Guild Wars 2

Hey Folks,

It’s math time yay!

Let us take a look at the current Living Story, and see what we see.

Facts:

- Released on August 20th, 2013 – Ends September 3rd, 2013 (15 days)
- 17 Achievements required (Clockwork Chaos)
- 6 Achievements in Vorpp’s
- Invasion Canceller Time 40 min + time for selling/repairing/etc (60min)

So, lets look at this for a moment.

You need to stop 13 invasions on different maps. Each invasion takes roughy 60 minutes to complete.

= 13 hours

If you then factor in other things such as dailies, monthlies, the other achievements, etc. we are looking at something like 1.5 hours per day.

= 22.5 hours

Still with me?

Ok, so if you’re like me, and the maps you needed to complete the achievements didn’t come up in the rotation, there is a possibility that you’ll spend an extra few hours (in my case 6 hours, I took the day off to finish the achievements). Lets say… 3 hours.

= 25.5 hours (estimated)

We are looking at somewhere in the neighbourhood of 20 – 30 hours to complete this portion of the Living Story, in 15 days. This equals almost 2 hours of gameplay every single day to complete this.

Now, what happens if you’re like me and you have other matters to attend to (I’m going to the UK for 4 days), such as work, family, sports, other games, etc? Lets be generous and say that the average person can play for a total of 10 days.

This means that the average player would have to spend 2.5 hours per day in game to complete all the current Living Story achievements, and other day to day achievements. This didn’t account for anyone who is still working on the last Living Story release, but for the sake of argument, we’ll leave that out.

So, 2.5 hours a day, for 10 days…or 25.5 hours.

According to an article on Forbes, the average American working a part-time job, works about 33 hours a week.

This means, that Guild Wars 2 is designed in a way that requires players (if they feel the desire to complete the achievements and get new gear), to play about as much time as a part time employee would work. Does this seem right to you?

I understand the desire for “more content” but what ANet seems to be completely oblivious, or simply doesn’t care about the time requirement to grind out these achievements. There HAS to be a better way to extend content for those who want, but not punish those without large amounts of free time.

Thoughts?

BobbyStein.2315:

I can empathize with having a busy life and not always being able to fit my gaming schedule in between work, home life, and social commitments. Your comments are not lost on us.

We’re exploring some ideas for the future, including a system that would allow certain bits of Living World content to be accessed independent of the release. Plans and designs have not been solidified yet, so I want to temper your expectations. But if you have any opinions on the matter feel free to let us know. We’re already looking at ways to leave some LW content behind to evolve Tyria and improve the game. This would be one element of it, should we decide to build such a feature.

From https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Living-World-makes-me-sad/first#post2536548

Sadly, you are very conservative on your estimate of time. Given that during the time you play, quite possible none of the zones you need might come up and the zones might glitch due to bugs, I would increase the time sink for some people by at least a third.

hmm, thats one of the most solid arguments yet… I do hope they continue to tweak the living story so everyone can enjoy it.

I’ve only played about 3-4 hours since the patch arrived, but 2 invasions I’ve completed so far have given me 9 of the 17 achievements I need for the meta. The first invasion actually completed 4 of the requirements for the daily that day, plus gave me enough aetherblade kills to complete my QJ meta, which finished off my monthly at the same time.

And this is why I think the OP may be off-track with his math, as overlapping achievements reduce the time requirements.

The part that increases the time is having to do the 13 different maps.

After ~3rd invasion (booted from 1st for new build, disconnected from 2nd and completed a 3rd which gave me no credit towards the meta achievement), I stopped, logged out and haven’t logged back on since. I honestly can’t say when I will log back on, if ever.

You don’t need to do 13 invasions on each map.
For the living story alone you need to do the story instances, 5 invasions (and as far as I know they don’t need to be in different maps) and a dungeon.
This will add up to no more than 10 hours total.

All the other achievements are extra, and are for those that do have the time to play. And I don’t think it is fair to cut down the nr of achievements just because some people don’t have enough time to play.