Talk:Activity

"Activity"

I don't see in the source where Colin says activity, all I see is mini-game. Eive Windgrace 03:27, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Try this one: [1] "[We] have decided to populate the major cities in the game with mini games similar to those found in Guild Wars. We call these games “activities” and they encompass everything from a bar brawl to a shooting gallery." -- Aspectacle  07:49, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm loving the concepts and the screenshots of the cities. The colours, the streets, the houses and the festivals. It looks vast, colourful and above all, interesting. I can't wait to be able to roam these places. --Odal talk 14:53, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

o.o err.. one problem.. the game also calls things that earn guilds inf "activities".. should this perhaps be a diambigation page splitting to one about guild and one about minigames? --192.168.104.81 11:14, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Unknown City

Is this out of date (before knowing other race capitals & Lion's Arch) or are these events that have been talked about but not their locations? "Unknown City" just kind of makes it look like we didn't know what the other capitals were. Photocopy /talk 03:28, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

They are events with unspecified locations. Aqua (T|C) 03:32, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Infobox

If we have a {{Activity infobox}}, we can dynamically generate the lists of activities by city. Anyone object to the creation/use of one? – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 22:00, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Keg Brawl

isn't keg brawl the only activity thats already in the game? Sjacie 12:26, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

It's certainly the only one in the "activities" section of achievements. I haven't seen Diverse Ledges but people apparently did it during the beta. Is it really an "activity" though? It certainly doesn't sound like a game. I'm pretty sure RC Golem exists in Metrica Province. I have no idea why Mystic Forge is listed. Manifold 18:39, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Updated page

I updated the page to closer reflect the current in-game status, since about half of the information was from articles dating back to 2010-2011. I wanted to add Costume Brawl since it behaves in similar methods except that you use an item to begin it anywhere (and it replaces your skills with level-agnostic ones), and the Box o' Fun as well since it creates an activity symbol on the map similar to Keg Brawl, but not sure how others would classify those. They seem like activities to me, at least the costume brawl does, where they're a small mini-game or fun things where your level doesn't matter. Alternatively, we could update this page to only reflect items in the Activities section of the game, although I think leaving it as a page collecting the small mini-games where your skills change might be better. Thoughts? Vahkris 16:04, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Nevermind on Costume Brawl. The actual page says it's an activity and has for some time (although the achievements are in Community), so I went ahead and added that. Vahkris 16:08, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Aug. 8, 2013

Added to "Cleaning up the neighborhood":

• • This does not count toward the "Daily Activity Participation" achievement. It does, however, provide ten Achievement Points in the "Explorer" track. --Gold Recluse (talk) 09:24, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

To think of it, why the hell simple explorer achievements are treated as activities at all? I mean, I understand that it is player's "activity" in a certain area, but this is not that kind of activity: it does not involve multiple players, it does not change your skill panels, it does not have several actions, it does not have several achievements for that actions... MalGalad 11:55, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

As far as I know, those explorer achievements ("scavenger hunts" on the page) are not activities in any way. I don't know why they're even listed on this page, they shouldn't be. —Dr Ishmael 14:35, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I think the issue is in the term activity itself. I would propose to have a discussion bout what we define as an 'Activity'. My proposal would be to limit this to 'pvp minigames'. This would exclude 'clean up the neighbourhood' or costume brawl. Also this should exclude things like the torchbearer. Only those activity's that have a confined arena where players in some way compete with eachother would classify for 'Activity'. All the other things are valuable parts of the game, but shouldn't be listed here.Ranique (talk) 14:50, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

ANet has already defined activity to mean something that is tracked under the activity tab of the achievements section of the hero panel. Currently, that means that most of the current article is misleading. RC golem is a fun mini-game, but not an activity. All of the scavenger hunt listings are part of the Explorer category.

the confusion comes from anet using an English word with a well-understood meaning and using it in-game as jargon to mean something more specific. So while scavenger hunts are properly considered as activities according to their plain English meanings, the game doesn't count any of them as activities. imo, this article should be edited to reflect how the term is used in GW2, not how we want the term to be used.75.37.17.78 15:18, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Awesome, almost quoting Douglas Hofstadter's "GEB". However, as far as I remember ANet defined costume brawl and moa racing (and maybe something more) as activities as well, without giving them the achievement category. MalGalad 15:28, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Like the IP said, Arenanet is using a very common english term for a game jargon. It is unclear when Arenanet uses the term activity, they mean the broad english term or the smaller jargon. This leads this to be a garbage category where everyone who thinks something was fun is dumping things. If you put moa racing here, then gambling on how far the cow flies in Diessa should be here too. All the guild missions are also activity's. Killing a world boss is an activity, etc, etc, etc. I propose to limit this page to only things that are in the achievement or are historical very simular. I made a sandbox for how I see the new page User:Ranique/sandbox/Activity. Things like costume brawl and RC golem could be categorized seperatly as for example PVE games (you play a competitive game in a pve map). The Moa racing and the flying cow game could be categorized as 'gambling games' if there is a need to put it into a category. all the other things listed here are either permanent explorer achievement (and listed there already) or part of living story chapters and listed there.Ranique (talk) 16:04, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree and not. It's a shame that the daily achievement is worded so vaguely. ANet themselves have in the past used the word 'Activity' to describe all sorts of things. I always understood 'Activity' to be the broader term and 'mini-game' to mean the instanced ones. And if the daily achievement was called Daily Mini-Game, we wouldn't have a problem - we could simply re-structure the Activities page on here a bit.
I do believe that it makes sense to have one central page for all such activities including mini-games. Maybe it depends on how you use the wiki, but I've been working on this page so much because I felt I spent too much time before hunting down information about achievements and such before. Also, I would like to retain a page listing all the fun activities, so when someone really likes Belcher's Bluff, they find information about related other activities that they might not know about. Spreading everything out over a number of different pages wouldn't help with that.
I created the current mini-game table so you can sort it chronologically or alphabetically or by location. That being said, if we were to separate the "Activity" activities from other mini-games and fun interactions, as well as rename this page to something else, I'd be fine with that.
Lastly, fair point about the Cow betting. And I'll add it to the page. Laale Kuningatar (talk) 19:31, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Somehow this discussion is going a bit silent but also unresolved. I think there are roughly 4 type of activity's listed on this page.

1: the competitive arena minigame like crab toss. This consist of the current activity's that are on rotation. I think all agree bout those being activity's.

2: The competitive mini games in PvE like Belcher's Bluff and costume brawl. Belcher's Bluff is categorized as an activity-achievement as well, but costume brawl is not.

3: 'Scavenger hunts'. This consist of those activity's where you have to click an interact-able object and go on. This includes the current torch run's in divinity's reach, but also speedy reader. I do not believe this belongs here on this page. These are either explorer achievements or part of living story's. I do think they can be perfectly well find through the release pages or through the explorer's achievement section. Besides that, the map pages also make good notes bout them.

4: Gambling. There is again no achievement tied to this. The thing you have to do is significant different then the first two. I personally would say to get rid of these as well. On the other hand, it might be harder to find them. However the map-pages give good information of them.

I disagree with you Laale that we need to rename this page. The confusion has been around since this page exist. This talk page itself starts with a very old discussion bout the term. I think we have let this go out of hand for too long but that doesn't mean that the past contributors to the page can decide what an activity is. What bout all the hearts where you have to collect e.g. frogs? Bring sacks of bunny food to an NPC? trade bunny's for stones? etc, etc. My opinion, is that scavenger hunts don't belong on this page. I think the same bout the gambling, but not so strong.Ranique (talk) 08:40, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Beacons of Kryta is definitely not a scavenger hunt.--Relyk ~ talk < 08:53, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Why not?? I do know what you mean. but from a perspective of game mechanics, a scavenger hunt is nothing more then clicking an amount of similar object. Some of these need to be done through difficult jumping, others in a time limit. Your remark is showing how problematic this page is in the current condition. In a previous post I said that almost everything you can do online can be counted as an 'activity'. The concept is just very broad. There has been past discussion bout this here but got unresolved. Arenanet has now provided us with pretty good borders what they consider activity's, so my suggestion is to follow that from now on.Ranique (talk) 22:53, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Scavenger Hunts

I removed the Explorer achievements, as I still don't see any way that they'd fit under even a broad definition of "activity" - except for diving, all you do is press F, there's nothing special about them. —Dr Ishmael 20:08, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

I contest this. "All you do is press F" arguably is valid for half the game. The Marriner Plaque and Ebonhawke scavenger hunt have another dimension (when you read them in order).
For comparison: when you complete a jumping puzzle, you get the achievement only upon the first completion; that doesn't mean that people don't repeat them, do them socially, etc. And of course, they're listed on a page for "Jumping Puzzles". Mini-Dungeons have their own central page, even though some of them give explorer achievements. So I don't think that this is a very good argument.
As I stated before, this page prompts players who enjoy this sort of activity to other acitvities that they didn't know existed: in my opinion, they should not be "hidden away" in the achievements pages. Laale Kuningatar (talk) 20:42, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

There are several ways to alert players that the game offers more than the current Living World's mini-games. One is what we have done on this page: mangle the English word activity with the game's definition and show both types on the same page. Another is to use the see also convention to link to other articles, such as "List of scavenger hunts" and mini-game. In this case, I think it's much more confusing to players if we include concepts that are not part of anet's idea of an activity.

I encourage the community to add more lists and offer more information about other fun things to do besides killing stuff, but I do not like adding to the already-confusing system in the way the current article has done. In the mean-time, I've edited the article to try to make it more obvious which activities count as official activities and which are something else.

(edit: added)I prefer that we not increase the amount of confusion around the term, "activity" by using it to mean any thing that involves being "active". I admit that user:Gold Recluse and User:Laale Kunigatar have a very reasonable point of view in that they are using the world similarly to how ANet did before the game was launched.

However, the game as it exists today uses Activity to refer to a select subset of mini-games. Instead of trying to separate Activity from Daily Activity Participation and "Activity (achievement category)", I prefer we use Activity to refer to just the small group of games. I also would like to see a "see also" section of that article that points to the other games or "things to do in Tyria" and to buff up the relevant articles.75.37.23.116 22:09, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm fine with grouping all these under activity but we can group the mini-games and scavenger hunts onto their own pages. I have seen the term "mini-game" only start being used recently and it's probably because of this. I would consider Choir Bell and How to Dance, Volume 1 activities along with betting on the cow race. It's not clear to me what "Activity" means at this point so we can use the page as navigation to anything considered an activity.--Relyk ~ talk < 23:28, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

What I believe that Ish was trying to accomplish is to take the discussion bout the scavenger hunts out of the broader discussion of what an activity actually is. Unfortunally this has failed and is resulting in two discussions that are the same. So I do agree with you Relyk bout the need for a solid definition of Activities, but it would be better to keep that in the section above so this discussion isn't splitted into two parts. As for the scavanger hunts I would propose to put them back on the page till we have consensus bout what to do with this page.Ranique (talk) 08:29, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

So our problem is that the term "Activity" is now tied to the daily activity achievement, and if the Activities page lists other things that fall under a broader definition of the word, then users might be confused because they don't count towards the daily achievement. However, in the achievements categories, Belcher's Bluff is also listed under "Activities", so the problem is one of GW2 already, and not limited to our wiki page here. By the game's own definition, Belcher's Bluff IS an activity, yet it doesn't count towards dailies. Conclusion: If the daily achievement was worded more clearly (and players would know that exactly the one thing offered by the activities NPC in LA is what they're supposed to do) then we would have no problem using a broader definition here in the wiki. Correct? 14:29, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

The Daily Activity is a rotation, and Belcher's Bluff simply isn't included in the current rotation - nor will it ever be, I'd think, since it's always available as long as you purchase the kit - the Daily Activity rotation will only include instanced activities. Don't conflate the Daily Activity rotation with the definition of "activity" - it's a limited subset for a reason. —Dr Ishmael 14:38, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Activity =/= Achievement

I think I know where some of the disagreement comes from. I can see that some people keep re-labeling some headers on the Activities page to "Achievement this, achievement that". No wonder you think that the Activities page is redundant. We have plenty of coverage on achievements already on the various achievement pages.

But the Activities page is not about achievements. At least in my opinion. It is a list of fun activities to do that sort of fall out of regular gameplay. Some of them grant one-time achievements, some of them grant recurring achievements, and some of them don't grant achievements. All of this is explained on the individual activity's own page. So I really don't see why the Activities page itself should need to be structured by how many achievements you can theoretically get when you perform the activities.

Don't get me wrong, I'm an achievement hunter myself, but I don't think that this is the focus of the Activities page, nor should it be. Laale Kuningatar (talk) 12:17, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

And you still treat "activity" in it's commons sense. It's confusing for sure, but there're activities and there're activities. Activities is a subset of activities, and not every activity is activity. There're two problems: we need to strictly determine definition of activities and define an appropriate term to distinguish them.

From my point of view, activities are activities, that follow any 3 of the following rules:

- Has a defined area, instanced or not

- Has achievements

- Involves multiple players

- Has different tasks

MalGalad 12:37, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Fixed by categorization. —Dr Ishmael 15:04, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Table Formatting

Is there a particular reason for the last column to be completely shaded blue? It doesn't help much with readability. Rebani (talk) 09:44, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Activity Tracker

So, this page keeps track of which activity is supposed to be active. Am I the first person to notice it does not work? For example, today the wiki page shows keg brawl is active; however in game it is Southsun Survival. I've noticed this before when I bothered to check wiki for the active one. This should either A) be fixed or B) Not keep track if there is no way to do this accurately. I don't know how to fix it though. Ikarus (talk) 08:58, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

I fixed the tracker so that it is now accurate, at least for today. Note that all I did was shift the entry numbers as it seemed like a simple 1 digit screwup. Forgot to sign. A Liability (talk) 06:04, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Tracker template fixed. The activities template broke when anet went from monthly to day of week. Note that i changed the magicword from currentday to currentdow. If anet hanges he activity back to day of month, please lookup the right magicword and replace thearray reference as well as fix the array.A Liability (talk) 09:28, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Scavenger Hunt - Revisited

Looking at the page I noticed the Scavenger Hunt section. I noticed there was some debate above, but it doesn't seem like much of a conclusion was reached. I bring this up because from my perspective this section doesn't seem to fit. The argument was that "they're an activity you can do in the game" which feels a bit odd to me. They're not noted as an activity in anyway (such as the daily activities or Belcher's bluff) but are closer to a more traditional quest.

At the top of the page we're saying activities are mini-games. I'd argue then that along with MalGalad's requirements listed above, we should also say that an activity needs to be repeatable on any given character. I would like to also say that it should provide some sort of reward upon completion (each time) as well, but that would mean Belcher's Bluff wouldn't be part of the list, which I would count as an activity. Maybe something along the lines that the outcome can change each time you "play" the activity? 152.105.62.15 15:31, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

What constitutes an activity?

What I gathered from conversations:

Activities are

• a PvP format (experience bar is purple)
• contributes to Daily Activity (at the moment all contributing have a timer)
• afk get kicked out

Celestial Challenge: the game labells it as activity. It's an activity in the sense of "something to do", but not an activity in the game mechanics sense.

I would like to come to a consensus and not start a revert war. —Kvothe (talk) 20:20, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

While i generally agree with the first and third properties You have listed, i do not with the game mechanics statement and have doubts about the second. The Celestial Challenge is an activity as labeled by the game, hence - even though it might not be an activity in the previously known game mechanics sense - it should be threated as one, be it as a new kind of activity; but as an activity. Regarding the second property, under Notes it currently states that some festival activities count torwards daily Activity participation, implying that not all do or have to. Furthermore under Other types of games it reads that ...but do not count for the daily activities or any other achievements, implying that other achievements, such as Blessing of the Celestials, work too. Nightsky (talk) 10:27, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Isn't the Secret Lair of the Snowmen or Tixx also often referenced as activity in game? I have this in mind, but can be wrong. What about the Dragon Arena? I would add a small section or some information in brackets to the activity article with some "special activities", where it is shortly explained and add those who are affected into the Category:Activity.--Aylia (talk) 12:27, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

What festival activities count for Daily Activity Participation?

During Lunar New Year 2023, Firecracker Lighting, Time Trial: Racing in the New Year, and Celestial Challenge do not count. Adeira Tasharo (talk) 17:40, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

I am pretty sure we had it noted somewhere which Halloween and Wintersday activities counted, but I cannot find it. ~Sime 17:43, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Confirmed that the Stopped Clock Tower JP doesn't count as an activity, although the page says the original Clock Tower JP does.