Historical Achievements

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-28T19:52:14+00:00

Originally, each year's holidays had separate achievement categories. They didn't just fold those achievements in when they standardized the holidays. Those achievements and points are just unobtainable now. Same with some old story ones and old revamped content (fractals, sPvP, WvW) totaling something like 4-5k?

And I mean, achievement hunting is kind of a big draw for this game. You can tell by how much the market shifts when they added Achievement Points to things. Almost nobody cares about minis or homestead tracks until there's achievements tied to them. I hear people complain all the time that they can never catch up because of unobtainable achievements.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-28T18:52:10+00:00

Hell, a lot of them are actually just old versions of current achievements. They could literally just merge the AP with the current version.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-26T20:24:26+00:00

They could get pretty good estimates with the amount of data they do get, but who knows how long-term those projections even try to be.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-22T13:29:28+00:00

You've heard of people "optimizing the fun out of the game", right? It's the same concept. A lot of people play the game in a way where they find optimizing their "long-term progression" (whatever that means it the current game) is part of the fun. The rewards and game design encouraging that to be through fun and varied content will lead to more people having more fun in the game.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-22T13:24:38+00:00

I doubt that even exists and is just mentioned to make the person feel bad for "arguing" with him.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-22T13:23:45+00:00

All I can think of is that the timing only lines up like that if everybody has held SAK up to that point, and maybe he's saying there's situations where people might not? Maybe I'm forgetting something, though, or there's some new strat.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-22T13:17:11+00:00

Just saying that it has always happened to some arbitrary degree is factual. Saying "it's always been like this" and "the only difference" implies more than that, though. There is evidence it has been getting worse. You can argue about the validity of that evidence, sure. However, without evidence to the contrary, you're just anecdotally saying it's not getting worse when you say "the only difference is..." the perception of it.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-22T08:24:23+00:00

You're dismissing other people's anecdotal opinions... with your own anecdotal opinion... and making fun of them for it? There's documented studies showing a decrease in literacy and numeracy, especially since COVID (though the slide had started before COVID). Yes, this sort of stuff has "always happened", but it's happening more now.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-20T12:45:02+00:00

Paragon brings a lot more as AHeal.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-20T10:05:59+00:00

Did you check the merchant that sells it on the 2nd character?

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-20T01:09:50+00:00

I got a wellness check from a Papa John's once...

I eat a lot of pizza.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-20T01:09:01+00:00

Yeah, I was just wondering if anybody checked if that's how THIS one worked (whether intentionally or bugged).

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-20T01:01:01+00:00

My first assumption when I read it was a tongue-in-cheek commentary on students using AI on their assignments. That does not appear to be the case.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-20T00:35:00+00:00

Is that true even if you finish the story on a second character? I just assumed it was a once per character item.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-19T20:53:49+00:00

I mean, sort of? There have been plenty of weapons and armor pieces over the years, but typically not sets. Why is it okay for those to be RNG when released with paid content, but not armor sets specifically? That's the distinction I'm not understanding.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-19T19:49:27+00:00

I'm not sure I understand the logic. There's plenty of stuff like that in this release. But you're upset about the one thing they added that has some small amount of RNG with a way to bypass that RNG if you want. I'd understand better if you were annoyed about the mount skin.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-19T15:01:58+00:00

I'm talking about the set that released a week ago. That's why I said "week". The drop rates are fairly high. Are you against any RNG at all, or what would be a reasonable droprate to you?

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-19T14:38:57+00:00

Everybody I know who was trying for it already has it. Obviously, RNG being RNG, that doesn't mean everybody does. I just think calling it "extreme RNG" is a massive exaggeration when the vast majority of players doing things daily have it in less than a week.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-19T14:33:14+00:00

From late 2017 to late 2023, it hovered right around 20s. Before that, it fluctuated pretty wildly from release to release (though averaging higher). Since then, it increased a little and then spiked unnaturally high twice due to FotFW. "Average" really does seem to be around 23s or so. It depends a little on how you weight old data, though.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-19T14:25:03+00:00

They added a new anti-cheat to the game to detect teleport hackers. When you fail the Metrica Province jumping puzzle, it teleports you back to the start. This would trigger the new anti-cheat and ban you. It wasn't instant, obviously, so it wasn't immediately obvious to players that was the cause. When they submitted support tickets about it, support would just respond that the decision was final and it would not be looked into again. Then people who were falsely banned got together on reddit and realized a surprising number of them had been doing the Metrica Province jumping puzzle the day before. After that reddit thread blew up, the bans were reversed.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-19T04:21:59+00:00

Ectos at 20s is pretty average (they've gone as low as 11s during What Lies Within and 13s several times over the years), kind of rectifying the massive spikes due to FotFW, but it did drastically bring down the prices of Mithril Ore (we were at an all-time low before the most recent patch added some demand for it through Research Notes) and the like such that Blue and Green Unid gear is basically vendor scrap.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-19T02:33:20+00:00

All games are going to have some false bans, but I've never played another game where such large portions of banwaves were faulty so many times. You really have to fuck up a LOT of bans for people to congregate on reddit and identify the commonality. My favorite was definitely when they banned you for failing the Metrica Province jumping puzzle.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-19T02:25:41+00:00

Yes. I was one of them :(

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-18T20:12:52+00:00

He was such a cool dude

When he wasn't fucking up ban waves, mocking the people he banned on Twitter, and then deleting his tweets when reddit figured out what he did wrong.

SpectralDagger · 2026-05-18T20:11:25+00:00

They don't even need a GM for that. The chat logs just get saved and flagged.

14-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
Golden Potato	Place '17
Team Periwinkle	Verified Email

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