Guild Wars 2

CETheLucid.3964:

Ohoni.6057:

Yes, and Eles have long range Staff and Scepter (and hopefully pistol). There’s no compelling need for a long ranged sword.

There’s no compelling need for a pistol for the same reason.

True, and at that point it becomes a thematic issue, and I’d prefer a pistol to a sword thematically. I also feel an offhand weapon would be more useful and likely than a mainhand one.

Ohoni.6057:

Why would a long range sword need gap closers? That’s what range is for.

Same reason dagger has one. It’s “melee”. There might be a close range zinger rapid fire attack or something. Just spit balling.

Dagger’s a melee weapon, you proposed Sword as a ranged one, like Mesmer GS. If ti’s ranged, it doesn’t need to close gaps. If it’s just a combo of short and mid-range moves then it’d be more like Dagger, which would make it redundant.

Ohoni.6057:

An offhand pistol would work well with the other options. For Scepter/Pistol, it would provide more offense than Focus or Warhorn. For Dagger/Pistol it would provide more ranged flexibility than OH Dagger, allowing you to attack while melee is too risky, or drain down enemies that insist on staying mobile.

All that can be said the same about a ranged sword weapon, so yeah. It’s just a matter of preference. I’m team sword.

So you’re thinking offhand sword? That would just be weird. Dagger/Sword? Scepter/Sword? Huh? I agree that if it’s mainhand, a ranged sword and a pistol could fill pretty much identical roles, but I still believe that an offhand pistol would be better.

CETheLucid.3964:

Ohoni.6057:

They could do some interesting stuff visually, I’m sure, but if they’re going with a ranged option, I’d prefer a spellcaster gun to anything they could do with a sword.

I disagree. Spellcaster sword would be awesome, and I’d prefer it to gun. Dagger is the ‘melee’ weapon, Revs have long range hammers.

Yes, and Eles have long range Staff and Scepter (and hopefully pistol). There’s no compelling need for a long ranged sword.

A mid to long range main-hand sword with gap closers/makers, CC, and devastating single target burst damage would be keen. A rapid attack of some kind?

Something that puts the ele squarely on the more offensive side of things.

Why would a long range sword need gap closers? That’s what range is for.

An offhand pistol would work well with the other options. For Scepter/Pistol, it would provide more offense than Focus or Warhorn. For Dagger/Pistol it would provide more ranged flexibility than OH Dagger, allowing you to attack while melee is too risky, or drain down enemies that insist on staying mobile.

DeceiverX.8361:

Which is literally what I proposed >.>

Just rather than a whole new class of weapons (something I doubt we’ll ever see due to the amount of work it’d take), make the specialization weapon a rifle skinned as a black-powder-powered crossbow. Now you’ve got crossbows game-wide on anything with rifle for flavor reasons, and a logical way to introduce it.

A black powder crossbow is called a “gun,” and they are already in the game.

A lot of people seem to be looking at this from a PvP perspective, that getting attacked by a Sniper player would be really annoying. And it would be. But what if they significantly split off the class between PvP and PvE?

Like when I was brainstorming how the class could work, it basically involved a #1 attack that was the big “sniper shot”, bursty but slow, and then a rapid fire #2 ability (which would be very cheap and offset by certain Steal bonuses I put in place). What if they did something like that for the PvE version, but then in the PvP version they rebalanced them, so that the sniper shot was relatively weak and largely not worth using, but the rapid fire option was much stronger than in PvP, allowing it to become the bread and butter DPS?

Think of it like Widowmaker in Overwatch, if they determined that sniping was way too OP, they could rebalance her to have weaker sniper shots and much stronger auto-rifle mode.

This would give the rifle a purpose in PvP, as a skirmishing long range option, while also giving it a purpose in PvE, as a way to deal solid DPS to enemies that are deadly in melee range.

steve.2945:

Ohoni.6057:

I definitely want to see pistol, main or offhand, either would be fine, but main would be better because then it could get spammable attacks. I’d see mainhand as being more offense, offhand being more reactive/support.

Sword would likely be lame.

From my understanding, sword “may” get the revenant hammer treatment. It may be a ranged weapon, but lets cross our fingers, and hope anet knows that ele isn’t made to be close range/upinyourface kind of class

I actually really love Dagger/Dagger, it’s the entire reason I became an Ele, so melee ele is not an issue for me. I just don’t see the point of making ANY kind of sword build for ele, whether that is a melee sword OR some “wandsword” option.

If it’s going to be a melee sword, where you’re smacking the enemy with it using fire and earth and stuff, then that’s fine, but what does it bring different than Dagger, and it doesn’t really have the supportive offhands, like no Shield, so you couldn’t even make a proper “Spellsword” ele-tank kind of character.

If it’s going to be a wand-sword, where you just pose with the sword as a prop and magic happens down-range, what’s the difference from Scepter?

They could do some interesting stuff visually, I’m sure, but if they’re going with a ranged option, I’d prefer a spellcaster gun to anything they could do with a sword.

AIJ.3784:

Not allowing full teams to play together is not a smart more if that whats planned. Playing together in pvp is one of the social activity`s our guild really enjoy. We are not particularly good and we have all from seasoned veterans to green rookies. No matter we still gather together to socialize while trying to kick the enemies buts….or run for our lives…

The only way I can see something like this working is changing to the old system with solo q and team q. Of course than population might become a problem… difficult decisions for you ArenaNet

I tend to agree, I think full teams should be able to play together, the problem is just that if the other team has a significant advantage going in (and being a full team can be a huge advantage, even if it isn’t always), then it is annoying to be on the receiving end of that, especially when the rewards are based entirely on who wins.

I think that it’s important that they separate the reward mechanisms as much as possible from team victory. Like if you face a pre-made team, even if you lose there should be ways to earn pips. That’s what made season 1 the best season of this year. The less players have to worry about which team wins, and they can focus on doing the best they are capable of under the circumstances, the better they can feel about the experience.

If they end up on a team of complete losers against a team of really great players, they don’t have to think “well that’s great, it’ll break my winning streak and lose me a pip on top of that,” they can just think “huh, well no matter how this turns out I’ll get one pip for how bad the rest of my team obviously is, and another for how awesome that other team is, so I might as well have fun and maybe learn a few things from the experience.”

I don’t mind a rifle, and I’ve thought of some ways they could really have fun with the idea, but I’m still hoping for offhand Focus.

This might be a solution, but I was thinking that maybe they should have eles with only TWO elements.

The big problem with adding new weapons is that adding a single offhand weapon creates eight different attacks to balance, more than any other class’s two-hander would, while an actual two-hander generates 20 different attacks, as many as most classes with four different weapons. That’s a big deal.

So what if they gave Eles Greatsword (or some other two-hander), but it’s tied to the Elite spec, and the Elite spec has the built in mechanism of restricting you to two elements?

So let’s say the Xpac 2 class would be the “Volcanic” or something to that effect, it would be just Fire and Earth, essentially giving you the same 10 powers that other classes get through swapping, and twice as many new powers as any other class would be getting, but at least less than 20. It would also be easier to balance because it’d be DPS and Tank, not Healer as well.

Then XPac 3 could offer the “Tempe-” no, that’s taken, um. . . the “Tropical Depression,” which is still GS, but just Water and Wind together. Or it could be Longbow or Rifle or whatever and the other GS abilities could come later.

In any case, I think it’d be fun and also easier to balance. One issue though would be that it would automatically make 2/5 Traits mostly worthless to slot, but I would think they could get around that by adding language that makes it so that Fire counts as Air attunement and Earth counts as Water attunement for the purposes of those traitlines, or something like that.

I definitely want to see pistol, main or offhand, either would be fine, but main would be better because then it could get spammable attacks. I’d see mainhand as being more offense, offhand being more reactive/support.

Sword would likely be lame.

Gaile Gray.6029:

A message from the PvP Team:

First, we wanted to let you know that the off-season between Seasons 4 and 5 will be longer than previous seasons. We’re working on some significant changes to the league system and we decided that we’d rather wait until the league changes are ready to ship before starting the next season of PvP. We haven’t completed our internal “is it ready to ship?” checklist, so we can’t dive into the specific changes or give the start date for Season 5, but you can read-up on what we’re hoping to address in this post. We’ll be giving you a full run-down of the changes prior to release.

This sounds fine, but the important bit is, once you guys do announce the intended changes, if the players go “NO, that is a bad idea, we do not want that, and here’s why. . .” are you guys prepared to change the game in response to that feedback, or will you insist on pushing out your version anyway, and only get around to fixing things for the next patch. That’s where you guys tend to get into trouble, you don’t let us know what’s coming until it’s too late to do anything about it, so that when it turns out what’s coming is something nobody actually wants, nothing gets done about that.

I think it would be far easier to let us know what’s planned before it’s too late to fix it, so that maybe we can head off a disaster like the first league year.

If you happen to have bought the Lava Lounge pass then you will be ported right above 3 apple trees. I bought the 2 week pass and found out it’s useful for this. Port to above trees, grab an apple, glide and run to lava tube, glide to Hal. Port back to above the trees and repeat twice more. If you put the pass in a account wide slot you can do this on your alts, even low level ones.

So “pay to win.” That sounds about right.

Or..better yet, speak to the Ringmaster and be instantly ported to the cliffs above Hal. Ezpz.

I had done that a few times, but yesterday it wasn’t working. Maybe they patched it out. In either case, it doesn’t really shave you any real time, and arguably is more hassle. It’d only really be worth it if you don’t have lava tubs unlocked, in whcih case, get Lava tubes unlocked.

Edit: Anyways, this is like the 4th iteration that I have made of my points. I’m really getting no value from each time that I’m posting so I’m going to stop. This discussion must be badly designed. Anyway, it was great having this discussion.

And see, that’s fine, because there’s no Mastery point after making fifty repeated posts on the topic, so you can leave without abandoning that Point.

Btw, for those still actually trying on this one, there is a relatively simple strategy to it. This doesn’t “fix” the quest or “make it good,” it’s still bloody awful, but I believe it’s the best-worst way to do it.

1. Get to where the Circus Chef NPC is. Jump on the mushroom next to him. This puts you onto a small rise to his left. There is another mushroom on a platform just behind this one. Jump on it, which will put you on a platform high up with an Ember tree. Grab the apple.

2. Leyline glide back towards the circus, drop into the lava tube. Shoot to the next tube over, then shoot out of that tube, and immediately hold jump to start gliding ASAP. Turn back around and glide toward Hal. You should land about 50ft away from him, and should be able to avoid any nearby enemies easily enough. Turn in the apple.

3. Glide down to the Sloth area, take the Lava Tube pointed back towards the circus. Hit glide as close to the end as possible, but if you wait until you land then it’ll shoot you away. Land next to the Chef. (*)

4. Take the mushrooms back up to the platform with the tree, leyline glide towards the cliff with the Viewpoint, then glide back towards the south. Basically this area has around five more trees that can all be reached leyline gliding around from high cliff to cliff in a stable pattern, so just grab the nearest available apple, then follow step 2 again, and repeat. You can do this once a day, or swap maps/characters to do it more than once per day.

(*) if you want to also complete the Chef thing for the daily, you can collect eggs and pearls as you travel through this portion, and should gradually have enough to please the chef. I can confirm that while you can complete this heart twice in a day on two different characters, you only get credit for the daily on the first of the two.

I don’t know about zero, but how about this, have an available trait that reduces cooldown on swap by 1s each time you make a non-1 weapon attack? Between that and the animation time of the attacks themselves, you could likely switch to a weapon, burn all abilities, and then immediately switch to the other, or almost that. It would prevent you from just using one ability on the alt weapon and flipping back though, which might be more exploitative.

Y’all keep confusing “I hate this mechanic” with “it’s bad design” — why do you have to insist that there’s some high principle at stake?

If it’s an element that causes more negative (not neutral) player experiences than it causes positive (not neutral), then it’s bad design. We’re convinced that this is the case here. It’s not automatically bad design for content that does not appeal to most players, but it is if this content is not easily ignored by everyone that dislikes it. The reward for Hal makes it too inconvenient to ignore for it to “not be for everyone.”

Why do you have to insist that it is not bad design?

Ohoni was wrong then. I said it can be done through normal course of play when doing events and dailies on that side of the map.

You did say that, and you were wrong then, and wrong when you repeated it.

Nothing you do to advance the normal events, hearts, or dailies of the island will advance Hal even one iota. Nothing to do to advance Hal will advance any of the events, hearts, or dailies one iota. The two elements are completely mutually exclusive. You can do events adjacent to Hal, but any time you spend advancing Hal is time taken away from progressing any other goal.

I’ll give you an example. I was doing some Hal runs the other day. I would go to the area around the chef heart quest, I would collect a bunch of eggs and pearls, grab an apple, fly to Hal, fly back, grab some more eggs and stuff, and repeat. I imagine you would view this as “doing them together,” but every second I spent with an apple in hand was time spent NOT advancing the heart quest, while every second spent collecting eggs was time spent NOT advancing Hal. Advancing either meant slowing down my progress on the other.

A true synergistic effect is beneficial, something like an event going on where every kill you make contributes not just to that event, but also to a Heart quest, also to an achievement, etc., where doing one thing benefits you in multiple ways. That does not apply to Hal.

Even if you’re just talking about running apples while moving from one event to another, the time taken by going to collect that apple and in delivering it to Hal is still time taken away from traveling. It’s not a ton, but in most cases you’d be adding at least thirty seconds to a minute to the time it would take you to get from the Osprey Islands to actively participating in Mursat Fortress content. That’s not a massive negative, in and of itself, but it is still negative, not positive.

Rewards motivate players as well. Not everyone will do everything just for the enjoyment of it. How many players would do jumping puzzles just for fun with zero reward?

Plenty, at least once. That’s why they are largley good content, because they are content players would want to do whether there is reward or not. Reward should not exist to convince players to do a thing. If you have to bribe players into something then you’ve already failed. Rewards should be a bonus on top of player fun, and should be more about making sure that players don’t fell that they are falling behind the loot progress they would be making if they spent that time doing something else, than they are about encouraging players that do not particularly enjoy the content to do it anyway.

People need to differentiate between their opinion (I don’t like it) and making a judgement for everyone (it’s bad design). Different people like different things. Huge numbers of people like to play Solitaire for hours at a time. If you find that boring, that’s your opinion.

Again, it comes down to “what is the cost for ignoring the content.” If the cost is negligible, then it can be something that appeals to relatively few people. If the cost is something most people would not want to pay, then it must be content for most people to enjoy. Mastery points are too rare in this game to consider them an optional goal.

I still don’t trust Caithe. I’m upset that the PC would leave her alone with the baby.

If Hal has a poor reward scheme, then nothing to worry about, whether players ‘zone out and farm it’, or not.

He’ll have to speak for himself on intent, but “poor reward scheme” does not mean that the reward itself is “poor” and thus not worth caring about, it means that the mechanisms surrounding the reward were bad.

It would be like if you were designing this quest, and had to give Hal his 50 apples, if you only got 2 copper for completing it, most would consider that a “poor reward scheme” for not offering a return worth the effort, but likewise, if he gave you a Precursor of your choice, most would also consider that a “poor reward scheme” for being overly generous for a relatively simple activity.

The argument I make on this is that it is a poor reward scheme because the reward is of a high enough value that it’s not easily ignored, it is worth pursuing, but the content itself is dead boring to me and apparently a ton of other players, which means that to pursue that reward, we have to go through a lot of content we are not enjoying. I believe that this situation creates more negative gaming experiences than positive ones, and would welcome any data either proving or disproving that position.

I believe a more universally favorable gaming experience could be created by making the reward something more generic, something that had value, but not a unique value, something where players who wanted to do the task could do it, and feel that what they got was worth the effort, but people who didn’t want to do it could do something else instead, and end up being equally well rewarded by playing other content for the same amount of time. So long as Mastery Points are a finite resource, they cannot fill this role.

Would you believe the lack of innocence to mean that someone must be bad? The lack of one thing doesn’t mean it must be the opposite. It works both ways; however, several players came in here stating that it was “bad design” so it’s on them to support it with facts. Not a list of opinions on what someone prefers in their achievements.

There’s no such thing as “objective design.” Anything involving design is automatically subjective, a collection of opinions. “Bad design” is always subjective, but certain elements are generally accepted as being “bad design” because a wide number of people tend to share the view that those elements cause more harm than good. There are no facts to be had either way, just a preponderance of consensus.

The Hal achievement can be obtained through the normal course of play as you do your dailies or simply doing events on that side of the map just like playing WvW and fractals normally.

This is not true at all. You could complete the Ember Bay dailies for years and never even go to the western side of the island. You could complete only the western heartquests daily for years and never complete this objective. It is only if you take time out specifically to work on this objective, grabbing and carrying a non-combat bundle from one location to another, that you advance the quest. It is possible to accomplish some of the other objectives roughly in the same timespan as working on the Hal quest, but they are two completely distinct activities that only hinder progress on each other, not help it. This is completely different than other “grindy” achievements like “kill 1000 mobs of this type,” which happen completely incidentally as a part of normal gameplay. Killing those mobs is something you would already be doing, for most of them.

The value comes from the reward. Is it worth returning 1 apple to him for a few AP, 1 MP, and a title? How about 5 times? 10 times? 50 times? If the rewards are not worth it to you for the effort needed then don’t do it.

But again, MP is a VERY constrained finite resource. You cannot simply write off ever MP source that you do not enjoy, or you’d never have enough MP to max out the available skills. Therefore, it is important to try and get as many potential MP sources as possible to avoid negative gameplay experiences. “Just don’t do it” is not a reasonable response in this case.

Hmm, it’s claimed above that this content offers only a poor reward. Then, why all the angst. Just ignore it, and let those that feel the reward and the effort required worthwhile experience it.

It doesn’t say that.

If, as others claim, it’s a valuable reward (MP), then I posit it is worth the effort. Perhaps, that’s “What has been added by the extra 49 unnecessary iterations(?)”

It is worth acquiring. That doesn’t mean that it is a fun or valuable gaming experience. Two other Mastery Points in this patch can be earned by walking up to them and hitting “f.” It’s not like there is some high bar for what a player “should” jump through in order to earn a Mastery Point, and they just had to add dozens of repetitions to the quest to make it worth awarding a Mastery Point. They could have made less repetitions, they chose not to, that’s on them.

Many games have quests that are simply fetch quests. Are those bad design then? Not everything in a game will everyone enjoy. This achievement isn’t mandatory for anything so players have the choice to skip it if it doesn’t appeal to them. People claiming bad design would have had more grounds had that not been the case.

A fetch quest is not automatically bad design. This fetch quest is bad design, for the numerous reasons mentioned already in this thread.

Now one way that this could have been designed better, is to not make the trees ever regenerate, and require you to deliver him one apple from each. That would be a valid quest, because each tree would offer a somewhat unique experience, how do you get to it? But this current one, where even if you hit up every tree, you need to do so about 5 times or so, is just pointlessly repetitive.

And as for the “things HAVE to be repetitive” argument, this isn’t how you do that. For repetitive content, the rewards should be per-repeat, not “per completion of a dozen repeats.” The latter forces you into continuing to repeat content you do not enjoy in order to get the eventual reward, whereas the per-repeat rewards you each time you complete it, but after each repetition you get to decide whether it’s something you want to continue doing. The map dailies are a good per-repeat reward that encourages repetition.

And as for the “if you don’t like it, you don’t have to do it,” there is a Mastery Point attached, and we’ve already gone over why that makes it ineligible for “if you don’t like it, you don’t have to do it.”

I can make a list of a lot of achievements in this game and call them bad design simply because they involve grind.

And if so, that only proves that those achievements could use some work too, not that Hal is fine as it is. Nobody is making the argument “this game is absolutely perfect and does absolutely everything right, except this one achievement.” The argument on the table is “the Hungry Hal achievement could use some work, regardless of any other factors.”

With the Mystic Forge, it opens a unique interface listing all forgable items. You then need to double-click on four different things, and then hit the accept button. Why double click? It seems like a wasted click to me. Why not just click once to select, then a second time to deselect? And if you have all your items in a row, why not allow players to click and drag to select the four items they want to forge? You’d always be able to deselect a mis-click, so what would be the harm? This may seem like a small thing, but over the whole game it would save players millions of clicks, improving mouse longevity and reducing tendonitis.

I was wondering if it would be possible to change the way that event chests work. I’m talking about the ones that appear in the bottom-left corner of the screen. They stack up with three visible at a time, and then you click to open them, where they open to the middle of the screen, and then you have to click “ok” to dismiss them. When you’re chaining map events, this leads to a lot of boxes piling up, and then you have to click on the left side, then move back to the center to click ok, back to the left side, wait for the boxes to reorient themselves so you can click on the next one, and repeat. It’s a minor hassle, but over thousands of boxes it really adds up to a lot of wasted time.

There’s got to be a better way.

I don’t know what the most effective solution would be, but I think the easiest fix would be to move the “ok” button from the center of the screen, under the loot display, to a big button that covers all thee chests in the corner, so you can click once to open the chest, and click a second time to clear it, without needing to move the mouse at all. Alternately, allow players to bind a key to “open/clear chest” so you’d just need to double-tap it to open and clear the chest.

I don’t know, something.

What they need to do is visually cue “working terrain.” If they intend to have some little nudge of terrain something you can stand on, then they need to put a little rock there, one that you can see from a distance exists as a practical ledge, and its hitbox needs to be large enough that you don’t have to be pixel-perfect to land on it.

If a player is grinding up and down against a seemingly flat wall, then he’d kitten-well better be doing it because that’s how he enjoys himself, and not because if he does it just so he’ll end up standing on a platform (while every other attempt will lead to him sliding back down).

The location where he just sits is meant to be an irritating climb…day after day, hour after hour…I wish I could just hit him with that apple and knock him down the cliff face to those Jade armors he seems to be the only one who can sit where they are and not get hit anyway.

I will give you a tip that makes things easier. If you’ve completed the circus story step, you can talk to the Ringmaster to teleport high in the cliffs. You can casually glide down from there to Hal. If you don’t have that unlocked, you can use the magma tube south of the Sloth stage which launches you towards the Mursat, just hold jump after launching to start gliding ASAP, and then head back the way you came a bit, and you should easily land right next to him. Still a hassle, but a bit less of one.

No, that’s an incorrect restatement of my opinion. I do not expect all of the game’s content to appeal to me.

You’ve been pretty clear on that and I’ve never claimed otherwise, but you extend that to mean “and this content does not appeal to me, so that’s fine and I’ll leave it alone.” I believe that while this applies to some cases, in other cases the better solution is to make changes that would cause the content to appeal to MORE people. “It doesn’t appeal to me and that’s ok” is not always the best possible outcome.

You keep insisting that it’s not good enough now and I’m saying it already is ‘good’ for the people who like that sort of thing, which clearly doesn’t include either you or I.

And I don’t think there’s enough evidence to support that claim. There have certainly been more people expressing that they actively dislike it than are saying that they actively like it, I think it stands to reason that improvements could be made that would cause more players to feel more favorably towards it than there currently are. I don’t think there are any players out there who if the Hal achievement were made less grindy would go “well that’s it then, I’m done with this game if they’re going to make the Hal achievement less grindy.”

‘Hungry Hal’ is a classic FedEx/DSL quest: get a thing, take it to someone. I’ll never find those ‘fun’ whether I have to make a delivery a dozen or four dozen times. I accept, however, that some people do find them to be fun — my understanding is that they like that it’s low risk, that progress is assured, that it’s something they can complete over time, and that it’s paired with an important reward.

And I assert that the reward is too important to ignore, while the task is to tedious for most players. If some players want to do a repeatable fed-ex quest of this type, that’s fine, but it should not gate access to a Mastery Point for everyone else. The reward should be more generic in nature, such as a small reward each time you complete a delivery (infinitely), or a reasonable generic reward, like an exotic weapon or a gold or a stack of Petrified Wood or something if you deliver 50 times. For players that want to do that sort of thing, they can and they’ll get something nice at the end. For players who have no interest, they can skip it and get that same level of reward doing other available tasks.

My question remains: why is that so hard for you to believe, especially when you’ve demonstrated that you enjoy the same sort of experience by repeatedly posting in this thread the same (restated) idea?

And again, it’s not that I don’t “believe” that side exists, it’s that I don’t believe that their existence is justification to not improve this achievement.

You asked this question and you got your answers. Sorry you didn’t like them, but there’s no need to be so hostile.

Many of the answers were very polite and well reasoned, but a lot of them are along the line of “it doesn’t bother me, so it doesn’t matter if it bothers you.”

So why aren’t you willing to accept that not everyone agrees with you that Hungry Hal is horribly onerous?

I have never contested that point. There are some people that will like just about anything. My point has been that I firmly believe that the vast majority of players of this game would believe this to be a weak achievement. At best it’s something that people wouldn’t mind doing, and in many more cases it’s something that leaves people with a significant negative impression. I’m far from the only person to point this out.

Of course you shouldn’t do the achievement if you feel it’s too boring — that’s exactly why I haven’t attempted gold in most of the adventures. I don’t like them; I wish they weren’t in the game. But all the same: I understand that others do like them and others are very pleased to have content like that in the game, which allows them to gain AP and mastery points.

But again, nobody is talking about removing any content. The content gets to stay. Like with the Adventures, keep the adventures, just make it more plausible for the average players to get gold on the more insane ones. That doesn’t take anything away from those who can currently get gold, Leyline Run is one of the easiest Adventures to get gold on and there are still players routinely shaving milliseconds off their times.

You see problems and say “well, whatever, I’ll go elsewhere.” I see problems and say “that could be better! Let’s do that!” If your method works for you, fine, but it’ll never work for me. I want to leave things better than I found them.

And of course it would be convenient if there was a more substantial surplus of mastery points, but it’s not as if it’s essential to gameplay to unlock every single tier of every mastery.

Were you unaware that if you max out your masteries then you start to gain spirit shards from gaining XP? With the amount of XP I’ve picked up since Bloodstone Fen came out, I would probably have picked up dozens of spirit shards by now, but instead I have none because I don’t have the MPs to max out the existing lines. That is a massive feeling of waste.

tl;dr since you don’t find it “grindy” keep posting to this thread (without every ‘maxing’ the achievement), why aren’t you willing to accept that some people don’t find things like Hungry Hal “grindy”?

Again, not disputing that. I’m just saying that I do find it grindy, and a lot of other people do too, and I’d like to see changes made to it that would make it less grindy, ideally in ways that would not harm any enjoyment of people who, for whatever reason, enjoy feeding Hal apples.

The no-prize answer I’d go with is that there were Risen years ago, but after Zhaitan died they all got eaten by Mordrem and Destroyers.

What you’re doing is attempting to shore up a weak argument by adding more hours until “there is resistance.” You can make anything too grindy by adding extra hours, terms and conditions, including lying in the shade and being fed bonbons by an attractive person of your choice.

Yes, and that’s exactly the point I’ve been trying to make. A lot of people have been posting “this does not hit my limit, therefor it’s fine.” Well a lot of other people have been saying “this already does hit my limit, so I’d like some changes made somewhere.” The first group do not negate the difficulties raised by the second. The entire point is to discuss what should take place once those limits have been crossed.

If your argument is sound than you don’t need to change the underlying terms. Shoring up your argument with those extra hours only exposes its weaknesses as it shows it couldn’t stand by itself without those extra props.

That assumes that the example is the point, rather than the tool. The example itself is meaningless. I was attempting to form a shorthand for “a task that is so tedious even you would not put up with it,” and clearly I missed the mark on the specifics, I greatly underestimated the tedium he would enjoy, but the example itself is never the important part, the intent behind it is, which is why if the example does not properly represent the intent, then the example needs to change, it does not mean that the intent itself was flawed.

Inculpatus has a point. As soon as someone doesn’t object to your idea you move the goalposts waaaay over.

Because the point is that everyone has a point at which an activity becomes too objectionable to bother. I’m trying to determine that that point is for him. That requires moving the goalposts until there is resistance.

Well . . . it’s slow going, but I’ve added it to my daily rotation. Should be done in or around a week. I’ve seen worse achievements in the game.

/sigh, again and again and again and again and again with this response, I feel like I’m delivering apples. . .

So again my response is that the total time to complete the achievement has NOTHING to do with my objections to it.

Nothing.

It could take a day, it could take six months, it could take five years, that has nothing to do with my objections here.

I personally would find this infinitely preferable to many of the achievements in GW2.

And so would I, but “better than some of the existing achievements” should not be the standard to go by, since many of the achievements in the game are just plain awful (seriously, the cultural armor collection?). The standard should be "is this the most fun achievement that IT can be.

There are plenty of mastery points. If you got all mastery points unlocked you have 35 HoT and 18 Tyria mastery points to spare.

Yes, but if you don’t have all mastery points unlocked then you have zero to spare, and plenty of the existing mastery points are unreasonable to obtain. There are not enough reasonable mastery points to unlock all existing masteries, much less if we consider that future new mastery points may not keep pace with new abilities.

You need 124 total points to unlock the existing HoT masteries. There are currently 160 available points, so yes, theoretically there are 36 to spare. Unfortunately,

14 of those are inside the raid, out of reach of non-raiders.
10-16 of them are locked behind Adventure silver/gold challenges that are typically considered extremely difficult

4 more are locked behind completing all story mission achievements in the HoT sets, at least a few of which are very challenging such that even if you complete the majority of them, you won’t get those masteries.

Several others involve fighting mobs who cannot be soloed, and that groups almost never challenge, making them hugely inconvenient to target.

1 of the other ones in Rising Flames involves a jumping puzzle that is universally considered cruel and unusual (even by those who like it that way).

and of course Hal.

So even just counting the currently available masteries, there really is no huge surplus for most players. If we factor in that the next episode will likely add a new mastery tier that costs even more, every last available point matters.

You aren’t supposed to finish it in one day.

And that’s also not the point. If it were in some way time gated, like you could only deliver one apple per day, then that’s fine (I’m aware that there are some limits to how many you can deliver). The problem is that you still have to repeat it 50 times, and that’s about 40 times too many.

Now with some quests, “you don’t have to finish it in one day” is a fine response, like if it’s “kill 5000 destroyers,” obviously you don’t have to grind them all out at once, but the thing is that destroyers are all over the place, and you don’t have to grind them all out in one place, you can just kill a few here and there as you go about your business. “kill 1000 giants,” on the other hand, there are only a handful of giant spawns in the world, and chances are you could play for decades and never get that one unless you deliberately made the effort to farm it.

The same is true here, it doesn’t matter whether you clear it in one day or a thousand days, you will never clear it unless you go back and forth from Hal at least 50 times, which may not be what you’d prefer to be doing.

I don’t understand. There are some Mastery Points that I don’t like, and some I do. And, you know what? There are players that feel just the opposite to how I feel. The ones they don’t like, I do; the ones I don’t like, they do.

True, but that doesn’t mean that none of those things could use improvement, or that the fact that they haven’t been improved is somehow justification for never improving anything else.

So, what is your solution? The Devs can hardly please every player, as players have different ideas of what is fun, and what is not. As stated before, there are more MPs than needed, so there are options for the players to pick and choose among the offerings. You don’t like this one; I prefer it to others. You can choose other MPs to earn that I don’t like. Yay! Win/win.

The problem is that there are not enough MPs out there, given how many of them are tied behind abominable goals. The easiest solution would be for them to add a LOT more MPs to the game, at least ten to fifteen more scattered around the world behind various activities. In their current state, however, every MP matters, and any MP that could be made more fun and engaging to players, rather than A. a total chore, or B. an impossible challenge, would be an improvement on the game.

Sounds great to me. A 3 minute jumping puzzle done 100 times to get an awesome Legendary instead of spending 1000s of gold and spending hours doing map completion in either the HoT maps or core Tyria and spending hours in WvW? Sign me up!

So you would rather spend 15 hours playing through a deliberately tedious jumping puzzle than to actually play the entire rest of the game? That’s pretty depressing. Ok, what if it took 40 hours to complete? Or 100? Or 300? Or 1000 hours? At what point would you say “you know, there could be a better way to do this, maybe.”

And we are back to: “I wish all Mastery Points were this easy.”

And we’re back to “‘easy/hard’ is not the issue here, it’s fun/not fun.” Nobody is suggesting making this achievement harder, just making it less grindy.

Perhaps, the Devs will find your arguments compelling; perhaps not. It’s really not that big of a deal. I imagine it will soon (er or later) be completed by most, and then forgotten. Kind of a tempest in a teapot sort of thing. /shrug

Which is true of any customer feedback and literally goes without saying.

Seeing as the mastery points where supposed to be the “new level” system as apposed to a new level cap, they should be very easy to get.

Exactly, the points themselves should be relatively easy, it’s the XP gain to open up the skills you spend the points on that is the “new leveling system.” The problem with making the points a hassle to get is that you can only get each point by doing one thing. I mean, I have been playing regularly on HoT maps since it came out, and yet hadn’t gained a single mastery point in about eight months before the LWs3 ones dropped. If the one thing a mastery point is attached to is outside your wheelhouse, then no matter how much you play elsewhere you’ll never get that one. Any sort of progression system needs to respect players interests, and give them plenty of alternative options for progressing. If you want XP or gold, sure, there are some places that will be more efficient to get them fast, but you can do anything in the game and earn them at least a little bit.

It’s really difficult to take anything you say after this seriously. By definition, grinding isn’t bad design; it’s just grind.

Then what would you classify as “bad game design,” if not “content that takes time and effort to complete without providing equivalent entertainment value?”

That, to me at least, is synonymous with a game failing to do its job.

Bad design is when something can’t be completed as intended, when it frustrates its target audience, when it damages the game’s or the development company’s ability to operate.

The first and last are more issues of implementation than design, and I believe the one in the middle applies 100% to the issue at hand.

Producing stuff that some enjoy and some hate isn’t “bad” design, it’s just design; it’s a choice that you or I might not make, but it’s not inherently “bad.”

Agreed, but when you factor in that it has a specific reward attached that cannot be easily ignored, that is when it becomes an element of bad design, because it gives reasons for people who fall outside the “some enjoy” camp to do it anyway. For “some like it, some don’t” to apply, those that don’t must be free to do other things without missing out on desirable rewards.

But, I’m not the only player and my interests diverge with others sometimes. The game is vast and big enough to accommodate all sorts of players. The best thing is for ANet to add lots of stuff, with as much variety as possible, to give all of us a lot of things we find fun.

I’m not sure you’re getting this, so let me create a more extreme example of the issue I’m describing. Let’s say there was a quest. It required you to jump through a small jumping puzzle, not so intricate and complex that it was actually fun or interesting to do more than once, but just complex enough that you actually had to pay attention to what you were doing and could not just auto-pilot it, and takes about three minutes each time.

Now, let’s say that there was an achievement for completing this jumping puzzle (without any tricks or exploits) not once, not ten times, but a hundred times (roughly fifteen hours in total).

Now, let’s say that the reward for this achievement was a free Legendary weapon, one which just happens to be for your favorite character’s favorite type, and that you personally think is the most awesome looking weapon that ANet’s ever designed. And this is the ONLY way in the game to get this particular weapon, although there are obviously plenty of other skins in the game.

Would you see this as a perfectly acceptable situation, or would you prefer that they make changes to this situation in some way to allow you to get the weapon you wanted while avoiding this puzzle, or to make the puzzle completion a more enjoyable experience to more people?

Since there are more Mastery Points than needed to max all Masteries, 1 MP falls into the optional category.

No, because too many of the existing Masteries are locked behind other abominable tasks, like getting gold on adventures, or clearing ALL story achievements in a given chain. As of right now, I have picked up roughly exactly enough mastery points to buy the last HoT mastery I needed (the last Nuhoc, one, obviously), but haven’t even started on the raid-based ones, and the next LWs3 mastery will likely cost 3-5 more points, so I’d rather have a surplus than have to farm mastery points when that comes out.

Now on the flipside I have like 300-400 Hero Points left over on my main, so if we were arguing about an achievement that awarded nothing more than a few hero points, even 50 Hero Points, then I’d agree, there are plenty of fish in the sea. But in the current “economy,” mastery points are worth too much to just pass up with a clear heart.

Something like, say, Legendary Weapons. Now many players have objections to engaging in any kind of PvP, so WvW is something they do not wish to partake in. Yet, if they wish this optional ‘reward’, they must.

And that’s something that should change too, two wrongs do not make a right.

Same case here. And for the record, I enjoy these kinds of repetitive content. I doubt I am the only one out of tens, even hundreds, of thousands. It may be a minority, but nevertheless, it’s there.

And that’s fine, they can have it, it could perhaps give you a respectable reward each time, or for completing it several times in a day, enough that you feel rewarded for doing it, but little enough that people who really did not enjoy it could do something else and feel equally rewarded. They could even keep the exclusive title attached to it, I suppose, but not a Mastery Point.

I don’t want to take the activity away from you if you genuinely enjoy it, but clearly a LOT of people definitely do not enjoy it at all, and yet the reward attached is putting pressure on them to complete it regardless, and that is poor game design. Players should feel rewarded for doing the things that they enjoy doing, this is not work, it is an entertainment project, and it succeeds or fails not on how much time it takes people to complete things, but on how much time they spend having FUN.

Taking nothing away from that person’s accomplishments, but she could have completed the JP in half the time if not for all those random “maybe a ledge, probably not” bunny hops. That’s just poor architecture design when you need to land on specific invisible pizels if you want to stick, otherwise you slide. You should be able to see before you leap which edges are platforms and which are not.

Not everyone will find everything in the game enjoyable.

True.

There will be some things that players do not like.

Also true.

Some people do not like jumping puzzles. Should those then be removed because they’re “bad design”?

No, but players should be able to ignore them if they know they do not enjoy them, and have alternate means of acquiring any rewards found within them. Players who do not enjoy jumping puzzles should never have reason to do jumping puzzles instead of other content, while players who do enjoy jumping puzzles should be able to have fun doing them.

After all, someone doesn’t like them and according to you that makes it bad design.

No, it’s only bad design if you’re given reason to do the content whether you enjoy it or not. If it’s good design, then you can always choose to do something else without missing out on a specific reward. If the Hal achievement were not tied to a Mastery point, of which there is a limited supply, then it would fall into “to each their own” category, and so long as some people enjoyed it (which we STILL have not seen anyone who claims they do) then it would be serving a valid purpose. But so long as people have no choice but to complete it if they want that Mastery, then it must appeal to everyone in the game, and is bad design if it fails to do so.

Again, if you’re given two paths to a given goal, and you deliberately choose the path you don’t enjoy, then that’s on you. But if there’s only one path to that goal, and you don’t enjoy it, then that’s on them.

Grind =/ bad game design.

By definition, yes it does. If you’re grinding, it’s because someone has seriously kittened up. Now “repetition” is not always “grind,” it’s only grind if you aren’t enjoying it. But yes, if you’re doing something repeatedly beyond the point that you’re having fun, then it is bad design and they should fix it.

Not everything in this game do all players enjoy. There are some things that certain players enjoy and other things that another group of players enjoy.

And again, that is fine, so long as the players who do enjoy it can do it, and the players who don’t can do something else instead, and NOT have to give up on specific rewards. If there are specific rewards that a player would miss by giving up on the activity, then “to each their own” no longer applies. And no, the game is by no means perfect on this, but that is reason to fix the other parts that are broken, not to excuse adding new broken elements.

I’m really not seeing the reason we can’t gather the apples and put them in our backpack. Holding one at a time seems . . . silly.

I would be willing to pay the circus folk a few thousand Unbound Magic or whatever to teach me to juggle 3+ apples per trip.

I’m not sure everyone enjoys re-visiting Vistas, or gathering mats, or throwing things in the Mystic Forge, or even doing events in a map…or countless other things offered in the game. But, they do them, anyway, for the reward.

You only need to visit vistas once per character you intend World Completion on. The reward for them is minimal, and the effort involved is usually tiny. That is entirely different from grinding apples 50 time, you’re proving my point.

As for mystic forging, yeah, that can be a hassle sometimes, but they have streamlined it over the years, like adding 10x recipes for some things instead of having to do one at a time, and if they made other improvements, I’m sure people would appreciate them.

I’m not saying that players won’t do unpleasant things for the right reward, I’m saying that if players are finding something unpleasant, but do it anyway for the reward, then developers should consider that a failure on their part, and should do what they can to either make it fun for the player, or at least avoidable. It’s ok for content to not be fun, so long as players can choose to do something else without giving up on a specific reward. If they have no choice but to do that specific content to get a certain specific reward (like a Mastery point), then it should either be fun for all, or quick and easy enough to complete that nobody really minds the hassle. One or the other, either is fine.

And also the Mastery point.

Why exactly is it bad game design?

I explained that above.

Then don’t do it. Or would you prefer that Anet puts it locked behind some ultra challenging thing that relies on a player’s personal skill?

It doesn’t have to require great skill, it just has to involve player engagement. It needs to be something that players actively enjoy doing, and so far I haven’t heard anyone say that they actually really ENJOY doing this one, just that they don’t mind it so much, or that it’s a better alternative to skill challenges that they cannot complete. Neither of these mean that it’s good content.

Good content is content people ENJOY DOING, content that makes them happy as they do it. It doesn’t need to require any great skill, it can be something that anyone can do, but it needs to keep them engaged at all times.

When designing content, you should either make it something that can be completed in relatively few repetitions, or something that is fun enough that you’d want to keep doing it over and over, without any cumulative reward forcing you to do so.

How many people have delivered at least five apples to Hal AFTER completing the achievement? If the answer is zero, then that is not an activity that players should be forced to do more than five times to acquire a reward.

Yeah, that’s the problem. If they have a JP that’s crazy hard, that’s fine, but they should only gate ONE standard achievement behind it and ONE basic chest at the end, nothing else. If they’re going to tie it to several achievements and rewards tehn it needs to be accessible to everyone in some fashion.

Maximum efficiency is less than about a minute per apple, so at worst, it’s an hour of effort. (Only the first apple or two might take longer, til you figure out how to go back/forth quickly.) Mind you: it’s so stupefyingly boring to me, that it feels like hours of grinding.

Yes, which, however people insist on defending it, is a BAD GAME DESIGN.

I was a Staff Thief, and I did die a lot, and agree that it’s pretty difficult for one person to handle all those waves coming from different directions. I hate escort/tower defense missions under the best of circumstances. Luckily as soon as I got out of there, I noticed several groups forming and went in with one. With a full party the entire mission was a complete cakewalk, the enemies didn’t even get close to the shield, for the most part, and my health was never at serious risk.

Ok, we get it, you don’t like it. Some don’t mind this kind of thing.

Not everyone has to like or dislike the same thing.

True, but that literally goes without saying.

I don’t think this’ll happen. Mostly because I think ArenaNet wants us to explore to find the ley lines to take advantage of them. Plus, how would you indicate the direction of flow? Maybe if an industrious asura gives us a new high-tech map which could detect the leyline flows, but on a static map, it would just get messy.

Well, I wouldn’t ask, but we already have the Molten Tubes and the Wallows that appear on the map with little arrows indicating their direction (and hooray for that). I like exploring and all, but I can’t keep track of where every single leyline track starts and stops, they are all over the place on this map, and vital to navigating it efficiently given how many areas are a 2-4 minute jog from the nearest WP. This isn’t like most maps where there are dozens of WPs, and it’s not like Bloodstone Fen where you have Ride the Leylines to zip along, so easy access to the existing Leylines is vital.

And as for direction of flow, that’s easy, they’d just draw a thin blue line tracing it’s route, then put a little arrow of some kind in the middle pointing in the direction of travel.

Plus, some of us still don’t have leyline gliding and it’s not like it’s one of the earlier abilities like the wallows are.

Man, I had Leyline gliding almost a year ago, and that was before Bloodstone Fen and Ember Bay came out with their freely-flowing XP, and their “permanently boost XP up to three times” buffs. I suggest you make the investment if you haven’t already, because Leylines are awesome.

Fun can be subjective. It seems a lot more fun to me that carrying a bunch of rabbits to that NPC in Wayfarer. Lol.

It’s marginally more fun than that, but that bunny thing only took about ten minutes to complete. Even at maximum efficiency this takes hours of grinding away at it.

Just wait for the next expansion and you get HoT for free (“…when we say Guild Wars 2 is buy-to-play, we’re only asking you to buy one thing: the current release…”), of course you then need to buy the current expansion in that time for $80.

Again, they never promised that HoT will come for free with the next expansion, and I actually bet that it will not. The next expansion might include some overlap from HoT, like the gliding tree, maybe the Pact Tyria stuff, etc., but I think that the bulk of HoT’s features and content, including the maps and the Elite Classes, will not be included, and if you only buy xPac 2, all you’ll get is the F2P game plus whatever maps/classes/races/etc. are new to xPac 2.

And I would argue that many Mastery Points are a lot more difficult to attain. I suppose it’s a matter of perspective. If this particular Mastery Point was the most difficult to attain in the game, I would be happy.

Again, nobody is arguing that this one is difficult, it obviously is not. The argument being made is that it is not FUN, and there’s no good reason why it shouldn’t be.

I dont think that 1-2 hours for a title is too much effort. It should have been more grindy to be honest

It’s not the time that’s a problem, it’s the grindy nature of it. It requires very little creative gameplay, basically running the same loop over and over, but at the same time requires just enough attention to get there and back that you can’t just coast through it, you need to actively pay attention. It’s like working checkout at a retail place, just engaging enough that you can’t think about anything else, but not engaging enough to actually keep you fully occupied.

This is the worst possible gaming state for a game to achieve.

It is the “Razzie” of game design, and should be avoided whenever possible. Any game element should either be fun enough that players actively enjoy pursuing it (even if they have to do it over and over, each time is enjoyable enough), OR be so mindless that they can do it on autopilot and focus their attention on something else (like the various "kill 100 of these things, eventually) quests. This achievement fails at both.

I just meant that they should be visible on the actual overhead map, not that they should add more leylines to the physical spaces. Although, they could certainly do that if they felt like it, maybe link up those Leyline event nodes scattered around several zones or something.

With Bloodstone Fen and Ember Bay, much more than in the HoT maps, Leyline routes are some of the most vital ways to travel. The WPs tend to be further away from where you want to go, and even with Magma Canons unlocked, those don’t get you everywhere. The problem is, the Leylines are not on the maps, so if you don’t know where they are, you don’t know what to head for when you want to get to a boss fight in a hurry. They need to put the Leylines on the maps, ideally with little arrows showing direction, like they do with Wallows/Magma.