Guild Wars 2

Lord Kuru.3685:

Achievement points should be the only form of vertical progression in this game.

I may be wrong, but aren’t achievement points horizontal progression?

Baldric.6781:

But, giving achievemnts for playing X games will only increase the afk numbers. I believe the only thing that can be done is either remove the achievements for spvp or that all of the achievemnts are something like kill 3 guys in spvp, capture one node in spvp, try to defend 2 nodes in spvp, and so on. Something that require you to play but can be done in 2 or 3 games just by trying to win.

Having to win games is not necessarily bad, but the current numbers are really overwhelming. Overall I completely agree with you, the dailies should be doable in 3-4 games if you’re actually trying to win. And shouldn’t be doable at all if you afk.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Well this comes down to your play style it’s not like there is anything forcing you to log in every day just slows you down if you don’t and as for being behind I think when the new thing comes out there is a stronger pressure around “being behind” but as time goes on that pressure goes away. Sense we are normally planning on how something will work in the long term we are ok with there being a bit more pressure when something first goes out but someone who starts one month from now will have a very different feeling.

While it does come down to my playstyle (which I don’t think is limited to just me) it is the game that encourages this. (Partly by tagging timegating on to stat-progression, which feels much less optional than other forms of progression.) A playstyle is not just made by choice, also by the design of the game.

There is nothing ‘forcing’ me to log on every day. But there are systems in place that make not logging on feel like a wasted opportunity, that make reaching ‘completion’ a matter of logging on every day. Without these systems I would have a different playstyle. So while I am not ‘forced’ to do timegated content every day, I feel bad about missing out on the opportunities when I don’t. (Moreso because not doing it today means I will have to do it some time in the future. We can’t just get it out of the way.)

Games can use tricks to keep players attached. (Skinner box among others) They do not force us to play, but they are misleading us into doing things that we don’t actually want to do (or they make us want to do things that we wouldn’t want to do if we had clear vision, not deeply influenced by encouraging game mechanics). It can take a long time and some serious help from other people to get players to snap out of that mindset.

Now I understand that the devs can’t keep in mind every player. And that ‘feel’ arguments are especially hard to place. But it is the sort of stuff that fuels a gaming-burnout. I get the feeling that you are brushing it off. Like a minor issue. While to those affected, it is a very big deal. It may not affect the majority of the playerbase, but please acknowledge it and use it in evaluating wether or not a time-gate is worth it.

As I said, you make a fair point. And I am not suggesting that the con’s outweigh the pro’s, because even though I do not like it, I can see the value of timegates. But I somehow get the feeling that this side of timegating does not get the attention it deserves.

This side-effect is due to the time gate working both ways, you can’t access the “future” gated content, as intended, but you can’t also access the “past” gated content you missed. This creates time-limited content because the threshold of the time-gated content does not get carried over to the next gate: if I don’t have time to craft my daily Lump of Mithrillium (or other ectoplam refinement reciepe), I won’t be able to craft two of them the next day. The common time gate being a day, I have to log in and craft every day to get the new content in the less possible time without using the TP.

In the particular case of ascended crafting, I think this side-effect of the time gate is too penalizing for casual players. Allowing players to craft more than one ascended material a day if they missed it the previous days would, I think, help closing the gap in gear acquisition between casual and hardcore players. The number of materials you can carry over should of course be limited, like having a ‘memory’ only of the 7 previous days.

The achievement system suffers from the exact same problem with dailies being time-limited content, although I’m not sure the solution I proposed for ascended crafting would work for them. I’m eager to discuss this topic when the thread will move on to horizontal progression.

Rezz.8019:

Also, I think you guys are ignoring a very important fact. Solo arena and team arena are actually FUN to play now. There are so many people and lot of diversity, instead of same 10 people. This daily is more than necessary in order to revitalize PvP

Also I think you are ignoring the fact that many of us already stated we did play and enjoy tPvP regulary way before the update. And the fact that I acknowledged PvP should award more APs and rewards overall.
Having to play tPvP is not a problem, the daily time requirement is. Reducing the requirement to 1win->2win for both solo and team arena would be an improvement, capping the daily AP gain would be a solution

Rezz.8019:

Yamiga.7863:

Rezz.8019:

Risingashes.8694:

Achievement hunters are sick of time gated content. Add really really hard permanent achievements, let people get them at their own pace.

You don’t even need to effect people who just want choices between dailies, just cap the maximum points to 4 and add as many stupid catagories as you want.

You mean like activity achievs that are exploited on reset?

• I have no idea what you’re talking about
• how is that relevant to the post you quoted?

People enter activities before reset and then get stuck in those activities because people can’t enter more after the reset. They just exploit and farm those precious achievement points some people here are talking about. Funniest thing is that they complain about an achiev where they would actually put some effort in. I get all dailies most of the days and I have no problem at all with this daily. Hope it stays forever.

Didn’t know that one, its pretty lame but I wouldn’t call it an exploit. Also iirc you’re booted from activities before any update?
But the point is these achievements are not time limited. They sure are grindy but you have all the time to do them, unlike dailies. You may have no problem with the new dailies but you can’t refute they take way more time to complete than any other daily. I’m all for achievements that require skill and effort but, permanent ones.

Alissah.9281:

Why dont you just do the 4 we already had and be done with it?

After last patch, I still do 3 solo Qs and get my daily.

Edit: I spend about 45 mins per day to get the daily completed. 10 mins per match, and up to, but usually lower than 5 mins waiting per match.

Because our goal is to collect the more achievement points we can, and every daily option does award them regardless of the daily chest. If you want to beat the current 8 PvP options you have to win 3 teamQ matches and 5 soloQ matches, which easily takes 3 hours. Every day.

Rezz.8019:

Risingashes.8694:

Achievement hunters are sick of time gated content. Add really really hard permanent achievements, let people get them at their own pace.

You don’t even need to effect people who just want choices between dailies, just cap the maximum points to 4 and add as many stupid catagories as you want.

You mean like activity achievs that are exploited on reset?

• I have no idea what you’re talking about
• how is that relevant to the post you quoted?

XacTactX.6709:

You guys can’t forget one thing when you talk about flexibility in the daily system. The daily achievements become a requirement for the top 1,000 leaderboard, and the top 1,000 leaderboard is a competition that people do. If ANet decided to eliminate the top 1,000 leaderboard so that people can’t compare themselves to each other, having to spend 3-5 hours every day doing dailies would no longer be a problem. It becomes a problem when the entire AP leaderboard incentivizes people to live unhealthy lifestyles and grind out one repetitive aspect of the game.

The comparison to limiting the number of dungeon runs per day is accurate, but it also doesn’t tell the whole story, because players are not forced to do every dungeon path in the game every day for the sake of competing on a leaderboard.

It’s more for the sake of completing everything than of competing on a leaderboard. I’ve been chasing APs since launch for the sole sake of completion, that’s the reason I am currently in the top 20 eu but I will probably continue if the Ap leaderboard is removed.
I agree that the leaderboard promotes an unhealthy playstyle, but this playstyle does exists without it and is unhealthy only because of the current state of dailies that require a huge time investment for maxing APs.
Capping the daily AP would solve the problem.

Ulalume.9584:

Well, I for one hope that some of you achievement hunters realize while completing your dailies that spvp is actually really fun.

Since it has been forever talked about that they are looking at making pvp more rewarding in terms of achievement points, this might be a great time for you guys to get into pvp.

All of us are already into tPvP and have been for a while, at least because of the AP we can get there
I can’t speak for all AP-hunters but I personnaly enjoy PvP, and was already doing my daily in tournaments before the update, often doing more than the 3 required games. I just don’t like being forced to play 8 games minimum per day.
I agree that PvP players deserved more APs (and still deserve more), all I am saying is that the time requirement for those dailies is insane.

sorudo.9054:

Malediktus.9250:

^I couldnt care less about the laurels and other crap you get for the dailies. I just want the achievement points.

so in short, you rather farm AP’s rather them playing the game……

Chasing AP is playing the game
It’s a playstyle, which actually encourages us in playing every aspect of the game. We are just more interested in the achievement points than in the daily chest.

Cosmetics
Cosmetic progression is very important in the game and imo replaces advantagely vertical progression, since it gives people a long-term vanity goal without giving them an advantage over other players. Weapons aside,there is currently very few such vanity items, since all the armor skins are either crafted (ascended) or bought directly from a npc (dungeons, karma, cultural, gem store). Having a chance to get (tradeable?) rare skins when finishing challenging content should be more frequent (like fractal weapons or Final Rest), but I understand that the drop rate for those items are hard to set
Also I completely support the wardrobe suggestion, it would really help to have those LS skins always available without having them taking inventory/bank space.

Achievements/titles

The basis of the achievement system is to reward players for completing certains tasks, the rewards being achievement points and titles. But there’s currently only very few titles that are actually hard to obtain, and the difficulty require way more grind than actual skill. Overall I feel the titles lack prestige, the better being probably the ones from gw1. I’d love to have more difficult titles, preferably requiring skill, but unlocking a title when finishing a given achievement category could be a good idea (it would not be possible to add more achievements to this category though). A personnal home instance where the player can display his achievements would be great also, like the Hall of Monuments in gw1.

My main concern with the achievement system is the dominance of dailies on the AP score, mainly because it makes the permanent achievements a bit meaningless since scoring 5000 kills with a given weapon awards less points than a complete daily. The original system awarded 10AP max per day iirc, but now its up to 23AP/day for someone willing to chase them all: if this system was in place since launch, the total AP earned with dailies would be higher than the AP from permanent achievements, even if the LS are considered permanent.
For someone like me that whises to max their AP score, doing all the dailies every day is mandatory, but it has become a chore, especially with the new PvP dailies introduced on Dec 10th that more than doubled the time required to do all the dailies (around 6h now). Capping the AP one can obtain with dailies is imo the better solution, be it a hard cap (after X AP dailies stop awarding AP, like the agent of entropy), or a soft cap (can’t earn more than X AP per day). The AP already earned can’t be taken away since it would mess badly with the achievement rewards.
To summarize, I think the achievement system should focus on permanent achievements, with titles awarded for the harder ones and a cap on the daily AP gain (read the suggestion linked in my signature for detailed ideas on how this could be implemented with close to no negative impact on 99% of the playerbase).

Vertical:
I think Vertical progression is good but very hard to correctly introduce since it has to be:

• long/hard enough to be an achievement
• rare enough so it doesn’t feel like a treadmill
• rewarding enough so there is actually a meaning for player to invest the time/resources into it
  and at the same time it has to :
• be easy enough to let more casual players go for it, even if it takes them a long time
• keep the power increase low enough so that old content does not become too easy
• keep the power increase low enough so that new content does not absolutely require this vertical progression (fractals does not require ascended gear unless you go for higher levels)
• avoid penalizing people with alts/ wanting to play multiple builds

I think the way ascended gear was introduced was rather good considering those criterias, especially the small stat increase. It lacks on the last point though: crafting a whole set for one char is ok, but going for multiple sets is really long/expensive. I personnaly think we should not get more vertical progression, at least for a while. It will take a while for people to fully gear themselves with ascended, and PvE content (dungeons especially) is easy enough for experienced players that more power creep would trivialise it.
To main problem I have with gear in gw2 is how the rune/sigils are handled: unless you buy an item from the gem store you lose the old rune/sigil when using a new one. And if you want to be able to switch runes often (pve set and WvW set, for example), you need two separate armor sets. It was ok with exotics, not so much with ascended. The solution I propose is to have runes/sigil stack on the weapons/armor piece they’re added to with only one active at a time. Adding another sigil/rune would not erase the first one, but instead the player would be able to chose which one he wants to use when not in combat mode, just like the stats combo on legendaries. This could also be used for infusion slots.

Horizontal:
I really think horizontal progression is the way to go, I really loved the way gw1 was almost exclusively horizontal. I see three main types of horizontal progression: skills, cosmetcis and achievements.

Skills
It has already been stated that new skills are to be introduced, like the new healing skills in the last update. I think there should be a special mechanic for unlocking those new skills/weapons (whiel being automatically unlockes in PvP), maybe a dedicated instance where the character learns something, with the new skill/weapon as a reward. This instance could or could not be profession-specific and skill-specific, depending on the work needed and of the number of new skills that are to be introduced.
On a related topic, having templates for traits would be a great improvement. I know I almost never change my build because I am too lazy to go through the whole process, but there are multiple occasions where I wish I could easily adapt my build to my team composition.
(to be continued)

Ryan.9387:

Kuzzi.2198:

Since when is making a suggestion arrogant? All I said is that the Solo Queue daily is not on par with all other dailies in the game in terms of time commitment required.

Oh really?

Daily regional killer
Daily here be dragons
Daily crab toss champion
Daily aquatic slayer
Daily fractal runner
Daily kill variety
Daily mists caravan disruptor
Daily dungeon completer
Daily group event completer
Daily master of ruins
Daily personal story finisher
Daily story dungeon completer

Remind me again how these are less grindy and more fun than solo queue daily.

every one of those can be done in 15-20 mins max. That’s one soloQ match, 1/5 of the daily if you win, probably more like 50%.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

i think the new PvP achievements should worth more achievement points because of the effort required.

this way, PvP players would have a chance at higher achievement points.
proposed changes:

Solo Arena Three Wins – 10 AP
Team Arena Two Wins – 20 AP
Five Total Solo Arena Wins – 20 AP
Three Total Team Arena Wins – 50 AP

this way, pure PvP players may be able to earn 100 AP per day. i feel this is more justified.

by the way, i do not play solo arena or team arena, but i believe more daily AP should be awarded for solo arena wins and team arena wins.

Not sure if serious or just trolling…
This would just make the whole achievement system PvP-only. If this was to be implemented, it would take around 3 months for the AP gained from PvP dailies (not counting the ones earned before the update) to overcome the AP from permanent achievements.
Do I really have to explain why this is silly?

Romek.4201:

they are time limited – there will be ladders and seasons and for this will be rewards who win it and for the top rank – like top 100 or whatever

and im sure whis will have archievements too – how you end season

and this is fine – this is what we need in pvp

And I agree with you that PvP needs that kind of rewards, even if it means I won’t have some of the achievements. Of course I’d prefer to be able to obtain those achievements and I’ll certainly work towards them whatever the ranking requirement is. But those are long-term achievements that reward skill, the complete opposite of dailies that almost only require time spent.

Romek.4201:

this thread is soooooo funny^^

seriously guyz – wait for the storm when arenanet bring the rewards you can get in spvp only for being good

oooh the QQ from all this people who think they deserve everything just for buying the game^^

As long as they’re not time limited I’m fine.

Eyia Hellhide.7320:

I have to confess, I just misunderstood the point of this thread. I thought these guys are some kind of PvP only achievement hunters and was so confused and I wondered why I’ve never seen them in this forum before. But I swear I’ve never heard about this way of playing a game. And there is even a special name “completionist?”.

Now I’m very curious, where exactly is the fun for you guys? What makes you happy – the feeling when you finish all the achievements for the day, or competing on the leaderboards? How do you feel if you can’t complete the daily? Is it worse if you have it half done than not started at all?

The fun is the feeling of having completed everything. Not only dailies but every achievement in the game, I myself have only a few permanent achievement remaining (except the PvP/WvW ones). Achievement points behave like a summary of the things you completed, that’s why we try to earn every AP we can. Leaderboards are not really important because it’s a personnal satisfaction, not a competition.
If I can’t play a given day I just don’t play. I’ll lose the daily APs and get over it, I know I can’t play every single day even though I’ll try to find some time as much as I can.
Being unable to finish the daily or having to spend almost all my game time on it is really frustrating, because I know these AP will dissapear if I don’t do them, therefore I have to do them to keep my long-term enjoyment. But short-term I don’t necesseraly feel like doing what the daily requires me to. The PvE ones are ok since I would naturally do most of them by just playing the game, and the remaining ones can be done fast. But the new PvP dailies are awfully long, even when I feel like doing PvP (I regulary played soloQ/teamQ before the patch, much more than what the dailies required). I then have to sacrifice either my long-term fun and ignore those dailies or a large part of my short-term fun and grind for them.

Oh and what is the average percent of the people with this playstyle?

Probably quite low, but I don’t have a precise idea. Many people started the AP-hunt when Anet released the achievement rewards, so I don’t think its limited to the people on the leaderboards

KarlaGrey.5903:

I think it is not a very good sign that the outcry on achievements change is the most active thread in the pvp section after what was supposed to be a big pvp patch.

If achievements are the only thing people are complaining about it’s actually rather good. And if everything outside of dailies is fine, can we have them fixed?

I think your idea is not bad but a bit too complicated (or maybe I’m just a bit lost in your explanations).
FYI, there is already a thread proposing a rework of the daily system which I think is better, at least in the short term. Basically, the idea is to have all the daily options to award 0 AP, but to have them count towards a daily meta-achievement which gives APs and the daily chest.

Anet added completely broken achievements to an already half-broken system. Completing those 4 achievements takes more time than it took to complete all the dailies pre-patch. I understand they want to give more AP to the PvP players but using dailies was a bad idea imho, and the numbers are completely out of touch with the whole daily system

Writetyper.1985:

Malediktus.9250:

Writetyper.1985:

Rigel.5789:

If this stays in the game it will turn off most of the completionists from sticking around. Temporary achievements are absurd enough to begin with, but to require people to play six hours a day without an exception repeating the same tasks amazes me. That is what is the issue.

Dude – I have bad news for you, there are unreasonable achievements LITTERED throughout this game if you’re a completionist. It takes something like 8 years of 13 hours a day of a dolyak a minute to get Yakslapper. You could probably kill a man and be out in 8 years on good behaviour. I think anyone rational has accepted that they won’t get every achievement point. If you’re complaining about the leaderboards then wow, now we actually have something to separate the hardcore from the not hardcore enough.

Bad news for you. The WvW achievements will be reworked to make them more reasonable.

Bad news for you. There are still loads of unreasonable achievements in the game. You don’t expect to get champion brawler or more than one or two of the champion titles if you can’t cope with winning 8 matches.

Winning 8 matches is not a big deal. Having to win 8 matches a day is just wrong. The time requirement is completely out of touch with the other dailies, especially the PvP ones. I am all for giving (t)PvP players more/better rewards, actually I would also profit from it since i spend quite a lot of my gaming time in tPvP, but dailies are a bad way to do that.

Just an idea off the top of my head: If Anet truly wants to reward PvPers with APs, they can introduce a capped repeatable achievement for tournament wins, similar to the dungeon explorer: gain 5AP every 5 wins for a maximum total of 250 (or more, the numbers are just an example)

Vargamonth.2047:

The new achievements do not make any sense to me.
There are mainly 2 positive things the game could get from this:
- Use AP as a carrot to bring more players to tPvP
- Reward sPvP players so they can get reward chests easily for some gold/skins.

The first one is a complete failure. A whole soloQ match (queue time + prematch time + the match itself) can easily last for over 15 minutes. With a proper matchmaking (50% win rate), 5 wins would mean 10 matches played, so easily over 2 hours and half for just a couple of APs.
Only the most hardcore AP hunters could be attracted by such a grindy task, and there are still serious chances on completely kitten ing them off (and making them to eventually stop playing) instead.

The second one has no dangerous conunterparts, but doesn’t look either as a big deal.
Many PvP players won’t play the 3-4 hours required for all the 4 AP on a daily basis, and those who actually do are probably most dedicated to one given format, be it SoloQ or TeamQ, so most of them still won’t get the whole 120 points a month.
I also doubt PvP players will find those reward chests lifechanging :P

Some posters have sugested to make the achievements about games played.
I completely disagree; every reward in tPvP should be mainly about winning matches (
anything else could promote undesirable behaviours among newcomers).

I would just rework them to somehing like this:

Daily: Win 2 tournaments (no format specified) —> 2 AP
Monthly: Win 35 soloQ tournaments —> 30 AP
Monthly: Win 25 teamQ tournaments —> 30 AP
With any tiering/unlock required.

3 tournaments are usually enough to complete every regular PvP daily achievements and, with a bit of luck, they can also be enough for this new 2AP daily.
It’s a longer time for daily achievements, that’s true, but there’s also more AP and better rewards involved. IMHO it could attract players to tournamnet play, and still requires winning, so eventually those players will be on the right mindset or have left.

The monthly ones are a bit redundant. There are there in order to reach the same 120 points a month, and also to encourage people to try TeamQ while being more easily attainable by any player, even PvP ones.
If your roster only plays some given days a week, it doesn’t matter at all. You can fully dedicate to TeamQ whenever is possible, playing soloQ otherwise, and still get the whole reward.

I would also want to talk about the changes on Slayer and Conqueror achievements: They don’t make any sense :P

There’re a lot of easily reachable PvP achievements for a newcomer. New tiers should have been added, if anything, in the upper end, so players could have some short run carrot for playing PvP a bit more.
If bonus APs could be introduced or those new tiers, that would be also a way to reward, AP wise, dedicated PvP players.

I couldn’t agree more. Those new dailies seem to have been added to reward harcore PvPers, which don’t seem to be extremely exctited about them. I may be wrong but that’s what I felt reading the forums. As you said the daily is a carrot used to encourage people into doing certain things. The new dailies are completely off this idea

Luthan.5236:

I thought about a different suggestion. A bit similar to that from OP post. Why not still let it be tiered? Instead of giving all the AP in the reward chest make another meta which resets every day.

Let the small subachievements only increas the meta by 1. Each step of the meta gives a few AP so you get maybe like 5-10 AP each day if you complete the meta which should need max 4 sub achievements to complete(those indvidual are giving 0 AP and are only to increase the meta count). So people doing only 1-2 achievements because of time still would get a few AP(if it was in reward chest they would get nothing then).

And AP farmers can get all AP without doing everything.

People not farming AP might still get more. If previously we did only 4 for laurel and got 4 AP then now we could get more(depending on how much they want to give max – 10 maybe a bit too much, maybe 1,1,2,2 max 6, a bit more than before for people only doing 4, bit less for people that did all that stuff).

I was thinking about something similar. It would work perfectly in PvE, and I think it would also fit PvP. Since the PvP and PvE currencies are merging, having both dailies separated is a bit meaningless, and since they already share the laurel I don’t see much reason not to merge them completely.
More options should be given to complete the PvP dail (imo around 8-10 total with a daily rotation), like:

• Win a tournament match
• Revive 3-5 players
• Complete 5 secondary objectives (kill a boss on niflhel, score the orb on spirit’s watch, etc)
• Gain 500 rank points

and so on. I found some good ideas on another thread for such options. Also those options should award some experience, like the PvE ones do (5% of current level).
This solution would make PvE and PvP completely even regarding the rewards for daily.

JackyCorus.6915:

If u Dont so spvp that often, u will have issues. If u make tournaments more often, The Daily will Take u an our or two. This achievement is for pvp Players who have a pvp score. Not for pve-Farmers
Pve Farmers will always get Bad groups cause they’re unranked. So Play More pvp or stop complaining

I actually play tPvP every day, even though I could have gotten my PvP dailies faster in hotjoin (until today), just because I like it. I am ranked in both solo (773rd) and team arenas (406st), and I have been for quite a long time. I am not a harcore pvper but I am not a “PvE farmer” either.
Does that make it easy to complete those dailies? No, they still take at least 2 hours, and its only if you don’t lose a single game. Probably more something like 3-4 hours. Being ranked means you play against better opponents, it does not means you get easier/faster matches.

Gracious.4279:

I never realized how much people care about achievement point rankings…

Its not about a ranking but about a playstyle. We’re completionists, we complete acheivements just for the sake of having them completed. The new PvP dailies won’t have any real effect on the leaderboard anyways, what we care about is our playstyle being destroyed by the incredible amount of time and grind needed to complete all those dailies

Heta.8629:

More dailies were added to help Pvp players who have a harder time getting AP than pvers not to annoy people on the leaderboards. Anet does what is good for the overall game which at times is an inconvenience to some but is good for the overall game. The current system isn’t broke so no need to fix it.

The change proposed in this thread would actually reward PvP players way more than those new dailies, while equalizing the rewards between PvP and PvE. Are the new achievements good for the overall game? I honestly think they’re not, quite the contrary actually, and the feedbcak I have seen on the pvp forums rather agree with it. They’re unreachable for casual PvPers and PvEers which Anet should try to drag into tPvP, and will just comfort these players that tPvP is not for them.

Edit: dailies do not prevent you from playing the game as all dailies are gained by playing the game. If you don’t have time for the activities you enjoy than time management needs to be done. Do less dailies, devote more time to the game, get achievements done quicker, sleep less, eat while playing etc. make decisions on what you want to do and what you feel you need to do just like everyone else

You don’t understand that we don’t want to have to choose beetween doing the dailies and doing something else. It worked fine for a while, even the state before the new PvP dailies was almost fine, since we had time left to play anything we wanted after finishing the dailies. But with this new update its not possible anymore since the tPvP dailies require something like 3hours to be completed: its either full-time doing the dailies or letting go.
I know a lot of AP-hunters will partially ignore those new dailies. Anet has come to a point where we can’t enjoy our completionist playstyle anymore.

These new dailies were clearly designed to give hardcore PvP players more APs that other players cant reasonably get. Casual PvPer? Too bad for you.
If Anet wants to bring more people in tPvP these dailies won’t work, they’re just way too long and the reward is way too small (1AP).
If Anet wants to reward PvP players with more AP it’s fine, but there are better ways to do so, like giving more reasonable options for daily PvP or/and merging Pve and PvP AP rewards (like the current laurel system).
I strongly recommend everyone in this thread to read this suggestion . It would address the issue we AP-hunters have with the dailies while giving PvPers the same rewards than PvEers. Since currencies from PvE and PvP are to be merged, I dont see any reason left to have separate daily rewards.

Heta.8629:

If you increase overall AP gain it would mess with the in game economy because of the gold, laurels, and rewards that are given in the 500 point chests.

In the most extreme case, it would give some players 10 more AP/day, which means one more chest every 50 days, which is roughly 10 gold/laurel a year, except if they hit a 5k tier. The other rewards being account-bound, the impact on the economy would be almost non-existent.

Time invested should equal greater rewards.

This is exactly how the leaderboard functions. Those are the top are the ones that played every day since launch. On the other hand, the daily AP gain has always been gated, the suggestion we are discussing won’t change this. People can invest more time to finish the permanent achievements they have left.

Being at the top of a leaderboard means something and you cheapen it by giving more AP for doing less. If you can’t or won’t put in the time to do every daily then you deserve to fall in rank. I believe a true completionist would still complete all the achievements even if there were no reward in order to feel that they have completed the content fully.

Sorry but being at the top of the leaderboard means almost nothing (and I am top 20 eu). Giving more AP for doing less, as you said, will have no impact on the leaderboard since all or almost all the players in the top 1000 currently do all their dailies and will continue to do so whether or not this suggestion is implemented, keeping their advantage.
I also want to point out that setting up a competition where you only win because the others burn out should not be supported by Anet or anyone. This is the direction the AP-hunt is currently following, and the very reason of this thread.

I think we can consider four categories of players regarding this suggestion. Let X be the amount of APs given withe daily chest:

• Players that do less than 5 dailies. If the APs are to be given only in the chest, they would lose their daily income. If only the 5 first options give 1AP (plus the bonus for the meta), they will not be affected by the change.

• Players doing less than X dailies every day (probably the majority of the regular players). Some simply do not care about dailies, some others only want the chest, some usually go for a few extra AP but not that much. These players will benefit form the change since it will give them a bit more AP every day.

• Players that occasionnaly do more than X dailies, usually to reach their next achievement chest. Those will lose this ability of booosting their AP income through dailies, but their overall AP income will actually increase.

• Players that usually do more than X dailies. Those are AP-hunters that probably do all of their dailies anyways. They would be the more affected by the change, since their AP income decrease. They are the ones requesting a change to decrease the grind.

Please tell me if I forgot someone in this list. Considering it, the only negatively affected players would be the ones from the third category (and the fourth, but as I said we are asking for it). Do you think the the increased AP income do not compensate for the loss of the possibility to gain a few more AP a given day? Don’t you think the shorter time needed to get the whole daily would give those players more time to get permanent achievements instead if they want an extra income?

JustTrogdor.7892:

That brings up another point about the leader boards. They are kind of pointless now because there is no catching up. If someone started playing in say Jan 2013 they can never catch up.

The AP leaderboard has been pointless from the day it was released. There already was no catching up since the people on top were already the ones doing all of their dailies and monthlies since lauch, and LS just widened the gap.

Heta.8629:

True achievement hunters put in the effort to get all the achievements.

Exactly. But should this needed effort be so much it may burn out those hunters? Considering the leaderboards, do you think its fine that the only way to improve one’s ranking (if it has any value at all…) is to wait for the other people to burn out and let go?

This change would be neutral to anyone who isn’t top if the leaderboards.

Actually it would give more AP/day to a large majority of people that only go for the daily chest.

Capping achievement point gain will hurt those who want that 500 point chest sooner.

This I have to partially agree with. People willing to max their AP a given day would be slowed down a bit, but overall they would actually profit from it, since their average daily AP gain would be higher.

Anet resources to change and test these effect on the overall game and economy will be better spent on content that will affect more players. Giving more achievement points for less will make them worth less. More dailies help players play the way they want to and still get achievement points.

This change would probably be not that hard to implement since it uses tools we know already exist (meta-achievments).

Occam’s razor says easiest path is best and this would make dailies more complicated. Current daily system works fine.

I will argue that it doesn’t work fine for me and other players that posted in this thread. I think the suggested changes would actually make it easier, changing the daily options to what they’re meant to be: options. Not the only time-limited way to obtain a reward.

Hellmasker.1649:

Some other things I’ve thought about over the past couple days…

- To those who insist a daily AP cap would hinder their progress to their next reward chest: There is already a cap in place. Today it happens to be 19. Changing that so that it’s EASIER for you to get the max available in a day shouldn’t be discouraging. If you need to push points for a chest, why are you relying on a single point from a fractal or story dungeon or discovering jps?

I may add that back in february 2013 the cap was a lot higher (25 for pve alone iirc, so at least 29 with pvp), right before Anet introduced the current system which had only 9 options at that time. The changes we are discussing here aren’t so drastic in comparison.

• Another bug (again…) with the Molten Facility boss. If you die while being knocked back by the berserk and fall down to the lava pit, your corpse will not be tp’ed back up. You will fall through the lava layer down to the ground below and respawn there when the first boss is killed, unable to come back up or even die.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Malediktus.9250:

At the start of the game: 4 dailies completable in 20min by everyone —-> now about 14 PVE/WvW dailies (exact changes all the time depending on living story) which make you go out of your way like doing a story dungeon or personal story even thought you played it all plenty of times already + 4 PvP dailies (+ more to come). Its a worrying trend.

I still only need to finish 5 things for my daily…. I just have more options to choose from.

It’s all optional. Nobody is holding a gun to your head, saying you must finish every single daily every single day.

And nobody said we’re forced to finish every of them. But we like to be able to complete them all, we have fun doing it. Unless there is so many of them that it is not fun anymore, then we would have lost something we loved.
I do think giving players more options to complete their daily is a good move, but if it kills what I love to do in the game I wont be happy about that. Therefore, we are searching for solutions that please everyone.

Mladi Bojevnik.2517:

People complaining here should learn one thing games are meant to be plaid for fun. So unless you are making money with this leaderboard chasing it is your fault you are wasting your time\life doing something you do not like.

As I said before, we do play for fun, and we find our fun in completing every achievement we can. And that is the reason we are complaining, because we want to keep our fun which the addition of even more daily options is slowly killing.

Most players who play for fun like having as many options for dailies as possible because they do not want to slay 50 crabs in the fractals just to stay on some leaderboard but they would rather do the daily by playing as they want to.

This is precisely why our suggestion do not include less daily options, only a cap on the AP obtained.

Limiting points gained ? Some people play on weekends or during holidays they will not get many points during other period but will do many more dailies during this time.

There has been suggestions addressing this problem, like having a cap higher than 5AP/day or capping the AP from dailies on a monthly basis (for example 300AP/month form dailies only), or even a hard cap like the one for dungeons and salvaging.

You made a competition yourself with these leaderboards which are only representation of how many spare time you have to waste.

Competition is only a consequence of our playstyle, not the reason behind it. And I may argue that the one that made this competition was Anet by releasing the leaderboards, which means when adding more daily options they promote the grind for AP.

The daily achievements are a carrot, they have been introduced to incitate players to login often (every day) to get that small reward: gold, experience, eventually a bonus item. Achievement points were only a little consequence since they had absolutely no meaning at that point (no leaderboards, no achievement rewards).

Then, to make that carrot more attractive Anet introduced more options to the daily, granting players various ways to get their daily chest. The achievement points were still something only completionists were caring about, and they were probably the only people doing more than 5 dailies at that time.
The leaderboards were released on March 26th. There was quite a lot of complaining about them being not fair, precisely because of the dailies which gave an advantage to the player playing and doing the dailies since launch.
Then, during summer, they added LS dailies so that people could get the LS meta easily. I feel the philosophy of Anet towards the dailies began to shift at that time: not only were they meant to encourage relagular play, but they also became a tool to bring player into specific parts of the game, like LS or activities.

With the addition of the achievement rewards, Anet do encourage player to do more than 5 dailies, reinforcing the potential of those to bring more players into specific areas.
This is the main target of the incoming PvP dailies: bring more people into tournaments. And this time the carrot is not the daily chest, since it will always easier to get playing hotjoin hence not doing the new achievements, but the AP.

What we, completionists, are complaining about is this new philosophy of Anet regarding dailies thats kills our fun. And I think we can find a solution to keep the dailies attractive without turning the AP-hunting even more into a grindfest, like cap on how many AP you can get per day through dailies.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

The argument presented in regards to AP is the people that do all of the dailies, every day, to keep their AP high now no longer want to do them all to keep their lead/rank/whatever. They want to limit it for everyone, so they can do less work, but still retain what they have. Where as, should they opt to slack off (which is what they want to do for a myriad of reasons) and others keep doing all the extra points (because they have the desire and motivation to do so), will eventually catch up and steal those upper ranks. Which they don’t want.

This is where you are wrong. What we want is not to prevent people from catching up, it is to make the AP-hunt minigame less grindy, or rather to not make it more grindy than it already is. My position on the leaderborads is a consequence of my playstyle, not a goal in itself. Our argument is not that we dont want to do our dailies anymore, it is we’d like it to be less tedious. Since reducing the global number of dailies available is not a valid option (they were added for a reason), we propose to cap the AP given by those.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

In my scenario, its the same general idea, only in the opposite direction. I want to catch up (and am willing to work my tail off to do it), where as in the case of high ranking AP holders they don’t want people to catch up but aren’t willing to continue to put in the effort. In my example I use playable time, which is a huge factor, and since people that can play extensively have the advantage, the only way to negate that advantage would be to force everyone to the same amount of time. For the AP hunters, the enforcement of a daily cap would allow them to retain their leads more easily, with less work, and force their competition into more work to find additional alternatives to catch up.

Again you’re only seeing the competitive part which is not the motivation here. The top AP-leaderboards player are there because they (we) grinded APs way before the leaderboards, just because its something we like. We just don’t want this something we like to become even more grindy to the point we can’t enjoy it anymore.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Thaumanova Reactor

• In the rescue the lab workers quest, it is possible to rescue them too slowly and have the mission fail/bug out. On two times we did a split (4 people doing the shield/lasers and 1 doing the rescue) in order to make the fractal faster only to have it bug out and force us to restart the entire shard since you cannot finish the fractal or reset it. This is a gamebreaking bug. Right now the solution is to do it as a group to avoid doing it “too slowly” but in a fractal with a non-linear sandbox design, it is a bit disappointing to have the ability to split and come up with creative solutions limited in that way.

Are you talking about lvl 40+? Because I have successfully completed this shard at lvl 35 after failling the rescue mission: since you only need to reach 3 out of the 4 control panels (or whatever their name is), we just did the fire room instead. (ie lasers+ooze+fire room)

Another bug on this fractal: after killing the last boss nothing happens. The party is not teleported to the end chest and does not receive the form to travel to the next shard. This may be caused by a player disconnecting during the boss fight.

As much as I support a cap for daily AP, I think limiting it to 5/day (10 total with PvP and PvE) is a bit too much. Having more AP available is helpfull for people that want to rush their next achievement chest by doing more dailies than they use to. I’d prefer having something like 10AP/day in PvE and 5AP/day in PvP, keeping the requirements for the daily chest.
Or there could be something a bit more complex, like limiting the number of AP obtainable through dailies in a given time, for example 70AP/week for PvE. This would give more flexibility for players that want to rush some AP on 3-4 days, while keeping the overall grind to a reasonable level. This would also allow people to skip a day with no consequence AP-wise (you’ll still lose the chest).
A very important point imo: the cap should be strictly limited to the AP, not diminishing the XP reward.

Awe.1096:

Blaeys.3102:

Do people anywhere actually care who is at the top of the leaderboards?

Perhaps few does. Most dont. But that is not the point. They could remove the leaderboards from the game and even hide the AP values of other players. And AP hunters would still grind it all. This is how completionists play. Its not about some leaderboard.

Completionists like me chose to go for the achievements at launch day. All the players that are now sitting at the top of the AP leaderboards were dedicated to AP-hunting since that day, way before Anet even spoke about leaderboards. We do it because we like it, not because of a leaderboard.
Now, our problem is that Anet is changing this minigame we like, slowly killing its fun by adding more and more dailies. What we are asking for is a way of keeping this fun part with the smallest possible impact on other players, preferably none.
There has been rather good suggestions in this thread and others on how this coud be done: a daily cap, a weekly/monthly/yearly cap to the AP obtainable through dailies, a hard cap to the total AP from dailies/monthlies/LS, or even a combination of those.
Now if you have concerns about these suggestions, if you think they would have a negative impact on your playstyle or your fun, please give your opinion so we can have a constructive discussion.

Animaniak.5619:

We just want a CAP on daily Achievement-Points – that’s all there is to it and i really think it’s a valid request!

This.

AP hunting is a minigame some people (like me) enjoy and are extremely commited to. I think it is legit to express our concerns about the changes Anet announced to that minigame, just like a dedicated PvP player will discuss the balance changes. Since Anet is promoting this minigame through the leaderboards, I think they shouldn’t ignore that always increasing the number of daily achievements (from 5 at launch to 22 starting 10th Dec.) does not promote a healthy competition.

Setting a cap to the daily AP would be a good solution imo (something like 10AP/day from dailies, either Pve or PvP). Since a very large majority of players dont bother to do their daily achievements after getting the chest, a cap to the daily AP would almost only impact the AP grinders, the very same player that are asking for it.

The only other consequence I can think of is players that want to get their next achievement chest quickly and would have to wait one or two more days providing they dont have any other way to get fast AP (quite unlikely if they’re not themselves AP grinders)

Iil.7349:

Now we have 3 German servers who have 34 points and 3 French Server who lead the league with 60 points.
And this question is now answered.

Didn’t know AR was leading the league.

hash.6287:

More questions. So i just hit 80. I have Berserker Gear from craft(yellow(rare) items in every slot except back). I have 400 Huntsman and 400 Leatherworking(i know it is nothing at this moment but i have done that).

1. What should i do? Map completion? Dungeons? Fractals(oh man i still don’t know what is it)
2. How should i gear up? What is the best way to do this?
3. What is the fastest way to farm laurels?(are they only from daily?)
4. Which one salvaging kits should i use?

1. Really depends on what you enjoy the most. You’ll want to do at bit of map completion at least to have access to the dungeons/world events, and the rewards can be pretty decent since even the low-level crafting materials are now quite expensive. If you are looking for more challenging content, go for dungeons/fractals.
2. Berserker gear is the most effective for pve because, unlike pvp, you can rather easily predict the damage and avoid it. As for the acquiring part, it depends how fast you want it to be… I’d recommend gearing in exotics before going for ascended gear. You can buy exotic gear off the tp for a decent price or get them for dugeons tokens. It really depends on which content you want to focus first.
3. Laurels are awarded for daily (1/day), monthly (10/month) and achievements (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Achievement_rewards)
4. I personnaly use master’s for rares/exotics and basic for everything under

The fight with Logan is actually a fight agaisnt the DE member of your race.
afaik, the final fight can be:
- Your race mentor
- Your Order mentor
- Clockwork nightmare
- Molten berserker (not sure about the name, its the charr boss at the end of the molten facility)

iirc there were aetherblades and toxic alliance too but not sure about those

fellyn.5083:

I don’t think people misinterpreted anything. I’m pretty sure they specifically said new legendary weapons would be coming. Now if those are going to be entirely new weapons types if they add new kinds of weapons to the games or for current weapons they never said.

They also said new types of legendaries, which Colin revealed to likely be accessories.

Just checked the blog post and you’re right, they indeed talked about new legendary weapons. The misinterpretation I was remembering was people going for legendary armor when it was trinkets.

ozma.3498:

That’s four updates to get the following implemented:

- A new “specific way” to build precursors.
- Crafting level 500 for all professions.
- New legendary weapons.
- New types of Legendary gear.
- Ascended armor (including craftable pieces).

- As stated previously, precursor crafting is likely not to make it into the game this year
- Since the art for the armor and the ascended crafting materials are already in the game files, we can safely presume it will come in time. No news about lvl 500 Chef though.
- No new legendary weapons are schedulded. People misinterpreted the announcement of the new types of legendary items and thought it was about weapons. What we will get is legendary trinkets of one type (either rings, amulets or earrings)

Hi Chris, thanks for taking the time to answer here, it is really appreciated.

Being an avid forum reader, I noticed that often people are just not informed of things that have already been announced / precised by the devs. This, together with the broken search feature, leads to multiple similar threads, suggestions and complains: for example I saw a post in this thread complaining about precursors being complete RNG, when a scavenger hunt has been announced for late 2013.

I think there should be a place (probably a forum thread) where all the released informations about what is coming / what is being worked on is gathered.

It should aggregate:
- The half-year blog posts
- The official forum posts/announcements
- The various interviews given by the devs (this part is probably harder)

Each topic having:
- A status: “coming soon”, “is worked on”, “we’re thinking about it”, etc.
- A release date (even something vague like “late this year”)
- The details of the feature as they are disclosed

Such a database would greatly help us, players, have a better understanding of where the game is heading to and as a consequence improve the quality of our feedback/suggestions. Also, it would be a great help to have this sort of “ultimate reference” when we want to back up our forum posts with dev information.

Cinnamon Goddess.3869:

I don’t like how it seems everyone always knows things before I do in this game. It is like they have friends at Anet that give them the heads up on what about to happen. That is just like insider trading and is just as distasteful if that is what is happening.

Another conspiracy theory…
We know since july that ascended armor are coming before the end of the year. Considering ascended weapons are already available and that 2013 has only 3 months left, its obvious armor will come rather soon. The armors skins being added to the game was just the trigger for some people that started to stock up gossamer, causing the price uprising.

Moon.6371:

Good players usually don`t rely on 24 mates to show off their skills, good players usually despise any setting where their individual talents cannot shine, good players usually don`t GvG because they would simply feel bored to hell…

And who are you to know so much about what “good players” do?

Augury killed him with 0:00 remaining

JanoRis.8703:

Hey Josh
The changes you made are fine though. Only thing I don’t like are the geysers being always up. I hope you find a solution to the problem with them, so they can be moving again next time they are around. How about you put in an alternate path with a switch, that makes the geysers frozen..or an upgrade to the slingshot that freezes stuff.

I too would love to see the geysers come back. Instead of making them an on/off mechanic you could turn them into moving plateforms, so that timing the jumps would still be required but you could stay on a geyser while waiting for it to come back up. The “down” position for some of them could be in the water to add a bit of pressure, but I think it would be more interesting than the current rocks while less punishing/frustating than the old system.
I dont know if the game engine allows moving plateforms (the only place I remember those is the 2nd part of the wizard boss, but the environnement seems kinda special there), but I think they’re what geyser should be
Anyways, keep up the good work! I can’t wait for w3 TM