Guild Wars 2

Kamikazi.5380:

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

Tibago.8276:

Why not insert dueling arenas in pve, that is, specifically designated areas for dueling between players? In fact, just put one dueling arena in Lion’s Arch to begin with and see how popular it is. If it works shove more arenas around the open world.

That’s been suggested many times before, and rejected by the duelists.
They want to duel right on top of other players, anywhere and everywhere they want.
It’s more a matter of showing off. If they can’t duel so everyone else can see how leet they are, they don’t want to duel at all.

It’s not so people can show off, it’s so people can put GW2’s great scenery to good use and duel in fantastic locations, like Mount Maelstrom or Orr. It’s a change of scenery from the long tired locations of WvW.

There’s no point in having arenas in PvE, we have arenas already in sPvP and Obsidian Sanctum. It sounds to me you just don’t want to see people doing something you don’t like, and you think it somehow persecutes you because of it. If someone were set out to annoy you, they have many tools and methods already set in game to do just that.

No, I have no objection to dueling in the open world and I don’t feel persecuted by anyone. If the suggestion is no good as a compromise (and let’s face it, few compromises are helpful), that’s fine. You could be right, this might just be an all or nothing thing.

Why not insert dueling arenas in pve, that is, specifically designated areas for dueling between players? In fact, just put one dueling arena in Lion’s Arch to begin with and see how popular it is. If it works shove more arenas around the open world.

What is a hunter . . .

I think many gw1 players have left, certainly my rabidly gw1 fanboy friend has abandoned gw2 in frustration. On the other hand, I was an active gw1 player for years and joined gw2 at launch and suffered frustration about six weeks in and abandoned the game. I rejoined in feb 2013 and have played consistently ever since. So this will be my first wintersday . . . but maybe I am an exception . . .

I want to do jumping puzzles while riding a Dolyak . . . also the diving achievement

Saulius.8430:

as someone who likes teaching and helping others to play dungeons, i find this suggestion offensive, because then no one would seek out for me

advice: get more friends

I appreciate your frustration, however, it is not merely a question of having “friends” but rather the simple fact that you prefer to solo content. This can happen, partly because of one’s gameplay skills, but also (especially in my case) that I have many real life responsibilities and so play when I get a chance. Also I frequently have to stop playing at a moment’s notice. For this reason, I tend to solo most content. Sure I join zerg’s here and there, but then no-one cares if you come or go. Also, I am one of those people that prefers to work out how to play various aspects of the game on my own. I am certainly not looking for anyone to “show me how it is done.” This is a game after all, so what I do, I do for fun. If I wipe, I can just try again. So there is no intent to cause offense, it is just the way I prefer to play the game. I just think that heroes is a way to open up aspects of the game for those players that solo content.

yes, agreed. Heroes for dungeons – that would get me to play content that otherwise I wouldn’t bother with. Hate PUGs and elitism and the stress of having to demonstrate your skill when playing with other players in a limited group. After a few bad experiences I just ignore dungeons and fractals. I have one friend that I used to play with but two is not enough for dungeons and in any case, he has since left the game. He mentioned that he would probably never come back, so I suggested heroes for dungeons and he immediately changed his mind – shades of gw1, I know, but this would open up so much content that I basically avoid.

The game has certain mechanics in place to manipulate the user to engage in specific content. I must confess that I was getting increasingly frustrated with living story releases and daily/monthly achievements, since I felt the pressure to do them or I would be “left behind.” This is related to the push players feel to achievement things in the shortest possible time. About 6 weeks ago I was on the verge of leaving the game because I was constantly playing content I didn’t really enjoy. I had a choice, abandon the achievements set by ANet and their releases, or abandon the game. I chose the former. I began an engineer about the same time with the intent of being leisurely. She is now level 77 after 70 hours of play (and that includes a boost to level 20 to start with). I often skip dailies, managed to finish 13/13 of the Blood and Madness yesterday (more by chance than design), and haven’t traveled to Kessex Hills to look at the Tower of Nightmares Living World stuff yet. I might do it, I might not, depends if I feel like it in the two week window (or what ever it is) that I have. I have totally stopped chasing Achievement Points and what I get is what I get. So yeah, I am done doing content on ANet’s timetable. I played gw1 for five plus years and if I am going to stay playing gw2 for that time, I can’t be on some frenetic achievement/reward/ascended gear chase. I will just get burned out and sick of it.

Yes. Very well thought out OP. A major factor of engaging me in gw1 was constantly playing with builds and options. Incalculable hours were spent in this way. It is true that with the addition of heroes in gw1 these options became insanely varied and complex for the solo player. Without the possibility of heroes in gw2, it is never going to match gw1 in this respect, not to mention that a well thought out build in gw2 is nowhere near as important. There are just fewer build options that really matter, but new professions with new traits and skills would certainly keep me engaged for a while – and I would probably spend money buying new character slots . . . also, more areas to explore – absolutely yes! I think the equivalent of factions is too much to hope for, but, nevertheless, that is the dream!

Thanks, that explains things. So a small investment in toughness is a good idea, but there comes a point when the numbers would favour investing the points elsewhere. I suppose the question is, what is the approximate number one would invest in toughness (assuming you have a defensive build), before the gain ceases to be worth it?

Wolfheart.1938:

English is not my first language so sorry if this doesn’t make sense.

Armor scales in a logarithmic way. This means that the more you invest in it, the less gain-per-given-investment you get. In other words, the 500 toughness points you invest to go from 2k to 2.5k armor give you more benefit than the same 500 points invested to go from 2.5k armor to 3k.

So when people say that the difference isn’t noticeable unless you reach crazy amounts of armor (+3.5k armor) it really baffles my mind.

With that mathematical consideration out of the way, toughness is far from useless, especially the first few hundred points you invest in it. Sure it won’t allow you to forget about dodging in PvE, but you also have to factor in the innate healing capabilities of each class.

Does this make Celestial Stats a more appealing proposition since the initial stats one invests have more impact?

“That really has to be the only reason. If I wasn’t in a guild I bet I wouldn’t care in the slightest what my AP was.”

You read me too well. I quit my guild (about a week ago) to escape the AP race and now I have my own guild of precisely 2 members, and the other guy has quit the game altogether. So I am leading my guild in the AP chase. I feel so good about myself now. I pull further ahead everyday

Danikat.8537:

Tibago.8276:

To say “nothing bad will happen if you stop chasing achievement points” is like saying nothing bad will happen if you lose a football match.

I know almost nothing about sports. What does happen when you lose a football match?

Is this supposed to mean that it’s true it doesn’t have actual negative consequences, but you still feel bad about it? Or that actually there are consequences of some kind? Like moving down league tables or whatever? Or something else completely?

I guess all I am saying is I prefer winning to losing, or if you like, achieving to not achieving. Again, I am not trying to justify my attitude, I am just trying to express how this particular aspect of the game makes me feel. I do acknowledge that I could well be expressing a minority opinion. Also, I have always seriously respected people who can both win and lose with grace, so yes, I don’t think your point is without validity.

Draknar.5748:

Tibago.8276:

To say “nothing bad will happen if you stop chasing achievement points” is like saying nothing bad will happen if you lose a football match.

Except people publicly see you lose a football match, whereas no one knows what your AP is and whether you have 1k, 5k, 10k, 15k, etc….

I mean seriously, it’s not like your AP is posted next to your name…

I have 9k AP at this point, and none of my characters wear the Radiant Armor I chose. So how will anyone ever know I have 9k AP!!!? They won’t. When I hit 10k, I’m not even going to wear the title, because WHO CARES….

… <— an extra ellipses

I would debate whether winning and losing merely concerns us when it is visible to others, after all I can get a kick out of winning a game of solitaire. Who cares? Indeed. I perceive your comment to be a call for maturity about something that is, after all, trivial. Fair comment . . . for what it is worth, I am trying, but you know that stupid competitive spirit that dogs my footsteps does tend to get in the way

Danikat.8537:

Actually if you don’t have at least 4 alts (one of each race) and level at least 3 of them to about level 40 then you’re missing out on almost an entire category of achievements – the ones for doing the personal story. Each race and each Order has their own achievements and since you can only choose one path per character you have to make alts to get them.

Also I really feel like a lot of this comes down to your personal attitude. Yes the achievements are built into the game, but that doesn’t mean you have to do them any more than you have to get all the armor and weapon sets from all the dungeons, even though you could argue that the game is intended to be about cosmetic, horizontal progression and the only thing you’re guaranteed to get from dungeons is tokens for weapons and armor, therefore they are the only reason to do the dungeon. (Which is obviously not true, I’m just saying to my mind that’s the equivalent of saying I get achievements for playing content therefore I have to get the achievements, therefore I must do everything whether I want to or not.)

Nothing bad will happen if you stop chasing achievement points. No one else will even care. If you’re having fun doing something else then that’s great, go and do it.

The APs you get with regard to personal story required by alts is tiny and I accomplished that ages ago (as I said I have 8 level 80 characters – though I deleted one to start an engineer). My point is a simple one – there are virtually NO APs available for just playing the core game with an alt and APs are the method that the game itself uses to indicate to players what they have achieved (generally). I perceive APs as being a manipulative tool that ArenaNet uses to influence players to engage in specific content.

To say “nothing bad will happen if you stop chasing achievement points” is like saying nothing bad will happen if you lose a football match. Having said that, and I need to emphasize this, I have stopped chasing APs. So I deliberately avoid completing dailies, I avoid LS content (unless it is directly to my taste), just to get my mind into the place where I don’t care how many APs I am getting. Why do I do this? Because I want to get myself back into the place where I am enjoying gw2. The alternative is to continue chasing points (but that is going to make me quit the game altogether).

Mixistrike.7840:

That’s the point guys, everyone wants to be competitive and everyone want to enjoy the game too, so why don’t remove all extra points and keep the varieties(choices)?

and If you think…
“oh..if you remove this points, how someone can be the top100, or top10?”
Put hard content, then those who are motivated can do achievs that will be hard do complete, But I hate the idea that we need to do all daily every day.

Maybe we should think about it and try to find a solution.

One thing is certain, it’s annoying the way it is!!!

and this

Draco.2806:

Achievements are designed to be a psychologically compelling factor, so that’s exactly what they do.

I would say the use of achievements in any form is unethical in game design.

Probably this

Mixistrike.7840:

I agree with you, and I say more. I think achiev points at this moments it`s ridiculous pointless.

And I feel tired to do that, I really want to do more things in the game, but this competition isn’t funny, I still doing that because I put focus on my mind.

At the moment I have 11150 points.

883 Mixistrike.7840 11147 Sanctum of Rall

There is about 18 points per day to do daily. It is INSANE.
18×30 = 540 points per month. I think they should give you a chance to get 5 options to do 5 points playing whatever you want, wxw or pve stuffs, or dungeons or pvp.

I become a hardcore player because I need to stay in game doing all daily, because I want to be competitive on leaderboard . Some days I spend about 4h to complete all daily.

So, I really enjoy if they change this things, but if they don’t I’ll keep doing that, because achiev points is the hard endurence content ever.

PS: Sorry about my english, isn’t my main language!!!!

Unfortunately, this as well

Astral Projections.7320:

I wish they did reward for doing 100% on all the maps each time you do it on an alt. Maybe it would pull more people into the maps doing area completions on alts. To keep people from farming low level areas it could wait till you ding 100% total and get your star before you get the AP rewards.

This

Thanks Celestial. I appreciate the points you are making and they are valid. In that regard, though, I have pretty much gotten all the points I can – although I haven’t killed a thousand plants or a thousand giants Certainly I have done all the personal story lines that can grant points. But again, taking Slayer as an example, if I want to grind out a thousand trolls, I don’t need an alt for that. In fact, I will probably go with the character that can get the job done the fastest, which is going to be my character with the best stats. But again, I am not particularly complaining about that. My bugbear, is that if I just play the game with an alt, because I enjoy the most fundamental element that makes gw2 what it is (the explorable map and story), then the game does not recognize this as being of merit according to its own scoring system. Rather, I will get credit for playing peripheral and incidental parts of the game that are not essential to its basic existence. So, of my 8500 points, 3063 come from dailies. This just shows a lot of dumb patience on my part with regard to endless repetition. I don’t mind this. It is perfectly fine to have dailies. However, my hero tab (showing personal story points) has maybe 300 points available altogether (something like that). That the dailies occasionally have a personal story component is not the point. There is a horrible imbalance with regard to what does and what does not grant points. So like Obsidian said above, I am either a lab-rat following the points wherever they lead, or I abandon the whole pursuit. Since I enjoy playing my alts (that is playing the actual game itself and not chasing the odd point here or there that I don’t have yet), that leaves me with the latter option, but it does leave a kind of bitter taste.

I appreciate all your comments. My point is not that I want to use alts to do daily and monthly achievements. My alts are there to play the basic content and develop like I did my first character. If I am doing dailies then I will rip through them in half an hour with my primary character. What I don’t understand is why I can complete the entire game for a second time with a brand new character (different race and profession), which requires a whole new skill set, and not get a single credit of achievement for it, because I am doing it a second time. And yet I will get credit for playing crab toss (or whatever) for the 15th time!!

I am trying very hard to ignore achievement points but it is difficult. Its name implies that the number attached to this is the primary indicator of one’s progress and success as a gw2 player. The accumulation of these points has become (certainly in my own thinking – I got to 8500 points today whoopee-doo) a goal in and of itself. I am not trying to justify this attitude. It is quite silly really, but nevertheless I find myself religiously completing daily and monthly achievements. I have no interest in playing crab toss (or, indeed, any of the other so-called “activity” daily achievements), yet I complete the activity anyway, just for the single point I will get. Since the activities keep cycling around (for who knows how long), in a sense, there is no cap to the achievement points associated with these games – notwithstanding the caps related to specific achievement points granted for particular accomplishments, such as Crabgrabber etc.

The desire for APs causes one to play content that one would otherwise not play. This, in part, is why people get frustrated with Living World content. Since completing the latest Living World update will grant a relative spike in one’s APs, any Living World content that is not to one’s taste is going to get irritating really quickly, simply because one is in essence being “forced” to do content one does not enjoy. Not wanting to be a victim of my own competitive stupidity and vanity, I have deliberately avoided “Twilight Assault.” Dungeons (and any group content really) is not to my taste, but I don’t begrudge it those that get a kick out of that type of game-play.

So I started an Alt, an engineer (in fact I had eight level 80 characters, one for each profession, but I deleted one, to run an engineer again). I have been just slowly replaying the PvE content. While I was doing this, just clearing areas and following a slight variation in the personal story line, I was having fun. I hadn’t done this content properly in ages and there is something cool about trying new professions and playing with trait lines and build options. The thing is, fun as it is, you don’t make any money (relatively speaking) and you don’t get any achievement points either (I don’t see why though) . The game itself is offering quite scant incentive for me to replay this content. Actually, in terms of APs, my alts, for the most part (accepting maybe a few personal story lines and cultural armor) are a waste of time. I will get points for playing crab toss, over and over and over and over, yet for most of the basic content of the game there are no achievement points for even doing it once. So I guess I will keep doing the daily achievements over and over and over with my primary character (a human ranger), although I really want to be exploring the map with different races and different professions. The thing is, the way the game is designed atm, I get rewards for doing content I don’t particularly enjoy, and precious little for that which I do, and I guess that kind of irritates me! While it it true that I am not forced to play content I don’t like, not all content is equal. The developers have decreed that certain content warrants the name “achievement” while other content does not. Certain content gets called “achievement” if you do it over and over, while for other content it only counts once. In terms of the current structure of APs, this, in general, is a real downer for my alts. I basically wish that each character could contribute in its own right to APs. In the meantime, I am trying to pretend that APs don’t exist, just so I don’t get the feeling I am wasting my time with my alts.

So ten months after the OP and this still irritates me. I agree it is not a game breaking thing, quite trivial really, but I also reckon that the vast majority of players would prefer to see themselves as others see them.

The problem with jumping puzzles is that the process of actually doing them can be incredibly frustrating. The reason as described by the OP is, I believe, correct, i. e. having to constantly redo relatively tricky content, which is now increasingly boring (because you have JUST done it . . . and redone it). It is true that one is relieved and perhaps also has a sense of achievement once one has completed the JP, but for me, this does not adequately compensate for the totally frustrating process (sometimes hours) of going over the same content over and over and over until you get it right. However, I think this could be remedied by the introduction of what I term “rock-climbing equipment.” In real life, if one were actually to attempt a jump on some cliff face, one would first secure oneself with a rope, and then attempt the jump. To fail the jump merely means hauling oneself back to the point from where the jump was attempted (as opposed to plummeting to one’s death). It seems to me that ArenaNet could mitigate huge frustration for those who struggle with JPs by introducing some form of consumable that would serve the same function in game.