Guild Wars 2

Conncept.7638:

They added a single new tier, it’s still capped at a clearly visible ceiling just like it was before, just slightly higher than the previous one.

This made me laugh.

Also if an employee violates a company policy, that can result in termination (in any company). Just because this is the game industry doesn’t make it less valid. If the “Manifesto” was a company policy, then clearly there are some violations in progress.

A well designed MMO gives all players a chance to experience content on their time… not some artificial time-table enforced by the developers. Don’t blame yourself for poorly executed content.

The content itself I hear was excellent… just not executed well for an MMO.

I’m slowly losing my patience with ArenaNet in Guild Wars 2. This is coming from a GW1 player who owns every ANet product released to date. ANet has done a great job in creating the game, but a horrible job in execution of an MMO. This lost shores event was just the latest in a series of bungled player-releations.

First off, we have new content that’s only accessible for a two hour window on a sunday afternoon. While this is just a game, we are paying customers with a minimum expectation that we can experience what we paid for.

Second, if you could attend the event, you probably experienced horrific lag making the play-quality poor.

Third, ANet decided to offer rewards better than any current in-game reward (dungeon chests, story rewards, map-completion rewards, you name it). If you want to make players mad, schedule an event they cannot attend and then give an awesome reward. (Never mind the overflow-hopping exploit that players used to run a “one-time” event many times)

ANet continues to treat the player base for an MMO in ways I didn’t not really expect from them. I’m losing more than patience… I’m losing respect.

Players would rather play than watch I think (I know I would).

I’m slowly losing my patience with ArenaNet in Guild Wars 2. They’ve done a great job in creating the game, but a HORRIBLE job in execution of an MMO. This lost shores event was just the latest in a series of bungled player-releations.

First off, we have new content that’s only accessible for a two hour window on a sunday afternoon. While this is just a game, we are paying customers with a minimum expectation that we can experience what we paid for.

Second, if you could attend the event, you probably experienced horrific lag making the play-quality poor.

Third, ANet decided to offer rewards better than ANY current in-game reward (dungeon chests, story rewards, map-completion rewards, you name it). If you want to make players mad, schedule an event they cannot attend and then give awesome rewards.

Now, if that wasn’t enough in the “bad decision” column, consider that some players ran the “one-time” event once for every toon they have.

I’m sure this sounds a bit sour-grapes, but ANet continues to work-over the player base for an MMO in ways I didn’t not really expect from them. I’m losing more than patience… I’m losing respect.

The exploit requires using different characters. ANet flagged a single character as “completed” and would not allow that same character to re-open the chest. What they missed was alternate characters.

I don’t think it was intended that players “hop” from overflow to overflow to rerun a “one time” event. That makes it an exploit.

I’m not sure what genius thought it would be a good idea to offer a “one time” event reward that is better than any existing dugeon/story/map-completion reward. That asside, players were obtaining the reward multiple times. This was achieved by exploiting the staggered execution times in the overflow servers as follows:

1. Complete event on main toon
2. Log to a different toon
3. Zone until finding overflow server where the event was still running
4. Repeat at step 1 until out of overflow servers or toons
5. Cha-ching I have multiple rewards!

I saw one player link 5x the reward chest. Just more salt in the wounds of players who could not attend the event just once.

I enjoyed the portions of Lost Shores that I could actually attend this weekend. Unfortunately I missed the finale event due to family obligations. I know this is just a game, but it pissed me off (more so upon discovering the event rewards were better than any existing dungeon/story/map-completion reward currently in game).

There was no real reason to make this a one-time event, or even an event. Using instances or even the story mechanic might have been a better route here since you could: (1) control access to limit a single run per player, (2) minimize lag by distributing the load, (3) give all your player base a larger window to hit the content.

Next time allow all your diverse player base an opporunity to play the content you worked so hard to create by opening up the access to be more than two hours on a single sunday in november.

The orb’s recharge was based upon when it moved out of range (when not blowing it up). A 50% increase in speed is effectively a 50% dmg increase.

Everything else about the staff is unchanged — including the damage. The orb always did nice damage — especially if using after “Empower” (staff 4). Twelve stacks of might will make a lot of skills look impressive.

I feel like folks are arguing in this thread for the sake of pride.

In my opinion, Illusions could already be countered by opposing players/mobs — simply hit them and poof. A foe could also block/evade the initial attack (and not receive the hit effect like cripple).

The fact is an illusion is not a simple one-shot skill like most skills in the game. It’s a combination of many mechanics including a pet. Nullifying the entire mechanic with a simple blind, aegis, block, etc. is overly severe.

If you think of an illusion as a fragile pet, then you’ll understand the fustration many players are having with this latest change. Combine that with the other bugs introduced on the illusions, and there’s plenty of reason to rant.

The TP explains it all — you don’t even need to guess. The prices are higher than they were before the excessive drop rate was in effect. That’s all the evidence you need.

If LoS is removed on iZerk, then they really need to fix the LoS issues with the auto-attacks.

The same argument applies in reverse for opponents standing on top of walls. If you can stand on a wall and hit people on the ground, then you should be “touchable” with ranged attacks.

Right now none of the Mesmer ranged attacks except iZerk can hit someone in plain sight on top of a wall.

I’m all for fixing iZerk through walls — but right now that’s a mesmer’s only option for wall tops.

So if flipping isn’t a problem, and encouraged by ANet for “healthy” economic reasons why don’t we have the luxury with Gems?

You can’t flip gems because the buy and sell systems are decoupled in some fashion. The only time was profitable was if you bought at 300 gems per 1gp, and sold in the weeks following the massive plunge to 100 gems per 1gp. Even then you’d make a piddly amount of money.

So, why does ANet keep the gem market tight and “unplayable”?

Should a similar decouping exist for buying vs. selling on the TP?

I wield the GS and I am a big fan of the following stat distribution:

Power > 2000
Precision > 1800
Toughness > 1300
Vitality >1250
Condition Dmg > 200
Crit chance > 40%
Crit dmg > 40

Step 1: Shape your traits to your play style
Step 2: Achieve your stat distribution with gear

Personally I’m running a 20/30/0/0/20 trait setup. For armor I use a Valkyrie set slotted with ruby orbs. For jewelry I use Knights slotted with emeralds. The knights/emeralds are nice because the knights primary stat is toughness, but on emeralds it’s precision. Emeralds are the only jewel that has precision as primary stat when slotted.

My GS is a zerk with a sigil of fire (I’m mixed on the sigil).

Samuirai.4561:

Can you please explain, why buying low, selling high would push the prices up?

Buying pushing prices up… selling pushes them back down.

Where it breaks down is the complete purchase of the current supply with limited supply coming into the system. You can argue this is supply and demand, but the demand in this case is initially manipulated by a small set of players buying up all the stock then letting it back out slowly, at higher prices. RL diamond market may be a good comparison — although I hate to compare anything in an MMO to real life.

I agree completely with a previous poster about gold farmers as the root cause of the problem.

I would love to see some statistics from ANet on the economy. One insightful metric would be the distribution of wealth in the player base.

lackofcheese.5617:

The TP most definitely does remove gold; it’s quite possibly the biggest gold sink in the game – the 15% tax, remember?

The “stock market” effect is not part of the intended role, but it’s a natural side-effect of a market system, and in a number of ways the effect is a positive one.

Doh slaps head that is correct. The 15% is a sink in the economy — thx for that!

I’m not sure the stock market effect is a positive one. In my opinion it’s not. It doesn’t provide any benefit to the players outside of the buy/sell behavior. In fact it’s a negative impact to everyone else by constantly skimming off the low buys and feeding in high sells.

It’s also enabled with “buy orders” that allow players to queue up huge transactions with 1000’s of gold. Without the buy orders, player would be forced to deal with stock on hand. That makes it more challenging to play the market.

Another way to look at it… features in an MMO are designed to entertain the majority of players. A bad feature does the opposite (to a majority of players). Is stock-market behavior in the TP hurting majority of the player base? I think the answer is yes. Whereas the buying/selling/trading of goods does benefit the majority.

We’re straying to different topics, but I think it’s good conversation.

I didn’t say anything about removing the TP lol… please stay on topic.

The TP does not remove gold — it’s not a sink. It simply transfers gold between players.

The real question is what are the all of the intended roles of the TP (as designed by ANet).

I’d wager that a “stock market” is not an intended role. Players buying 10,000+ items simply for resale falls into this category. Even trading houses in the RL market have limitations and penalties on quick-turn behaviors.

If the intended behavior is to allow players to buy, sell, trade goods, then restrictions on stock-market type behaviors do not inhibit this.

It’s happened before in much more complicated systems. This system is pretty uncomplicated with the additional bonus that you can produce gold by farming.

ANet has put algorithms in place for farming — even in GW1 there was anti-farming code. This is to limit the influx of gold into the economy.

GW2 has these rules but we also have bots which work around those rules. In addition we’ve had bugs that temporarily skew the economy (karma wep bug, exotic drop rates in halloween events, etc).

The trading post is currently unfettered. There’s no reason ANet shouldn’t put some restrictions in place to minimize the impact of players with significant gold reserves (whether obtained legitimately or not).

If you have 1000’s of gold, do you really need to be deep into playing the market?

Is the purpose of the TP to allow players to sell their drops, obtain crafting materials, etc., or is the TP more like a stock-market?

Right now it plays like both. I don’t think the intent was for it to be a stock market. If that’s true, then there’s no reason ANet shouldn’t cap such behavior.

MeveM.7913:

I just can’t understand why Thief has a 25% Speed buff sigil as passive AND the shortbow teleportation. After play a thief for a while it makes all other classes feel like snails and cripplingly slow.

Thief, warrior, ele have it really good. Air ele with traits and signet of air is really fast. Ranger has a signet with +10% passive. Guardian is in a similar boat to mesmer but they have a shout along with staff 3. The nice thing about guardian staff 3 is that with traits it can be used immediately after c./d to maintain near 100% swiftness. No clue what engineer and necro do… although I’ve seen a necro turn into “green vapor” and move fast for a long time.

Samuirai.4561:

And again. When the items sell with a higher price, the price was too low before.

Not true when the market is manipulated — that’s the whole point. If you personally bought 100% of available stock, you can set your own price. If the supply of stock is eliminated then you now have a monopoly.

There are players with 1000’s of gold (from botting, game bugs, gold purchases, you name it). This is influencing the market right now. These players can also play games like buying up 2500gp worth of limited stock and then setting their own prices on the resale.

I’ve been playing GW2 from launch — and there’s no feasible way I can have 1000+ gp right now from legitimate play. With that in mind, ANet should have software in place to limit the effects of those cash cows on the economy.

lackofcheese.5617:

It would be a mistake for a single player to buy a large quantity and post up most of those items at once, due to the risk of being forced to relist. If anything, that’s evidence of it being done by a larger number of players, and not just one.

Also, an increase in price for an item which is no longer being dropped from a dungeon is an obvious occurrence – I don’t see why this constitutes manipulation.

Disagree on both points.

If the supply was eliminated then buying all the items on the TP and reposting is lower risk (see ore market example previously). You essentially cornered the market in buying all available stock.

A larger number of players probably wouldn’t buy all the items in the same time frame. In addition, this doesn’t explain a similar number items posted back to the trading post shortly afterwards. If the supply was eliminated, it would not be possible for a large number of new items to re-enter the market so quickly.

Again this is only anecdotal — but what else do we have to go on?

I use to think that playing my mesmer required lots of skill — something I rationalized because there were very few mesmers, it was hard to play from lvl 1 to 30, etc.

Ever since rolling a GS+shatter mesmer I swear my play quality has dropped. Seriously it’s super easy in PvE and WvW. Open with GS4, GS2, dodge, auto, F1, dodge, GS2, auto, dodge, F1/F2, repeat…

Get a condition? mantra away two of them (and then another two if needed)
Need a breather? matra daze the foe.
Get CC’d? mantra away the CC and get stability for 2s.
Need another breather? mass invis, move, resume attack from a different angle

It’s not even hard anymore. I’m not even glass cannon with a stat distribution of: 2000 pwr, 1800 precision, 1300 toughness, 1250 vit.

It’s just easy. I swear there will be a DPS nerf to mesmer at some point. I just roll 1v1’s in WvW. The exception here is another GS+shatter mesmer which requires me to actually try (and usually comes down to who’s got the better gear).

Samuirai.4561:

I just don’t like claims with no evidence…

We have anecdotal evidence. We don’t have access to the raw data, so it’s not possible for us to provide anything else.

What was originally stated in this thread: three items on the market had all the lower-cost posts purchased off the TP within the same time window. That was followed by the same three items having a similar number of new posts all at higher prices, within the same time window.

I didn’t gather that information, I’m just going by what was stated already. If that information is correct, then that should be evidence enough for ANet to investigate — rather than blow off the concern with a “can you provide proof” response…

Samuirai.4561:

I just ignore these stupid anet support rants. You argue like politicians. Without content and just empty phrases.

These are legitimate rants — asking your customer base to provide evidence in response to a concern is just passing the buck. It’s a horrible response to a real concern. I like to believe ANet takes pride in their product and would investigate things like this on their own.

The only arguement here is from folks like you who seem to think that anyone who complains is a whiner, entitled, etc.

Also you are not the first player to mention “real world” when talking about the GW2 economy. Keep in mind there are thousands of laws governing our free-market economy. There are no such rules with the trading post — so don’t even go there. It’s a joke.

Having 1000’s of gold gives you the luxury to manipulate the market to some degree. You see it in WoW when one player buys up all the available ore then turns around and reposts all of it at substantially higher prices.

If all the weapons disappeared from the TP in the span of minutes, then a similar quanitity “magically” reappeared all at higher prices… the market was manipulated.

Phantasms are exellent for agro in PvE. At higher levels the phantasms take multiple hits. Even if they are one-shotted, that’s a hit you didn’t take. Throw in the natural defense of the staff and you are god-like. I’m not making this up — this was my play experience.

Staff + phantasms == easy mode pve

Mesmer is awesome in all facets of the game — no joke. This is true even for PvE. Mesmer is the best of all the toons I’ve played in this regard.

However the mesmer starts slow and feels very “weak” from level 1 to 25-ish. However it breaks out around level 30 and at level 80 it is almost OP it’s so good.

At low levels I recommend a staff because the #2 skill with chaos storm and chaos armor really help with survivability. Using phantasms at low levels helps a lot as well. Slot illusionary disenchanter and illusionary defender. Phantasms almost always pull agro off of you. With this play style the mesmer becomes “easy mode”.

At higher levels you can move to more direct DPS and utility skills over the phantams (if you want). I stuck with staff+conditions all the way to 80 then started playing with GS+shatters.

juno.1840:

The biggest wart on our nose in this case is WvW which is nothing but combat and moving from A to B. It’s the A-to-B part that sucks.

I know I posted a lot more above, but I want to put it in perspective. This is the ONLY complaint I have about mesmers. Overall our class is incredible to play with fun mechanics.

On the flip side, my Guardian can move around with perma-swiftness (Staff 3 with points in class trait line). However Guardian is a pill to play in WvW (no joke).

So we don’t have it all that bad

I love players who try to justify the status quo with statements like “you sound greedy”, “don’t know what your issue is…”, etc… (not)

If you’ve played your mesmer past level 20 then you know for non-combat movement we are slow. We have ZERO traits for non-combat movement buffs. We have ONE skill (focus 4) that provides reliable swiftness but it’s on a 50% duty cycle at best.

In combat we rock but in certain non-combat scenarior we suck. The biggest wart on our nose in this case is WvW which is nothing but combat and moving from A to B. It’s the A-to-B part that sucks.

I’d love to dump the focus as my off-hand in PvE, but I need the run-speed buff. It’s necessary to get to an event before other players beat it down, or even to keep up with my own team where the warriors, thieves, and eles are flying ahead.

This being said, I’m not sure what could be done to give mesmers non-combat movement buffs without making us even more dominant in combat. I can already kite like a sonofa in combat…

John Smith.4610:

I would very much disagree with all of these suggestions. I would also be curious to know what evidence you see of market manipulation.

I’m sorry but this response is poorly done — and an example of horrible customer support.

You are ANet — you have the data already. All the evidence to resolve this discussion is at your finger tips. A better response would have been: “I looked at the data and found the following…”. Instead you are asking your player base to give proof. We raised the concern (which I believe to be legit).

IMHO the economy is GW2 is off to a horrible start because of various game bugs that allowed a portion of the player base to accumulate 1000’s of gold. There are also tons of bots generating gold — they are all over the place, just play the game and you’ll run into 50 rangers with bears, 20 signet warriors running as a pack, etc. I’ve even seen groups of signet thief bots. I’ve reported them all, but I’m tired of being the “police” when I really want to immerse myself in a RPG for a couple hours.

If ANet doesn’t wish to be open with metrics on their enconomy, then at least provide informative responses to our concerns…

From reading all the hate on both sides, I’d say the only thing ANet achieved with 100% success is fracturing their player base. Doesn’t sound like a win in my book.

vince.5937:

… will the boots be level 80 when I get to the top?

By the time you make it to the top you’ll be lvl 80

I’m not convinced latency is my only issue either tbh.

I think the achievement was bad in retrospect… I’m not advocating removing it after the fact — not at all. That would be wrong. I appologize if I stated this (expressly or implied).

So do you disagree with making the puzzle client-side only? Would that diminish your experience in any way?

souldonkey.9534

Do you know why Arenanet hasn’t said anything on this thread? It’s because stuff like this, whether or not to have something be an achievement or not, is already discussed heavily in meetings before the content is released. They have a QA team that specifically runs this new content until their eyes bleed looking for what should be achievements, what should be made easier, and what should be more difficult.

I’m familiar with the software industry and development process. It’s not plausible to assume ANet nails it every time without mistakes. There’s no such thing as a zero-defect process.

We could play a game about what stuff the QA Team missed in GW2 so far… there’s no value in that so let’s not.

Myself, I am making assumptions on latency — but this is a server/client game (like all MMOs). I don’t think I’m far from the mark on server-based position calculations with client-side filtering and prediction. MMOs are not twitchy as a result (without degredation from latency). For something as positionally intense as the clock tower, I think it would be an improvement if it was a client-side exercise (and a solo event as a result).

ANet response, or lack there of, doesn’t really validate or invalidate a topic on the forums…

MissKittin.1657:

I hate jumping puzzles (mostly because I suck at them)… Maybe one day I’ll make the effort to try. Now, I’m a completionist along with the rest of you, but there are some things that aren’t happening for me right now: It’s a video game, deal with it

(sorry to sound harsh, but really: The whining is becoming ever more toxic)

People are dealing with it… doesn’t mean we cannot discuss it in a constructive manner.

There is no whining in this thread (with the exception of the “I finished it, kitten until you’re awesome like me!”).

The original topic was about the achievement on this puzzle “as-is” was a bad idea. Since then it’s morphed into another discussion of how to improve the puzzle without decreasing its difficulty.

The bag is also soulbound instead of account bound. This was a bad idea imo. The first toon that finished the event for me already had 15-slot bags. Unfortunately I cannot give the bag to a lowbie alt.

I find it amazing that people defend the puzzle being a multi-player event. As if this lessens the puzzle if the other players are removed… it sounds very artificial to me.

This is a solo achievement, not a group achievement. It’s not a dungeon requiring multiple players working as a team to complete.

It not a “mostly client side” puzzle either — having multiple players in the event proves that wrong straight up. The server is calculating positions for everyone and distributing to the clients.

fellyn.5083:

juno.1840:

I think the difficulty level is fine.

I’d like to see the puzzle as a solo, client-side puzzle. That would make it responsive and based upon your own skill level.

Having an achievement for that scenario is perfect.

But you’re not fine with the difficulty because the mess of players thins out quite quickly. It’s part of the challenge to make it past them.

You can’t say you’re fine with the difficulty and then in the next sentence say it should be easier.

My main point is that the puzzle should be completely client side, removing the server position calculations. This naturally requires the puzzle to be a “solo” instance.

That aside, I’m really baffled by your response. Is this a jumping puzzle or not? You feel that having the challenge of other players obstructing your view is ideal? You think removing the other players lessens your accomplishment? Once the horde thins out, it’s essentially a solo instance anyway…

I think the difficulty level is fine.

I’d like to see the puzzle as a solo, client-side puzzle. That would make it responsive and based upon your own skill level.

Having an achievement for that scenario is perfect.

Kana.6793:

juno.1840:

Serbaayuu.3051:

So what if you WANTED it? You have to earn it. It doesn’t matter to me or the game how much you want it. You don’t deserve it until you can win.

I agree with your statement, but throughout this post I talk about how MMOs do not support twitchy mechanics well — especially those dealing with player position in the world.

This puzzle is not achievable for some players based upon factors outside their control. With that in mind the event should not be an achievement – OR – the event should have been designed differently to begin with.

Example: If the clock tower was a stand-alone instance that ran completly on your PC without server side position calcualtions… wouldn’t that be sweet. Essentially a GW2 mini-game hosted by your client, and not the server.

Now latency and the internet are out of the picture. It’s just you and the puzzle. That would be bliss…

Online games don’t do that sort of thing because it’s easier to cheat with hacks if there’s no server communication.

Agreed – hence my statements about server/client and latency effect this puzzle.

Maybe there could be a different mechanism in this scenario to prevent cheating. If not, then consider that the effects of cheating in this example would be fairly minimal to the game itself (especially if the rewards were soulbound and not salvagable).

Serbaayuu.3051:

So what if you WANTED it? You have to earn it. It doesn’t matter to me or the game how much you want it. You don’t deserve it until you can win.

I agree with your statement, but throughout this post I talk about how MMOs do not support twitchy mechanics well — especially those dealing with player position in the world.

This puzzle is not achievable for some players based upon factors outside their control. With that in mind the event should not be an achievement – OR – the event should have been designed differently to begin with.

Example: If the clock tower was a stand-alone instance that ran completly on your PC without server side position calcualtions… wouldn’t that be sweet. Essentially a GW2 mini-game hosted by your client, and not the server.

Now latency and the internet are out of the picture. It’s just you and the puzzle. That would be bliss…

Serbaayuu.3051:

You spent four hours trying to do something you obviously weren’t having fun with.

Why would you do that?

One reason: I wanted the achievement

It grinds on me that I have an achievement that I cannot complete. I wanted to stop after two hours, but those 10 points on my Hero panel eat at me, so I put in two more hours.

I started to notice that my jumps were not behaving consistantly. I’m not perfect and each run is not identical. However, I started to see that my character wasn’t always lining up with my actual position in game. At that point I lost it — it’s hard enough of a puzzle not to have the additional challenge of latency screwing me.

Was I frustrated? You bet — to the point where it put me in a bad mood outside the game. That’s when it’s time to move on. A game is no longer a game when that happens. I took a break and then came back to do something else which was fun.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

ding Achievement for reaching level 5*
ding Achievement for getting X gold*
ding Achievement for killing 20 snakes*
ding Achievement for falling to your death*
ding Achievement for eating X Y times*

*Actual examples from other games and GW2

Achievements like that make me hate the whole concept of “achievements”.

Now, someone with the Clock Tower Achievement, I can admire. Because I have not been able to complete it myself (yet).

Achievements should, in my opinion, NOT be easy stuff that every braindead monkey can get if only they spend enough time. They should actually MEAN something.

Completely agree — I didn’t say otherwise.

MMOs historically have issues with twitchy game mechanics — this is due to the client/server interaction which is designed to prevent exploits (among other things). You cannot have the client making important decisions (like your position in the world). The server owns that information. Rubber-banding is what you see when the latency gets too great for the filtering and client predictive logic to accomodate.

I think it’s great that GW2 is pushing bounds and putting jumping puzzles into their games. This specific puzzle is very twitchy and will not be achievable by some players due to their latency. That alone is a reason why it should not be an achievement. It should be in the game purely for fun.

Plunder.8195:

And many players could also get this achievement.
And you can’t.

Why should their fun and feeling of achievement be compromised because a small group of players can’t finish this achievement.

Ok I’ve stated this a few times, and I’m running out of steam… it’s really not my role in life to enforce reading comprehension.

If you enjoyed the clock tower, then your success is not compromised if there is an achievement or not.

I never said “make the tower easier”, “kill the tower”, etc. I never said “nobody can finish the tower”.

What I said is some players will have difficulty with this puzzle because of factors outside the player’s control (specifically latency). This is an MMO with all the server/client mechanics that go with an MMO.

If the playing field was completely level, then I would not have any issue with this achievement — but it’s not. This is a game, not real life. It can be designed and redesigned. IMO, this achievement was a poor choice.

Slushey.8236:

juno.1840:

This thread is a lament on ANet’s choice of achievements for the holiday event — specifically an achievement that’s:

1. Dependent upon client/server latency
2. Cannot be incrementally progressed

It’s a worthy topic because achievements are a serious goal for many players.

What are you talking about? You don’t even need to finish the puzzle for the achievement. You just need to attempt it.

There’s a clock-tower puzzle achievement for 10 points. You may be referring to the achievement where you have to find four places in the MK’s realm.

fellyn.5083:

So let me get this straight. Anet needs to balance all future content in the game based on the lowest skilled player in the game so it’s “fair”? Yeah…I don’t see that working out to well.

Nobody said this, or even implied anything close. In addition, no where did this thread say “throw away the clock tower puzzle”. Don’t make up your own drama.

This thread is a lament on ANet’s choice of achievements for the holiday event — specifically an achievement that’s:

1. Dependent upon client/server latency
2. Cannot be incrementally progressed
3. Exists for a short time frame

It’s a worthy topic because achievements are a serious goal for many players.

Sentinel VX.1392:

You get achievement by effort not by doing easy thing otherwise it won’t be called achievement.

Completely agree — I did not say otherwise. However there’s an underlying assumption that anyone can complete it. This achievement is unique to GW2 (to date) in that it also requires a low-latency connection (and to a lesser degree good gaming hardware).

Sentinel VX.1392:

Also no one forces you to do it if you don’t like it.

Unfortunately it does if you’re an achievement hound. This applies to any achievement: Some players do not enjoy the dungeons, but they’ll be forced to do dungeons if they want achievement completion.

This particular achievement is a little different from many others because: (1) it’s around for a short time, (2) it’s effected by your server latency to a greater degree than the other achievements, (3) it’s not incrementally completed.

You can progress on HoM achievements incrementally. Some of the HoM achievements are very very time consuming (I know — I have all of them). But here’s the rub — you can still progress. With sufficient time and effort (and a few other things) you can surmount those challenges. Need 10000 drinks, well you can hit 500 on Monday, and shoot for another 500 on tuesday. It’s “achievable” — latency isn’t going to screw me out of my 10000 drinks.

This achievement is all-or-none and has dependence on factors outside your control (i.e. latency). That makes it a bad candidate for an achievement in my book. There are other jumping puzzles in the game which have achievement, but these are fundamentally different.

Sorry ANet, I can’t invest any more time trying to master this “puzzle”. I appreciate the diversity of activities you’ve incorporated into the Halloween event — all of them are very creative. However adding something like the clock tower as an “achievement” to a short, two-week event was probably a bad idea. I would have spent far less of time on the tower if it was simply another activity in the cornucopia of halloween awesomness.

The fact is this is an MMO where game mechanics are heavily managed by the server. My position in the world is server calculated, not local to my computer. Latency between client and server can make this puzzle exceptionally difficult to complete. You guys know this, and it’s nice to see an MMO push boundaries — but hey, don’t make it an achievement!

The players that enjoy the clock tower will enjoy it regardless of achievement (otherwise all these “clock tower is great” posts are hypocritical). Achievements should be something that are achievable by your complete player base (and yes some with significant effort). However unlike “grindy” achievements, you can’t progress to completion on the clock tower — it’s all or none baby! You either have the “stuff” as a player to complete this puzzle or you don’t. Unfortunately the “stuff” may be a low latency connection to the server — I wasn’t born with that stuff

EDIT:
After the discussions in this thread, I think the better solution (in retrospect) would be to keep the achievement, but change the puzzle to be a client-side application instead of a server-side. This eliminates the BS of my internet connection in the mix. As a side effect it also results in a solo adventure, removing the noise of obstructed views.

I have 3 hrs into the clock tower puzzle which I consider substantial “effort”.

At this point I haven’t quite made it to the first set of stairs after the beginning steps. I almost made the jump twice, but was eaten by green bile or missed.

At this rate, I think I may get the entire tower in 6 hrs. That’s too much investment for a holiday puzzle.

One thing that would help is slowing the rising green bile. The jumps are tough without a time limit. The current time limit mechanism is too severe!

Don’t abandon staff because of the game changes — it’s still great for conditions and can be quite tanky. Most phantasms die before their 2nd attack anyway (because of shatter or because the mob dies), so the ‘small’ decrease in iWarlock attack rate really doesn’t impact most activities.