Retroactive Luxon/Kurzick allegiance title track?

/Signed

Really there is NO REASON why ANet cannot do this. If they think getting jade should mean you get a faction boost now then they should give the same rights to those people that spent it in the past.

If ANet do not want to support this motion, they should come here directly and say why. No one-off statements, debate it with us and PERSUADE us.

/Signed.

I would be somewhere around 800k by now if the jades I got would have counted as well, and I'm on 480k on my title track, since our guild stopped faction farming in alliances, I did keep playing AB and earned jades instead since there was little point in donating it to the guild.

/signed.

The titles are prestige, they show that you've done lots of AB or whatever to get them. You've done just as much ab to get them even if the faction was donated to get jade/amber. Why should your play time be devalued because you opted to get amber. That's similar to not getting fame if you go to HA to get a Sigil...

P.S. Hey Lex and Takeko ^^

Perfect example, and can only agree to that. They chose to get money (amber/jadeite) instead of the title so now they have a small drawback. But you can always try to whine a biot to see if u can get things done the easy way.

I would only go back to the shop if they had a lowest price guarantee, but means usually at the same moment, not a week later ^^.

We all knew before this update that getting amber or jade as a reward was simply getting some amount of gold (or armor) in trade for our efforts rather than advancing a title track. It was fair in that way for those that made the choice one way or the other before this current change. There's no reason now to make it retroactive. We're all going forward under a new set of rules in the way faction spending works.

Edit: I hadnt seen GodofAcid's post. I agree with that. Exactly what I was saying.

/Signed

My guild was never a faction farming guild going for control of a town, so I always spent my faction on amber and jade. I've only donated a total of 5k faction, so it's kinda sad looking at the tiny title bar compared to all the Faction I have actually earned.

It would be nice to see previous transfers for materials counted towards the title, and reworking the title track so it uses the total faction earned figure would appear to be the best way, as Loki says.

We did not all CHOOSE to get amber for money. Some people didn't have a guild or an alliance. And why should people be punished for not being interested in titles that had no meaning for them? I also recall giving tips for ferries to the deep/urgoz... so it's not as if those people made no money from their choices either.

And this is not a matter of not saving a few bucks. When you're buying something, you know that prices can change. You don't know how they will change, but you know they will. Anet gave us no hint whatsoever that skills were going to be tied to titles over a year later. There was no reason to expect this. To make up the difference, we have to grind for weeks. And there's no good reason for any of that.

This is a game. It's meant to be fun. Buying things isn't about having fun.

Edit: IMHO, I think that having the first rank of the title should give you these skills at max strength (no scaling). That way it would be relatively easy for casual players to accomplish, and reduce the sheer boredom of having to grind multiple titles to make skills effective. It would also preserve the nature of the title for those faction farming for it.

I really don't like where this is heading. Sure, have your fow armor and tormented weapons and grind titles. But now grinding gives you an advantage over others? The LB skills were bad enough, but they're only useful in a few places, and still not as much of a grind to make effective. This is worse than rank elitism in HA. Rank doesn't actually make your skills better...

I think them before the update that got amber/jade should get it back for there title as long as they give the gold they made from the amber/jade so it would be far for the ones who put in faction in there guild for the title the one who was not in it to make money from it as i know someone in my last guild who has 6 mil faction they put in the guild they could off got amber/jade and made a killing but they did it for the title not the money

they are now giving some points for exchanging for amber, all we ask is for the people that previously exchanged for amber to get our fair end of the deal.

I was JUST about to make this thread too.

Please make this happen A-NET, I wasted so much faction on amber.

No you dont. 130k faction is pretty easy to get.

Now that's just lazy. Most people are going to spend the faction to get to 100k and get the skills(s) they want and just be done with it. That is the casual level. The skills work at level one. Bringing them beyond level 1 is a reward for continuing on the title track.

Its not an advantage over another player if its not in PvP. You dont need a max LB to play in HM. Rank elitism in HA is still far worse a problem imho since its actually discriminatory and discourages newer or less experienced players from entering PvP and keeping that side of the game play vital.

discounted lockpicks seem like the only worthwhile perk for owning an outpost. but most guilds that own a town would require members to donate at least 5k per day, so they can hold it. now would you rather donate faction for the alliance and get 1200g picks, or exchange faction for passage scrolls/amber/jade then sell them for gold and still get to advance the title?

its good enough now that trading for materials and scrolls add points to the luxon/kurz title. a title which was previously only for those who donate alot for their alliance. the faction used for amber/jade is also not wasted... it was used to buy armor or sold for profit.

also i think anet doesnt have any records or kept track on the amount of faction traded for amber/jade. if they did then those who did would already have high rank titles. its the same thing last time, when titles were first introduced. the game didnt keep track of opened chests, identified rares...

the titles that were granted retroactively last time were those that were recorded on your current character such as the
- number of capped skills through your skills list
- map cartography via revealead area on the map
- completed missions
- /deaths. you get survivor if your character has 0 at that time.

-mouseover on faction screen showing how much you have earned

Well excuse me, but you don't have a effing clue how much time other people get to spend on the game.

Get up on the wrong side of something did we?

Neither I nor Andisa Kalorn made any actual quantification of time. Andisa said "we have to grind for weeks" which makes no specific claim on time actually played (15 minutes a day for weeks? 3 hours a day for weeks?) but simply brings with it the implications of a nearly insurmountable task more akin to other titles we're all aware of needing large amounts of time investment. It is all relative. I merely took the other side of a general statement like that and said no, its not that large a hurdle all things considered, compared to other things we are asked to do in game for the completion of some titles or goals we seek.

that would make so many players close to saviours of luxons! :O still i think its fair for those who [before the update] chose to aid their alliance rather than use it for their own benefit.

Easy to get if you can spend your whole day farming it... In HM you get 10 faction per kill, and 250 per boss max. That's only slightly higher than the points for sunspear. And there's no wurms. And the first level of the title is twice the max sunspear level. Even farming sunspear points sometimes strains my patience... it takes a while because I can't do it constantly.

Lazy? You know what's really lazy? Just buying a skill from a skill trainer. Or getting one from a quest. Or capping an elite from a boss right outside the door. That's just crazy. And then only having to reach level 20 to get skills at their highest attribute? Maybe we should have 100+ levels instead, then those lazy people wouldn't be maxing their attributes so easily.

Well then. I guess we should have fow armor have +20 armor from normal armor too. I mean, it's not like it affects your current armor, and it doesn't give you an advantage over anyone else because it's not pvp, right? And while we're at it, let's have tormented weapons do more damage than those collector items that lazy people use.

I guess people just want a game where you have to grind to be equal to other players. That's not the kind of game gw used to be, and it's not the kind of game I want to play.

Ok, let me get this straight: in the good ol' days, the righteous gave away their faction and in the process accrued a title, whereas the greedy spent their faction on loot, which didn't give them a title. Fair enough.

Now, the righteous can still act righteously (so are neither advantaged or disdvantaged) but now the greedy can act greedily and still get their loot and a title as well (advantage the greedy, congratulations to you).

But the greedy are so phenomenally greedy, that they want this new advantage applied retrospectively, and are whimpering that otherwise this in unfair and unjust?

That's the argument really isn't it, or am I missing something? Because you lot look pretty pompous and grasping from where I'm sitting.

What fair end? The deal was clear when u exchanged faction for amber, no rewards toward the title track and u gain materials and money. Nothing up to this point is UNFAIR. Now u get a change of rules that allow u to get it both ways, thats a plus for amber guys, and i might start collecting it as well as now, as the title is the only interesting thing. Owning a town is a long time ago for our alliance, and it is not soon to return.

You didnt really wast it, you exchanged if for materials u either sold or used for special armor.

People should just stop whining here. There is no reason to give it retroactively. Or do i get my 920 jadeite which i missed out on too?

Don't be an elitist. Just because you donated your faction and I traded mine doesn't mean we didn't do the same amount of work.

I didn't donate faction to my guild because we weren't a faction farming guild: it's as simple as that.

I just want to be able to use the new skills effectively with the faction that I earned.

I don't think making it retroactive would be fair either. I'm sure if people knew that Luxon/Kurzick skills would be coming out, they would have spent more time farming faction rather than doing other stuff (i.e. the more useless titles).

But as of right now, people who farmed faction for their alliance suddenly got a huge bonus, even though they farmed it only thinking that they are contributing to their alliance (and decided that was better than getting amber or whatever). It's not really fair, but is it fair to give the amber farmers a huge bonus too? What about the people who didn't faction farm much and did other stuff?

A more pressing concern is that it is much more difficult to farm faction than to farm Sunspear points. These skills are much stronger than many elite skills, and some of them will probably become the standard (much like SS or MM or a necro, SF for elementalists, etc) because these skills are so good. This may lead to title discrimination and some people won't be able to get into groups.

I remember the first week of Factions.

We were very excited to have already set up an alliance with SMS and a few other guilds. We all began plowing through the Kurzick storyline working to gain as much Kurzick faction as we could. I think those first few weeks most of us donated our faction towards the alliance...

But I remember guild/alliance chats..."OMG 3 million kurzick faction to own..." or the fact that many towns were owned by some of the top PvP guilds.

We also learned that week, that owning towns did absolutely nothing. It was pointless. That title track we all started by donating some faction here and there, it was insane, how was I ever going to get that much faction doing PvE. Even if I did donate my faction to the alliance, all I got was a title track that did nothing, and the chance at owning a town...that did nothing.

As far as we were concerned, donating faction to the alliance did a whole lot of nothing, unless you were hardcore enough to own Cavalon or House zu Heltzer. But we knew that there was no way we could take any of these towns. We didn't even have the full 10 guilds in our alliance. We were a mostly PvE guild, and as far as we were concerned, it wasn't possible for us to own any of these towns.

There was no greed behind my decision to spend my faction on Amber. It was the only choice I had. Waste it on nothing or receive something I can actually use. So, like most players I know, I spent my faction where it was most worthwhile to me. That is not greedy. I wasn't doing it to make a profit.

In those first weeks, many of the alliances that owned towns, were mass-recruiting anyone who would give them faction. It was insane. And something my guild would never degrade itself by doing. There was no way any average alliance was going to be taking control of any town.

ANet can take their Luxon/Kurzick skills back. It was dumb of them to give us skills that only a small minority of players can use. I thought this game used to be for the casual player, like myself. But sometimes I wonder...

Will I ever see a one of these Kurzick skills on any of my skill bars....not for a long time...I've got a lot of work to do now, because apparently I'm so greedy. I didn't realize playing the game smart was greed...

I'm trying to understand why people are against this idea...

How is it that other people getting points toward a title affects you? Why should you care at all? Especially if these skills are really not that important and the title is easy to farm, as some people are suggesting.

Saying people are "greedy" or "lazy" isn't enough. Unless you're trying to say that things should be more difficult for people you arbitrarily decide are not up to your personal standards? And how does that reflect on your morals?

I'm just saying I don't see why having this change would hurt those who are against it.

no actually my amber and jade are still sitting in my storage unused. both alliance faction and jade were useless to me so I just picked one to empty out the 10k faction limit and went with it. and now here later because i picked A and not B all those months ago, I get punished for it... i don't give a flying pregnant nun about the title, just want access to the pve skills. if they suddenly made the faction skills so it went off of how much jade you bought instead of how much you gave to alliance, would you be bitching? I'm fairly certain you would. hell you're bitching at just the thought of someone who isn't hardcore into alliance wars getting your epeen title...

O.o I think the righteous were doing what they did to own towns. And they want a big fat reward for that junky process, maybe Anet should give you little crowns or halos or something. However the PVE skills should be in casual reach... look how they are in Nightfall.

/signed

It would be easy too, either, make the track off Faction earned, not spent, or, set the track to the total Faction earned minus the Faction you're currently holding.

It just irritates me, in my Hero Window, one tab says I've earned 280K Faction, and another tab says I've spent 170K, but you can only hold 10K.

I wouldnt want to do it in one day. There are faster ways to get faction of course than AB as you note. One could also do FFF runs.

Its 18-30 hours to max the LB/SS titles on average through wurm runs in HM, depending on if you do 3, 4 or 5 runs an hour. Reasonable I suppose as far as some titles go in comparison only on time investment, no matter how you spread it out, as you get two in one as a result, but they are so mind numbingly boring to do that I havent bothered to finish either. I agree with you on that.

And the point is.. what? Those things you note are easy, so maxing the Faction skills should be too?

I'm not saying maxing the Kurzick/Luxon title tracks are within reason. I always thought those had too high a bar. Its certainly not worth imho an extra couple seconds of skill duration or the like for what it would take to get 10M faction, but sure, for those who are up there in Faction points, let them have this as a boon. The skills work at level 1-3 well enough.

PvE in the end only comes down to skins and things that give no real advantage over others anyway, so surely you jest. Use the ones you like, but none have an advatage over another, nor should they. That's not being lazy, that's being frugal. As in real life, splurge on what you need that's extra to make you happy and ignore the rest of the fluff.

I use all collector and crafted weapons with the exception of a green or two. I always found it pointless to pursue very highly priced weapon skins, but I understand it, since I have a few sets of armor for my monk because I enjoy changing the look from time to time and that is all it comes down to. Saved for FoW for ages because I refused to wear tatoos. That point is now moot with inscriptions, but it hardly matters any. They only serve now to make a cosmetic change and to change what armor attribute set I am wearing.

I dont. I hate that the end game is all about titles since there isnt much else to do short of working on more skins to either wear or wield, but at least we are all pretty much on equal footing. I pursued Guardian because that was fun, to me, compared to many other titles. Had a blast with Protector too, of course, but that was far too easy.

There remains nothing in the game that has to be ground out to be on equal footing with another player, unless you feel seeing someone in FoW makes you unequal (it does not), unless you feel using a collector item makes you unequal (it does not), unless you feel not having a particular title makes you unequal (it does not). You dont even need the Faction skills. If someone wants them, the 100k faction entry to their use is not so much a big deal at all.

Having level 1 in the faction titles and therefore skills means yes, some players will have a few more seconds duration or a bit more damage from them in PvE. Hardly anything to get worked up about. I and many will be ignoring advancing those tracks to their end.

I really didn't want to make this flame fest, or complaining topic, as I said in OP.

Fact here is that: If anet would made total faction earned = title track, it just would help players to gain pve-only skills more easily. Players who have farmed faction just as those who gave it to alliance. Players, who didn't know that title track will some day have such a meaning as it has now.

Another fact: If anet changes this, what will all the people who gave faction to their alliance lose? Nothing. They wanted to get town control, others wanted to get rare materials. Only latter can't get the skills.

So I really don't understand why some people complain. It doesn't affect them, they still got benefit to their alliance.

i dont mind really
i recon whats done is done. leave it as it is. im sure we can benefit from it.

slightly offtopic but ive jsut found that killin enemie minions gives you faction when you have the blessing. is that really appropriate, i see an exploit coming along. My olias made about 10 minions and then he died. the minions turned into enemies so i just kill them for a bunch of faction

Quoted for truth.

Yes I was being a little sarcastic, but at the same time I have this horrible feeling that what I'm describing is what GW2 will be like...

And this is my point exactly. In PvE the things that you work really hard for are just for show, not actually any better. Any casual player can be equal to a hardcore player.

These skills go against that whole idea. Sure, grinding more faction will only give you a marginal increase in the effectiveness of the skills (though in some cases it almost doubles it). It doesn't matter if the skills aren't necessary, or if the increases aren't that significant. The fact is that there is a difference between how powerful a casual player's skills are, and how powerful they are for a long-time faction farmer. It may not always be big, but it's there. It's like having those expensive skins do 20^50 damage... not a big difference, but it's still unequal.

This is why I was uneasy when titles first came out. But back then there was no benefit to any of them. Over time, more benefits have been added. Now we have skills based on a crazy title that most of us never wanted. There isn't much between the current situation and a situation where hardcore players are significantly more advantaged than casual players. There's supposed to be many more titles and PvE only skills in gw:en, after all.

And for those who think faction spent on amber in the past shouldn't be added to the title: I just want the skills to help me in hard mode which I don't pug anyway. I don't care about the stupid title. And I don't want to farm any faction at all, if I can avoid it. How exactly does it harm anyone else for anet to make this change? And it's not about greed... I'd pay for the stupid faction if I could, it's about wanting the use the skills.

That's a fair point actually but if it's any consolation the best skills seem to be sunspear ones.

I agree. I think its a response to sentiment that title grind has no meaning and there is nothing to do in late game PvE and this was an attempt to address that in seeming small fashion. Anet's sort of in a no-win situation either way.

The only rationale I see for it not being retroactive is it was a meant to be fair to title track pursuers previous to the implementation, while simultaneously seen as not that large a hurdle to earn 100k faction for those who havent. I agree, at least, that the hurdle is not so large a hurdle.

Larger issue is the aforementioned departure from player equality, but they had already set that precedent with the LB track and now head full into the breach. I personally dont view it as that large a gap in a PvE-only environment, especially given the rarity of the maxed faction titles and the relative ease (mind-numbing though yes) of maxing the SS title. Still, I'd have preferred they not have tied any skills at all to the faction tracks. Far, far too long a track.

I have no idea what to think about GW2 anymore. Sometimes I'm bored to tears in GW having the ability only to tinker with skins or grind out titles. Other times I am thankful. At all times I wish for more content more often.

I think this is how all of us on the retroactive side feel, including myself.

Vamis, I'm R10 Sunspear, but the skill I'm really interested in is Allegiance related.

Like I said in the thread in sardelac, a big NO for me.

While all those people would be getting their title for turning in amber/jade, all those people that decided to go for the title instead would be screwed out of getting amber/jade. I decided I would rather have the title than amber/jade and you decided you would rather have amber/jade than the title. Now you expect to get both while I only get the title? HELL NO.

IIRC these "righteous" kept Cavalon and HZH elite missions locked down for a month or so, causing such hatred that one alliance had to have an official ambassador on the forums to handle public relations. Righteous my ass, they donated the faction to get something out of it, town control. Don't paint them up as some sort of angels.

I understand where you're coming from, but honestly the ability to use powerful PvE skills effectively > rare materials.

We'd probably all pay for the faction if we could.

Right. Before the change it was an either/or scenario. You chose one or the other. After the change, its now both. This is why the two have not been reconciled and why there was no retroactivity or change in the title functionality, as well as why I am near certain there will not be any change.

Not having a guild and having to sell amber/jade instead is not a legitimate argument because if you wanted these titles, you would have found a guild specifically for doing that. I was in a guild that didnt pursue faction at all and I dontated anyway fruitlessly as i wanted at least Friends. I was the only one doing that. So while I was not a faction farmer, I understand wholeheartedly this point of view and its why I came down on this side earlier in the topic, and still do, even though I have sold a fair amount of amber as well and stand to gain even more from retroactivity.

#1 those skills arent that powerful.
#2 It doesnt matter anyway.

You chose materials/gold instead of a title and now you want both while the people that chose the title are screwed over? NO. Give me a stack of amber and jade and reset the price to 1k each at the trader which is the price they were when I donated the majority of my faction and I'll go along with it. Short of that, I'm screwed over while everyone else gets both sides.