New Players Can't Catch Up to Birthdays

[Iggystlev.7203]

34 minutes ago, kiroho.4738 said:

Birthday gifts are mostly skins/dyes and gimmicks lick the birthday blaster.

Most rewards in gw2 are skins, dyes, and gimmicks. After just a year or two of playing gw2 the skin unlock of a random new rare item is more interesting then the item itself.
Skins, dyes, and gimmicks are important enough to some players that they spend real world money on them in the gem store, or real time grinding resources for them. Their value should not be discounted just because they dont provide gameplay content.

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

been playing since the beginning and flushed a lot of money into the game. I got my first B-day present this year.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

8 hours ago, Iggystlev.7203 said:

If birthday gifts were by hours played this would be a different conversation.
To use your analogy: Nobody made general by dropping out of basic 25 years ago

Except that general didn't drop out of basic 25 years ago, but paid the tuition fees for military university(bought the game) and served since then. Even if the account is unused the character is created and if done before HoT they even BOUGHT the game, something those new players who "can't catch up" now don't have to do.

Using the hypothetical person who bought GW2 in 2012 for like 50€, made a character and immediately stopped playing to try to justify why not giving new players all the birthday gifts all others who have been actively playing since before, buying expansions is just screaming entitlement.

"Give me what they earnt throughout the years without me having to do anything for it"

[Danikat.8537]

At least you will be able to get them eventually. In my other MMO birthday gifts are done by the year - if you weren't there in 2016 (or if you were there and were new and didn't know to claim the gift, or couldn't get online at the right time or whatever) you can never get it. Doesn't matter how many years you wait or what you do in that time, you missed the 2016 birthday so you don't get the gift, end of discussion.

Also whilst it may be too early to say for sure it looks like Anet have stopped adding new things to recent gifts. The 11th birthday gift had nothing that wasn't in the 10th one, not even a new title. If that continues it will be possible to catch up on birthday gifts.

(Of course there are still a lot of items veteran players will have which aren't available, like the Royal Guard outfit and the Mordrem Glider and the various pre-order titles, but those aren't birthday gifts.)

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

3 hours ago, Iggystlev.7203 said:

Absolutely.

Each season you are able to earn more than enough AA to buy all of the current exclusive skins. All the extra AA you earn can be used on the more expensive old rewards. You wont necessarily catch up in a single season, and nobody is saying you should. Eventually, you would indeed catch up.

I thought this was about new players; how long would it take for them to 'catch up' with 10 years of Legacy Rewards?

[Iggystlev.7203]

43 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

if you weren't there in 2016 (or if you were there and were new and didn't know to claim the gift, or couldn't get online at the right time or whatever) you can never get it

That is definitely worse on multiple levels. Other games are not Guild Wars 2 though, we can be better then that.

45 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

like the Royal Guard outfit and the Mordrem Glider and the various pre-order titles

Those items should definitely make a return too. Anet recently re-released the Celebration Hat as part of Extra Life which had not been available since the game's launch.

[MithranArkanere.8957]

They can catch up after 10 years. There are no more unique rewards and titles past the 10th. It just repeats the 10th bonus rewards.

[willow.8209]

players that deleted older toons don't have the right birthday gifts. I should be more than twice as old as i am on what's now my main account, but I decided the first couple birthday gifts didn't have anything exclusive so the warning about deleting toons was unimportant. spoiler: it was not unimportant.

(Also some other stuff like items that came with expansions can be bound to particular toons--but without any indication of which toon, if you want to check. In the old days nothing processed right away, so the thing you bought would come at a random time, making it impossible to definitely be able to link it to your main toon, oldest toon, etc.)

yes, there are a lot of dyes so I'm not missing the particular birthday dyes, and yes most of the other items aren't exclusive I can wait for backpack skins for example... but I'm really salty about not getting birthday cake yet when I did actually play gw2 in the beginning. (I have some achieves from the first living world on this account, listed right on the achieve as 2013 version--definitely 10 years ago but I can't afford to make ascended food much so I want my cake lol)

[kharmin.7683]

4 minutes ago, willow.8209 said:

players that deleted older toons don't have the right birthday gifts.

 

I deleted quite a few early on, not knowing about birthday gifts.  Whoops.

[willow.8209]

20 hours ago, Neferpitouh.4356 said:

The one thing bothers me with birthday rewards are either birthday cake needs to be obtainable for everyone, with a cost attached to it instead of being a freebie as it is on birthday rewards, considering how universally good it is or else we need legendary foods in the game already.

ascended is better than birthday cake. I wouldn't support another tier of food and I think legendary makes no sense for a consumable item. Heck I think ascended is too expensive for a consumable item. 

Making any food that can be shared with a group is now much more costly than it was before, even low level or low rarity food. 

[Sobx.1758]

6 hours ago, Iggystlev.7203 said:

Absolutely.

Each season you are able to earn more than enough AA to buy all of the current exclusive skins. All the extra AA you earn can be used on the more expensive old rewards. You wont necessarily catch up in a single season, and nobody is saying you should. Eventually, you would indeed catch up.

And you'll also eventually catch up to the cake.

[Cyninja.2954]

GW2 birthday gifts start repeating after 10 years: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Birthday_Gift

So eventually new players will be able to "catch up".

The only thing which will take longer to catch up to are the yearly anniversary achievement points from festivals which are capped at 20 years (1,000 points / 50 points per year) for now. So any new player will need 20 years from the moment he starts the game.

[kiroho.4738]

6 hours ago, Iggystlev.7203 said:

Most rewards in gw2 are skins, dyes, and gimmicks. After just a year or two of playing gw2 the skin unlock of a random new rare item is more interesting then the item itself.
Skins, dyes, and gimmicks are important enough to some players that they spend real world money on them in the gem store, or real time grinding resources for them. Their value should not be discounted just because they dont provide gameplay content.

And yet it's not a big loss when you miss a few skins.
I mean, since you argue with gemstore skins -> most of them are only available for a very short time before they are gone for months again.
Other skins are locked behind RNG such as Tequatl weapons.

Not having direct access to all skins is a common thing in GW2.
It's not the end of the world if a new player have no access to two weapon sets, one armor set and a handfull of back skins among all the other non or almost non abailable skins.

[kiroho.4738]

1 hour ago, willow.8209 said:

Heck I think ascended is too expensive for a consumable item. 

Fun fact:
Ascended power food is cheaper and better than the popular Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup, even when you use it alone.

It's even the cheapest food with top stats in general.

[Danikat.8537]

1 hour ago, willow.8209 said:

players that deleted older toons don't have the right birthday gifts. I should be more than twice as old as i am on what's now my main account, but I decided the first couple birthday gifts didn't have anything exclusive so the warning about deleting toons was unimportant. spoiler: it was not unimportant.

I did that in GW1. My oldest characters are about 1.5 years younger than my account because I started the game, then had problems with both my computer and university internet so I had to stop for a while and when I came back to it I decided to start over.

Although in GW1 the birthday gifts were random (always a mini pet, or later on a tonic, but which one you got was random) and tradable so it wasn't as much of a problem, but it was always kind of disappointing when a new gift came along and I had to wait even longer than I would have otherwise (I also didn't get the game on launch) to get it.

[Teknomancer.4895]

This is probably a troll thread, because it's straight up the dumbest FOMO I've ever seen here, NGL.

[Omega.6801]

1 hour ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

This is probably a troll thread, because it's straight up the dumbest FOMO I've ever seen here, NGL.

Never underestimate the entitlement of some people.

[Iggystlev.7203]

5 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

GW2 birthday gifts start repeating after 10 years: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Birthday_Gift

So eventually new players will be able to "catch up".

This is a pretty good take. If they do end up just repeating the same finite birthday rewards forever. Looks like the 11th birthday achievement does not contain any AP either.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Did any Birthdays reward AP?  I never got any that I recall. 

[Randulf.7614]

4 minutes ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Did any Birthdays reward AP?  I never got any that I recall. 

I had to check this one because I thought it rewarded 0 AP, but apparently it's 1 AP for every year up to year 10. I've doubled checked under "Hero" in achievements and it's correct

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Birthday_Gift#Related_achievements

Edited December 21, 2023 by Randulf.7614

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Ahh.  Wasn't listed on the page I checked.  Thanks. 

Edit: Actually it is listed on the page; I just didn't scroll down enough.  My bad.

Edited December 21, 2023 by Inculpatus cedo.9234

[robertthebard.8150]

On 12/20/2023 at 7:18 PM, Iggystlev.7203 said:

If birthday gifts were by hours played this would be a different conversation.
To use your analogy: Nobody made general by dropping out of basic 25 years ago

There's not much of a conversation to be had.  Nope, it's not based on "hours played", it's based on "years existed on the server".  Why should a new player get 10 or 11 years worth of birthday presents on day one?  "But it's not fair"?  How would it be "fair" to that vet player to just start handing out every birthday present to every new character that gets rolled up?  "Fairness" can be measured by the fact that it's going to take that new player the exact same amount of time to get the rewards that it took every other player that already has them, and every player that will get them going forward.  That's how these incentives are intended to work.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

3 hours ago, robertthebard.8150 said:

There's not much of a conversation to be had.  Nope, it's not based on "hours played", it's based on "years existed on the server".  Why should a new player get 10 or 11 years worth of birthday presents on day one?  "But it's not fair"?  How would it be "fair" to that vet player to just start handing out every birthday present to every new character that gets rolled up?  "Fairness" can be measured by the fact that it's going to take that new player the exact same amount of time to get the rewards that it took every other player that already has them, and every player that will get them going forward.  That's how these incentives are intended to work.

When these things are brought up it doesn't matter if it's not fair to others, it only has to be fair to them.

[Lucy.3728]

On 12/21/2023 at 2:19 AM, Yttris.2945 said:

Conversely, I have seen more than a few players who bought the game at the start. Played for a bit then left for other games. Log back on years later to get "Decade's Devotion" titles.

If you return after years to this old game, then your heart never left.

[DarkFlopy.8197]

On 12/20/2023 at 10:39 AM, Iggystlev.7203 said:

This sounds obvious. But what I am really getting at is that GW2 is still rewarding people just because they purchased the game over a decade ago, even if they are not playing and have not played for the last 10 years. A new player who found the game recently has no hope to get to the same reward level as their friends who found the game earlier. Some of these rewards are locked behind the calendar year 2034 for them.

It is fun to get rewards for birthdays, and I am not saying people should not get birthday presents. But maybe these exclusive items should not be locked behind having done something in the long long ago so they can incentivize new players too.

What do you mean "maybe these exclusive items should not be locked behind having done something in the long long ago"?
that is the entire idea of EXCLUSIVE items... they are EXCLUSIVE.