Will achievement points ever be fixed

[Mathias.9657]

AP cannot be taken seriously when there are still no 'feat of strength' style achievements. Earning AP from stupid unobtainable grinds from ages ago and retaining the AP after their removal? I mean wha.. huh??

 

I know GW2 devs never worked with an achievement system before, that much was obvious since launch.

 

It is pretty silly that after many years it is still a joke though.

Make AP matter and based on available content.

Allow viewership of others' ingame to see what they've completed, a compare button.

 

Join the rest of the MMO genre with a working achievement system, thanks.

[kapri.5918]

Why would I want to compare my achievement points with someone else's? As long as I have been playing (off and on and not that long) this game has never tried to throw at me being better than the next guy/gal. To be honest, it seems it would be a peeing contest. I know I don't have many achievements unlocked but I don't want a person to come up to me and start looking at what I got and all. And don't ask me about the diving achievements. They hate me and I hate them.

[Einsof.1457]

My only complaint is I wish achievements included the date the achievement was completed. Besides that it's a great system imo and a whole universe ahead of ffxiv's achievement system.

[Manasa Devi.7958]

Why fix what isn't broken? If it doesn't work like it works in some other games, so what? Do all games need to be exactly the same?

[Ayrilana.1396]

> @"Mathias.9657" said:

> AP cannot be taken seriously when there are still no 'feat of strength' style achievements. Earning AP from stupid unobtainable grinds from ages ago and retaining the AP after their removal? I mean wha.. huh??

>

> I know GW2 devs never worked with an achievement system before, that much was obvious since launch.

>

> It is pretty silly that after many years it is still a joke though.

> Make AP matter and based on available content.

> Allow viewership of others' ingame to see what they've completed, a compare button.

>

> Join the rest of the MMO genre with a working achievement system, thanks.

 

The GW2 achievement system is not all that different from other games that I have seen.

[Boysenberry.1869]

I have two thoughts on this.

 

1. I've played the game since launch. I played Season 1 and I've done achievements that are no longer available. Having these achievements is my reward for devoting years of playtime to the game. This makes perfect sense to me.

 

2. Achievement Points are largely meaningless. Comparing points to someone else is also meaningless. You don't race to 30k AP and get a giant banner on your screen that says "I WIN!!!!". If someone has more AP than you... so? How does this cause harm other than it taking longer to earn a few AP skins. I mean, it should take longer if you've played less.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"Mathias.9657" said:

> AP cannot be taken seriously when there are still no 'feat of strength' style achievements. Earning AP from stupid unobtainable grinds from ages ago and retaining the AP after their removal? I mean wha.. huh??

>

> I know GW2 devs never worked with an achievement system before, that much was obvious since launch.

>

> It is pretty silly that after many years it is still a joke though.

> Make AP matter and based on available content.

> Allow viewership of others' ingame to see what they've completed, a compare button.

>

> Join the rest of the MMO genre with a working achievement system, thanks.

 

I have never taken AP points seriously. I see them as a convenient source of in-game goals (and I don't entirely rely upon them to decide what I'm doing either). They are pretty much like gold in this game: anyone who wants tons can get them, if they devote their time efficiently towards their acquistion.

 

Accordingly, there's nothing to fix; it's working as intended.

[Ayakaru.6583]

My only complaint is that the latecomers, or people who with jobs/studies who missed half or more of LS1 are soft-locked out of the achievement rewards.

 

I myself had internships at the time, and missed everything after the nightmare tower. Was lucky enough to get a day to kill scarlet.

 

But as a result I've missed out of potentially thousands of AP that are now removed from the game.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Here you go: https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/na

 

Compare to your heart's content. :)

[MithranArkanere.8957]

While everyone should agree that what's truly fair is not having unobtainable AP, AP earned from unobtainable achievements cannot be removed from players and turned into feats of Strength like they would do it in WoW or Diablo III because AP amount is tied to personal rewards.

What could be done is moving it somewhere else, so players who earned that AP can keep it without that AP being tied to unobtainable achievements.

Right now there's a cap for daily achievements of 15 000 AP, and it's shared with monthly achievements, but monthly achievements have been removed. And rightly so, they were dull and pointless.

To make unobtainable achievements have no accounted AP, we'd need a place to keep the AP that has been already earned, so the historical achievements count for no AP, but players who earned that AP can keep it. And also ways for new players to catch up and earn it. Things like these could be done to achieve that:

 

* Make obtainable again as many of the unobtainable achievements as possible. Namely making unobtainable festival, S1 and S2 achievements obtainable again as part of yearly achievements, bringing back S1 in the form of instances, 'fractal rifts' that lead to shared instances in the past to replay old events like the marionette and attacks to LA, and retold Side Stories.

* Fractal rifts are the only way I could imagine to bring back map-changing events (and even make possible future map-changing events that coexists with the new versions of the maps, along the new phasing tech). Remember the starting tutorial instances and the prelude map for HoT? Those are shared instances that appear as a 'cutout' of a larger map, in the same world map space. Now, imagine you walk to the remains of the marionette, find a fractal rift portal and use it, and get send to such a 'cutout' shared instance with the old marionette re-enacted there. It could be a new hardcore world boss that happens every 3 hours, and that guilds can start out of schedule with a guild consumable, all without having to rework anything more in Lornar's Pass, as the changes remain isolated in the instance.

* Split the daily and monthly caps into two, remaking the monthly cap into new form of of long term achievements: Quarterly achievements. Quarterly achievements would be very different to monthly achievements. Instead a series of "repeat X" achievements that give 1 month to be done but people end up doing in a single weekend, they would take 3 months, and they would require doing at least 6 achievements from a list of several different things, and give 25 AP every time they are done. Examples of quarterly achievements would be:

* Defeat each world boss

* Complete 30 different jumping puzzles without using teleportation.

* Complete every story dungeon path and every mini-dungeon.

* Earn gold rewards in 20 different activities.

* Complete 20 different guild missions.

* Complete every explorable dungeon path.

* Complete 75 different fractal levels.

* Fight at least 9 different raid bosses.

* Defeat at least 3 different raid bosses.

* Defeat a number of different enemies of each profession in every Mist War map. (Only enemies that give full WXP count, to discourage farming schemes)

* Take and defend for 30 min at least 20 different WvW objectives.

* Defeat a number of enemies of each profession in structured PvP matches.

* Win matches in every arena in structured PvP matches.

* Since that would obviously be a lot of work, a 'quicker' dirtier patch could be just increasing the daily AP cap from 15K to high enough to fit all the AP from unobtainable achievements, and move that AP from unobtainable achievements to the daily cap. Of course, that would be still a lot of work. I bet there's people who would dread having to touch and rework earlier achievements and AP-related systems.

 

Once we have something like that and AP from historical achievements can be moved from them to something else, they could have their AP moved. That way players who didn't reach daily and quarterly cap would still be able to earn a bit more. And those who reach the cap with the new accounting would just keep their AP.

[Ashantara.8731]

> @"Ayakaru.6583" said:

> My only complaint is that the latecomers, or people who with jobs/studies who missed half or more of LS1 are soft-locked out of the achievement rewards.

>

> I myself had internships at the time, and missed everything after the nightmare tower. Was lucky enough to get a day to kill scarlet.

>

> But as a result I've missed out of potentially thousands of AP that are now removed from the game.

 

This is indeed an issue I would like to see the devs do something about. :+1:

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"Ayakaru.6583" said:

> But as a result I've missed out of potentially thousands of AP that are now removed from the game.

 

It's about 4-4.5k, depending on how/what you count. There isn't really any "fair" way of adjudicating that doesn't benefit one group over others, especially since the original bits of the game that offered those points is never, ever going to return. (Even if LS1 was made replayable, it would be in an entirely new presentation, because the game has changed, the tools have evolved, and ANet has learned some (and forgotten other) lessons.)

 

While it's entirely _possible_ to make the 4.5k deficit go away (or become unimportant); it's just never going to be an efficient use of resources, especially since most people are more likely to simply want more stuff to do, rather than worry about AP.

 

****

There's an almost-fair method that ... well, I doubt ANet would go for it: introduce massive AP inflation. If future AP were awarded at 10x the rate of past AP (with commensurate changes to the breakpoints that reward AP chests), then a past deficit of 5k wouldn't end up mattering much. However, it's an incredible amount of work and hardly anyone is going to follow the math, so I doubt it will result in people feeling better about the situation.

 

Another method would be to do something like what the OP wants and completely scrap the system and start over. Everyone keeps the rewards they got and ANet sets up a new system, refactoring every single achievement and only worrying about currently available AP. The old reward skins (pinnacle, zenith, radiant, hellfire) would be made available through some other means (reward tracks, laurels, or something new) and they'd invent new rewards. Veterans would unlock two chests each time they "ranked" up, same as they did when AP reward chests were first added. This too is unlikely to happen because it represents a massive sinkhole of time to review everything, normalize rewards, invent new ones, and make sure that they don't break anything along the way.

 

 

 

[Pifil.5193]

> @"Mathias.9657" said:

> Join the rest of the MMO genre with a working achievement system, thanks.

 

It works fine now if they just remove the leaderboards. There's no need to compare Achievement Points anyway. They're just a means to deliver rewards.

[Gop.8713]

AP is different things to different ppl. For me it's a reward track, so my big problem with it is that it includes unique rewards that cannot be obtained. If they just removed those rewards I'd be completely happy with it . . .

 

But for the OP, AP is a means to compare oneself to other players, so the big issue there is that historical AP unbalance the playing field and newer accounts can't compete, so he would need a different solution than I would . . .

 

So if anet were to decide to put energy into 'fixing' the AP system, their first task would be to establish a goal or set of goals that the system was meant to accomplish, otherwise they'll still be left with a bunch of players complaining that it doesn't do the thing that they think it should . . .

[Zaklex.6308]

Technically AP is supposed to be an individual goal, not something for everyone to fight over. Some of us earned AP that is no longer available, some didn't get that chance, it shouldn't matter to anyone else but yourself. I personally skipped LS1 because I didn't care for it(don't ask, just trust me that I knew the story direction) and I had other issues going on, not ones that actually prevented me from logging in, just I had lost interest. There's a lot of AP I've ignored because I can't be bothered to attempt it, that's how unimportant it is.

[Randulf.7614]

The ap system just needs to return to improved and consistent AP amounts given out. Beyond that, it is a working horizontal reward progression system. It does not warrant any major changes or overhaul. It just needs to do awsy with 1 point ap and strict budgeting per release.

[Gop.8713]

> @"Zaklex.6308" said:

> Technically AP is supposed to be an individual goal, not something for everyone to fight over. Some of us earned AP that is no longer available, some didn't get that chance, it shouldn't matter to anyone else but yourself. I personally skipped LS1 because I didn't care for it(don't ask, just trust me that I knew the story direction) and I had other issues going on, not ones that actually prevented me from logging in, just I had lost interest. There's a lot of AP I've ignored because I can't be bothered to attempt it, that's how unimportant it is.

 

It is one of the very few metrics that is easily visible to other players in the game though, so OP's inference that it was intended as a way for players to gauge or compare one another seems reasonable . . .

[Haleydawn.3764]

> @"Gop.8713" said:

> > @"Zaklex.6308" said:

> > Technically AP is supposed to be an individual goal, not something for everyone to fight over. Some of us earned AP that is no longer available, some didn't get that chance, it shouldn't matter to anyone else but yourself. I personally skipped LS1 because I didn't care for it(don't ask, just trust me that I knew the story direction) and I had other issues going on, not ones that actually prevented me from logging in, just I had lost interest. There's a lot of AP I've ignored because I can't be bothered to attempt it, that's how unimportant it is.

>

> It is one of the very few metrics that is easily visible to other players in the game though, so OP's inference that it was intended as a way for players to gauge or compare one another seems reasonable . . .

 

Is it though?

Last time I saw AP as a comparison/requirement was pre-HoT determining Dungeon groups and if you would be kicked or not. /shrug. Never seen it used outside of such scenarios unless someone was taking the p in an LFG.

People would much rather use items, ‘kill proofs’ to determine this now. Your AP really is a personal treadmill, it only shows people how much you play the game, and that’s fine.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"Gop.8713" said:

> It is one of the very few metrics that is easily visible to other players in the game though,

 

Yeah, it really is.

I always wished that they hid it. I thought the AP leaderboards were a mistake, because it runs counter to all the other aspects of the game they designed to foster cooperation rather than competition.

 

> so OP's inference that it was intended as a way for players to gauge or compare one another seems reasonable . . .

It's not an unreasonable idea. But it's just not very useful in gauging or comparing.

In the early days of the game, it was used as "KP" for dungeons, as if having 5k AP meant you knew mechanics better than someone with 2k.

[Gop.8713]

> @"Haleydawn.3764" said:

> > @"Gop.8713" said:

> > > @"Zaklex.6308" said:

> > > Technically AP is supposed to be an individual goal, not something for everyone to fight over. Some of us earned AP that is no longer available, some didn't get that chance, it shouldn't matter to anyone else but yourself. I personally skipped LS1 because I didn't care for it(don't ask, just trust me that I knew the story direction) and I had other issues going on, not ones that actually prevented me from logging in, just I had lost interest. There's a lot of AP I've ignored because I can't be bothered to attempt it, that's how unimportant it is.

> >

> > It is one of the very few metrics that is easily visible to other players in the game though, so OP's inference that it was intended as a way for players to gauge or compare one another seems reasonable . . .

>

> Is it though?

> Last time I saw AP as a comparison/requirement was pre-HoT determining Dungeon groups and if you would be kicked or not. /shrug. Never seen it used outside of such scenarios unless someone was taking the p in an LFG.

> People would much rather use items, ‘kill proofs’ to determine this now. Your AP really is a personal treadmill, it only shows people how much you play the game, and that’s fine.

 

The inference that it was intended for that purpose is reasonable, yes. I agree its value in that role is questionable . . .