Guild Wars 2

I would prefer to have achievements awarded (not “unlocked”) if you manage to do them on the first run. The achievement panel can still be locked until you finish the episode.

Like, I managed to protect Seraphs on 1st run naturally, and I managed to take the purple crystal and attack Aerin naturally as well.

Why is it good?

• You get a very positive experience for doing something “right” without knowing it.
• You get a very negative experience for seeing you’ve done something “right” straight away but you have to do it again because something wasn’t “unlocked”.
• Replaying stories for achievements is boring, and sometimes even frustrating. Especially if you have 1 of 3 but have to listen to all the unskippable dialogues and to click through all the text and then grind trash mobs again to advance to the important part. It feels like a time sink, even if it’s a minor one, and I see no point in it in a B2P no-sub game.
• People who prefer to use guides will not be forced to play the same story (about which they’ve read already and obviously do not care) once again.

…and I really miss Meta achievement rewards like some themed backpacks, by the way. That’s another topic, but it really extended the freshness of each release for me.

I would assume that they stay locked so that you focus on the story during the first run and after you’re done with the story and have taken that in, you can start doing stuff that isn’t story-related and get achievements for it.

Should achievements be awarded on the first run, people will concentrate on those instead of taking in the story.

ANet wants people to understand the story, which have been a problem on quite a few occasions before since people doesn’t properly explore to find the hints and in some cases just skip the entire dialogue. Then afterwards they complain about the story without having actually experienced it fully. This, to an extent, stops that since during the first run, you can only concentrate on the story.

You have the right to complain, sure.
But I think this is a better idea.
You shouldn’t be on a rush to make the achievements when the main focus on a living story should be the story. The achievements are an added bonus for later.

However I agree that on the 2nd and later runs, all dialog should be skippable in some form. Perhaps a waypoint you can go to to declare “I don’t want to listen to this again” and then it skips it all. Similar to how you can skip talking to your friends in the first instance, but for the entire conversations instead.

Sure you got a positive experience by doing something “right” without knowing it there, but the far more common scenario will be that people simply look up the achievements on dulfy or whatever beforehand, and spoil the story for themselves.

Tamias.7059:

Sure you got a positive experience by doing something “right” without knowing it there, but the far more common scenario will be that people simply look up the achievements on dulfy or whatever beforehand, and spoil the story for themselves.

Mikuchan.7261:

You have the right to complain, sure.
But I think this is a better idea.
You shouldn’t be on a rush to make the achievements when the main focus on a living story should be the story. The achievements are an added bonus for later.

I get the idea, but the problem is, people who do not care will do it anyway. They will check the guide to know what gonna happen, skip-skip-skip kill-kill on first run, then do the same. For them, it’s nothing more than an annoyance; for those who care, it wouldn’t matter as they’ll play the story anyway.

If I got the “No one left behind” during the first run, I know I would’ve felt really good for this small bit; same for purple crystal – I would’ve been rewarded by the game by doing something “smart” which didn’t involve walking to a green star and killing a mob with swords above his head. Or if I discovered the JP in the instance and jumped onto the haystack on first run, spending more than an hour on it for fun, would it be “fun” to do it once again?

But if I didn’t want to discover it myself and looked in a guide, why should I be forced to play through it twice? You do not get the achievement for doing it twice; you can only get it for doing the correct thing, so the “play it twice” part is simply not needed. There’s enough evident guiding for “wrong” players already in the game, why punish “right” players because of their existence?

For me, the only part I really enjoyed was Scarlet’s room. Aerin fight was fairly good – better than I expected – but I rushed through it and don’t feel an urge to do it again, even though I will for achievements. Both inquest parts were simply annoying for me; it is not hard, it’s just grindy and boring – the same reason I still don’t have PS finished. Yes, some will say that you can’t really come up with anything else in an MMO – but that’s it for me, I enjoy exploring new maps and doing random events or looking for llamas with a torch for hours in a wrong mine or fighting new champs but I click-click-click through all this forced storytelling in the same way as I fast-read through many, many evident things on the Internet where it takes a glimpse to get the whole idea and move on.

Mikuchan.7261:

However I agree that on the 2nd and later runs, all dialog should be skippable in some form. Perhaps a waypoint you can go to to declare “I don’t want to listen to this again” and then it skips it all. Similar to how you can skip talking to your friends in the first instance, but for the entire conversations instead.

I would be happy to see it implemented, but I don’t think they’ll do it – with a “it’s already short anyways, just do it!” excuse, which is rather valid.

Mikuchan.7261:

However I agree that on the 2nd and later runs, all dialog should be skippable in some form. Perhaps a waypoint you can go to to declare “I don’t want to listen to this again” and then it skips it all. Similar to how you can skip talking to your friends in the first instance, but for the entire conversations instead.

Reminds me of the annoying, unskippable intro scene in Culling of Stratholme from WoW: lich king. People complained that it was boring and annoying, especially when doing multiple runs to get bronze drake mounts for people, so Blizzard eventually let players skip the whole scene after seeing it a whole bunch of times.

The point is though, since ANet went the way they did with achievements and repeatable story missions I’m really surprised they didn’t take a page from Blizzard’s book and do something similar, it really does get annoying sitting through forced cutscenes and dialogues multiple times just because you’re expected to go back repeatedly to get more rewards.