Skyscale collection feed back.

I want to say right away, I have no problem working for something, so this feed back is not from a "being lazy" point of view. Now we have that out of the way, I'll get to it.

First off, I'm still on the first part of the skyscale collection. So far its collection in side collections. I really fail to see why on gods green earth each part of the collection requires a collection of it's own. This is the first collection, and I know I have days worth of stuff to do. So if each part is a collection, in side collections, my question is why? The progression is so painfully slow, and quite frankly unenjoyable. This isn't a legendary weapon or armour. It's a mount. First the Griffin then beetle. Collections are ok if it's just the one. But collections inside collections are just not fun.

I'm sure there are people out there who can spend multiple hours at a time playing so it's a non issue for them and that's great. But not everyone has that kind of time, also it's not going to give me a sense of achievement, it's going to leave me with "thank **** that's over!". I'm sure that's the opposite of what you are trying to achieve.

I read somewhere the idea is to have a bond with the mount, sorry its pixels. I'm not going to get emotionally attached to it, no matter how many hoops I have to jump through, if anything it's going to make me like it less. I hardly use the beetle and Griffin, mostly because they are kind of useless and only really of any use in specific situations.

I'm getting a bit off track here. Basically I feel the collection needs to lose, at minimum, half of the sub collections. I can feel my self burning out already trying to get it done so I don't end up wasting a day because of the time gates. I know it's being dropped to 2 hour cool down, but even that is too long I my personal opinion because of the sheer amount of sub collections involved.

I feel exactly the same. I am farther along in the collection but I've lost the will to login. I'm at the saddle now and having to acquire 250 diflourite crytals from a map I hated and only go to when I'm forced, such as now, by content needed for other things. There is a reason some of the maps are mainly empty and making us go to them and spend time in them by requiring us to collect from them is a manipulation that makes this collection even more tedious and unenjoyable. By far these crystals are the hardest in terms of bulk collecting and I only managed to get about 60 in 3 hours of constant searching and fighting. You can't even be sure you'll get any from the nodes you find and the event chests offer a max of 5 per day per character. Seriously?! It's just ridiculous to expect casual players to invest that many hours of gameplay for one resource for part of one sub collection of an already very long main collection. Surely the devs could have made the map currencies a bit more generous from places that have previously been so stingy. I didn't even log into the game today because while I want the Skyscale, and have been up to now willing to do the lengthy collection, this was the tipping point. These crystals are just ridiculously slow to come by and it's resulted in lost motivation to even play. I know from reading map chat and other posts that I'm not the only player who feels this way.

Surely they can come up with more exciting and fun ways to engage the player community in using the maps that aren't very populated. This was definitely NOT the way to do it.

@"Tupaloe.8267" said:Surely they can come up with more exciting and fun ways to engage the player community in using the maps that aren't very populated. This was definitely NOT the way to do it.

This is the 3rd mount collection, clearly they can't. Each one has gotten progressively worse, not better.

I don't mind "fetch" quests, to a point. I'm on the eggs now(the elemental ones), and I'm feeing the burn out coming. The worst part is I know I've got more of this to come.

The collections are fine..and kind of fun. Wait til you get to the map currency grind tho...

This mount is alot of work.

Oh, I think we all have established a very...special bond with Anet, LWs4 maps, mount and their collections already. I'm sure that wasn't exactly as planned, but...At least I did while following that lemming train in Dragonfall for 30 times to unlock the 3 merchants..

@"BrotherBelial.3094" said:Basically I feel the collection needs to lose, at minimum, half of the sub collections. I can feel my self burning out already trying to get it done so I don't end up wasting a day because of the time gates.If you are only just starting, why the rush? You're going to spread out the whole process across days or even weeks anyway, the few mandatory waiting times inbetween shouldn't make a difference there.

To your other point: collections in this game are just a ui to deliver what quests/questgivers deliver in other games. Gorrik is your questgiver, he just tells you "find all the eggs", then afterwards tells you "hand out this medicine" and so on. Other games keep track of quests like that with a questlog (that more often or not doesn't give you any idea of how many follow-up parts the quest has). This game's quest log is the collections ui, for both main quests and subquests (nested collections).

The skyscale collection/questline is involved. It's meant to be involved. It includes fetch quests (go get me this list of stuff, e.g. medicine ingredients), scavenger hunt type quests (finding eggs etc.), minigame quests (later on in the questline), resource-intensive quests (most notably the saddle) and so on. If you really want to play it (and not just treat it like a shopping list to get over with as quickly as possible by following some youtube or wiki guide) it'll give you hours of content to do. If you don't care about the questline and just want the rewards that's too bad, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it.

I'm a relatively new player who started this year. Now I've had some experience with other MMO's so the basic concepts weren't new, just some of the mechanics. I'm about 2/3rds of the way through grinding the mats for the saddle. I have the other mounts other than the Warcat since I don't do WvW. Here are my thoughts. The collections, scavenger hunts, etc have too many steps. What would have been fun to do at maybe 12 just turned into going down the list on the wiki or video walkthrough. It didn't engage my interest that much, but at least it was mostly pretty fast to do. The food and one toy having to be crafted wasn't much appreciated since I hate crafting in MMO's but at least I was able to buy them. I didn't really mind the time gating on feeding because it gave me time to get the treats and grind some saddle mats. Also, it was fun to play with and interact with the hatchling. Seeing her grow up was kind of neat. Anyone who tries to do things in order rather than concurently is really going to have a long haul. Lost Skyscale was mostly ok. I hadn't been to most of the jump puzzles before and was able to figure out most of them. I ended up buying 2 sausages in addition to the one given at the start. I skipped Goemm's Lab, Griffonrook's Run, and the Ley-Line Anomaly. I'm mediorcre at best at jump puzzles and those two were ridiculously long. I had no desire to do the Ley-Line thing again. I almost skipped the second visit to Augury Rock, but managed to get there when it opened. I don't think one should have to do any given world event or meta more than once for something like this. I think the saddle pieces costing 5 gold each in addition the the materials and volatile magic is a bit much. I should be pretty close to having enough, but if I'm short, I'm just going to hold my nose and sell gems for gold at the crappy exchange rate to get it done and over. That will end any farming/grinding I'll be doing for a good long time.

@"BrotherBelial.3094" said:I want to say right away, I have no problem working for something, so this feed back is not from a "being lazy" point of view. Now we have that out of the way, I'll get to it.

Okay, noted. So why did you spend 4 paragraphs complaining about having to work for something?

The minority will be happy(the eager ones who finish new content in 3 nano-seconds and those that won't bother with the skyscale) , that leaves those who want the mount and do it over a few days or weeks(like me).
Most of us will be burnt out by then and go off playing our other games, not good business sense.

@dognosh.6327 said:The minority will be happy(the eager ones who finish new content in 3 nano-seconds and those that won't bother with the skyscale) , that leaves those who want the mount and do it over a few days or weeks(like me).

Most of us will be burnt out by then and go off playing our other games, not good business sense.How do you know that only a minority will be happy? Looking at the people I know in game, most of them are in fact not rushing but thoroughly enjoying their journey towards getting the skyscale. I know I got my mount more quickly than I expected (about two weeks) simply because I was enjoying the journey so much I spent more time on it than I usually do.

ANet will have the numbers to see how many people do get the mount and how many keep on playing. If they aren't satisfied they'll do content differerntly in the future. We will find out who the minority or majority in this case is simply by watching out for how future content will be delivered. No use to state imaginary minorities or majorities as fact until then.

I had fun doing the collections. I kinda rushed it, but not to have the mount ASAP, I just tend to rush through everything I enjoy.

2 biggest problem i have with this is the time-gate(should have been 5 hours) especially feeding your skyscale, i fed it 3 of my last meats and i have to wait for the next day.... :/ then there the saddle grind: I have no problem with going back to old map to get currency BUT it was completely unexpected to have 250 currency for each map(iirc only legendary needs that much) Has Anet told everyone from the beginning, people would be less outraged considering the fastest way to get currency are through hearts and event which are also time-gated, luckily i have many alts but it still took me 2 or 4 days cause i don't have the patience to do the same task 10 times in 1 day. Anet expect everyone to already have 250 currency, you know what i have Anet? Scraps! Leather Sections! Ore! Wood Logs! Why? to get Gold! Why Gold? To trade for Gems to buy QoL items!Other than that, i love that Anet put marker on the map to save time and require me to go back to old maps, it felt like an adventure.

@Rasimir.6239 said: If you really want to play it (and not just treat it like a shopping list to get over with as quickly as possible by following some youtube or wiki guide) it'll give you hours of content to do. If you don't care about the questline and just want the rewards that's too bad, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it.

It's not about right or wrong...it's about Enjoying the time in game. I play GW because it offered something I couldn't find in many other games; I don't have to grind through content I do not enjoy. It's not a job, it's entertainment. A place to come and relax, have fun, enjoy the company of other players and engage in the parts of the game we most enjoy. I have no problem with the collections as a whole but I resent being forced to spend many hours on a map I avoided for a very small part of the large collection. It's boring, tedious, unreliable, time consuming, ie: isn't fun! A game is meant to be fun or else why are we even here?? My point is: there is no reason to make the currency part of the collection so much of a grind that casual players are put off. Simple. Obvious. Human nature - we engage in what we enjoy.

I didn't play MMO to do single player content and a time gated one at that.

I just find the whole situation a bit strange. As I have said other places I am not getting the new mount, largely because in several places I have to risk my RL health (seizures) to do so, especially since I do not see the reward as worth it. I do not find any 'time gate' a problem. When stress causes seizures you learn to take your time with, well, everything. I also do not have a problem with the region currency requirement: I have the home nodes for everything and even if I did not already have 250+ of each mat I have already said what I think of time to do things.

I unlocked the skyscale by week 2. Spent some gold, grinded some stuff (even considering I turned all my map currencies into VM a week before skyscale launch).Verdict:

• Sksycale: best mount ever! Super fun to play and can't wait to give anet all my money to the point I starve to death for the skyscale skins!
• Collection: worst content I played. I felt Andre Linoge by my side at all times saying "Remember, Hell is repetition.".
• Grind of mats: it was really okay! I actually was able to get quite a bit of gold farming the meta events as well as the tokens and some VM to get those trophy shipments for T6 mats.