Vault of the Khan-Ur/Grothmar Meta reward structure is horrid and needs severe improvement.

With a new map comes a new meta structure and possible rewards that can be obtained from that meta. There are many metas that are well-designed in terms of time commitment and rewards- and as a result, players keep playing them well after their release- think AB, TD, DS, Istan, and the more recent Dragonfall.

However, the Grothmar Valley meta structure is exceptionally terrible when you consider the time commitment versus the rewards obtained. Let's compare it to a couple of the more liked metas- the key points being time commitment and rewards.

Auric Basin- Takes less than 30 minutes from start of entering map to finishing the meta. 5 chances at the super rare Liquid Aurillium drop worth over 2k gold. Other chests can be opened as well as long as you have the easy-to-obtain Exalted Key, adding up to pretty decent gold. Hero's Choice Chest also given once per day. Can be farmed as many times as one wants over the course of the day.

Tangled Depths- Takes less than 30 minutes from start of entering map to finishing the meta. 1 chance at the super rare Chak Egg Sac drop worth 10k gold, or 21k gold on the black market. Other chests can be opened as well as long as you have the easy-to-obtain Chak Acid. Hero's Choice Chest also given once per day. Can be farmed as many times as one wants over the course of the day.

Now let's take a look at the new Grothmar Valley meta.

Must do 4 separate meta events to earn the 4 keys for opening the Vault of the Khan-Ur. If you do the metas all back to back, this will take you about 2 hours. Alternatively, you can spend, and thus lose, gold to buy the keys on their own. As of right now, buying the 4 keys costs you around 6 gold. Not exactly what we're looking for considering that playing metas should be lucrative.

Anyway, assuming you spent your 2 hours to get the keys (and yes, there are other potential rewards from each meta), you now get access to the Vault of the Khan-Ur, which comes with a few Grothmar Valley Chests (trash loot) and one "Recovered" Charr Artifact. This can only be done once per day, per account.

What's in the "Recovered" Charr Artifact? Well, there's only common, rare, and super rare drops. Based on the fact that we all know what "rare" and "super rare" means in gw2 lootbox terms, and what's been empirically shown so far, a vast vast majority of the drops are going to be the "common" drops. There's only one common drop here, and it's a measly SINGLE piece of rare unidentified gear. So... essentially, 18 silver. Maybe a little more if you get lucky with an ecto from salvage. And that's it, that's your only chance for the whole day.

As for the "rare" drops, you can get one of the legion weapons that are more commonly obtained from the reward track at this point. However, another one of the "rare" drops is the Visage of the Khan-Ur, which is apparently tradable and you get to choose ONE of three weights for a helmet that can only be used for Charr. Even better, all three of the helmets are needed for the Merchandise Collector collection. How rare is "rare"? Well, the helmet box wasn't officially on the GW2BLTC database until more than a day past the release. As I type this right now, the light weight helmet is still not in the database, meaning that no one has actually obtained the box and selected the light weight helmet- it doesn't even exist in game yet. You need all 3 of these helmets, meaning 3 boxes opened by you, as well as all 3 weights of the Ebon Vanguard shoulders (which are a little more achievable at... 300g each) to complete this collection.

That doesn't even begin to compare to the audacity to include a new, exclusive infusion as a "super rare" drop. The "Heart of the Khan-Ur." Over 2 days after the patch hit, this thing is still not in the gw2bltc database. No one knows what it looks like on a character because no one has obtained one to show off. Either 0 or 1 of these things has dropped gamewide, likely 0. The item is on the Trading Post, so players can post buy orders for it. The result? 18 buy orders for 10k gold each, without anyone even seeing what the dang thing looks like.

So there we have it- one of the helmets, which is required for a collection, hasn't even dropped yet. The infusion, which has people salivating so much that there are 18 buy orders for 10k gold each, hasn't dropped yet.

Although I know this likely won't be read by any of the actual rewards team, and I may well end up being infracted for the post, I do hope that anyone who sees this post can understand how ridiculous these drop rates are.

Just ask yourself this. If a chak egg sac is worth 21k gold on the black market when it has existed for 4 years, comes from an easily farmable, quick and lucrative meta event, and has also dropped from bonus boxes of goods as well as Zephyrite supply boxes in the last year, how much do you think this new Heart of the Khan-Ur will be worth when you spend 2 hours to have one chance per account per day to obtain it, and 99.9% or more of the time, you end up getting one measly rare worth 18 silver anyway (as evidenced by the fact that not a single person has one in a full 48 hours of everyone spamming this brand new content)?

TL;DR Grothmar Valley meta rewards are awful for your time investment, not a single new infusion has dropped yet, a collection is effectively not completable, and the reward structure needs to be looked at before people quit playing this content.

Edit: Since this thread has some activity, why not suggest a rework to the Recovered Charr Artifact obtainability? 1 a day is way too little. If you're not going to change the loot tables in it, simply make the Vault of the Khan-Ur give 10 of them daily, the Daily Grothmar Tribune achievement should give 1, and each meta event (concert, doomlore, ooze, effigy) should give an additional 1. At this point, I don't actually even think giving the playerbase an opportunity to get 15 of these daily is too ridiculous as proven by the drop rates on the helmet and infusion.

I agree, the only people who gonna benefit from this infusion will be the black market sellers who will try to price it up for 50k gold.That is if this thing ever drops KEKW

Unless you intend to use all of the skins, why does it matter?

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Unless you intend to use all of the skins, why does it matter?

Cos completionist are a thing.You person ally might not want to obtain all the skins or infusions etc in game, I'm not one of those who do either but the fact they are there and useable by the relevant classes suggests they should be more accessible.

Lets be honest rewards in GW2 have always been awful and I understand why some players just switch off or go elsewhere to spend their time.

I don't play that kind of content anymore. If I happen to get keys, I'll open it, but I wont aim for it. It's long winded and too reliant on rng. I stopped doing Thunderhead a while ago because of it (partly because the map is rubbish anyway).

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:Lets be honest rewards in GW2 have always been awful and I understand why some players just switch off or go elsewhere to spend their time.

This is a pretty fair summary for me. I've enjoyed the story side of the content, but the rewards - whether it be stuff from vendors, loot or the 1ap Anet love so much - are just not there for me. I'll go back to other games now where I can feel rewarded for my time.

The real kick in... right down there, you know, it's not even the meta, it's the new emote WvW can get in a relatively easy way while everyone else has to do no 10, not 20, not even 30 but 54 achievements!

I've got mine, it looks great until someone tells me that.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Unless you intend to use all of the skins, why does it matter?

this Fashion Wars. Skin Collection is Endgame progress

Thunderhead was the same way, and I still super resent it. Needing to time gameplay to catch these event cycles just to get a half/quarter key to mediocre loot is just . . wrong.

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Unless you intend to use all of the skins, why does it matter?

If you’re a completionist then you should be accepting that some things will require you to grind more than others.

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Unless you intend to use all of the skins, why does it matter?

So they should be prepared to grind for them.

I’m pretty sure if they were not tied to an achievement, there wouldn’t be a complaint.

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Unless you intend to use all of the skins, why does it matter?

Maybe more players realize this and voice their concerns more often.GW2 has had a problem with effort/reward ratio since a long time and yet there are not many vocal complaints about it.

Rewards could be a little better. I don't think it has to be THE top meta, but they should be soooomewhat comparable.

When I do metas, I do them for the fun and minimal gold input, not hardcore farming and flipping. A few extra chests are great for vendor trash, but I'm not expecting something that's going to make me 10gpm. Not all metas need to be treasure troves for goldfarming. They just need to be enjoyable enough to do every so often which I think these are.

Did you have fun playing?

No: Then no reward is worthwhile.Yes: Then no reward is necessary.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Unless you intend to use all of the skins, why does it matter?

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Unless you intend to use all of the skins, why does it matter?

That's just a cop out excuse …. expect to grind.

How many times do you think players want to grind the same content over and over in order to get lucky with RNG or such.

It's like the old Treasure Hunter achieve.. 7 years and still not a sniff at some of the items.. 7 years!Or the Garden plots where harvesting rules are for some reason different and we can't get critical gathering strikes in order to get rarer things like the varietal seeds now or freshwater pearls, lilies, and heaven forbid the giant mushroom spores that are rarer than rocking horse doodah.Some of the rewards and mechanics are so petty and desperate nowadaysOnce players work out how much effort is needed in obtaining the end chest, the shiny skins, the impossible to get items only to find Russian doll rubbish.. like the Char caches, that rewards like a single Rare, it just takes a lot of the fun away...And before we go down the .. well you can buy it from the TP.. sorry that is just a cop out as well, not everyone enjoys having others achieve the things you might be struggling to get lucky on for you.Content , as good as it might be, takes time and many players want to feel they have achieved something and are being rewarded for their efforts, not be subjected to endless RNG and a pile of junk unidentified gear.As I said though, effort, time, reward has never been something ANET has cared about in GW2 imo. Its just slap some greens, blues and a few rares and all is good in the game, the rest is locked behind stupid bad RNG odds in the hope it will keep players playing the game longer, when I would hazard a guess its one of the major factors players loose interest in the game sooner than we want them to.

I mean if the visage of the khan-ur is tradeable it is still not even linked in the trading post.

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Unless you intend to use all of the skins, why does it matter?

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Unless you intend to use all of the skins, why does it matter?

If you intend to be a completionist then you should certainly be prepared to grind. There are plenty of skins available that are available with little to no grind. It should be even less of an issue if you don't even intend to actually use the skins.

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Unless you intend to use all of the skins, why does it matter?

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Unless you intend to use all of the skins, why does it matter?

Actually it's the logical conclusion. ANet tries to bring content that appeals to different players. That includes the group of players that enjoy grinding for rng rewards. They may not be the majority (I certainly don't think they are), but just a large enough group to get a bit of content/rewards designed for them.

Being a completionist means getting all of the rewards. It's only logical that this includes those rewards aimed at the grind/rng crowd.

Personally I decided long ago that I'd rather play what I find fun than complete collections that include decidedly un-fun (for me) content. As such, I very much enjoy the events on the new map, and the rewards that I can realistically get from that certainly seem adequate to me.

if it was less rare I wouldd gladly grind for it, but I wont grind 100h for 1 rare every 2 hour... The chance is way too low to be fun, at this point I wont even try to, its on the point of bad design.

I get low rewarding system,because ANET rely mostly on Gem trade.

What i don't get is no reward at all (well minimum reward) for actual effort put in by players.

There's only actual and real way to farm gold.Silverwastes riba combined with cf,but ONLY if you invest some time into it.Map is easy to navigate,you don't have to compete with those people who spend 20 hours a day riding their mounts,who learned every single corner and shortcut so you actually can get in time to at least tag something.

No other map is ever going to come even close to it.Because you are busy whole time,and you getting rewarded for everything you do,rewards that actually matter.15 minutes waiting time after VW kill is filled by doing CF.

You can get 120 different bags a hour.

I just pray God they dont ruin it,because if they nerf SW,that's gonna be day i quit game.I really couldn't farm DS,TD or Grothmar meta's for gold.

I think anet should review the whole reward system at this point. Its been way too long since the game didnt feel rewarding... A single skin here and there, is far from enought and those god rare, ultra, cashy loot do not count, they are faaaaar too rare the be consider. Why not add new weapons set on the loot table of new map, instead of BL ticket. Why not put those cheap ass, low effort mount skin in the loot table or hide in a spesific chest somewhere (like at the end of a jp). At this point we just need more skin. They can be cheap, just more and in different way, not just in vendor. And in a rng is fine, if its not awefully, mythically rare.

My first reaction to the OP was that not every zone's meta needs to be financially competitive with the most lucrative existing metas, and I think that's pretty much all the argument the OP's complaint warrants . . .

But reading through the rest of the thread freaked me out for a moment bc I thought ppl were saying that the infusion was tied to a story cheeve, which would have been truly tragic. But it is not. The skins are tradable, so the metas and strike mission will continue to be run until the skins fall in value to the point that players consider them to be unworthy of the effort. So players interested in the skins have three avenues: They can play the game and hope for rng, they can grind or rl cash to buy now, or they can wait until prices fall. That range of options is sufficient . . .

The infusion does not need that range of options bc it's not tied to anything else in the game. It's an rng one-off, which is not without precedent. I'd be fine with it even if it was account bound on acquire . . .

I will say that if the above does not prove to be true and a couple of months from now the helmet and shoulder skins are still listing for hundreds of gold I might agree that drop rates should be revisited, but I'm not ready to panic less than a week in . . .

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Unless you intend to use all of the skins, why does it matter?A meta that is not worth doing is a dead meta. In this case it's not the rarity of the rare/super rare drops that is a problem. The basic rewards are. So is the 4-part key system.

@Gop.8713 said:My first reaction to the OP was that not every zone's meta needs to be financially competitive with the most lucrative existing metas, and I think that's pretty much all the argument the OP's complaint warrants . . .

But reading through the rest of the thread freaked me out for a moment bc I thought ppl were saying that the infusion was tied to a story cheeve, which would have been truly tragic. But it is not. The skins are tradable, so the metas and strike mission will continue to be run until the skins fall in value to the point that players consider them to be unworthy of the effort. So players interested in the skins have three avenues: They can play the game and hope for rng, they can grind or rl cash to buy now, or they can wait until prices fall. That range of options is sufficient . . .

The infusion does not need that range of options bc it's not tied to anything else in the game. It's an rng one-off, which is not without precedent. I'd be fine with it even if it was account bound on acquire . . .

I will say that if the above does not prove to be true and a couple of months from now the helmet and shoulder skins are still listing for hundreds of gold I might agree that drop rates should be revisited, but I'm not ready to panic less than a week in . . .

I think the point is that unless I'm missing something the visage of the khan-ur is not tradeable for the charr helms

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Unless you intend to use all of the skins, why does it matter?

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Unless you intend to use all of the skins, why does it matter?

No one is saying things should be gifted to you or so easy it has the same effect on players loosing interest, but we all know just how terrible the reward system is in GW2 as it is always heavily biased around RNG not something being hard to achieve through playing the game and beating content, its based around luck and that is not fun after the gazillionth attempt at getting a skin or any kind of shiny out of a chest you earned.

@signarokkaos.4035 said:

@Gop.8713 said:My first reaction to the OP was that not every zone's meta needs to be financially competitive with the most lucrative existing metas, and I think that's pretty much all the argument the OP's complaint warrants . . .

But reading through the rest of the thread freaked me out for a moment bc I thought ppl were saying that the infusion was tied to a story cheeve, which would have been truly tragic. But it is not. The skins are tradable, so the metas and strike mission will continue to be run until the skins fall in value to the point that players consider them to be unworthy of the effort. So players interested in the skins have three avenues: They can play the game and hope for rng, they can grind or rl cash to buy now, or they can wait until prices fall. That range of options is sufficient . . .

The infusion does not need that range of options bc it's not tied to anything else in the game. It's an rng one-off, which is not without precedent. I'd be fine with it even if it was account bound on acquire . . .

I will say that if the above does not prove to be true and a couple of months from now the helmet and shoulder skins are still listing for hundreds of gold I might agree that drop rates should be revisited, but I'm not ready to panic less than a week in . . .

That would be different. It was my understanding that only the infusion isn't tradable . . .