Increase drop rate of symbols

The rune change was supposed to make most runes easier to access, by making them craftable, and a QoL update, because the inventories wouldn't get full. But the drop rate is so bad, most meta sigils tripled in price, their crafting cost is also expensive, and this is not good for the game.

The change was only meant to make it "easier" in the same way precursor crafting was - it's just an alternative. It's obvious they intended to increase the costs, since the recipes that already existed had their requirements increased on top of adding the new materials.

The new materials have the same problem as mystic coins. Everyone is getting them, and although the vast majority don't use them, they simply deposit and forget until it overflows. The drop rate is so incredibly low because it's likely balanced around how many would have been generated vs how many would have been used prior to the patch in order to not have it quickly turn it into another trash item. That's the problem with personal loot - everyone gets a little bit everything so it's balanced around trading. It feels so low however, it reminds me of the usual tactic where they're planning on releasing something new in the next expansion with a higher salvage rate, but also a higher usage, such as making ascended the new exotic and introducing ascended runes/sigils.

The drop rate is bad. I have been salvaging and putting lucent motes and symbols in my material storage since this started. I salvage everything I get when playing WvW or out in PVE. So far I have 538 lucent motes, 2 symbols of control, 5 symbols of enhancement, 0 symbols of pain, 4 symbols of brilliance, 3 symbols of potence and 1 symbol of skill. That is 15 symbols for 538 motes. Not good and doesn't look balanced to me. I can't get enough symbols to even buy the recipes I don't have. I am not wanting these overnight but you would think the drop rate would be a bit better than this.

The system is still new. Give it some months and it will be mostly back to normal. There really isn't anything wrong with having materials not drop in abundance, we'd just have the same problem as before essentially.

@Blocki.4931 said:The system is still new. Give it some months and it will be mostly back to normal.

It's not going to get fixed if nobody complains.

@"Healix.5819" said:The change was only meant to make it "easier" in the same way precursor crafting was - it's just an alternative.

The precursor acquisition methods weren't changed when they added their crafting, but the other methods of getting sigils/runes were revamped (with the exception of the mystic forge), the new recipes to craft them are more expensive than the old ones, while you can no longer extract sigils/runes that you want without using gem store items.

@"Verrier.5870" said:The rune change was supposed to make most runes easier to access, by making them craftable, and a QoL update, because the inventories wouldn't get full. But the drop rate is so bad, most meta sigils tripled in price, their crafting cost is also expensive, and this is not good for the game.I'm not sure how you drew the conclusion that the only purpose was make runes & sigils "easier to access" and reduce inventory clutter.

It seems much more likely that the goal was to restore the value of sigils and runes (minors have vendor trash for most the of the life of the game; majors have been at or near trash for a long time and especially since PoF and more so since Istan; and only a few superiors have ever had much value). This ultimately benefits everyone who doesn't swap their build every few hours: the stuff that drops ends up being worth somewhat more (which adds up over the long run).

Further, runes & sigils are more accessible now. Instead of only a random assortment being unobtainable on demand, they all are.

And finally, if the drop rate increases, then symbols & charms will end up being vendor trash too, which just means the old status quo will return.

Regardless, there's almost no chance ANet is going to tweak things this soon after massively disrupting this part of the economy. It takes weeks, if not months, for any sort of equilibrium to shake itself out. Before then, any form of micromanagement is more likely to make things worse, rather than better.

This change was probably 18-36 months in the making; they aren't going to undermine just because some of us aren't adapting.

It's not going to get fixed if nobody complains.It's not going to get fixed if it's not broken.

The only thing I dislike about the change is that the druid healer build for meta raiding requires two sigils that are only obtained through scribe. So me as someone in a small guild has to buy it from the tp or spend lots of gold on leveling scribe for only the sigils. I just wish they were any other crafting discipline...

Whenever ANet makes a massive change like this, I try to pretend that this was the status quo in the first place and imagine whether we'd be upset about it, if we'd ask for ANet to change it, and if so, would we ask for what we had previously to replace it... or would we ask for something else.

So imagine that we had these things from launch:

• All sigils|runes have some sort of direct source.
• Whether meta or not, all had some sort of value, for multiple reasons (so that unexpected economic shifts don't wipe out that value).
• Sigils|runes are salvageable and the materials are deposited into inventory.
• Those materials are worth more than vendor price.
• Salvaging gear is a one-step process that returns the mats from both the gear & any upgrade.
• There's an additional sink on ecto, so that rares and exotics always have some value.

Would we really feel that we needed to add a step to salvaging a full bag of gear, so that we fill up with upgrades and have to decide what to do with them before salvaging more stuff? Would we be upset that these upgrades have similar costs, whether meta or not? I don't think we would.

The current system isn't perfect. There are some unfortunate rune bonuses and some odd costs (the amount of ecto required for superior feels high to me, but maybe I'm just not used to it). Nevertheless, I think we would have been collectively happier if this was how things were 4 years ago.

tl;dr I think once we get used to it, more of us will prefer things this way.

I'm guessing the ones defending this horrendous drop rate are the people that don't have to worry about gold...

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:Whenever ANet makes a massive change like this, I try to pretend that this was the status quo in the first place and imagine whether we'd be upset about it, if we'd ask for ANet to change it, and if so, would we ask for what we had previously to replace it... or would we ask for something else.

So imagine that we had these things from launch:

• All sigils|runes have some sort of direct source.
• Whether meta or not, all had some sort of value, for multiple reasons (so that unexpected economic shifts don't wipe out that value).
• Sigils|runes are salvageable and the materials are deposited into inventory.
• Those materials are worth more than vendor price.
• Salvaging gear is a one-step process that returns the mats from both the gear & any upgrade.
• There's an additional sink on ecto, so that rares and exotics always have some value.

Would we really feel that we needed to add a step to salvaging a full bag of gear, so that we fill up with upgrades and have to decide what to do with them before salvaging more stuff? Would we be upset that these upgrades have similar costs, whether meta or not? I don't think we would.

The current system isn't perfect. There are some unfortunate rune bonuses and some odd costs (the amount of ecto required for superior feels high to me, but maybe I'm just not used to it). Nevertheless, I think we would have been collectively happier if this was how things were 4 years ago.

tl;dr I think once we get used to it, more of us will prefer things this way.

As ive said in other threads, unless they add an ingame non gemstore item that can extract sigils for relatively cheap, i will never be fully happy or approve with this change(and i can say that i would have objected to it even if it was that way at launch).

I'd have thought making meta builds more expensive to make would be a healthy and positive thing for any game

That isn't to say I think they implemented it well. Either they thought extremely long term, which is quite unlike Anet at times or they overlooked a lot of potential issues. Overall, the situation has improved in terms of making runes/sigils more available and inventory clutter has lessened dramatically. Some tweaking is likely in order

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Verrier.5870" said:The rune change was supposed to make most runes easier to access, by making them craftable, and a QoL update, because the inventories wouldn't get full. But the drop rate is so bad, most meta sigils tripled in price, their crafting cost is also expensive, and this is not good for the game.I'm not sure how you drew the conclusion that the only purpose was make runes & sigils "easier to access" and reduce inventory clutter.

It's not going to get fixed if nobody complains.It's not going to get fixed if it's not broken.

It was never broken before, the only issue was players wanted a way to reduce inventory clutter when running metas's like AB.. so a simple salvage rune/sigil was all that was required for that, nothing more. The crafting of all sigils, although on the surface was a welcomed advancement was nothing more than a knee jerk reaction after the armor mess imo, it was just a way to shift attention from purposeful starved supply of sigils to a new RNG drop rate reliance of symbols/charms with the added spice of a new gold sync/ gems push with the extractor, salvage kit and sigil price hikes whether via TP or from direct crafting.There was never a need to fix this non broken issue and to add insult to injury, everyone who has purchased the copper / silver feds no long benefit from the salvaging of upgrades like they are supposed to offer not just the chance to salvage crafting mats. In fact this has made the latest sales of these items and respective item combo's look like nothing more than predatory miss-selling.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Verrier.5870" said:The rune change was supposed to make most runes easier to access, by making them craftable, and a QoL update, because the inventories wouldn't get full. But the drop rate is so bad, most meta sigils tripled in price, their crafting cost is also expensive, and this is not good for the game.I'm not sure how you drew the conclusion that the only purpose was make runes & sigils "easier to access" and reduce inventory clutter.

It's not going to get fixed if nobody complains.It's not going to get fixed if it's not broken.

ANet has a long history of, "fixing," things that are not broken.

That "change" made nothing, sigil of nullification is still around 8-10 gold. Was a bad solution to add T6 materials as part of the recipes, but the worst is the required symbol of control, thing that rare that it worth around 2 gold! A real broken fix for me, whereas I only needed 15 sigils of nullifications, I need now a ton of T6 materials, ton of control symbols, and some others stuffs making it even harder to obtain, guess I will not get the requiem armor if they don't want us to have it. I can pass, I don't like her, but that's very sad.

I support the change of making sigils/runes available, but drops rates are too low, for earning a rune/sigil after salvaging and for looting symbols.

@"Bloodstealer.5978" said:The crafting of all sigils, although on the surface was a welcomed advancement was nothing more than a knee jerk reaction after the armor mess imo, it was just a way to shift attention from purposeful starved supply of sigils to a new RNG drop rate reliance of symbols/charms with the added spice of a new gold sync/ gems push with the extractor, salvage kit and sigil price hikes whether via TP or from direct crafting.

I doubt they started creating the new crafting system, components, salvage rates, recipes AFTER the release A Star to Guide Us. Instead, this is more likely a lengthy process that started some time ago, remember that with that episode we also got the ability to swap sigils from Legendary Weapons, so it makes sense that the entire system was designed and under development long before the "armor mess".

@"Healix.5819" said:The change was only meant to make it "easier" in the same way precursor crafting was - it's just an alternative. It's obvious they intended to increase the costs, since the recipes that already existed had their requirements increased on top of adding the new materials.

That's the problem with personal loot - everyone gets a little bit everything so it's balanced around trading.

HM? An alternative means a "different" way of what you already have. You can use one way or another - this is an alternative. In the case of the precursor crafting you have both the ways - you can craft a precursor OR you can use the old methods - gambling in Mystic Forge / buying from TP / or a lucky drop.In this case we have only the new method. Where is the alternative? AAA - sorry, I was too rush. We have alternative - an Upgrade extractor is now 3 times cheaper. And a BLSK is not a fortune. With only one objection - you need RL money for the alternative.

Balancing something around the trading makes the TP the main character of the game. The TP and not the players. And I think that balancing around trading is NOT good - loock at the balance of the classes and skills =) =). Also, I think this was the starting point for what I saw is called "wintrade".

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:It's not going to get fixed if it's not broken.

Usually it is as you say. But in ANet case it is not unusual to do this. They "fixed" several good working aspects of the game. The result was not always something at the same level as the "broken" detail. But, also we have broken aspects of the game for years.I think we have no hope to see something changed :#

@Aerinndis.2730 said:The drop rate is bad. I have been salvaging and putting lucent motes and symbols in my material storage since this started. I salvage everything I get when playing WvW or out in PVE. So far I have 538 lucent motes, 2 symbols of control, 5 symbols of enhancement, 0 symbols of pain, 4 symbols of brilliance, 3 symbols of potence and 1 symbol of skill. That is 15 symbols for 538 motes. Not good and doesn't look balanced to me. I can't get enough symbols to even buy the recipes I don't have. I am not wanting these overnight but you would think the drop rate would be a bit better than this.

The crafting balance should be looked at like chemical formulas when determining drop rates. It was a similar problem (and still somewhat similar problem) with cloth/leather and Ascended crafting: too much of some materials plummeting in price while other materials with low drop rates are high priced, so the crafting that would take place to use them all doesn't happen and it stalls the crafting process.Granted, none of these should be completely relied on in isolation, but there's more than enough trend data to know what drops rates should be tweaked.

No way! The less rare those are, the more we will be supposed to rely on the trading post to switch upgrades.

I want none of that.

What I want is them becoming rarer and rarer over time, and once the trading post is depleted enough of upgrades and there's a steady small supply of each, add a way to unlock upgrades and a way to apply the unlocks in the wardrobe.

Once we have a way to unlock stats and upgrades, that would be one step less in the path towards getting fully working build templates!!

No kidding. The people advocating for it are those who for some reason didn't like getting free stuff in their bags when salvaging, and they're clinging to the idea that anything that eliminates that is good, despite all evidence to the contrary. It's not worth the cost of extracting runes. It's not profitable to craft them because they require mats in addition to the motes/charms they're made of. So supply goes down and prices go up. This will balance out at a price level that's way above what it used to cost to get runes/sigils. No more experimenting by swapping them out if you don't want to shell out several gold. And yes, it's not a problem if you're rich and have legendaries. It's only a problem for the bulk of players.

@Biff.5312 said:No kidding. The people advocating for it are those who for some reason didn't like getting free stuff in their bags when salvaging, and they're clinging to the idea that anything that eliminates that is good, despite all evidence to the contrary. It's not worth the cost of extracting runes. It's not profitable to craft them because they require mats in addition to the motes/charms they're made of. So supply goes down and prices go up. This will balance out at a price level that's way above what it used to cost to get runes/sigils. No more experimenting by swapping them out if you don't want to shell out several gold. And yes, it's not a problem if you're rich and have legendaries. It's only a problem for the bulk of players.

Jesus its a problem even if you have legendaries, i have six of them and this change pissed me off alot, and i have a decent amount of gold to go with it.

@Rauderi.8706 said:The crafting balance should be looked at like chemical formulas when determining drop rates. It was a similar problem (and still somewhat similar problem) with cloth/leather and Ascended crafting: too much of some materials plummeting in price while other materials with low drop rates are high priced, so the crafting that would take place to use them all doesn't happen and it stalls the crafting process.

Curveball for your consideration - given the drop rates and recipe requirements, Lucent Motes are, in general, the limiting reagent.

Since runes sigils need ectoplasm to craft now, the expensive ones i.e. those that cant be extracted from weapon/armour drops, will still be expensive even if charm/symbol salvage rate improves. Some recipes require already expensive ingredients like freshwater pearls/azurite and multiple of them at that. If one wanted to make them cheaper they have to look into changing some recipes too.

Also I think a little bit more time is required to get a better idea of where the price of symbol/charms/runes/sigils will settle at, as Ive been tracking a few items and prices still fluctuate a lot. Scholar runes for instance jumped up to 7g from 5g and symbol of brilliance has doubled in price, all within a week.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Bloodstealer.5978" said:The crafting of all sigils, although on the surface was a welcomed advancement was nothing more than a knee jerk reaction after the armor mess imo, it was just a way to shift attention from purposeful starved supply of sigils to a new RNG drop rate reliance of symbols/charms with the added spice of a new gold sync/ gems push with the extractor, salvage kit and sigil price hikes whether via TP or from direct crafting.

Apologies, yes in terms of the sigil crafting methodology sure.. what I meant that was after the utter mess that came from the last patch and the backlash that it caused, the new system imo has been adapted to take the place of "starved supply sigil must pay disgracefully inflated prices or wait and age for your luck to change in game" with "ooh look shiny sales of buy copper and silver fed o matics, that don't actually do what they are supposed to, change salvaging to across the board to no longer return actual sigils unless buying from the store or rely on endless offerings to RNGesus in the hope it repays against pitiful salvaging odds of symbols and charms you need".. the whole thing smells bad to me and is a worrying sign.

I'm kind of expecting a gathering glyph that has a chance of giving rune/sigil salvage materials. Yeah, it'll be a mote most of the time, but we have glyphs for just about every other kind of material. Right?