Guild Wars 2

echo.2053:

5k/10k here all earned no store bought

36 wonderland acgives = 540 jumps/15 = 36 rounds / 2 = 18 hours worth. its been 6 days since start of event so / 6 = a mere 3 hours per a day

we still have 3 more weeks of this event 3*7=21 *16 ( giving you 8 hrs of sleep a night) = 336 hours. This isn’t including the fact that youll still be able to continue worthing on this achievement after festival is over.

Iv’e been earning 1k etoh a day easily so….

Ps even buying after the event isnt an issue it wont ever rise above a gold a drink. assumibng you havent drank 1 etoh 10k/365 = buying 27 a day and youll have it easily by next next xmas

The thing is, if you turn your complete attention towards the shoulders – you can sell everything you find for more drinks, which equals a higher than 80% droprate at least.

I ate all the candies and drank all the drinks, and once I had gotten ‘Sweet Tooth’ I simply began to sell the food as well as everything else until I had 10k drinks. Don’t this the wrong way though, it will be a lot of work still to earn Winter’s Presence, but if that is what you really want, this way I found – Worked really well. (Luckily for me, I pretty ran the JPs on autopilot, reaching around 500-600 clears something and that was enough for me, but I sold the superfluous items which dropped. (Most of them anyway.)

This does need some attention.
/Signed

Swagger.1459:

Maileen.1065:

Please Anet DON’T remove the requirement of doing the jumping puzzle 3 times….you already extended the drinking of 10k drinks for a whole year.

That’s pretty festive of you… Nice to know that some of you would like to force a requirement that some players can’t or won’t be able to do… That’s the holiday spirit!!!

You’re not forced to earn those shoulders. And if you want them, you have another year to earn them. Good luck and have fun.

wolfyrik.2017:

Kahli.4325:

wolfyrik.2017:

What’s really bizarre is that this one achievement makes the rest of the collection entirely pointless. If the goal is, as many apologists so far have claimed, to make the shoulders prestigious by way of rarity, then this one achievement alone is suffificent. Of course the prestige claim is obviously false, because no skill is required to achieve Festive Imbiber, only gold.

If the goal is to redistribute gold, then the first four achievements are sufficient in that respect, combined with an Imbiber achievement of 1000 would be pretty much overkill.

If the goal is metrics, then it still doesn’t really make sense. The grind will burn people out, the scrooginess will put some people off and the rest would have carried on playing anyway, so again 10,000 is overkill. Added to the fact that many have just bought the achievement and therfor have no need to keep logging in, and it still makes no sense.

It’s a baffling, cruel and exclusionary achievement that doesn’t really accomplish anything apart from brining out the cynic in everyone and spread ill-feelings throughout the community. I honestly can’t understand why Anet would do this.

Then I don’t understand half of the extremely poor decisions they’ve made of late.

Completed my shoulders today, through doing nothing else but the Jumping puzzle. It’s an insane ammount of work at first, but if you sell everything except for the drinks, you could in theory shorten the ammount of work through that.

It’s a lot of work though, many hours – even through being decent at the JP. (Since that is the most effecient way of doing it.)

then you’re very lucky to have those hours available, not everyone else does. I’ve played as much time this week as I’ve had available, got 9/10 collection items but still only reached 371 drinks. Between work and family, there is literally no way I can put that amount of time in to the game. Most people aren’t able to. What’s more, that you’ve put so many hours in doing the same thing, doesn’t make you any more skilled than the rest of us, you’ve just got more free time. Which of course in no way changes everything that’s wrong with this achievement. Infact you’ve just proven the point of the entire thread.

You have the entirety of the next year to work through the achievment, so time isn’t really a problem for anyone who really wants to get their hands on them. Not sure what you’re trying to prove, I merely stated the fact.
Even if I didn’t have the time to burn through to it, I’d still say that the 10k requirerment is fair and keeps it rare, as it imo., should be.

wolfyrik.2017:

What’s really bizarre is that this one achievement makes the rest of the collection entirely pointless. If the goal is, as many apologists so far have claimed, to make the shoulders prestigious by way of rarity, then this one achievement alone is suffificent. Of course the prestige claim is obviously false, because no skill is required to achieve Festive Imbiber, only gold.

If the goal is to redistribute gold, then the first four achievements are sufficient in that respect, combined with an Imbiber achievement of 1000 would be pretty much overkill.

If the goal is metrics, then it still doesn’t really make sense. The grind will burn people out, the scrooginess will put some people off and the rest would have carried on playing anyway, so again 10,000 is overkill. Added to the fact that many have just bought the achievement and therfor have no need to keep logging in, and it still makes no sense.

It’s a baffling, cruel and exclusionary achievement that doesn’t really accomplish anything apart from brining out the cynic in everyone and spread ill-feelings throughout the community. I honestly can’t understand why Anet would do this.

Then I don’t understand half of the extremely poor decisions they’ve made of late.

Completed my shoulders today, through doing nothing else but the Jumping puzzle. It’s an insane ammount of work at first, but if you sell everything except for the drinks, you could in theory shorten the ammount of work through that.

It’s a lot of work though, many hours – even through being decent at the JP. (Since that is the most effecient way of doing it.)

All the best wishes to you devs and community managers, have a merry christmas!

Lhos.1643:

One thousand is difficult but doable. That said, the fact that you can just buy the things you need to complete a holiday-themed collection and earn a vanity item is silly. The other achievements (15 JP, Toypocalypse rounds, etc) involve actually participating instead of paying.

This has both pros and cons. You aren’t forced to do the events to get the items needed. Or, if you have a buffer of gold saved up (Planned ahead.).

That being said, through JPs you can earn 200-300 Gifts / Hour, and around 180 I’ve heard from Choir bell. Doesn’t sound too unreasonable to me, especially since you could practically head into a usual farm mode if the Wintersday events grow tiresome.

My main issue with the events is that I can’t play them with a friend, otherwise I don’t have any real issues with it. And doing this would make it feel less of a chore overall.

Draknar.5748:

MithranArkanere.8957:

GussJr.1643:

lol It is not hard by any means… you either earn them by hard work inside the game… or earn them by hard work at your real life job…

Yeah. Forget about having fun and playing in a game. Let’s all just work.

Just all what people need from a game. More work.

While I agree 10,000 is a stupid amount to put a time constraint on, I think people really need to cool it with the “this is a game, I’m not supposed to work!” mentality.

Work and effort are not the same thing. Work is something you need to do to support yourself and your family. You will never and have never worked in GW2 (unless you are a gold farmer and sell gold for a living, I guess, shame on you). You may have to put effort into getting the things you want, and depending on the person, the amount of effort you are willing to put in will vary. You are never required to do any of it. You can put in as much or as little effort you want.

For me personally, the amount of effort required to get this skin is too much, so I won’t do it.

But to imply a game shouldn’t have items/achievements/skins that require effort to obtain, simply because we all work for a living, is something I just don’t agree with.

If you ever feel like what you’re doing in game is “work”, then stop doing it. There’s nothing in this game worth feeling like that.

Every item I’ve grinded for has been for something I wanted enough for that grind to not even phase me. But this snowy effect skin? Yea, that’s not worth the effort.

Agreed. I feel that it’s fine as is, and it’s pretty obvious Anet wants this to be something you have to put effort into earning. Much like the shoulders during Halloween.

I don’t mind the drinks at all, it’s not that insane of an achievment IF you have some spare gold to flip off – or time to spend on doing the Choir Bells or JP, that’s the only reasonable way to aquire vast ammounts of drinks without buying them.
The JP netting around 200-300ish Presents / Hour, and Choir around 180 I believe.

What I do really find horrible with the whole Wintersday is that you can’t play the events (Except Trixx.) with a friend, or two. It’s rediculus and pretty much goes against the whole idea of what christmas is. Instead it’s turned into a solo farm of instancing with random people.

There are prons and cons to these changes.

Pros -
You’ll have more people playing TD, more people doing the events and perhaps giving the map a chance. (I believe this is what Anet wants, for everyone to get a chance to enjoy the content. For in all honesty, the vast majority of players I saw during Chak Gerent before were averaging 90 mastery or so.)

Easier to drop in for a down and be done with it, as in you don’t have to tie yourself down for the event chain for hours on end to find a decent map.

Cons -

Less of a challenge for those seeking it, which in turn equals another zergfest. (Honestly I can’t think of anymore drawbacks than this to it.)

—

I figured they would nerf the content sooner or later as but a fraction of the playerbase cared to head into TD, and one could argue day and night about it being justified or not. More so since you have three casual maps to play, leaving TD quite a challenge in comparison to the others.

Personally, I found the pre-nerf TD pretty awesome. It was a challenge, but it wasn’t too hard in my opinion. Ran through it with Steve in the previous posts, some runs were successful, others not. But with Anet giving fails rewards as well, it remained fun even while failing.

However, I do understand why this nerf was handed down. TD was for most part empty, unless you ran it with a pug commander. Teamspeak wasn’t needed, but some kind of organisation was required I’d say. Commanders communicating with the new people, hoping they listened or knew their business. And most importantly of all, you couldn’t slack with the dishing of damage.

With that being said though, I’m sure there are more pros and cons to this (obviously.) but I personally don’t mind this change, intended or not. I’ll still be going through it, shame about it being easier now, but I understand them changing Gerent.

I enjoy old Tyria greatly, but started to enjoy HoT just as much. Except the masteries behind the adventures, otherwise I actually like the time I spend there.

I enjoy this Wintersday in all honesty, like the slight changes they’ve made, and the things they kept around since before. Try to find some christmas spirit or some actual Swagger, and live happily ever after.

ugrakarma.9416:

Kahli.4325:

LFG system should get a rework, this shouldn’t be too hard to code either.

i didnt ask too much, just create a separate category for raids, this will eliminate 90% of pollution on LFG.

That’s probobly a good idea and do the same with each map that works around timers like the ones in HoT do, whilst keeping the general tab open for misc groups parties?

Gaaroth.2567:

Granted you are right and there are things that need URGENT fixing (i feel too that taxi/map instances/map partecipation is the FIRST thing), I’m really happy with HoT in general and really looking forward for the upcoming features

Looking forward to see what Anet brings out next. I think they’ve done a good job all in all, they are just people, like us. And with the recent barrage of negativity on the forums, more so than constructive criticism, and that in turn doesn’t really help mend things a whole lot for neither the readers or the devs.

Redfeather.6401:

I roamed HoT last night and had a lot of fun.

But then I managed to unlock a mastery after all that time, the talking to frogs one. So I talked to frogs and saw more locks. Is truly such an awful thing to do. I’m positive the average video game player is going to look negatively on such decisions.

So I’m skipping every mastery that feels like it won’t add to the game play. I would like to enjoy the good parts at least. Maybe put giant red text warnings above all poorly implemented mechanics locked behind xp bars. Something like “This unlock is a means to exploit your hopes”. lol

Some decisions does make you wonder, but even with the flaws of the expansion I’d still say that there’s some great fun to be had and experience in it. Is it perfect? No, but I’d say it’s quite fun still, and why play a game if not for the fun?

kuritsutian.2987:

snip

Yeah, well I really wasn’t a fan of it in the beginning. Neither were many of my friends, but I’ve begun to like it more and more. Though I know many on my friendlist who aren’t that big fans of it.

I also really despised Tangled Depths, but the more I spent time on the map, the more I began to like it. Think it will grow on people with time, but some will hate it with a passion I’m sure.

The following words come from someone who did hate the expansion at release, even with my having enjoyed their game for about three years now. I’ve explored, done puzzles, jumped here and there. Built a legendary or two, as well as completed Mawdrey through the journey of finding a fair, yet challenging enjoyment out of the Living Story 2 content.

I’d say that there’s always been a hardcore audience as well as a casual one to GW 2, even though the former mentality has evaded my personal understanding.

I really did hate Heart of Thorns at first. I found it confusing, unrewarding and just plain boring. I didn’t return after my first few visits there, and it wasn’t because the content offered proved too difficult, instead it was more of being walled in-between masteries to explore, and the more I think about it, that was probobly why I found it so incredibly dull to begin with.

A few weeks later I decided to give it another try, and having unlocked Mushrooms, Updraft and Nuhoch Wallows, I found myself enjoying the expansion more and more. Leveling became rather fun, even with the, to me – minor annoyances of maxing out HoT masteries which have started to come up towards the end. Adventures with masteries tucked into Gold, and having a good/perfect run ruined with even the most minute of lags. A glider activating half a second too late, or a skill activating just a bit too slow can lead to a few frustrating moments of throwing things around, or the risk of possible head injury due to facedesking.

With this being said, I’ve begun to enjoy HoT in its current state. Sure, Anet needs to work on a few things like adventures, fixes and some tuning here and there, as well as the current state of the megaservers. Running as com, explaining things to new players – only to get DCed on the final event on Dragon’s Stand isn’t very fun, nor helpful for anyone there.

I think the game would also benefit from a reworked LFG tool, since the one we players currently have feels rather outdated. Give the players more options and more tabs, especially since Taxi LFG is mainly a workaround to Anets flawed server mechanics, this would help things greatly.

All in all however, with all of the flaws mentioned – I found myself enjoying Heart of Thorns, once I gave it a fair chance. But only after having certain masteries done, which strikes me as an odd. But I’m glad I gave it another chance. There are however tons of things I could go through in addition to this, lack of basic skins to unlock and so on and so forth, but for a new player coming into Guild Wars 2 – HoT is worth it’s price imo, for veterans, it’s a more complicated question in my humble opinion.

It’s placing the game in a new direction, yet with Auric Basin, Verdant Brink and Dragon’s Stand, I’d say the game is fairly casual still, even though certain mobs will indeed one or two-shot you if you don’t pay attention.

Final thoughts,
- Mega Servers needs a revamp.
- LFG system should get a rework, this shouldn’t be too hard to code either.
- Adventures needs some tuning, while still letting players compete with one another on times.
- Dungeons need to be reworked as well, might not be that easy to solve but has to be done. Having them in this state of utter despair is just utterly sad. And I’m not only talking about rewards. (Mind you, I almost never ran them before either, apart from Aether.)

Not there yet anet, but after giving HoT a fair chance I’m actually enjoying my time spent there, and you did a good job with the fractals imo. I would perhaps speak of how lovely it all looks, but my wooden PC can’t keep up with todays standards so I’ll leave that to someone else.
Besides, the graphics to me has never made a game.

Just my two sents, and since my post lacked kittens, here’s one

Been having the same issue more or less. Really empty areas and thus unable to do much if anything for the last day or so.