Guild Wars 2

I think it is necessary to focus on the achievement which improving quality of player’s game. Achievements like "capture x100500, get x9999, grab x50000 should be avoided. This creates a sense of banal grind. Instead of doing useful things and help the team players just run and grab a points/hunt dolyaks/fill up difficult gates with common rums, etc. Need to do to achieves like “remove 100 conditions” “raise/rally 25 downstated players”, “create x10 supperior siege equipment”. In other words – achievements that force players to benefit the raid, rather than forcing them to grind.

Also, you should think about the number of targets more carefully. 50 camps of mercenaries… Hm… I captured probably less than 50 for the entire year on WvW. 225 sentry points – it is many hours of useless running around, even after all other achievs are done.

MeGaZlo.9516:

I think it is necessary to focus on the achievement which improving quality of player’s game. Achievements like "capture x100500, get x9999, grab x50000 should be avoided. This creates a sense of banal grind.

But at least it introduces you to the stuff that is valuable in WvW.

Instead of doing useful things and help the team players just run and grab a points/hunt dolyaks/fill up difficult gates with common rums, etc. Need to do to achieves like “remove 100 conditions” “raise/rally 25 downstated players”, “create x10 supperior siege equipment”. In other words – achievements that force players to benefit the raid, rather than forcing them to grind.

Removing conditions is not WvW specific. Reviving downed players would result in people jumping off a height and reviving each other. Creating siege would result in people emptying the supply in a keep to build whatever siege they are missing, most likely in a manner that makes them unusable.

Personally, the ones that I disliked are the jumping puzzles and the mercenary camps. The mercenary camps would’ve been good, if they had not throw in Toxic stuff.

What would you recommend?
-1. Time Gates? People hate time gates.
-2. RNG? People hate RNG. An even bigger complaint than time-gates.
-3. Low Numbers? People mock low numbers. “Catering to casuals! How ridiculous!”
I think we have here the least of 4 evils.

I agree with the sentries and similar achievements just being useless grind/fluff.

Gotta disagree with capturing camp and cutting off supply by killing dollies though, those activities are alot more beneficial than the other stuff you grouped them with in your examples, specially for people who prefer to play solo/small scale and contribute to PPT.

Olba.5376:

Removing conditions is not WvW specific. Reviving downed players would result in people jumping off a height and reviving each other. Creating siege would result in people emptying the supply in a keep to build whatever siege they are missing, most likely in a manner that makes them unusable.

Personally, the ones that I disliked are the jumping puzzles and the mercenary camps. The mercenary camps would’ve been good, if they had not throw in Toxic stuff.

Eeer… Support squads are based on the cond-removing. Most WvW builds one way or another are based on the cond-removing. The entire game’s combat system is tied to the conditions. It is a kitten VERY specific. This would encourage glory-hunters running around in wretched pve-solo builds to show signs of use.

I didn’t say “downed”, I told “downstated”. And to avoid bypass grind, dev-s shouldn’t do massive amount of target’s numbers like 250-500, etc. All must be done in the course of ordinary WvW process.

For example – capture 5 castles – good. Performed for a couple of evenings. Process does not interfere with the WvW. Capture 50 camps of mercenaries – bad. Need a few weeks. Cut off from the WvW process and it is essentially a PvE.

Izaya.2906:

I agree with the sentries and similar achievements just being useless grind/fluff.

Gotta disagree with capturing camp and cutting off supply by killing dollies though, those activities are alot more beneficial than the other stuff you grouped them with in your examples, specially for people who prefer to play solo/small scale and contribute to PPT.

Exactly, much more important and helpful than zerging towers.

aspirine.6852:

Izaya.2906:

I agree with the sentries and similar achievements just being useless grind/fluff.

Gotta disagree with capturing camp and cutting off supply by killing dollies though, those activities are alot more beneficial than the other stuff you grouped them with in your examples, specially for people who prefer to play solo/small scale and contribute to PPT.

Exactly, much more important and helpful than zerging towers.

I am not against these avhievs. I am against the number of targets. An average player who plays in the evenings have no time to do it all “in the process.” He forced to focus specifically on this to complete. This imposing of play style allready.

MeGaZlo.9516:

I am not against these avhievs. I am against the number of targets. An average player who plays in the evenings have no time to do it all “in the process.” He forced to focus specifically on this to complete. This imposing of play style allready.

And yet someone that actually plays WvW more than for just the season one achievements would have done more than enough of those to have completed the meta in the 7 weeks it was possible without even trying.

Some more defensive ones would have been good – eg x no. of times successfully defending a tower/camp/keep etc and number of times escorted a Dolyak.

99% of the wvw meta achievements are fine just the way they are. If anything more numbers should have been added to certain ones. The whole point of the current “high” numbers is it is meant to take you 7 weeks to do. Not grind it out and finish it in 2 days. The only one that should have been tweaked in all honesty was the merc camp one. It should have worked for neutralizing them aswell not just when trying to recruit them. As you could only get about 4 every hour, which kept you stuck on eternal. All the rest of the achievements there, helped players learn what wvw is about and how they can contribute to their world. Which isn’t that improving players quality game (which I am assuming you mean making better quality wvw players) because to me that is exactly what the meta was helping them with to some extent.

MeGaZlo.9516:

aspirine.6852:

Izaya.2906:

I agree with the sentries and similar achievements just being useless grind/fluff.

Gotta disagree with capturing camp and cutting off supply by killing dollies though, those activities are alot more beneficial than the other stuff you grouped them with in your examples, specially for people who prefer to play solo/small scale and contribute to PPT.

Exactly, much more important and helpful than zerging towers.

I am not against these avhievs. I am against the number of targets. An average player who plays in the evenings have no time to do it all “in the process.” He forced to focus specifically on this to complete. This imposing of play style allready.

The average player who only gets to play in the evening (and on weekends) wouldn’t be trying to get all the achievements.

They’d most likely do what I did (partially because I am one of those players) – pick the 15 achievements which are easiest to do and do them for the meta achievement, then ignore the others.

I’d never done WvW before so at first I didn’t know what was reasonable, but as soon as I realised that there were, for example, only 3 mercenary camps and that they were rarely worth capturing I didn’t bother with that achievement. I did the ones that I could finish like capping ruins (which can easily be done solo and is quite quick), killing players and guards, capturing castles, keeps, towers etc.

Imho, the main problem with those achievements is that they’re mostly offensive in nature.
What happens is that there is no incentive to defend. If you need to conquer a camp, enemies must first take it for you to do so. Same for keeps, towers and the castle.
Even the repair one – heh, if you stop enemies before they can attack, you can’t repair.

Well, some of them are a bit exaggerated, too. Sentries and dolyaks, namely.

The average player who plays in the evening couldn’t during the first 3-4 weeks due to queues, lags and crashes. The queues vanished as soon as the AP-strivers were done with their work.

So IM(subjectiv)O, the achievements
- obviously haven’t led more people into WvW longterm
- don’t teach people to play as a server (maybe as a team though)
- just lead you to do things you wouldn’t do otherwise (at least not as focused)

I don’t think the achievements are totally out of place but I’d lower the number to finish an achievement and lower the rewarded AP for each achievement.

Why? So people who only want to gather APs can do so and leave again without getting too many AP for the little work invested. I don’t believe somebody needs to kill 225 Dollyaks, 500 Guards, spend 300 for repairs to find out if he/she enjoys WvW or to learn how WvW works.

Those who just want to WvW have harder Achievements anyway and probably won’t care as much.

I must admit I got 13/15 achievements at the weekend of Round 5 (I was ill). But before that WvW wasn’t really playable for me.

I didn’t play for 4 weeks of the season and I still manage to get the meta. Sure some of them are pretty ridiculous, like merc camps ans sentries, but overall it was pretty easy to achieve. I even got 225 yaks by spending a couple nights in enemy BLs farming 4 camps, I admit that was a little tedious (go to 1 BL kill yaks at 2 closest camps, go to other BL and kill yaks at 2 closest camps, repeat about 38 times).

Actually the quantity and task list I thought was fairly right on target. Took me about 5 weeks to do but I wasn’t super hard core about it. Basically just did my thing in WvW for the first 4 weeks and then finished off the last two that I did and wrapped it up with two jumping puzzles. Worked out rather well. Now lets see what’s in the chests and if it was really worth the effort. I doubt it since this is GW2.

I found the sentries, spending supplies and demolition to be counterproductive in wvw. Nothing more annoying that seeing your little group stop to wait in a circle for the sentrie ap. Or blowing supplies on a gate that has 3 sup rams ramming into it.

lordkrall.7241:

MeGaZlo.9516:

I am not against these avhievs. I am against the number of targets. An average player who plays in the evenings have no time to do it all “in the process.” He forced to focus specifically on this to complete. This imposing of play style allready.

And yet someone that actually plays WvW more than for just the season one achievements would have done more than enough of those to have completed the meta in the 7 weeks it was possible without even trying.

What about someone that actually has someone to spend their life with? Or jobs? Or education? Or other obligations? The people that can fit in an hour a night at most.

I understand you’ve not got any of that and you’ve got all the time in the world for the game but there are people out there that do tend to take care of the real world first.

I always think that if real life obligations or desires are more important than playing a game or having time for achievements, then real life obligations are more important than any reward one might receive from said game or achievements. Can’t really have it both ways, in my opinion, anyway.

Darkobra.6439:

What about someone that actually has someone to spend their life with? Or jobs? Or education? Or other obligations? The people that can fit in an hour a night at most.

I understand you’ve not got any of that and you’ve got all the time in the world for the game but there are people out there that do tend to take care of the real world first.

And people that can only fit in an hour a night at most are not really the target for these kind of achievements. Simple as that.

If you can’t play the game on a regular and somewhat “meaningful” (in lack of a better word) basis why should you get the same reward as someone that can?

What about people that can only play 1 hour a week? Should we change all achievements so that you only need to log in to get them?

Easy. Skill over time. The definition of an achievement.

Next question.

There should have been daily achievements. (I’m not in the mood to think about the right numbers so interpret them as placeholders

• daily invader killer – kill 20 enemies
• daily camp capturer – cap 5 camps
• daily defender – get 10 gold, silver or bronze rewards for (successfully) defending a structure
  .
  .
  .

It’s sad when a 7-week-meta achievement can be finished in 3 days – especially since most of the achievements for the meta were things you can do just as well in PvE.
Actually fighting the other servers should have been the focus of the meta (Or at least stuff that helps your server PPT if that really has to be)

Get rid of the one’s that use supply because it just causes problems.

I’m not going to get the achievement becaue I don’t want to spend time doing things I consider mundane grinds.

lordkrall.7241:

MeGaZlo.9516:

I am not against these avhievs. I am against the number of targets. An average player who plays in the evenings have no time to do it all “in the process.” He forced to focus specifically on this to complete. This imposing of play style allready.

And yet someone that actually plays WvW more than for just the season one achievements would have done more than enough of those to have completed the meta in the 7 weeks it was possible without even trying.

I disagree. I spend what I consider a decent amount of time in WvW, at least ~20 hours a week usually, and I’m 5/50 on merc camps, am only halfway through sentries, had to actively spend a few hours literally doing nothing but farming dolyaks, and begrudgingly had to join the ranks of those who “wasted” supply for the repair achievement.

These things are highly dependent on your playstyle, the servers you’re matched against, and the times of day you play. Personally, I found there were only about 3 weeks out of the 7 where I was able to accomplish very much. It really made me wish those achievement values were halved at the least.

Every achievement you mentioned can be obtainded by any player, mostly of all the " achievements hunters".

Imo there’s no point in all of this.

lordkrall.7241:

And yet someone that actually plays WvW more than for just the season one achievements would have done more than enough of those to have completed the meta in the 7 weeks it was possible without even trying.

Actually a purely roaming player, like myself, has to try to complete the meta.

I’ll break it down because I’m bored:
Big Spender: Easy, though I already had a large stockpile of badges, probably still easy for somebody who doesn’t
Camp Crusher: Easy within the 7 week timeframe
Guard Slayer: Much easier than it sounds, doable while doing other achievements
Castles in the Air: tap the door and you’ll get it, way easy @5
The Keep Is the Thing: same thing, really easy within the timeframe @10
Mists Invasion defender: This one seems like a joke, this is a daily
Advanced Mists Invasion Defender: Really easy even as a roamer, 10 kills a day would get you this
World Ranker: Challenging without using laurels, I think I would get about 35 ranks in 7 weeks otherwise
Master of Ruins: Really easy, almost insulting considering how ridiculous dolyaks and sentries are
Sentry Capturer Extraordinaire: Ridiculous but doable, also not fun in any way
No Tower Too High: a little tougher than keeps/castles, even though towers flip more often, it’s just the number of them. Still easy though.
Supplies Severed: No. This one is a no. I’d rather run across the entire map and waypoint back 225 times. Which is the same thing but easier considering you’re guaranteed to get it at least.
Mists Merc Camp Vanquisher: I didn’t even want to try for this one. Getting into EB is already a challenge. I could do this one as a roamer, but it’s really boring and I’d rather not.
Seasonal Mists Defense Restorer: This requires me to pay attention to things being attacked and either waste supply for hours on end or wait for the zerg attacking to be defeated and then repair. Extremely tedious, would rather not.
Demolition Expert: HAHAHAHA, nah

The jumping puzzles were easy, I’m glad they included those otherwise I wouldn’t have completed this I don’t think.

But if I only played 2-3hrs every other night then some of these might’ve been impossible.

As someone who spends a fair amount of time in WvW it was possible but I did have to go out of my way to complete certain aspects of it. I realize this was in part due to my not wanting to be on week 7 and wonder if I’d get the completion from my normal style of play. So yes, I did make the decision to pursue some and have the key and be done with it. That being said, I think it was still week 4 or 5 when I finally completed enough to receive a key.

Dolyaks killed- They go down pretty fast and I always seem to have more escorts than kills when it comes to dolyaks. The addition of escorts to the next season would be nice.

JPs- Not part of any regular WvW play. Completed without too much bother but it still involves doing something that has no real bearing on WvW. I’d rather see more options that are actually about WvW added for season two. (and ideally the removal of JP based ones but I am biased.)

Sentries- Not a problem that they are part of the achievements, but the number felt like quite the grind to complete and completion didn’t happen naturally, not even over the course of multiple weeks.

Siege Master- All told this led to me taking ranks in Treb and Ram, and as a consequence using a treb in ways I hadn’t before. Personally broadened my tactical horizons so to speak but I don’t think overall this has been a welcome achievement in the big picture for most.

-Suggestions-

Add a season based WvW daily, the completion of which would add to the meta much as the PvE and Spvp dailies add to their monthlies. There could even be a series of them. For example, complete two dailies during a week match up for an achievement towards the meta, and that happens each week.

Add more defensive based aspects. Dolyak escorts, tower, keep and SM defense.

Part of me would love to see the achievements hidden. greatly reduced and reasonable but without the breakdown of achievement points and so on for a key. The idea being if you play WvW with any amount of regularity you will receive a key. While I can appreciate that it was perhaps, in part, an effort to give regular players of WvW some achievement points that won’t take years to complete I think the main result early on was PvE point hunters adding to queues, while later on some WvW regulars found them a bit of a grind to complete.

I expect it wouldn’t be easy to do hidden achievements, what determines enough play to be considered a ‘regular to WvW’ being highly subjective and so on but I’d rather have more people get a key for just getting out there and doing what comes naturally than see what happened this season as per achievements. If that translates to more people get the key for ‘less contribution’ I still think that is better than what happened at the beginning of this season. One of the things I truly I enjoy about WvW is it doesn’t feel like a grind, you just get out there and play. The season 1 achievements really seemed to bring that PvE grind feeling into WvW and in my humble opinion, that wasn’t an improvement.

celeron.3469:

lordkrall.7241:

And yet someone that actually plays WvW more than for just the season one achievements would have done more than enough of those to have completed the meta in the 7 weeks it was possible without even trying.

Actually a purely roaming player, like myself, has to try to complete the meta.

I’ll break it down because I’m bored:
Big Spender: Easy, though I already had a large stockpile of badges, probably still easy for somebody who doesn’t
Camp Crusher: Easy within the 7 week timeframe
Guard Slayer: Much easier than it sounds, doable while doing other achievements
Castles in the Air: tap the door and you’ll get it, way easy @5
The Keep Is the Thing: same thing, really easy within the timeframe @10
Mists Invasion defender: This one seems like a joke, this is a daily
Advanced Mists Invasion Defender: Really easy even as a roamer, 10 kills a day would get you this
World Ranker: Challenging without using laurels, I think I would get about 35 ranks in 7 weeks otherwise
Master of Ruins: Really easy, almost insulting considering how ridiculous dolyaks and sentries are
Sentry Capturer Extraordinaire: Ridiculous but doable, also not fun in any way
No Tower Too High: a little tougher than keeps/castles, even though towers flip more often, it’s just the number of them. Still easy though.
Supplies Severed: No. This one is a no. I’d rather run across the entire map and waypoint back 225 times. Which is the same thing but easier considering you’re guaranteed to get it at least.
Mists Merc Camp Vanquisher: I didn’t even want to try for this one. Getting into EB is already a challenge. I could do this one as a roamer, but it’s really boring and I’d rather not.
Seasonal Mists Defense Restorer: This requires me to pay attention to things being attacked and either waste supply for hours on end or wait for the zerg attacking to be defeated and then repair. Extremely tedious, would rather not.
Demolition Expert: HAHAHAHA, nah

The jumping puzzles were easy, I’m glad they included those otherwise I wouldn’t have completed this I don’t think.

But if I only played 2-3hrs every other night then some of these might’ve been impossible.

Your cheevies looked about the same as mine up until a week ago. I only haven’t done the Merc meta.

About World Ranker, that one was indeed easy as well. Running with a winning zerg could easily net you a few ranking. Also, any toon that doesn’t have WvW exp can level up really easy because getting to Rank 5 takes way less experience. I did that for all my toons, yet didn’t really need it. If you have killed all the yaks and sentries you needed to kill plus taken the towers and camps, then you could have been able to get that Achievement easily. I don’t have experience with any of the lower tier servers, so that may be something that can work against you but shouldn’t still be impossible.

1. World Ranker*
2. Kills
3. Gates/Walls destroyed
4. Towers/keeps/castles **

That’s it. No other achievements please.

. Disable the laurel achievement at the start of leagues
*. Merge the achievement, but give more points for keeps than towers.

The worst thing about the achievement meta was that it encouraged a tit-for-tat karma train. There was really no point to defending anything (aside from getting the repair achievement), because if you happened to own everything — you couldn’t get the points for capturing something. Therefore you had to let your opponent capture it, so you could backcap it. Whee, instant round thing jerking.

Dale Rojo.7485:

Your cheevies looked about the same as mine up until a week ago. I only haven’t done the Merc meta.

About World Ranker, that one was indeed easy as well. Running with a winning zerg could easily net you a few ranking. Also, any toon that doesn’t have WvW exp can level up really easy because getting to Rank 5 takes way less experience. I did that for all my toons, yet didn’t really need it. If you have killed all the yaks and sentries you needed to kill plus taken the towers and camps, then you could have been able to get that Achievement easily. I don’t have experience with any of the lower tier servers, so that may be something that can work against you but shouldn’t still be impossible.

I don’t run with zergs, so getting the rank up achievement was all reliant on me getting kills/taking camps/sentries/etc. by myself. That’s why most roamers don’t even have guard stacks yet. That achievement is really hard to get the real way for somebody who doesn’t zerg. That one was one of those I feel like if I didn’t play as often as I did, I may not have gotten it.

celeron.3469:

I don’t run with zergs, so getting the rank up achievement was all reliant on me getting kills/taking camps/sentries/etc. by myself. That’s why most roamers don’t even have guard stacks yet. That achievement is really hard to get the real way for somebody who doesn’t zerg. That one was one of those I feel like if I didn’t play as often as I did, I may not have gotten it.

I had the opposite problem. I almost predominantly zerg, I don’t enjoy roaming at all. Unfortunately, to complete this meta I had to do quite a bit of roaming because getting yaks and sentries, in particular, are extremely difficult in a zerg if you straggle behind even a little bit (not hard to do if you don’t have perma-swiftness).

I also never do ruins, so I had to solo all 50 of those during off-peak times. While not particularly difficult (at least I rarely ran into anyone else), it was not fun at all and completely unrewarding outside of the achievement itself.

The only reason I got Demolition Expert is because my server’s been awesome about letting people who didn’t have the achievement on siege, normally I don’t man siege at all.

I won’t be finishing this meta even though I’ve been active every week of the season. They need to seriously re-evaluate this if they ever expect to do this again.

My server sucked hard during the majority of the season which was not enjoyable and coupled with some of these achievements required for the meta has turned me off quite a bit.

Add a kitten daily wvw like you do for other living world events or count me out.

You may say well you’re just one player, which is true, but look at how empty some of the servers are when in the mists and I’ll say, I’m not alone.

Most of these were doable with little to no effort. However, some were ridiculous.

The merc camp one required not only getting in EB, but then having to deal with the PvE events stuck there. Sure, I could spend a several hours with a small group flipping those, but for what purpose? Those camps are only helpful in battle in certain situations. I’d rather actually be playing WvW, not fighting NPCs.

The sentries were the most annoying – people would disregard the commander’s instructions to skip it, then cause us to wipe because they weren’t where they were suppose to be.

The ruins were a joke. I wasted a few hours one day just running in circles capping them. I doubt very many people actually tried to strategically accomplish this one.

Dolyak kills was perfect for small roaming groups, though I saw way too many people gaming the system just to get it done. Kill the dolyaks, leave the camp. Run to the next camp, kill the dolyaks. Run back to the first camp, and repeat. While this was marginally useful for the server, it would have been better if they had taken the camp for PPT and supplies.

Demolition Expert was buggy for me. I’d get on a treb, knock down a wall, then go help take the keep and still not get the achievement. I tried rams, catapults, FGS, in a party, and all I was able to get was 10. Thankfully I had the JPs so it wasn’t a huge deal, though I would have liked those achievement points.

I would love it if they could come up with some sort of achievement that promoted defending places. I don’t come to WvW to just run around flipping abandoned towers.

matty.1052:

The merc camp one required not only getting in EB, but then having to deal with the PvE events stuck there. Sure, I could spend a several hours with a small group flipping those, but for what purpose? Those camps are only helpful in battle in certain situations. I’d rather actually be playing WvW, not fighting NPCs.

I learned the hard way that you can’t easily flip the merc camps. Since I never usually bother with them I didn’t realize each one had an event to complete before you could work on being friendly with them.

Even then, a few of us on my server yesterday were talking about trying to get as many done as possible before reset, but after the 3 of them were capped neither of our opponents ever tried to take them so what could we do?

Also, words cannot express my abject hatred of the toxic alliance BS being put in the middle of all this for basically the entire season. Way to make an already ridiculous achievement “hard mode” by littering the area with tightly packed veterans, elites, semi-permanent DoT damage, etc.

Not to mention all of the yaks the toxics they placed along the roads killed, making that achievement all the more tedious than it already was.

I’m still missing 45 achievement points. Last 2 tiers of Dolyak. Last tier of Ruins. Last tier of sentries. Last tier of merc camps.

Just got boring in the last few matchups when there was still time enough to finish it. Most of my server stopped playing WvW already and I just decided to ignore the achievements even though there wre only few left. As long as I have the meta it is fine.

And that is the biggest problem: If they give to winning server a lot more rewards then people that only are playing for achievements get some bigger rewards and maybe have only played the first matchup. People at other servers that played all the time WvW for real and for fun(and barely managed to do the achievements because they do other usefull stuff like scouting which is not giving achievements) might be on lower server and get less rewards even though they have “worked” a lot more.