

yah this is messed up. Anet finally releases armor skins that are not on the Gem Store and they put a huge grind wall in front of it. We don’t like grindy games Anet, that is why we bought your game. Putting grind in your game just wastes the precious time in our life.

I have to agree with DiogoSilva.7089 here. It is a lot of badges, even if you most likely don’t have to invest 1.2k crests into the recipes any more.
I also have not seen a single box (or shoulder) drop from a chest, legendary or breach boss the last two weeks (and I am confident that applies to my guildies as well)

@Electro.4173:
There is no use for crests besides the carapace armours? That’s nonsense. You buy bandit lock picks which open the chests which hold a ton of valuable and useful stuff
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lost_Bandit_Chest

By omitting alt armor acquisition Anet ensures there is always a sizable amount of players around, so latecomers don’t find themselves on a deserted map, therefore unable to complete achievements.

This replaces shovel farming as a new incentive to ensure players keep doing events in the new map.

This was intended and won’t change no matter how much people complain.

Want the new armor? Do the grind!

zaw.6741:

“I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again.’ That’s great. We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun. We want to change the way that people view combat.”

That’s right ANet, no one enjoys that.

Yet you think it’s fine to make us spend hours doing the same events, over and over, every 5 minutes?

I was seriously bored of the Silverwastes last week. Literally all you do is defend, turn in rubble, help a caravan.. then do that ad nauseum. Others may find that fun. Personally for me, it’s not anymore.

I really appreciated how their were multiple routes towards getting the shoulders last episode. Other people found it better to do the zone and work towards the crests. For me, I found it better to do the story 3 times.

It feels like you’ve found a way to keep people in this zone when they don’t really want to be. What happened to play how you want, hmmm?

If anything, PLEASE halve the amount of crests needed. 1000 × 2 is very over the top.

We’ll probably have more people leeching now. You’ll see people doing enough to get credit for the event and either AFK or run to another event to tag and get credit.

OmniPotentes.4817:

By omitting alt armor acquisition Anet ensures there is always a sizable amount of players around, so latecomers don’t find themselves on a deserted map, therefore unable to complete achievements.

This replaces shovel farming as a new incentive to ensure players keep doing events in the new map.

This was intended and won’t change no matter how much people complain.

Want the new armor? Do the grind!

Many players, including myself would have saved their crests, rather than farming chests. Players expect some level of continuity, dependability with acquisition methods. This change strikes me as taking advantage of that expectation.

This was a bad change. They also reduced the amount of badges you get for event rewards. Now it’ll take 600 events to get your 2 other glove skins for the collection.

OmniPotentes.4817:

By omitting alt armor acquisition Anet ensures there is always a sizable amount of players around, so latecomers don’t find themselves on a deserted map, therefore unable to complete achievements.

This replaces shovel farming as a new incentive to ensure players keep doing events in the new map.

This was intended and won’t change no matter how much people complain.

Want the new armor? Do the grind!

You put this much of a grind in for it and people say forget it, I don’t want the blue crap anyway.

Gorani.7205:

I have to agree with DiogoSilva.7089 here. It is a lot of badges, even if you most likely don’t have to invest 1.2k crests into the recipes any more.
I also have not seen a single box (or shoulder) drop from a chest, legendary or breach boss the last two weeks (and I am confident that applies to my guildies as well)

@Electro.4173:
There is no use for crests besides the carapace armours? That’s nonsense. You buy bandit lock picks which open the chests which hold a ton of valuable and useful stuff
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lost_Bandit_Chest

The bandit chests are nice for general loot, but that’s all they are. General items. Standard champ bags, more ascended materials, extra bandit crests, ect. Loot you can get from any number of places.

Not to say there’s anything wrong with that specifically, but some people look for something a bit more unique and special than just “more basic loot”. Not really something I have a problem with, but I’ve definitely seen some forum posts and in-game comments about it.

Devildoc.6721:

OmniPotentes.4817:

By omitting alt armor acquisition Anet ensures there is always a sizable amount of players around, so latecomers don’t find themselves on a deserted map, therefore unable to complete achievements.

This replaces shovel farming as a new incentive to ensure players keep doing events in the new map.

This was intended and won’t change no matter how much people complain.

Want the new armor? Do the grind!

You put this much of a grind in for it and people say forget it, I don’t want the blue crap anyway.

You’d be surprised. They’ve realized a lot of people are willing to grind. Just look at all of the collection achievements that people have attempted to grind out.

Yeah the “tag the event and run/afk” is gonna be a thing. It already was, painfully so.

I thought getting the shoulders for all the LS achievements done + having 3 geared lvl 80s to go through story was a just reward. I finally thought this meant the start of more endgame and rewards for having more than one toon max level. Plus, I enjoyed the story and helped a lot of my friends through.

Don’t get me wrong, I commanded the SW keeps more times than I can count and don’t dislike the events- who doesn’t want to do story to buy the shoulders – by all means stay and farm. But who does should be encouraged to play and replay the Living Story because holly hell THAT is what should be the strong point of this update, not drop farm imo.

kitsu.3502:

Yeah the “tag the event and run/afk” is gonna be a thing. It already was, painfully so.

I thought getting the shoulders for all the LS achievements done + having 3 geared lvl 80s to go through story was a just reward. I finally thought this meant the start of more endgame and rewards for having more than one toon max level. Plus, I enjoyed the story and helped a lot of my friends through.

Don’t get me wrong, I commanded the SW keeps more times than I can count and don’t dislike the events- who doesn’t want to do story to buy the shoulders – by all means stay and farm. But who does should be encouraged to play and replay the Living Story because holly hell THAT is what should be the strong point of this update, not drop farm imo.

Yeah. Unfortunately the tag and go to the next event is the only way to minimize the amount of grind players now have to do if they want all of the armor pieces. Just imagine what it will be like after the next update.

Gorani.7205:

I also have not seen a single box (or shoulder) drop from a chest, legendary or breach boss the last two weeks (and I am confident that applies to my guildies as well)

I got the shoulder one after a only few bandit chests last week.

I had to farm badges last patch, cause my alts are all mules. Collecting 3k badges wasn’t hard at all. The more events are completed on a map and the more keeps remain under pact control the higher the rewards. The more bosses are killed during the breach the higher the reward. You can even collect multiple organs during one breach. The amber boss usually dies within a minute. There is plenty of time left to run to the orange keep and collect an organ there as well. You don’t even have to kill silver and gold to collect an organ. Just tagging them will suffice. Bottom line. Is it a grind? Hell yes! But it won’t take more then a few days of active participation.

So, instead of standing around shoveling kitten at Amber all day, this time around you get to play the content as it was intended.

P.S. Players complaining about wasting badges on keys, don’t make me laugh. You sow what you reap. In your case, loot bags.

Ayrilana.1396:

Devildoc.6721:

OmniPotentes.4817:

By omitting alt armor acquisition Anet ensures there is always a sizable amount of players around, so latecomers don’t find themselves on a deserted map, therefore unable to complete achievements.

This replaces shovel farming as a new incentive to ensure players keep doing events in the new map.

This was intended and won’t change no matter how much people complain.

Want the new armor? Do the grind!

You put this much of a grind in for it and people say forget it, I don’t want the blue crap anyway.

You’d be surprised. They’ve realized a lot of people are willing to grind. Just look at all of the collection achievements that people have attempted to grind out.

A few I’ve done if they seemed like they would be fun to do, but if they seem like an awful grind or just a gigantic gold sink, I say forget it, not worth the time invested.

This is now one of those.

Not to mention some of the achievements seem to be a hassle like, not being caught by the Lurcher, which immediately B-lines for you at the start of the instance and is much faster than you.

so its official no obtaining the gloves on alts when u redo the story oh well not going to redo the story then was so pointless. It was more fun to redo the story in the previous episode allowed me to get use to the mechanics now I gotta grind to get the other gloves kinda boring oh well

@Melanie.1240

Perhaps you are blessed by the gods of RNG and had multiple precursors in the past – guess how many I had?

Good and enjoyable tasks and achievements should not rely on RNG. Saying that I could get an armour piece by RNG is the worst possible way to acquire it. Remember that those are account bound, so the blessed people can’t even put some on the TP.

Like others said, going to the Silverwastes map to have fun with the events should be the prime directive, using exploits, bugs and super efficiency by tagging events should not.
Players will use those methods because the LS parts in Silverwastes do not allow them to rely on the devs to stick to a concept.
(e.g. Caith’s Blossom => suddenly appeared at a vendor and lost its exclusivity by completing Echoes achievements.)
Now they changed the way we can get armour pieces by denying us an option that was previously possible.

Gorani.7205:

@Melanie.1240

Perhaps you are blessed by the gods of RNG and had multiple precursors in the past – guess how many I had?

Good and enjoyable tasks and achievements should not rely on RNG. Saying that I could get an armour piece by RNG is the worst possible way to acquire it. Remember that those are account bound, so the blessed people can’t even put some on the TP.

Like others said, going to the Silverwastes map to have fun with the events should be the prime directive, using exploits, bugs and super efficiency by tagging events should not.
Players will use those methods because the LS parts in Silverwastes do not allow them to rely on the devs to stick to a concept.
(e.g. Caith’s Blossom => suddenly appeared at a vendor and lost its exclusivity by completing Echoes achievements.)
Now they changed the way we can get armour pieces by denying us an option that was previously possible.

Oh no, I’m actually not very lucky usually (not more than any others). For example, I still haven’t seen any fossilized insects. But yes, I agree that hoping for a drop is one of the most inefficient ways to get the skin.

OmniPotentes.4817:

My alts are all mules so I had to farm badges last patch. Collecting 3k badges wasn’t hard at all. The more events are completed on a map and the more keeps remain under pact control the higher the rewards. The more bosses are killed during the breach the higher the reward. You can even collect multiple organs during one breach. The amber boss usually dies within a minute. There is plenty of time left to run to the orange keep and collect an organ there as well. You don’t even have to kill silver and gold to collect an organ. Just tagging them will suffice. Bottom line. Is it a grind? Hell yes! But it won’t take more then a few days of active participation.

So, instead of standing around shoveling kitten at Amber all day, this time around you get to play the content as it was intended.

P.S. Players complaining about wasting badges on keys, you get no sympathy from me. You sow what you reap.

I imagine you mean “you reap what you sow”. Are you suggesting that using the keys was somehow against the rules or evil in some way? I agree that the amber chest farm was nuts and detracted from the zone. However, for many, myself included, used keys because we didn’t know the acquisition method for multiple armor pieces was going to be changed and keys were a good choice to spend crests.

I just have to link this…….

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2mp06g/how_to_get_easy_carapace_armor_pieces/

GOLD! Jerry GOLD!

@Prientist:
What I’m saying is this is Anet. Expect the unexpected! The season just started. You had it easy last patch plus you got to profit farming keys. I had to spend my crests on armor pieces for lack of having alts. So please stop whining.

Anet pulled a classic bait and switch.

and why would you expect to get all the armor in 2 weeks?

I sincerely hope Anet reconsiders adding the gloves back as a repeatable story reward. The grind in and of itself isn’t that bad, the problem I’m having is that SW gets boring pretty fast. The same events on a 30-40 min loop, culminating in boss fights that only last a few minutes and are, frankly, not that exciting. Oh wait, we can play pacman in the maze between loops now…

This, imo, is just a way to keep people in SW, and it feels artificial and cheap. Disappointing.

OmniPotentes.4817:

@Prientist:
What I’m saying is this is Anet. Expect the unexpected! The season just started. You had it easy last patch plus you got to profit farming keys. I had to spend my crests on armor pieces for lack of having alts. So please stop whining.

Anet pulled a classic bait and switch.

At the risk of making this into an argument, do you consider pointing out that it looks like a bait and switch is whining? Because that is what I am pointing out. You may applaud the behavior or be fan enough to shrug off a bait and switch, but I am not. If I expected a change in acquisition methods, I would not have replayed the story on 2 more characters. If I were a developer I would be disappointed if even my defenders expected me to bait and switch.

Psientist.6437:

OmniPotentes.4817:

@Prientist:
What I’m saying is this is Anet. Expect the unexpected! The season just started. You had it easy last patch plus you got to profit farming keys. I had to spend my crests on armor pieces for lack of having alts. So please stop whining.

Anet pulled a classic bait and switch.

At the risk of making this into an argument, do you consider pointing out that it looks like a bait and switch is whining? Because that is what I am pointing out. You may applaud the behavior or be fan enough to shrug off a bait and switch, but I am not. If I expected a change in acquisition methods, I would not have replayed the story on 2 more characters. If I were a developer I would be disappointed if even my defenders expected me to bait and switch.

Since this move by Anet does not impact me directly I’m indifferent to it. I’m just pointing out the obvious. I also argued what their motives might be for this sleazy move earlier in this thread. The bait and switch is no doubt a cheap move on Anets part, but it also serves a purpose, which is to keep the map populated. What I consider whining is your complaint about wasting your crests on keys . Guess what, I didn’t get to buy keys. I had to exchange my crests for amor pieces. That’s the price I pay for never leveling my alts. And so we all have to live with the choices we make.

As mainly a WvWer I am likely a little sceptical regarding Anet updates.

I had already stockpiled Badges for when they got around to forcing us to play something we do not want to in order to get an item.

IMHO, This is still a fine game and I have had 6000+ hrs of enjoyment for my payments.

Well carp. I’ve been playing three characters through the all the LS because they could each get any potential armor pieces, and NOW they change it?

This is not one of their brighter ideas for the game. If they are going to change it now, they need to drop the number of crests needed for the armor (which I thought was stupid expensive in the first place). If this were one character’s story, why would that character purchase a bunch of useless armor to just tote around in their bags…doesn’t make sense.

I’d rather have them make it so that one each of the different armor classes has to get the entire collection again (award the armor for the story, and the character collect the other pieces again)—that would at least make sense, that a character needed to get all the pieces for their own armor.

I was looking forward to spend 3-4 hours doing the story on 3 characters like i did 2 weeks ago, but now that I NEED to grind repetitive events to get 2000 crests (which will take me a couple of days of farming non-stop) i’m probably not go for it, if that’s the new norm and i’ll need to farm the same events for weeks and weeks to get one set of armor (and lets be honest, it looks horrible on charr) i’m probably gonna skip this set… grinding for a set is good when you don’t feel like it’s a grind (SHOULDER ARMOR DIDN’T FEEL LIKE A GRIND even if you completed the story 3 times, why did you change that?? now getting this set is the most boring and time gated thing in this game… probably worse than grinding for a legendary)

Ugh, so much for any point in taking alts through the story ever again…

This is disappointing to hear. The acquisition method for Carapace Shoulders made it feel like ANet was doing something nice for altoholics for a change. Hopefully we can get a statement from ANet about whether or not this was intended for the Gloves.

no way it’s a bug. and it doesn’t really bother me.

they “threw us a bone” by letting alts get the skins in ep1 (a nice way to get the your collection going)…..but if this practice continued all the way through, the zone would be pretty dead as soon as the last installment ended. these episodes take so little time to complete.

you get one full set by playing the LS (a few hours of gameplay)….you get the rest by playing the map (it’s only a grind if you make it one and “need” to have all skins quickly). you can argue the cost in crests is too high (i’d agree and probably halve the total)…but the fact that it isn’t available only through rng is more important to me.