Guild Wars 2

Unfortunately, and evidently, the so-called team devoted exclusively on designing Living Story content is not as well-skilled as A-net would like to believe. Ever since Dragon Bash update, we have been given some ridiculously time-consuming, unbearably boring (or difficult), horribly bugged achievements, which were required to earn the rewards. Specifically:

1) Dragon Ball Arena: We had to win 20 matches (?!), to complete the achievement. I understand that the people who come up with these achievement ideas may have unlimited free time, but some players in Guild Wars 2, do NOT. Also, it’s pointless to add achievements needed for the living story in a PvP-oriented mini-game. Each mini-game should have its own achievements to complete, separately, unrelated to any living story.

2) Open the chests near 30 “UNIQUE” (you forgot to mention that, didn’t you?) balloons. This means that a new player should rush their way to level 60-70 to have access in all the maps, since there are only two balloons in each map. So technically you say to the new players this way, level up within 2 weeks or you will never complete the achievement.

3) Kill 300 holographic monsters. Monsters that spawn from holographic devices, which OTHER players can activate and kill the monsters before you even manage to reach the spot. Then you would need to wait 7-8 minutes until the device was available to interact with again.

4) The part when we needed to kill 250 Aetherblade enemies, which only spawned near the Aetherblade Caches, and only 2-3 per minute. That is a total of 80-85 minutes of forcing us to be semi-AFK, waiting for the enemies to respawn so we can kill them. Brilliant? Nope.

5) Adding Living Story content within the maps of World Vs. World. Not much to say, highly counter-productive and a huge mistake to mix PvE content with WvW.

6) Similarly to the above mentioned issue of the extreme time-consumption of some living story achievements, the “Launch 100 fireworks”, “Pummel 150 pinatas”, “Light 50 effigies”, were just too much. Such achievements should require less time to be completed, and not be annoyingly repetitive like those older ones were.

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7) The “Support Evon/Kiel” living story was a bit more balanced, players could complete those achievements day by day without having to diverge a lot from their casual daily activities (i.e. dungeons, fractals, dynamic events). The only mistake you did there was the extremely badly designed Southsun Survival. Buggy, when it comes to awarding points for it. Why on Earth would someone get only 10-12 points after dying, when they have actually managed to survive longer than anyone and are among the 2-3 last ones staying alive?! And you expected players to actually get a score as high as 2500 points. Even the 1000 points was an intolerably frustrating task to do. You, dear designers, should keep in mind that not every player can be as effective in PvP content as others. You can rest assured you gave most players moments of frustration instead of the desired goal, which was to offer players FUN.

8) Eventually, we’ve come to talk about the latest living story, Queen’s Jubilee. The first part was fairly easy and relaxing, can’t really complain about anything other than the balloon chests mentioned earlier above. However, regarding the Queen’s Gauntlet… firstly I don’t understand why we “need” two different types of living story achievements to complete every 2 weeks. They take so much time, pulling us off any other game content we’d actually wish to do (WvW for example… a lot of people do not wish to do WvW anymore because the want to complete the living story achievements). Yet, as if the lack of time is not enough, you added these enemies in the Gauntlet Arenas, which well… I admit I like how each of them has their own mechanics, but the whole system overall is awfully designed. And I will explain why:
– Upon death, you are teleported outside the arena and you remain dead, with your armor being damaged. So technically we MUST beg friends or guildies to wait for us outside to revive us. Otherwise we have to pay to teleport, and then run aaaall the way back up there, and wait for our turn to fight if the arena is taken. Fail, just a big fat FAIL for that one.
– The floor inside the arenas is also badly designed, the AoE circles are not visible in some of the battles.
– The time limit to kill some enemies is ridiculously low.
– The camera angle is kittenED, like the person who programmed it. I am sorry for being rude, but the game has been released since one year ago and you’ve still NOT fixed the camera angle conflicting with the ceilings or walls. It’s impossible to see what’s happening most of the time, since those Gauntlet Arenas are in fact cages and don’t resemble an arena at all.

Perhaps some parts of the feedback are a bit inflammatory, but this is what I have collected from friends and guildies, summarized in this post.

Suggestions to improve Living story:
Do not add such time-consuming content in the living story achievements. Instead try to add minor achievements that players can complete along with their daily achievements, and ONLY those. Let’s say, if a new living story goes live, and is supposed to last for 14 days, players who want to complete it should try to play for 5-6 days during this period of two weeks to get their rewards from it. This way you will still allow players to focus on other content within the game and no one will feel they are missing on much by doing e.g. dungeon runs and fractals instead of focusing on living story achievements, and vice versa.

Nice book guy

MauricioCezar.2673:

Nice book guy

I think A-net appreciates detailed feedback. Whether it seems like a book or not, we hope they will look into these issues the living story has.

ok i understand where your coming from and they did add the daily and monthly part to the achievements this time which i hope stays for future ls stuff. i dont mind the repetitive stuff as long as its so high that one cant get it the Launch 100 fireworks”, “Pummel 150 pinatas”, “Light 50 effigies i thought were ok a pain but not that bad and easily doable for a person with limited time i did them all. i thought the 2500 for the southsun survival was a mite high so i agree 1000 would have been enough… the guantlet my biggest problem is this isnt permanent i dont have time to do real hard stuff so i skip it entirely if it was permanent i would get around to it i just dont have enough time to do real hard stuff thats going to go away.. thats why i did do any of the aetherblade stuff heard and saw from dev video that it was hard i did other things instead. just commenting on your feedback although it was a mite long it was well done

Naeleen.7601:

<snip>

1) Dragon Ball Arena: <snip>Each mini-game should have its own achievements to complete, separately, unrelated to any living story.

Thankfully, they’ve started doing that.

2) Open the chests near 30 “UNIQUE” (you forgot to mention that, didn’t you?) balloons. This means that a new player should rush their way to level 60-70 to have access in all the maps, since there are only two balloons in each map. So technically you say to the new players this way, level up within 2 weeks or you will never complete the achievement.

At least they should let the balloons reset each day. You can get 10 from beginning areas. It would take 3 days for newbies to get them for the balloon. Which isn’t that bad at all as opposed to being forced to level quickly. TBH their content this time focused much much more on the experienced and active player than it did the majority of their playerbase: the casuals (just look at achievement point leaderboards to see that).

3) Kill 300 holographic monsters. <snip>

can generally be avoided though (if I recall correctly I either avoided that achievement or didn’t need it or just got it by roaming through the world – obviously it wasn’t impressionable on me). I also hope they slow down on the Kill x number of y soon. That’s the biggest problem with the Queen’s Jubilee. All it is is kill x 100 times representing y! Plus the balloons.

4) The part when we needed to kill 250 Aetherblade enemies <snip>.

Who even are these Aetherblades? Why are they even here? I apparently missed the memo. Either way…. again… be more creative, like the Bazaar achievements and the balloons (and the balloons could use some updating too, as I mentioned before)!

5) Adding Living Story content within the maps of World Vs. World. Not much to say, highly counter-productive and a huge mistake to mix PvE content with WvW.

I see what they’re trying to do… get more people into WvW… but it just ends up being a bad experience for the PvE person trying to get an LS achievement and for the WvW person going about the fight. You don’t want people drawn in just to chase down map points or LS achievements – they end up having a bad experience and they often hurt, not help, their team. I’m just not sure what could help in that sense. To draw people into it that normally wouldn’t be drawn into it and then potentially decide they like it. If you aren’t a WvW person… you’re just not going to be one very likely.

6) Similarly to the above mentioned issue of the extreme time-consumption of some living story achievements, the “Launch 100 fireworks”, “Pummel 150 pinatas”, “Light 50 effigies”, were just too much. Such achievements should require less time to be completed, and not be annoyingly repetitive like those older ones were.

I wasn’t there for Dragon Bash so I can’t really comment, but yeah, that seems really really annoying.

My biggest miff about the Gauntlet is that it really alienates and discourages trying it if you only have one level 80 and like alts (and it really alienates people without a level 80!). It really should’ve been a PvP instance where it’s not a gold sink to repair armor AND waypoint after every single loss. Plus you’ll want to retrait(which is free in PvP)! And you could go on alts and go into spectator mode in a PvP instance. Plus, the graphics wouldn’t kill a lot of computers as it would be an instance. It also alienates people without gaming rigs (which is a whole LOT of your populace). Everyone would have an even playing field and obviously even people with level 80s and full exotic gear are having trouble with the final boss so just imagine the trouble for sidekicked up characters. Either way, it would still be difficult (they could in fact push up the difficulty), and everyone would have a fair chance. Plus, that would get people into the Mists. And attract them in a fun, positive manner unlike how they’ve been trying to with WvW.

Lorelei.7809:

Naeleen.7601:

<snip>

2) Open the chests near 30 “UNIQUE” (you forgot to mention that, didn’t you?) balloons. This means that a new player should rush their way to level 60-70 to have access in all the maps, since there are only two balloons in each map. So technically you say to the new players this way, level up within 2 weeks or you will never complete the achievement.

At least they should let the balloons reset each day. You can get 10 from beginning areas. It would take 3 days for newbies to get them for the balloon. Which isn’t that bad at all as opposed to being forced to level quickly. TBH their content this time focused much much more on the experienced and active player than it did the majority of their playerbase: the casuals (just look at achievement point leaderboards to see that).

I think balloons in areas equivalent to your level should reset daily. So, if you’re higher level (say 42 for a random number), the balloons in the level 35-45 and level 40-50 areas reset daily but the lower level ones don’t. If level 15 and under, the beginning area balloons would reset every day so a new character isn’t penalized for being new.

Lorelei.7809:

My biggest miff about the Gauntlet is that it really alienates and discourages trying it if you only have one level 80 and like alts (and it really alienates people without a level 80!). It really should’ve been a PvP instance where it’s not a gold sink to repair armor AND waypoint after every single loss. Plus you’ll want to retrait(which is free in PvP)! And you could go on alts and go into spectator mode in a PvP instance. Plus, the graphics wouldn’t kill a lot of computers as it would be an instance. It also alienates people without gaming rigs (which is a whole LOT of your populace). Everyone would have an even playing field and obviously even people with level 80s and full exotic gear are having trouble with the final boss so just imagine the trouble for sidekicked up characters. Either way, it would still be difficult (they could in fact push up the difficulty), and everyone would have a fair chance. Plus, that would get people into the Mists. And attract them in a fun, positive manner unlike how they’ve been trying to with WvW.

I believe the Gauntlet achievements were intended to be unattainable by a large portion of the player base. So the argument that the Gauntlet should have been designed to make it achievable by regular players isn’t really valid. (I say this as someone who can’t beat the first boss in the Gauntlet, probably.) The goal was to give the really elite players (you can define elite in terms of skill, gear, play time or whatever) something challenging to achieve.

The Jubilee achievements were intended to be (and are) attainable by all.

Aerial.4380:

I believe the Gauntlet achievements were intended to be unattainable by a large portion of the player base. So the argument that the Gauntlet should have been designed to make it achievable by regular players isn’t really valid. (I say this as someone who can’t beat the first boss in the Gauntlet, probably.) The goal was to give the really elite players (you can define elite in terms of skill, gear, play time or whatever) something challenging to achieve.

The Jubilee achievements were intended to be (and are) attainable by all.

I didn’t mind the high difficulty of those achievements. In fact I had already completed most of them when I created this thread. As I mentioned in the first post, the feedback is collected from guild mates and other friends I’ve been discussing the living stories content with. The frustrating part about Queen’s Gauntlet achievements was the lack of some elegant design pertaining to the battle mechanics and arena textures. I’m quoting myself here:
“…but the whole system overall is awfully designed. And I will explain why:
– Upon death, you are teleported outside the arena and you remain dead, with your armor being damaged. So technically we MUST beg friends or guildies to wait for us outside to revive us. Otherwise we have to pay to teleport, and then run aaaall the way back up there, and wait for our turn to fight if the arena is taken. Fail, just a big fat FAIL for that one.
– The floor inside the arenas is also badly designed, the AoE circles are not visible in some of the battles.
– The time limit to kill some enemies is ridiculously low.
– The camera angle is kittenED, like the person who programmed it. I am sorry for being rude, but the game has been released since one year ago and you’ve still NOT fixed the camera angle conflicting with the ceilings or walls. It’s impossible to see what’s happening most of the time, since those Gauntlet Arenas are in fact cages and don’t resemble an arena at all.”

Naeleen.7601:

Aerial.4380:

I believe the Gauntlet achievements were intended to be unattainable by a large portion of the player base. So the argument that the Gauntlet should have been designed to make it achievable by regular players isn’t really valid. (I say this as someone who can’t beat the first boss in the Gauntlet, probably.) The goal was to give the really elite players (you can define elite in terms of skill, gear, play time or whatever) something challenging to achieve.

The Jubilee achievements were intended to be (and are) attainable by all.

I didn’t mind the high difficulty of those achievements. In fact I had already completed most of them when I created this thread. As I mentioned in the first post, the feedback is collected from guild mates and other friends I’ve been discussing the living stories content with. The frustrating part about Queen’s Gauntlet achievements was the lack of some elegant design pertaining to the battle mechanics and arena textures. I’m quoting myself here:
“…but the whole system overall is awfully designed. And I will explain why:
– Upon death, you are teleported outside the arena and you remain dead, with your armor being damaged. So technically we MUST beg friends or guildies to wait for us outside to revive us. Otherwise we have to pay to teleport, and then run aaaall the way back up there, and wait for our turn to fight if the arena is taken. Fail, just a big fat FAIL for that one.
– The floor inside the arenas is also badly designed, the AoE circles are not visible in some of the battles.
– The time limit to kill some enemies is ridiculously low.
– The camera angle is kittenED, like the person who programmed it. I am sorry for being rude, but the game has been released since one year ago and you’ve still NOT fixed the camera angle conflicting with the ceilings or walls. It’s impossible to see what’s happening most of the time, since those Gauntlet Arenas are in fact cages and don’t resemble an arena at all.”

Sorry if I misquoted. I was actually responding to another poster who was complaining that the Gauntlet does not provide a level field for upleveled characters or characters with non-maxed gear.