Guild Wars 2

I thought the dragon lighting ceremony was cool. That was more involved. It had a plot, a mystery. I agree that the press F thing is a tad annoying, but I started to like it after awhile. Fulfills an OCD side of me.

I enjoyed the story instance but then this…

This is pointless grind and busywork. This isn’t fun.

I can’t even figure out why arena net would do this. It’s not like they need to keep people playing non stop for subscription fees like other MMOs. Why can’t they just focus on making fun content.

Why force this pointless achievement grind in there? Why can’t it just be just “Burn 1 effigy” It wouldn’t be so bad if there was some gameplay to it but there isn’t. It’s literally just running around the map and pressing F.

Come to think of it, you’re right.

- eat 250 zaitaffy (double click 250 times)
- launch 150 fireworks (find, press F)
- break 150 pinatas (find, press F)
- enjoy fireworks display (…do nothing)
- kill holo monsters (this one is cool, and will net you the zaitaffy needed for #1)

Huh….and yet I continue to be entertained. Guess that explains tho why I do the achievements and then move on.

Dont forget the gold sunk into porting around the map. Gotta balance that economy yknow…

Yeah, I have no idea why they cant just make fun stuff either. 10 effigies makes sense, 50 is just annoying. Same for so much of the temp content in the last half a year. Bizarre.

come up with thing to do that involves F key

make shinys as a reward for frequent F key use

make promo vid and sneak in a shiny during the vid (hype the kitten out of dat shiny)

put lots of boxes out there and i mean lots of boxes, boxes out the wazoo if you will. elude to the idea that shinys are hidden in the almost infinite number of boxes

call the whole thing a monthly event, bash what ever

wash rinse repeat, different shiny, new name for box that shiny could possibly be in, tie in the name of the box to the new event name.

F key …. monies!!!!!!

To be fair, unless I missed it. You have until July 9 when the Dragon Bash Festival ends to do 50. That’s three weeks, or 2.4 effigies a day, sure not everyone can play every day, but it doesn’t seem that unreasonable when you look at how long you have to do it.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

To be fair, unless I missed it. You have until July 9 when the Dragon Bash Festival ends to do 50. That’s three weeks, or 2.4 effigies a day, sure not everyone can play every day, but it doesn’t seem that unreasonable when you look at how long you have to do it.

Yeah it’s fair since there is so much more to do in this game like grind dungeons and… nothing in pve.

The Ace.9105:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

To be fair, unless I missed it. You have until July 9 when the Dragon Bash Festival ends to do 50. That’s three weeks, or 2.4 effigies a day, sure not everyone can play every day, but it doesn’t seem that unreasonable when you look at how long you have to do it.

Yeah it’s fair since there is so much more to do in this game like grind dungeons and… nothing in pve.

I still have yet to do all of the dungeon exp paths, and those I have done, I’ve done once or twice. I mostly go world boss hunting or run around my favorite areas, the starting and ending norn areas (wayfair foothills? and frostgorge sound) or do a level of fractals. Play the game how you find it fun.

People were complaining that they had to do 50, when the content has been out for 2-5 hours? When we have 3 weeks to do it. That was my point. When they grind it out within the first day there is nothing left for the remaining 3 weeks except to go back to as you call it “grind dungeons and… nothing in pve.”

I’m not sure the OP was suggesting there was a lack of time in which to complete the achievement, nor that he/she had rushed through it and was now left without anything else to do … I believe the observation was moreso that additional content being included in the game is a repitition of the same action — find object, interact with object, run to next object, repeat … 50, 100, 300 times in a row …

I think the way they did it with collecting the memories during the Mad King Halloween event made more sense — you were running around to different places, collecting different objects, not running around to difference places repeating the same action … so, if by me bashing 150 pinatas gave me a 150 pieces of something I could use to construct a dragon-themed backpack or something along those lines, I think it would seem more purposeful.

This game has the biggest concentration of whiners I’ve ever seen.

You know what I’ve been doing? Map completion. Because I didn’t sit on my butt obsessively playing the game for hours every day since the launch grinding through the content. It’s a freaking video game, it has finite boundaries. If you’re going to sit and obsessively blast through everything as fast as possible just to get it done you’re going to run out of things to do and be left just grinding on the newest additions. Been playing since September and I’m only at 60% since I didn’t just blast through it all as fast as I could.

So Bash hasn’t been a real problem for me since, you know, I just kind of hit pinatas now and then as I walk by and collected all the taffy and fireworks I needed (and killed the holos) in the course of normal play. You know what that means I didn’t have to do? Double-click a taffy stack for several minutes straight. Run around hitting “F” on pinatas for three hours straight. Intentionally hunt down holograms for several hours straight (in fact, I got that done just cleaning up the Iron Marches map and doing the dailies each day).

Crazy, huh? You don’t just sit on your bum obsessively slaving away like the game is a long checklist and you don’t run out of content right away. Wow. Who would have thought?

Some of you people really need an actual hobby. You’d be a lot happier.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

The Ace.9105:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

To be fair, unless I missed it. You have until July 9 when the Dragon Bash Festival ends to do 50. That’s three weeks, or 2.4 effigies a day, sure not everyone can play every day, but it doesn’t seem that unreasonable when you look at how long you have to do it.

Yeah it’s fair since there is so much more to do in this game like grind dungeons and… nothing in pve.

I still have yet to do all of the dungeon exp paths, and those I have done, I’ve done once or twice. I mostly go world boss hunting or run around my favorite areas, the starting and ending norn areas (wayfair foothills? and frostgorge sound) or do a level of fractals. Play the game how you find it fun.

People were complaining that they had to do 50, when the content has been out for 2-5 hours? When we have 3 weeks to do it. That was my point. When they grind it out within the first day there is nothing left for the remaining 3 weeks except to go back to as you call it “grind dungeons and… nothing in pve.”

You use your own perspective on this. You are not all the others who have played this game for a long time and hope to get new content that would actually be challenging and fun to play. Nobody doesn’t care if YOU haven’t done all the content you could have done during these 10 months with only permanent content being fractals. Most of the players now just grind dungeons or akitten LA.

Hey c’mon! Think about it! 3 weeks dancing around effigies? WHAT ARE YOU THINKING! Does players really want to dance 3 weeks around the effigies? Right now there is no way for most of the players to play this game how they find it fun because there is some guys like YOU who tells how great this game can be without any new actual content. Play this game like you have played it running around foothills and frostgorge for about 10 months and then try to say that it’s FUN!

The southsun achievements felt much more reasonable. Consider the scavenger hunt to get the flower back piece- that was 10-15 things to collect? Perfect, and they event let you skip one so you didn’t have to do the JP. It was a nice way to explore the island, and if you already had it took a very short amount of time to port to the locations. The piñatas and fireworks are a similar sort of scavenger hunt thing but 100? 150? And with no mini reward? And crab toss had multiple titles associated with it, while dragon ball has none. The only step forward for this event is the increased box drop rate (I didn’t get a single crate for the hours and hours I spent in southsun) and the awesome new food (though I wish there was a >80 level option). All in all I agree with the op, this is not a good direction for the living story achievements to take.

Hamartia.3421:

Noticing lots of padding and almost no real content.

This game is amazing and I love it— because of the content that came out at launch through October.

I don’t know if different people are in charge or what— but the direction you’re taking the game in is bad.

I think the intention of these being the way they are is to give you something to do on the side throughout the whole of the event. Not to be grinded in one day.

The real meat of the event is finally approaching and only at the end do I believe we can judge.

You know every computer game ever made is just some combination of clicking and keyboard pressing. It’s not like you are going into the world and smashing things yourself.

Every activity ever made in any game ever can be made to sound boring by reducing it to its key strokes.

rfdarko.4639:

The southsun achievements felt much more reasonable. Consider the scavenger hunt to get the flower back piece- that was 10-15 things to collect? Perfect, and they event let you skip one so you didn’t have to do the JP. It was a nice way to explore the island, and if you already had it took a very short amount of time to port to the locations. The piñatas and fireworks are a similar sort of scavenger hunt thing but 100? 150? And with no mini reward? And crab toss had multiple titles associated with it, while dragon ball has none. The only step forward for this event is the increased box drop rate (I didn’t get a single crate for the hours and hours I spent in southsun) and the awesome new food (though I wish there was a >80 level option). All in all I agree with the op, this is not a good direction for the living story achievements to take.

I think the difference around the achievements is due to the location. Because it is an extended event there needs to be achievements that can last the whole event in a more casual manner (the “press f” achievements). However, we are not in a map with events and mobs that can keep us busy in addition to the simpler events. Only now that we have the effigies and the beginning of the story are we starting to enter the open world.

Black Regent.5897:

This game has the biggest concentration of whiners I’ve ever seen.

Holy crapola, this x10, x100, x a gazillion!
I wish I could +1 this post that many times.

And please for the love of everything good and decent stop all the whining!

While I like the jade weapon skins and do enjoy games of Dragon Ball when teams don’t just zerg, I find myself over all disappointed with Dragon Bash thus far. I made a good bit of gold the first day from farming, but the actual activities of the festival leave me missing the Dragon Festival from the original Guild Wars.

The Ace.9105:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

The Ace.9105:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

To be fair, unless I missed it. You have until July 9 when the Dragon Bash Festival ends to do 50. That’s three weeks, or 2.4 effigies a day, sure not everyone can play every day, but it doesn’t seem that unreasonable when you look at how long you have to do it.

Yeah it’s fair since there is so much more to do in this game like grind dungeons and… nothing in pve.

I still have yet to do all of the dungeon exp paths, and those I have done, I’ve done once or twice. I mostly go world boss hunting or run around my favorite areas, the starting and ending norn areas (wayfair foothills? and frostgorge sound) or do a level of fractals. Play the game how you find it fun.

People were complaining that they had to do 50, when the content has been out for 2-5 hours? When we have 3 weeks to do it. That was my point. When they grind it out within the first day there is nothing left for the remaining 3 weeks except to go back to as you call it “grind dungeons and… nothing in pve.”

You use your own perspective on this. You are not all the others who have played this game for a long time and hope to get new content that would actually be challenging and fun to play. Nobody doesn’t care if YOU haven’t done all the content you could have done during these 10 months with only permanent content being fractals. Most of the players now just grind dungeons or akitten LA.

Hey c’mon! Think about it! 3 weeks dancing around effigies? WHAT ARE YOU THINKING! Does players really want to dance 3 weeks around the effigies? Right now there is no way for most of the players to play this game how they find it fun because there is some guys like YOU who tells how great this game can be without any new actual content. Play this game like you have played it running around foothills and frostgorge for about 10 months and then try to say that it’s FUN!

Actually I have been playing since the 3day head start, thank you. And besides a break I took during the F&F event, I’ve been “casually” playing since Aug (only 900-1000 hours logged). Do I want new skills, more perm content, etc., yes. Do I want new content that is “challenging and fun to play” yes, but this is a holiday event, it should be treated as such. “Fun” casual content assessable to anyone at their own pace. Besides the game has been out of less than a year, and while my memory is too fuzzy to remember gw1’s first year of events. Things only got better with time. If 60-70% (or even just 30%) of the development time went into the reskin of LA, then next year that time can be put into more events.

Personally, I still find the game fun after 10 months, I wouldn’t still be playing it otherwise. I spent $150 on this game, and I feel I got my money’s worth and then-some. Any extra content since launch has just been icing on the cake for me. Whenever an expansion comes out, I’ll pick that up to, but I don’t demand hours of new content for free (though I won’t complain if that comes). I don’t find dungeons that fun, so I usually ignore them, if you find them fun then good. So if you want to yell at me for still enjoying a game how I want then go ahead. But to say a holiday isn’t fun just because you have to do something repetitive in a 1 hour block instead of over the remainder of the event isn’t really that fair.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Black Regent.5897:

This game has the biggest concentration of whiners I’ve ever seen.

Holy crapola, this x10, x100, x a gazillion!
I wish I could +1 this post that many times.

And please for the love of everything good and decent stop all the whining!

What really irks me is that people will gripe about things like this that basically just boil down to “WAH! I want the reward but I want it now and without having to actually do it because I don’t like it!” while there are actual, legitimate reasons to be irritated like, say, the messed up communication on the Dragonball achievements that led to tons of AFKers messing up DB arena for people who actually wanted to play it.

It’s like these people never played an MMO before. OMG! You have to tap F next to a couple of pinatas that respawn quickly and reliably in one place! So terrible! I mean… you LITERALLY have to break, what, 6 Pinatas a day each day to get the achievement? That entails breaking all the Pinatas in the area of the Mystic Forge once a day! I can’t be bothered with such a horrible burden! It would take almost a full minute to do that! And if I wanted to do all the Pinatas in Lion’s Arch it would take me a whole FIVE minutes! THE HORROR!

Meanwhile, I remember doing the Fire Festival achievements in WoW that required you to not only run around to your own towns and light bonfires, but forced you into PvP by making you go into enemy towns to extinguish there’s. Can you imagine the crying if people in GW2 had to do something like that? And god help them if they ever saw the ones that required you to actually go into the populated enemy cities.

I mean, I get that some people want ANET to focus on longer development of more in-depth content and that’s fine, but the whining because they actually have to do something to get the little achievement popup is so freaking annoying….

I have to admit that I’m not liking the Dragon Bash events either. I expected the fireworks show to be more choreographed. It doesn’t have to be overly complicated. Just having the dragon dodging the fireworks until it was finally downed by the last volley would have been worth watching.

I’m quite sick of the fireworks and pinatas. I feel the limit should have been 25 times or, like mentioned elsewhere, have a finite number scattered across the world that can only be accessed once. I’m so tired of pressing “F” just to increase an arbitrary number by 1 that, now that we have effigies, I just can’t be bothered to do it again. Not even for 50. It’s horrible game design.

I will admit that Moa racing is a very interesting concept but the implementation was horrible. Attaching an achievement to betting (ugh, more RNG nonsense) and making each bet 50 silver sucked the fun out of it.

Don’t even get me started on the Dragon Coffers. It’s apparent Anet isn’t listening because we have been screaming about how wrong it is to gate cosmetic items behind RNG chests since October.

Crossplay.2067:

I will admit that Moa racing is a very interesting concept but the implementation was horrible.

I think it would have been more entertaining if -

1. We could ride the Moas in the race!

or

2. We could BE the Moas in the race!

or

3. There was no race because some wacky asura inventor put experimental speed hormone in the moa feed but instead of making them faster it turned them into rampaging moa-dragons that we must bash in order to save Lion’s Arch. Kind of like bashing the piñatas, ’cept they bash back…

4. Moa-drawn chariots. With swords on the wheels. Yeah.

5. Moa juggling.

Tachenon.5270:

Crossplay.2067:

I will admit that Moa racing is a very interesting concept but the implementation was horrible.

I think it would have been more entertaining if -

1. We could ride the Moas in the race!

or

2. We could BE the Moas in the race!

or

3. There was no race because some wacky asura inventor put experimental speed hormone in the moa feed but instead of making them faster it turned them into rampaging moa-dragons that we must bash in order to save Lion’s Arch. Kind of like bashing the piñatas, ’cept they bash back…

4. Moa-drawn chariots. With swords on the wheels. Yeah.

5. Moa juggling.

Either of the first 2 would have been awesome!

Black Regent.5897:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Black Regent.5897:

This game has the biggest concentration of whiners I’ve ever seen.

Holy crapola, this x10, x100, x a gazillion!
I wish I could +1 this post that many times.

And please for the love of everything good and decent stop all the whining!

What really irks me is that people will gripe about things like this that basically just boil down to “WAH! I want the reward but I want it now and without having to actually do it because I don’t like it!” while there are actual, legitimate reasons to be irritated like, say, the messed up communication on the Dragonball achievements that led to tons of AFKers messing up DB arena for people who actually wanted to play it.

It’s like these people never played an MMO before. OMG! You have to tap F next to a couple of pinatas that respawn quickly and reliably in one place! So terrible! I mean… you LITERALLY have to break, what, 6 Pinatas a day each day to get the achievement? That entails breaking all the Pinatas in the area of the Mystic Forge once a day! I can’t be bothered with such a horrible burden! It would take almost a full minute to do that! And if I wanted to do all the Pinatas in Lion’s Arch it would take me a whole FIVE minutes! THE HORROR!

Meanwhile, I remember doing the Fire Festival achievements in WoW that required you to not only run around to your own towns and light bonfires, but forced you into PvP by making you go into enemy towns to extinguish there’s. Can you imagine the crying if people in GW2 had to do something like that? And god help them if they ever saw the ones that required you to actually go into the populated enemy cities.

I mean, I get that some people want ANET to focus on longer development of more in-depth content and that’s fine, but the whining because they actually have to do something to get the little achievement popup is so freaking annoying….

Based off the OPs initial comment, I would think he/she would find the situation described (putting out bonfires in own town/extinguishing those in an enemy’s town) to be very preferable to whacking pinatas 150 times. I don’t believe anyone was suggesting that the time involved was inconsequential, whether done in an hour or stretched out over the next three weeks. I believe the observation was that the task itself, on top of 300 candies on top of 100 fireworks, on top of 300 holo creatures (which is different, albeit, then simply pressing F) is rather trivial and inconsequential and something a little “meatier” is desired.

Again, I mentioned accumulating pages/memories during the Halloween event which was still a collection quest, and broken down to its basics, was still gathering x amount of x, but in the end, the pages/memories were combined to provide the player with the backpiece. Somehow, I think more people preferred that than even doing what you were suggesting, which is, while I’m in Hoelbrak, I might as well whack these pinatas. It’s not the time involved, but the point, I believe is being brought into question.

And if there is no real point to it — if it’s merely content for content’s sake — why have it be 300, 150, or 50 even? Why not 5 or 10? Those who will burn through new content will do so regardless of the number, and those who won’t will attest to there being the sufficient amount of time to tag one here or there as they happen upon said task in their wanderings. And I think that was the point to the OPs post — the desire for content with a point/purpose/deeper meaning. Yes, this is a “Bash” rather than a living story update, but aspects of this were very similar to the early stages of F & F as well.

On a sidenote, I personally agree with your method of doing it as my play-style is very similar … I don’t have map completion, no legendary, never been in a dungeon, in no rush to do anything … hell, i have 17 chars total at levels all across the board. No rush to get them decked out in dungeon gear with ascended this and that, wielding Twilight or Bifrost, etc. … so if i happen upon a holo or a pinata, i’ll do it, but i’m not going out of my way to do so …

The effigy achievement is hardly a grind, I’ve gotten 12% without using Waypoints and with a lot of detours for holograms and events in the time it took me to watch an episode of Dr Who.

Black Regent.5897:

What really irks me is that people will gripe about things like this that basically just boil down to “WAH! I want the reward but I want it now and without having to actually do it because I don’t like it!”

I don’t think i’ve ever read anyone actually say anything that resembles that at all. I have heard tons of people say they want a reward for doing something interesting or challenging in place of mind-numbing grinding and/or RNG.

It’s like these people never played an MMO before. OMG! You have to tap F next to a couple of pinatas that respawn quickly and reliably in one place! So terrible! I mean… you LITERALLY have to break, what, 6 Pinatas a day each day to get the achievement? That entails breaking all the Pinatas in the area of the Mystic Forge once a day! I can’t be bothered with such a horrible burden! It would take almost a full minute to do that! And if I wanted to do all the Pinatas in Lion’s Arch it would take me a whole FIVE minutes! THE HORROR!

No one in any thread i’ve ever read has complained that breaking pinatas is too hard. Plenty of people are complaining about it being lazy, boring, non-content filler though.

If the achievement asked me to do something interesting that took twice as long, I wouldn’t be complaining.

I’m happy to invest tons of time in Guild Wars 2 as long as it is fun. But it is ceasing to be fun.

You basically either try to run through it and get it over as fast as possible, causing it to feel like a grind, or you do it casually as you explore that map, in which case it completely feels like forgettable non-content. Either way, its a stinker as a mechanic.

I agree with mojowalker. Its not a necessary conclusion that people whinging about the “press f 150” just want the event to be easier. Maybe some do, but I think most people actually want something harder – just less monotonous. Difficulty and tedium are not the same.

Your solution to “just bash a few a day” works so long as you have time to play everyday. Some people only have time set aside on a few days a week – do they want to spend a chunk of that time lighting 30 fireworks and bashing 40 pinatas? Is there anything inherently fun in that activity? No, its a chore, plane and simple. You can make the chore more manageable by spreading it out (if you have the time), but I think it’s a legitimate criticism to say the pinatas and fireworks are grinds with no intrinsic worth.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Actually I have been playing since the 3day head start, thank you. And besides a break I took during the F&F event, I’ve been “casually” playing since Aug (only 900-1000 hours logged). Do I want new skills, more perm content, etc., yes. Do I want new content that is “challenging and fun to play” yes, but this is a holiday event, it should be treated as such. “Fun” casual content assessable to anyone at their own pace. Besides the game has been out of less than a year, and while my memory is too fuzzy to remember gw1’s first year of events. Things only got better with time. If 60-70% (or even just 30%) of the development time went into the reskin of LA, then next year that time can be put into more events.

Personally, I still find the game fun after 10 months, I wouldn’t still be playing it otherwise. I spent $150 on this game, and I feel I got my money’s worth and then-some. Any extra content since launch has just been icing on the cake for me. Whenever an expansion comes out, I’ll pick that up to, but I don’t demand hours of new content for free (though I won’t complain if that comes). I don’t find dungeons that fun, so I usually ignore them, if you find them fun then good. So if you want to yell at me for still enjoying a game how I want then go ahead. But to say a holiday isn’t fun just because you have to do something repetitive in a 1 hour block instead of over the remainder of the event isn’t really that fair.

Okay. The problem here is that this “fun” event isn’t that fun. Achievements are pain. SOLO (this game is MASSIVELY !MULTIPLAYER! online rpg) story instance was max 5 min long and you didn’t have to really do anything and the next update which probably includes max 5 min SOLO (again this game is MASSIVELY !MULTIPLAYER! online rpg) story instance where you don’t really have to do anything comes next day. It feels like that Anet is making this game “fun to play” for those who have just started playing so that they can get more money. I know that GW2 is 10 months old but if anet wants GW2 to be best mmorpg game ever… this is not the way. This game should have already be better than other mmo games and include good mmo features used in those other games. You said that dungeons are not so fun and that is the point. Fun is happening when you level up your character. After that there is nothing for lvl 80 except wvw or spvp or dungeon grinding which is not fun anymore after 10 months(no challenge at all) or then visit old areas over and over again(boring).

I know that this is holiday event but so was the halloween and the wintersday. If you try to remember what kind of achievements or events were back then I am sure that you realize what is happening. GW2 atm runs automatically and new content just repeats the old pattern with different skins. Anet is a big company and they could do so much more. (Does anet have all those programmers who couldn’t get a job from elsewhere?) This dragon bash content here can be done with roughly 2 programmers in about 2-3 weeks.

I don’t know what the rest of the GW2 team is doing other than celebrating this dull content like this is something different and new. They just celebrate and ignore forums and those good ideas that players are having to make this game better.

I don’t actually even know what we celebrate. We haven’t bashed any dragons and if you count zhaitan… “Zhaitan will be extremely hard and you encounter him in a dungeon” What? Where is that extremely hard zhaitan? This dragon bash should be an event where we gather an army and then attack the dragons. After that the bash celebration should start.

Idk if anet is just partying but right now it feels like that anet isn’t doing really anything. Every skin is fan designed and even content like super mega “fun” box is a fan creation. Without those…idk.

There is no signs of that game they promised us and they aren’t answering these forums posts because they know that this game isn’t the game they promised. Sadly, they are not doing really anything about it.

Rooks Zaer.5846:

Of course they’ll open the Crystal Desert at some point.

The story will be completable in about an hour. There will be a single pvp-like instance that rewards containers of some sort. They will also drop off mobs. In the containers will be consumables mostly. Maybe one jumping puzzle will be included. There will also be achievements that require you to mash your interact key a hundred times or so on various things. Completing them all will give you a back item.

Along with offering new, exciting items in the Mystical Crystal Coffers….available now in the gem store! These coffers will have a few new mini pets, along with a rare chance to contain a Sandstorm Weapon Ticket!

These updates can practically write themselves at this point.

This is a great example how they are going to use this automatic system with other updates in the future with new and old areas.

mojowalker.3798:

Based off the OPs initial comment, I would think he/she would find the situation described (putting out bonfires in own town/extinguishing those in an enemy’s town) to be very preferable to whacking pinatas 150 times. I don’t believe anyone was suggesting that the time involved was inconsequential, whether done in an hour or stretched out over the next three weeks. I believe the observation was that the task itself, on top of 300 candies on top of 100 fireworks, on top of 300 holo creatures (which is different, albeit, then simply pressing F) is rather trivial and inconsequential and something a little “meatier” is desired.

I don’t get that at all. I get the impression it’s just whining because people have CHOSEN to do the whole thing all at once instead of just playing the game.

It’s like this every event. People gripe and whine and kitten and moan because it’s “so repetitive”, but it’s only like that because they insist on zeroing in on that one goal and doing it end to end. If you just whack the nearby pinatas in LA each time you’re there you’ll finish the achievement no fuss no muss in one year. If you just play the bloody game and stop at holos when you see them, same thing. Same thing with the candy and fireworks.

None of this has to be a grind, people just MAKE it a grind because for whatever reason they want to rush through the list like they’re grocery shopping, then they come in here and whine. ANET’s updating the friggin’ game every few weeks, no, you’re not going to get hefty new expansion-level additions. But as far as little sidebars to NORMAL PLAY these things aren’t so bad. Far better than Southsun. At least you don’t have to just stay in one zone the whole time.

As far as “meatier” content that requires more than just hitting a few keys now and then, I hate to break it to you people, but in case you didn’t notice at some point in the past 10 months, this is an MMO. It’s entire basis is pressing a couple hotkeys again and again. That’s just how MMOs work. If you don’t like that, you probably should not only uninstall Guild Wars 2 ASAP, you should probably go ahead and not buy ANYTHING in the genre.

And even at that, it’s baloney for most people. There’s already been a huge, blubbering teary-eyed uproar over the Jorbreaker back item and HOW DARE THEY add something that can’t reasonably be accomplished in one year!

This game is just full of whiners. There’s plenty of problems, some objective like bugs and poor communication and some subjective desires for different game design, but about 95% of what gets posted on this forum is just whining because people in this game just have no patience or perspective. Granted, most of what gets posted on any MMO forum is just whining, but this game really takes the cake on crybabies.

panzer.6034:

You basically either try to run through it and get it over as fast as possible, causing it to feel like a grind, or you do it casually as you explore that map, in which case it completely feels like forgettable non-content. Either way, its a stinker as a mechanic.

This. Exactly. It seems the developers are getting lazier and lazier. Each event having less and less actual content.

Consider the holograms. Why are they there? Who put them there? Is there a story behind them at all? Did the devs just steal the idea from Wintersday and repackage it?
During Wintersday, you had Tixx’s airship which was presumably dropping the gifts as a form of self-promotion. Any story attached to the holos here at all?

Bread.7516:

most of the achievements during dragon bash is a repetitive grind.

they did southsun achievements right; dragon bash achievements sucked

I’m glad someone agrees. This is such a huge grind fest. 300 holographic minions is a tad ridiculous of a grind. I’m at 172/300, I get we get 4 per but come on.

Yeah I dont see how this is sposed to be fun at all. Why not add a boss or ten for us to kill? This is an mmo where im playing a tree person that shoots fireballs. LET ME SHOOT FIREBALLS AT THINGS! Not press F with some kittening trees after walking all over the world. Not fun arenanet.

I wouldnt care if you’d made me kill a thousand somehtings. Ten thousand. At least I’d be playing the game instead of running around pressing F

F

F

F

F

Hamartia.3421:

Noticing lots of padding and almost no real content.

This game is amazing and I love it— because of the content that came out at launch through October.

I don’t know if different people are in charge or what— but the direction you’re taking the game in is bad.

That’s why I stoped paying attention the kittenty new content (temporal so who cares) and the stupid rewards (useless shinies anyways) and focus only on the game I paid for (you know, the hearts and dynamics events all around the world) and I’m really enjoying it (except for all the bugged event, that really bother me but well, better than nothing).

Tired of these events, they are fun but only for about 10 mins, then the novelty wears off, the RNG and monotonous F spamming achievements set in and I’m bored again. I would rather they didn’t add them, and just left the game alone so they could pour all their resources into getting an expansion out sooner.

Just my opinion, still gotta hand it to them, the voice acting, and the graphics and changes to LA and everything, it’s a lot of effort on their part, and it’s nice to see they care, even if they ignore alot of the posts on forums… especially in the dungeons section. It’s a pity that it’s not working out so well, especially given the RNG cash shop stuff which is leaving a bad taste in people’s mouths. I get the feeling NC Soft has the final say on cash shop additions, it doesn’t seem like Anet philosophy in that area.

I’m seeing a lot of people here with absolutely zero reading comprehension.
No one’s saying the achievements are too time consuming or that they want the reward without working for it. What OP is saying is that achievements/content it’s boring, pressing F is boring. I don’t even want the rewards (didn’t bother with any living story rewards yet, they all make you look like a goofy clown), I just want to experience a fun game!

I don’t get it, why don’t they actually do a living story and change events here and there around the world?

Maybe the Norn are on a hunting spree and want to kill as many holograms as possible so they can brag to their friends? Or a norn child and her brother feel very strongly about protecting their family, even though they’re just children they want to destroy the holograms because it’s giving the family bad memories. But they get overwhelmed and we have to help them.

Help young asura progeny decorate the area with pinatas? Then a new event lets you break them?

(Chain event) An event where you have to gather materials for fireworks? A (easy) jumping puzzle/vista where you can launch fireworks at the end? A sylvari is trying to impress his beloved with a display of fireworks. When we finish event and launch fireworks, you can now press F on the vista and you’ll see the fireworks!

Lionguard could have requested supplies from different towns/villages, to help decorate LA, fabric, paint, wood, etc. But, for example, Centaurs keep raiding us to take the supplies/wood we gathered so they can build their siege equipment, bandits keep stealing paint and trolling villagers (painting apples, dumping it on some pretty girl’s hair, painting over road signs) etc.

…

Skritt are stealing shinny pinatas and you’ve gotta stop them? When the event ends you can smash the pinatas.

When you try to catch the candy that fell on the floor, the skritt try to steal it (because it has a shinny wrapper). If they steal too many you go on a quest to take them back.

….

Event where we need to find out the best animal to train for racing. Drakes? Skales? Maybe a sylvari pupmaster dreams his fern hounds will become famous!

Help train moas for racing. Escort moas to LA (from gendaran fields for example).

The event NPCs can become merchants who sell zhaitaffy.

Catch moas for moa racing. Maybe you have to Knockdown or Stun them before you can catch them (F). Could be a mini game!

They already have the code for pretty much all this stuff, for example catching young dolyaks in wayfarer foothills, or catching animals for the charr arena.

When we get the email about Aetherblade, we try to stop them at places near LA (even if we have to fail it for story reasons)

They could have each city have a different mini game to spread out the population?

And because of interesting quests, not everyone goes to the beginner areas where enemies are easier to kill for Lv 80s. Because of interesting quests all over the world, people spread out.

It would be good if every city had sign posts and heralds at all times that you could check every day and see what’s new. It could point out important events in surrounding areas.

Right now it’s more like Dead Story, and we’re a bunch of undead going around and pressing F
:D

If I’m just a nobody and can come up with this stuff in 10 minutes, I expect an actual game designer to come up with even more interesting/fun things since they’re PAID to do it.

Lord Kuru.3685:

panzer.6034:

You basically either try to run through it and get it over as fast as possible, causing it to feel like a grind, or you do it casually as you explore that map, in which case it completely feels like forgettable non-content. Either way, its a stinker as a mechanic.

This. Exactly. It seems the developers are getting lazier and lazier. Each event having less and less actual content.

Consider the holograms. Why are they there? Who put them there? Is there a story behind them at all? Did the devs just steal the idea from Wintersday and repackage it?
During Wintersday, you had Tixx’s airship which was presumably dropping the gifts as a form of self-promotion. Any story attached to the holos here at all?

Of course! holos be bad. The End.

mojowalker.3798:

Black Regent.5897:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Black Regent.5897:

This game has the biggest concentration of whiners I’ve ever seen.

Holy crapola, this x10, x100, x a gazillion!
I wish I could +1 this post that many times.

And please for the love of everything good and decent stop all the whining!

What really irks me is that people will gripe about things like this that basically just boil down to “WAH! I want the reward but I want it now and without having to actually do it because I don’t like it!” while there are actual, legitimate reasons to be irritated like, say, the messed up communication on the Dragonball achievements that led to tons of AFKers messing up DB arena for people who actually wanted to play it.

It’s like these people never played an MMO before. OMG! You have to tap F next to a couple of pinatas that respawn quickly and reliably in one place! So terrible! I mean… you LITERALLY have to break, what, 6 Pinatas a day each day to get the achievement? That entails breaking all the Pinatas in the area of the Mystic Forge once a day! I can’t be bothered with such a horrible burden! It would take almost a full minute to do that! And if I wanted to do all the Pinatas in Lion’s Arch it would take me a whole FIVE minutes! THE HORROR!

Meanwhile, I remember doing the Fire Festival achievements in WoW that required you to not only run around to your own towns and light bonfires, but forced you into PvP by making you go into enemy towns to extinguish there’s. Can you imagine the crying if people in GW2 had to do something like that? And god help them if they ever saw the ones that required you to actually go into the populated enemy cities.

I mean, I get that some people want ANET to focus on longer development of more in-depth content and that’s fine, but the whining because they actually have to do something to get the little achievement popup is so freaking annoying….

Based off the OPs initial comment, I would think he/she would find the situation described (putting out bonfires in own town/extinguishing those in an enemy’s town) to be very preferable to whacking pinatas 150 times. I don’t believe anyone was suggesting that the time involved was inconsequential, whether done in an hour or stretched out over the next three weeks. I believe the observation was that the task itself, on top of 300 candies on top of 100 fireworks, on top of 300 holo creatures (which is different, albeit, then simply pressing F) is rather trivial and inconsequential and something a little “meatier” is desired.

Again, I mentioned accumulating pages/memories during the Halloween event which was still a collection quest, and broken down to its basics, was still gathering x amount of x, but in the end, the pages/memories were combined to provide the player with the backpiece. Somehow, I think more people preferred that than even doing what you were suggesting, which is, while I’m in Hoelbrak, I might as well whack these pinatas. It’s not the time involved, but the point, I believe is being brought into question.

And if there is no real point to it — if it’s merely content for content’s sake — why have it be 300, 150, or 50 even? Why not 5 or 10? Those who will burn through new content will do so regardless of the number, and those who won’t will attest to there being the sufficient amount of time to tag one here or there as they happen upon said task in their wanderings. And I think that was the point to the OPs post — the desire for content with a point/purpose/deeper meaning. Yes, this is a “Bash” rather than a living story update, but aspects of this were very similar to the early stages of F & F as well.

On a sidenote, I personally agree with your method of doing it as my play-style is very similar … I don’t have map completion, no legendary, never been in a dungeon, in no rush to do anything … hell, i have 17 chars total at levels all across the board. No rush to get them decked out in dungeon gear with ascended this and that, wielding Twilight or Bifrost, etc. … so if i happen upon a holo or a pinata, i’ll do it, but i’m not going out of my way to do so …

You nailed it.

Glad to see someone here has a brain; someone capable of analysis unlike the “wah whiner” response types..

They think that the “F” key literally stands for “fun”. The more you push it, the more fun!

ArenaNet has become so obsessed with locking their content behind grinds and time gates (or limited time events) that they are putting no effort at all into designing engaging or challenging gameplay.

It’s gotten to the point where you don’t say “I swung a sword, I swung a sword again” and all the new content boils down to “I pressed the F key, I pressed the F key again”. It must be so disappointing being a dev at ArenaNet going into the game with “lofty” goals but you end up producing this kind of content.

Black Regent.5897:

This game has the biggest concentration of whiners I’ve ever seen.

You know what I’ve been doing? Map completion. Because I didn’t sit on my butt obsessively playing the game for hours every day since the launch grinding through the content. It’s a freaking video game, it has finite boundaries. If you’re going to sit and obsessively blast through everything as fast as possible just to get it done you’re going to run out of things to do and be left just grinding on the newest additions. Been playing since September and I’m only at 60% since I didn’t just blast through it all as fast as I could.

So Bash hasn’t been a real problem for me since, you know, I just kind of hit pinatas now and then as I walk by and collected all the taffy and fireworks I needed (and killed the holos) in the course of normal play. You know what that means I didn’t have to do? Double-click a taffy stack for several minutes straight. Run around hitting “F” on pinatas for three hours straight. Intentionally hunt down holograms for several hours straight (in fact, I got that done just cleaning up the Iron Marches map and doing the dailies each day).

Crazy, huh? You don’t just sit on your bum obsessively slaving away like the game is a long checklist and you don’t run out of content right away. Wow. Who would have thought?

Some of you people really need an actual hobby. You’d be a lot happier.

You can’t just assault other players because you have a different play style. It’s selfish, arrogant, and wrong.

Concentrating certain things to certain period of time create the F-spam scene. You, on the other side, mixed it with normal game play. I won’t say there is any difference between these two: you still have to press certain amount of F and grind certain amount of holos, just at another time. This doesn’t change the fact that dragonbash is a F-spam grindy event.

Additionally, since this is a mmorpg, you should never run out of contents. Have you done all the achievements? Have you reached lvl 80 in spvp? Have you maxed out wvw traits? Have you gotten all the legendary? If you find you are running out of content easily besides doing world completion, to be honest, you must have been doing it wrong.

The easy way to fix this would have been to still have the effigies but make it 10-20 and have them guarded by a champion or even vet from the ceremony story. That would have made it seem like you were actually doing something.

The vets/champions were put in place to help prevent the ceremony and continue the story from the instance.

The entire event is one massive grind. Pre-launch, they seemingly would have agreed that grind in an MMO is just a clear sign of failed game design. That we get more and more grind with each monthly update just reinforces what’s becoming more and more obvious, post launch development has seen failed game design become an ever increasing hallmark of each update.

I don’t get it. Look at what this company created in five years. Divide it by six and compare that to what we’ve seen since launch. Productivity, quality and commitment to design principles all seem to have fallen right off a cliff.

I swung a sword, I swung a sword again= I hit f, I hit f again

Black Regent.5897:

This game has the biggest concentration of whiners I’ve ever seen.

You know what I’ve been doing? Map completion. Because I didn’t sit on my butt obsessively playing the game for hours every day since the launch grinding through the content. It’s a freaking video game, it has finite boundaries. If you’re going to sit and obsessively blast through everything as fast as possible just to get it done you’re going to run out of things to do and be left just grinding on the newest additions. Been playing since September and I’m only at 60% since I didn’t just blast through it all as fast as I could.

So Bash hasn’t been a real problem for me since, you know, I just kind of hit pinatas now and then as I walk by and collected all the taffy and fireworks I needed (and killed the holos) in the course of normal play. You know what that means I didn’t have to do? Double-click a taffy stack for several minutes straight. Run around hitting “F” on pinatas for three hours straight. Intentionally hunt down holograms for several hours straight (in fact, I got that done just cleaning up the Iron Marches map and doing the dailies each day).

Crazy, huh? You don’t just sit on your bum obsessively slaving away like the game is a long checklist and you don’t run out of content right away. Wow. Who would have thought?

Some of you people really need an actual hobby. You’d be a lot happier.

This post is a shining beacon of truth in the sea of idiocy that these forums are. Very well said!

“F” is the action button. Which is not the problem in itself. The achievement just need more completely to them. And less of a grind.

Bash da dwaggoonn, smash da dwagggon… Oh F the 50/30 F’egys.