Treasure Hunter Achievement no longer relevant - Enchanted Treasure Chest not accessible to all guests

[FinnTheOwl.6435]

The Enchanted Treasure Chest Home Instance Node reward from the Treasure Hunter achievement can only be opened by Home Instance guest players who have completed the achievement. This is the only Home Instance Node in the game which operates this way, and I believe this is detrimental.

The purpose of the Treasure Hunter achievement is to encourage players to participate in less popular world events and game content they might not otherwise engage in, such as the Flame Temple Tombs or the Zho'qafa Catacombs. The Enchanted Treasure Chest is designed to be an enticing reward for engaging in said content.
However, with the game's growth, it has become easier for players to obtain daily chests which provide comparable (if not superior) reward loot-tables, making the Enchanted Treasure Chest no longer be perceived as a worthwhile reward to obtain, which in turn makes the Treasure Hunter achievement fail at its purpose of boosting engagement.
I believe a simple solution to once again encourage engagement with these less popular events in the game would be to make the Enchanted Treasure Chest no longer require guests to have completed the Treasure Hunter achievement to access it.

The appeal of Home Instance Nodes is the ability for a player to invest large amounts of personal time or currency in order to then be able to generously share the rewards of that investment with other players. All other Home Instance Nodes are able to be harvested by guests even if the guest does not own the Node themselves, which promotes a unique sense of comradery and satisfaction between the Instance owner and the guest.
If the Enchanted Treasure Chest was able to be accessed by guests who didn't have the Treasure Hunter achievement, I believe it would be perceived as desirable and worth obtaining once again. I do not think its loot-table offers any significant threat to the current game balance and economy should it become accessible to all guests, since players are currently able to access considerably more lucrative daily chests as-is.

I believe making the Enchanted Treasure Chest accessible to all Home Instance guests regardless of Treasure Hunter achievement completion would once again encourage participation in the world events Treasure Hunter was designed to promote, and thus boost engagement with the game as a whole, without significantly impacting the current game balance or economy. 
It’s a small change, but I believe it would go a long way.

Reference Links:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Enchanted_Treasure_Chest_(object)
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Treasure_Hunter

Edited March 12 by FinnTheOwl.6435
Formatting

[DanAlcedo.3281]

I sadly can't read it as the text is black on black background. 😢

[FinnTheOwl.6435]

Just now, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

I sadly can't read it as the text is black on black background. 😢

Hopefully that fixed it? This is literally my first forum post, so idk what I'm doing, sorry. The gist is, the Enchanted Treasure Chest reward should be changed to act like every other Home Instance Node, since at the moment it's literally the only node which guests can't use unless they also have it in their home instance, which is ridiculous considering that undermines the entire point of putting in effort to get the node in the first place.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

32 minutes ago, FinnTheOwl.6435 said:

The appeal of Home Instance Nodes is the ability for a player to invest large amounts of personal time or currency in order to then be able to generously share the rewards of that investment with other players.

I'm not sure this is true.  It certainly wasn't/isn't my motivation for acquiring Home Instance Nodes.  🤷‍♀️

[FinnTheOwl.6435]

Just now, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

I'm not sure this is true.  It certainly wasn't/isn't my motivation for acquiring Home Instance Nodes.  🤷‍♀️

Even if not everyone views home instance nodes that way... considering the sheer amount of work or raw gold a player would have to invest just to obtain the Enchanted Treasure Chest, the fact that the player can't even share that investment with any other players is like rubbing salt in a wound. This entire achievement is really overdue for a rework, to be honest, but... I figured the barest minimum change the developers could make would be simply making the Enchanted Treasure Chest operate the same as every other home instance node. That at least would make it have some point and value which couldn't also be gotten by simply parking an alt account next to a jumping puzzle completion chest or one of the infinite other ways players now have of obtaining daily loot.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

44 minutes ago, FinnTheOwl.6435 said:

Hopefully that fixed it? This is literally my first forum post, so idk what I'm doing, sorry. The gist is, the Enchanted Treasure Chest reward should be changed to act like every other Home Instance Node, since at the moment it's literally the only node which guests can't use unless they also have it in their home instance, which is ridiculous considering that undermines the entire point of putting in effort to get the node in the first place.

Yes! Perfect. Thx. 

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

I'm not sure this is true.  It certainly wasn't/isn't my motivation for acquiring Home Instance Nodes.  🤷‍♀️

There are home instance nodes, and there's the Treasure Chest. As far as home nodes go, that one is in a completely different category from the others.

[Teknomancer.4895]

It's just another questionable and convoluted limitation imposed on the home instance for reasons that are unclear at best.

My main home instance complaint is the Chef station which is ONLY available to a single character.

The Gourmet achievement costs all sorts of account-bound materials including ascended, but no other character on the account can access it -- unless I spend even more account bound materials to grind out 425 Chef levels on every single toon I want to have access to it.

It's not technically soulbound, but the effect is the same. My other characters don't even get to look at it -- unless they're a Chef 425+, it's not even there.

All I want is bank access, just like any non-Chef character would have just by walking up to any other cooking station anywhere else in the world. But in my own home, I'm not allowed to even see the cooking station I spent time and resources on.

[Omega.6801]

So your solution to get more people to do these events that are needed for the achi is to make the chest available to more people who haven't done the achievement?

Sounds more like "I don't want to do the achievement, but I want to loot the chest, pls let me loot the chest without doing the achievement, ANet."

[Vayne.8563]

I share my home instance with people every day. No reason not to, as it costs me something. But there's a difference between the treasure chest and the other nodes. The vast majority of other nodes are just bought with gold or in game currency.  The treasure chest is an achievement that requires people to either farm a lot or spend a lot of gold on specific items that come from specific events.  That's one of the reason some of those events are populated at all.

If people decide they can get that for free, you're actually changing the economy for some items. For some people, doing the Eye of Zhaitan in Straits of Devestation is part of their play, because they have a rare chance of getting a pendent of Arah.  This isn't really true for any of the other items in the home instance.

And in truth, the stuff you get from the chest is pretty lousy to begin with. But if people could get the reward without getting the chest, some of those items might go down in price, due to lack of demand. There's enough free stuff in the home instance that not getting that chest means very little. Not sure it matters one way or another, which is why changing it doesn't really make sense.  This is a long complicated achievement, and the reward for it should be yours.

[Gop.8713]

This doesn't affect me one way or the other, I don't visit other ppls homes or have visitors in mine, but I'm with OP. The enchanted treasure chest is an absurdly underwhelming reward for an absurdly expensive achievement and would def benefit from a rework. I've no opinion on whether that should include other ppls getting access to it, but I don't think propping up the tp price of the achievement items is a strong argument against . . .

[kharmin.7683]

1 hour ago, Omega.6801 said:

So your solution to get more people to do these events that are needed for the achi is to make the chest available to more people who haven't done the achievement?

Sounds more like "I don't want to do the achievement, but I want to loot the chest, pls let me loot the chest without doing the achievement, ANet."

This is the way I feel when I see players begging to get into other players' full home instances.  Why don't they do their own?  I have no issue with players who offer to let others into their instance.  That's their choice.  But the begging?  Egad. 

[Vavume.8065]

3 hours ago, Omega.6801 said:

So your solution to get more people to do these events that are needed for the achi is to make the chest available to more people who haven't done the achievement?

Sounds more like "I don't want to do the achievement, but I want to loot the chest, pls let me loot the chest without doing the achievement, ANet."

This ^

[FinnTheOwl.6435]

3 hours ago, Omega.6801 said:

So your solution to get more people to do these events that are needed for the achi is to make the chest available to more people who haven't done the achievement?

Sounds more like "I don't want to do the achievement, but I want to loot the chest, pls let me loot the chest without doing the achievement, ANet."

I meant exactly what I said and nothing more: Trying to get every single boss drop item from Treasure Hunter legit would take literal years of nonstop grinding, given the chances for some of the boss drops. The fact that a player could theoretically put in all that time and effort only to then be met with a home instance node which they can't even share with anyone feels arbitrary and insulting. But fine, even if there are reasons to restrict the Enchanted Treasure Chest to be limited to just the players who've already obtained the achievement... it's still an incredibly awful reward compared to the amount of time and energy it would take to obtain it. And if you wanted to bypass the time and energy, you would have to spend literally thousands of gold. It's just... bad. One of the reasons the supply of boss drops on the trading post is so low is because nobody cares about such a sub-par reward, meaning demand is incredibly low, and thus nobody's seriously trying to fill that market. If the Enchanted Treasure Chest was buffed, that would increase demand, which would increase the amount of people grinding to meet that supply, thus increasing engagement.
That's my point. I was trying to think of a simple, easy way of buffing the Enchanted Treasure Chest without making it broken or without needing to spend a lot of development time on it, and the obvious solution to me is simply by making the node operate the same as every other home instance node and let it be accessible to guests. If you have an alternative idea for how to buff the reward, I'd love to hear it.

Edited March 12 by FinnTheOwl.6435

[Omega.6801]

Sure...
But what you are suggesting doesn't make the chest more valuable. I decreases its value as now more people can leech it. Now it needs less people to actually do the achi. So less people will be inclined to do it. If you really want to incentivise people to do the achi more, this is not the way.
If you want to make the chesst more attractive, what needs to happen is that it would need to drop better loot. It would need to be worth it. But it never really was, as I said. It was always a very niche thing for the completionist AP hunters. It was always a thing that either cost thousands of gold or required farming rather obscure events for a standard champ bag per day. Something that would take you years or decades to get even goldwise. At least imho, it's fine like it is. Sites like GW2efficiency inform you on how expensive it will be, the wiki informs you on what you will get out of it and if you don't think it's going to be worth it, easy, don't do it. You don't need it, no one does. You're probably better off buying a champ bag per day from the trading post.

[QueenKeriti.5176]

4 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

This is the way I feel when I see players begging to get into other players' full home instances.  Why don't they do their own?  I have no issue with players who offer to let others into their instance.  That's their choice.  But the begging?  Egad. 

It's very, very, very expensive to kit out a home instance (right now, GW2Efficiency has mine valued at ~7k gold with current gem values, and that does not include the enchanted treasure chest, which is another 1.4k gold), and I understand people not wanting to make an investment in something that will take a long time to recoup the efforts for. I don't mind the "Does anyone have a home instance I can loot?" people in map chat because I can empathize with the amount of work/time/cost it will take to get one fully stocked, plus I like sharing. Some people are super nice and tip, too.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

I think the reward is completing the collection, and the chest is there for flavor. You can compare this to making legendaries, the journey is the reward.

[Gop.8713]

No the reward for legendaries is the utility ; p

[Ashen.2907]

I expect that the key is in the title.  "Treasure Hunter," is an achievement while the other nodes are just purchases from various vendors and such.

[corwin.3495]

8 hours ago, Omega.6801 said:

So your solution to get more people to do these events that are needed for the achi is to make the chest available to more people who haven't done the achievement?

Sounds more like "I don't want to do the achievement, but I want to loot the chest, pls let me loot the chest without doing the achievement, ANet."

You are behaving like we actually get something worth from that chest. It's outdated, you would need 10 years, at best, to even pay for the investment, because those items aint dropping anytime soon, so you must buy the item on the trading post. I did the ach because I am mentally damaged, a sane person would never waste 1000 gold on a stupid chest that gives close to nothing, and I would not mind sharing it with someone. Even if that were a player who does not want to do the achievement. 

As for the person who made this thread, I already made a similar post like... 2 years ago? In the quality of life thread, but the odds they will change anything about it, are very small. 

[FinnTheOwl.6435]

4 hours ago, Omega.6801 said:

At least imho, it's fine like it is. Sites like GW2efficiency inform you on how expensive it will be, the wiki informs you on what you will get out of it and if you don't think it's going to be worth it, easy, don't do it. You don't need it, no one does. You're probably better off buying a champ bag per day from the trading post.

If I understand your argument correctly... you're trying to say that even if it's irrefutably bad, it's obscure enough that you consider it benign?
Like... since it's not in people's faces, it's okay that it's a bad reward for the investment?
...I suppose realistically you're not wrong, even if on principle I believe that's a bad way of thinking about things. Since if it's bad, it's still making the game worse, and there's no reason not to fix it if everyone agrees it's not fun and is bad.

Being a relatively new player myself, I was lead to discovering this achievement thanks to the map fragments dropped by low-level chests, and upon reading up on it I realized the true scope of how unpolished the game's old code really is. Like... Rhednak's Flame Temple Tombs are laughably outdated to the point where even the boss summoning chest lacks basic quality-of-life features like a visible timer, meaning players are forced to spam-click for up to ten minutes if they want to be efficient with the summoning. And that's just one of the many issues I discovered thanks to this achievement. So I would argue that it does have a detrimental impact on the game, and it's emblematic of the developer team not paying attention to new-player experiences.

I dunno. I just hope, with all the recent updates the developers have been making to old code, they would consider updating this archaic game design remnant. Since just because something's old and bad doesn't mean it isn't still bad and it doesn't mean it shouldn't be fixed.

Edited March 12 by FinnTheOwl.6435

[Omega.6801]

4 minutes ago, FinnTheOwl.6435 said:

If I understand your argument correctly... you're trying to say that even if it's irrefutably bad, it's obscure enough that you consider it benign?
Like... since it's not in people's faces, it's okay that it's a bad reward for the investment?
...I suppose realistically you're not wrong, even if on principle I believe that's a bad way of thinking about things. Since if it's bad, it's still making the game worse, and there's no reason not to fix it if everyone agrees it's not fun and is bad.

Being a relatively new player myself, I was lead to discovering this achievement thanks to the map fragments dropped by low-level chests, and upon reading up on it I realized the true scope of how unpolished the game's old code really is. Like... Rhednak's Flame Temple Tombs are laughably outdated to the point where even the boss summoning chest lacks basic quality-of-life features like a visible timer, meaning players are forced to spam-click for up to ten minutes if they want to be efficient with the summoning. And that's just one of the many issues I discovered thanks to this achievement. So I would argue that it does have a detrimental impact on the game, since it's emblematic of the developer team not paying attention to new-player experiences.

I dunno. I just hope, with all the recent updates the developers have been making to old code, they would consider updating this archaic game design remnant. Since just because something's old and bad doesn't mean it isn't still bad and it doesn't mean it shouldn't be fixed.

The argument is more, if they wanted to improve this particular experience, i.e. the treasure hunter achievement. Making it accessable to more players is the wrong way. Imho a better way would be to 1) fix whatever is broken in all the little sub-missions (I wanted to go for it years ago but stopped because one of the events was broken so I couldn't buy an uncommon trinket, stuff like that) and 2) improve rewards to a point where it doesn't take decades to make back the possible 1.5k gold it costs should you not farm the events for the exotic trinkets. Maybe 3) give the chest a unique rare drop or add a unique title to the achievement.
I am very much with you that ANet should improve and fix their core game because it has huge potential and it is true that achis like the treasure hunter shines a light on content that has been broken and or abandoned since years which is a bad look. But I think the answer should be to fix them not to bypass the issue.

[FinnTheOwl.6435]

25 minutes ago, Omega.6801 said:

I am very much with you that ANet should improve and fix their core game because it has huge potential and it is true that achis like the treasure hunter shines a light on content that has been broken and or abandoned since years which is a bad look. But I think the answer should be to fix them not to bypass the issue.

I'm glad we're in agreement of that. I do agree that making the Enchanted Treasure Chest accessible to everyone is at best just a band-aid patch over the real problem. I went into this trying to find an actionable, realistic change a developer could make in like an hour - something small and simple to at least cause real change. (Since my initial impulse was just to go "Oi Arenanet, everything about this is bad, plx fix k thx bye" which wouldn't be helpful.)
The best band-aid patch idea I had was making the Enchanted Treasure Chest function like every other home instance node and be accessible to guests, since that seems small and easy for a single developer to change in an hour or so.
But I do concur it's not the most ideal fix. It's just what I felt was the easiest "sell" to the developers. Even something like changing the loot-table is more daunting than simply removing the guest restriction, IMO. That was my logic.

And I do definitely see your point that making it accessible to guests may in fact do the opposite, but... personally, I think even if it doesn't make other people participate in the world events more, it at least will still make the chest more useful, since it'll serve more of a purpose from a communal aspect rather than its current purpose of being basically just a display piece of opulence. 

Edited March 12 by FinnTheOwl.6435

[Vayne.8563]

7 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

This is the way I feel when I see players begging to get into other players' full home instances.  Why don't they do their own?  I have no issue with players who offer to let others into their instance.  That's their choice.  But the begging?  Egad. 

I don't think of it as begging. It's more like asking if anyone can help with a quest that you can't do on your own. After all, when you donate to a beggar you lose something. When you farm someone's home instance, no one loses anything.

It's more of a community thing.  You're going in anyway, so taking in 2 or 3 or even 4 other people costs you nothing. At worst, you can chat with someone while you farm, and at best someone tips you, though I don't expect it, and sometimes return it.  It's not much different from a mesmer offering a portal at a JP.

[Ashen.2907]

28 minutes ago, FinnTheOwl.6435 said:

. you're trying to say that even if it's irrefutably bad

That is a pretty big if as the hypothetical is not correct.