Colin took to the forums today to respond to a few questions. Here’s one:

I’m kinda diggin’ the announcement that achievements will have value, even if it ultimately ends up being nothing but cosmetic stuff. However, I’m a bit concerned that my 4200+ points will go -poof-.

So, do we get tokens for our existing points? Is the exchange going to be 1 to 1?

Originally posted by ColinJohanson (Source)

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The initial version will only be for daily/monthly achievements (this will not be retroactively rewarded.) Later you’ll see a system in place that rewards more expanded achievements points which will retroactively reward all achievements already earned, yes.

However, there are some achievements which are infinitely repeatable currently. It is highly likely so this new system isn’t broken we’ll need to cap those and people who have made insane progress down one of those lines will lose some of their progress to get back to the cap. I wouldn’t recommend anyone go bonkers trying to progress an infinitely repeatable achievement category in anticipation of the release of this system, as you will likely lose some points/progress if you take it to an extreme number.

We’re still working out the details on the system, so that’s about as far into detail as I can go currently.

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Re Examples of rewards

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In going back to that whole “let people play the way they want to play” concept:

We’re going to hold off on adding most of the daily achievements that send you to specific parts of the game until we’ve added the ability to select from a list (like 4/6.) The initial version you’ll see with rotating daily achievements won’t feature too many new achievement options, since we don’t want to do more specific type achievements without giving you the choice to pick from a list of stuff you’re more excited about.

Today, Colin Johanson posted a long awaited developer blog that gives us insight into the next six months of development for Guild Wars 2. The main focus of the changes come in the forms of rewards and incentives for players to be playing different parts of the game. Colin breaks down the game into three spheres: sPVP, PVE and WvW. Each portion of the game should see some upgrades to the way players earn rewards. Whether it’s achievements that reward tokens to buy gear or WvW prestige ranks that award new skills and abilities, big things are coming for Guild Wars 2.

Keep reading to find out more.

Originally posted by Colin Johanson (Source)

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Hey guys,

Just a quick update on where the whole scavenger hunt system stands since I know that’s a topic many of you have brought up recently. We’re not currently actively working on building any sort of legendary precursor scavenger hunt, this is something we want to do in the future and we’re in the midst of designing how this would function, but no one is actively building this feature and you should not expect in the Jan/Feb/March releases at this point.
We are however working on expanding reward systems to make them more re-rewarding across all parts of the game, making the open world more rewarding, and adding new ways you can earn precursors as rewards via new reward systems taking advantage of our open persistent world.

Some of these additions will come as early as the January release, and will get covered in more detail in the next week or two as well release all the details about this release once testing has signed off it’s all ready to go in January. (we’ll also provide a high level summary of our goals with reward systems, etc. in our 2013 blog post, which should be out next week)

For players affected by the bug-filled, final stages of The Lost Shores world event, ArenaNet has began distributing Karka Chest rewards through the mail to players who are coming up as qualified on their end. The team is using a script to figure out who exactly is eligible for this reward. Gaile Gray, ArenaNet Support Liaison, is currently asking for players who have not been mailed this reward, yet know they are eligible for one, to contact customer support.

For the full forum post, click “Continue Reading.”

Yesterday we received confirmation on the official Guild Wars 2 forums that players who were affected by the various bugs during The Lost Shores event will be granted a retroactive reward if they were unable to loot the final reward chest. ArenaNet hasn’t given out the specifics yet, but the reward will be granted to players even if they haven’t contacted customer support, and will be mailed to players sometime early next week.

Here is the full announcement:

Originally posted by Mark Katzbach (Source)

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We have confirmed that we can provide everyone who did not have the opportunity to loot the chest with a reward for their participation. All affected players will receive a reward regardless of whether or not they have contacted Support. We’re working very hard on this, and you should have a reward in your in-game mail early next week.

Yesterday, John Peters, Game Designer for Guild Wars 2, had a few interesting things to say about the diminishing returns some players are seeing for rewards such as karma during dynamic events. These diminishing returns, it seems, were put in place to stop bots and economy-breaking exploits, and not normal players who happen to be enjoying an endgame gear farming session. The problem? It’s affecting everyone, even some players at lower levels.

Guild Wars 2 is a game about freedom. We want you to be able to explore the world and engage in a huge variety of activities, focusing on whatever best suits your tastes.

Some players have run into “diminishing returns” thresholds we put into the game to provide a safety net against unanticipated economy-breaking issues. We do have these thresholds in place, but it’s not our intention that normal players should ever run into them. We’ve recently had bugs and imbalances that have caused normal players to hit thresholds, and we’ll fix those.

These systems are put in place to protect the economy from botters and exploiters. We will close exploits as quickly as we can. These thresholds help create a safety net to keep the economy safe when we aren’t there to deal with the offender. It’s important to have a safety net in place. It would be bad for everyone if, for example, a group of players learned how to speed-clear a dungeon in 5 minutes, with full rewards each time, and then repeated that continuously. When one activity emerges that’s order of magnitudes more profitable than anything else in the game, it forces everyone to either engage in that activity or get priced out of the economy.

While we need a safety net to stop unanticipated economy-breaking exploits and botting, we have no desire to stop farming. Farmers are a part every online economy and when they are doing normal game activity they do not cause any harm. If a player finds a normal game activity fun and would like to keep doing it, that’s fine with us.

Initially we have to rely on smaller data sets, instinct and some guesswork to find the correct cutoff. What this means is that some players are going to bump into the edges of these systems for a while as we get them sorted out. Please bear with us while we gather more data and lower the safety net until it’s only providing critical economy protection. Looking at the numbers this morning, we believe some of the threshold systems are just too harsh empirically and we’ll be adjusting those systems within the next few weeks to ensure that fewer legitimate players are being impacted.

I hope this helps to explain why a game like this needs systems such as this to protect its economy. I also hope it gives some insight into our philosophy about botters (BAD) and exploiters (BAD) vs. farmers (GOOD). Thanks for your support and we will see you in game.