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Celestial Challenge and Divine Lucky Envelope nerf


Musha.4025

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This is a great idea in concept. You could get a guaranteed 16 envelopes in all previous years, so take half of those and make you have to play for them to get the other half at a discount. Nothing wrong with that at all. Until you understand that it's just not possible to get that other half. The tokens are supposed to drop from the end chest in Celestial Challenge, but they don't. I've played the challenge a good many times before reset and after. The ONLY tokens I got were from the daily chest! Not a single token from the end chest.

This MUST be a bug. Cause there's no way anet would take away a guaranteed way to get the envelopes only to turn them into super rare drops. Right?! (He says sarcastically, but hopeful and optimistically).

If this is not a bug and is intended, then this is not ok. It really kills the festival. This festival has always revolved around these rewards and that chance to get some extra gold. As I said, I love the idea behind the change, but getting the Divine Lucky Envelopes should still be guaranteed! Finish the challenge, get a token - done! There should be no rng involved at all. You're catering to those who can spend all day farming that challenge and encouraging people to simply afk the challenge, hoping they get those tokens.

Again, I did this challenge numerous times and got 0 tokens, so I'm hoping this is just a bug.

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Yeah, the patch notes read:"The number of Divine Lucky Envelopes that can be purchased per day has been reduced from 16 to 8; however, the 8 additional Divine Lucky Envelopes can be purchased at a reduced price by earning Tokens of the Celestial Champion, which drop from the Celestial Challenge and from completing Lunar New Year daily achievements."

The way I read that, if I do my festival dailies and play Celestial Challenge, I can earn the tokens to buy the extra 8 Divine Lucky Envelopes every day. Instead, I got 3 from the festival dailies (Blessings of the Celestials - 1 token, Lunar Firestarter - 1 token, New Year's Fortune - 1 token) and 1 from the Annual Celestial Challenger achievement. I can get another 3 from the Celestial Challenger achievement under Lunar New Year, but that's only one time.

The patch notes are either wrong and misleading or this is bugged.

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The wiki says the token drop chance increases with your number of Lucky Aura stacks, with a guaranteed drop at 12 stacks. The stacks build with doing events in the challenge. Because you need 12 stacks, I'm guessing they persist between cycles. Seems the answer is to do several runs without leaving the instance to get the tokens.

Edit: Actually, they don't persist. I can't get anywhere near 12 stacks in 1 cycle. Best I could do in 3 runs was 5.

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@Manasa Devi.7958 said:The wiki says the token drop chance increases with your number of Lucky Aura stacks, with a guaranteed drop at 12 stacks. The stacks build with doing events in the challenge. Because you need 12 stacks, I'm guessing they persist between cycles. Seems the answer is to do several runs without leaving the instance to get the tokens.

Unfortunately, that is not how it works. The most stacks I ever get in a run was 5, cause there are only like 4 or 5 events in a single run. And the stacks do NOT carry over to the next run; they reset every run. So far as I can tell, it is impossible to get 12 stacks. Unless that, too, is bugged.

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@Musha.4025 said:

@Manasa Devi.7958 said:The wiki says the token drop chance increases with your number of Lucky Aura stacks, with a guaranteed drop at 12 stacks. The stacks build with doing events in the challenge. Because you need 12 stacks, I'm guessing they persist between cycles. Seems the answer is to do several runs without leaving the instance to get the tokens.

Unfortunately, that is not how it works. The most stacks I ever get in a run was 5, cause there are only like 4 or 5 events in a single run. And the stacks do NOT carry over to the next run; they reset every run. So far as I can tell, it is impossible to get 12 stacks. Unless that, too, is bugged.

Yep, I just found out myself. I did notice though that the stacks dropped at the moment I opened the chest. Could be a coincidence, or maybe you can build to 12 by skipping the chest in 2 runs. Seems really poor if that's the way to do it. The activity isn't a goldmine to begin with.

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@Manasa Devi.7958 said:

@Manasa Devi.7958 said:The wiki says the token drop chance increases with your number of Lucky Aura stacks, with a guaranteed drop at 12 stacks. The stacks build with doing events in the challenge. Because you need 12 stacks, I'm guessing they persist between cycles. Seems the answer is to do several runs without leaving the instance to get the tokens.

Unfortunately, that is not how it works. The most stacks I ever get in a run was 5, cause there are only like 4 or 5 events in a single run. And the stacks do NOT carry over to the next run; they reset every run. So far as I can tell, it is impossible to get 12 stacks. Unless that, too, is bugged.

Yep, I just found out myself. I did notice though that the stacks dropped at the moment I opened the chest. Could be a coincidence, or maybe you can build to 12 by skipping the chest in 2 runs. Seems really poor if that's the way to do it. The activity isn't a goldmine to begin with.

Which means you have to do 3 runs to get 1 token. NOT a fair trade.

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The token does drop from the end chest. I had one drop on my 3rd (and final) try at the challenge last night (I was at 5 or 6 stacks of the buff at that point). Of course with that low of a sample size (and the variable chances due to buffs ... I only had one stack of the buff on my 2nd try since I came into the instance just as it was wrapping up the last activity) there is no way to tell for me how frequent the drop really is.

The chance of getting buff stacks does seem to increase the better your instance is doing. The one I did with 6 stacks had several activities end early due to the instance reaching the limit for said activity, and it did seem to allow for more activities to complete than the first one I was in (where most activities ran out of time before reaching the goal). I'll have to observe the whole thing a few more times to be sure that's how you're getting your buff stacks.

It's a new activity. Nobody knows the ins and outs of it yet. Give it a couple of days for people to figure out how to best gather stacks and get a feel for how the stacks affect the loot chance before crying "nerf". Personally, from what I've seen last night this looks to me like a welcome addition for those of us that prefer cooperative to competitive activities.

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@"Rasimir.6239" said:The token does drop from the end chest. I had one drop on my 3rd (and final) try at the challenge last night (I was at 5 or 6 stacks of the buff at that point). Of course with that low of a sample size (and the variable chances due to buffs ... I only had one stack of the buff on my 2nd try since I came into the instance just as it was wrapping up the last activity) there is no way to tell for me how frequent the drop really is.

The chance of getting buff stacks does seem to increase the better your instance is doing. The one I did with 6 stacks had several activities end early due to the instance reaching the limit for said activity, and it did seem to allow for more activities to complete than the first one I was in (where most activities ran out of time before reaching the goal). I'll have to observe the whole thing a few more times to be sure that's how you're getting your buff stacks.

It's a new activity. Nobody knows the ins and outs of it yet. Give it a couple of days for people to figure out how to best gather stacks and get a feel for how the stacks affect the loot chance before crying "nerf". Personally, from what I've seen last night this looks to me like a welcome addition for those of us that prefer cooperative to competitive activities.

Maybe the token was a daily/achievement reward for opening the chest?The first time I opened the chest I also got a token, but the 2nd time I opened it (with 12 stacks), I got green trash pretty much.

Also I doubt that performance of the party has anything to do with how many stacks you get, but actually the random events you get. Some are a bit shorter or give less lucky magic thing that fills the bar (and thus it takes longer for the chest to spawn). So if you put it like that it means that everyone has to do a bad job to fill the bar slower and thus actually get more stacks through more events.

I do like the idea, but it kinda feels half baked. The icons on the mini map are a pain to see, the rewards are a joke and I see no reason to not 100% get a token for participating. I couldn't buy all 8 envelops even though I did all dailies and adventurers/this activity. I just can't think that this was intended this way.

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It is also unecessary time consuming. For the 12 runs I had to do the "challenge" 3 times doing up to 13-15 events in total (including waiting time inbetween).And the events do repeart fairly often.

Personally I would change it to something like that:

Imagine you doing the event alone would work like this:Gold = 3 stacks, fills the bar 20%Silver = 2 stacks, fills the bar 17%Bronce = 1 stack, fills the bar 14%

With this you would need 5 perfect gold events for 12 (5x3) stacks and the chest to spawn.Silver would need 6 runs for 12 (6x2) stacks and the chest to spawn.The worst would be 8 bronce events with 8 (8x1) stacks and the chest to spawn.

This simply would scale with other people. For example with 10 people in total, it would scale to:Gold = 3 stacks, fills the bar 2.0% (20/10) for each playerSilver = 2 stacks, fills the bar 1.7% (17/10) for each playerBronce = 1 stack, fills the bar 1.4% (14/10) for each player

So, if the average of the group is silver or better, you do get 12 stacks until the chest spawns.In the end you could end up with 12 stacks quite fast, but if the whole group lacks behind you would need to do more events to spawn the chest.

This is of course just an example with some fast thought numbers and stuff. But I think you could actually do this more like a "challenge" than just a unecessary time consuming activity. Even decreasing the event times would help a lot.

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@"Rasimir.6239" said:It's a new activity. Nobody knows the ins and outs of it yet. Give it a couple of days for people to figure out how to best gather stacks and get a feel for how the stacks affect the loot chance before crying "nerf". Personally, from what I've seen last night this looks to me like a welcome addition for those of us that prefer cooperative to competitive activities.

Then that's a couple of days we are not able to get our full 16 Divine Envelopes.

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@Zanktus.9821 said:

@Rasimir.6239 said:The token does drop from the end chest.Maybe the token was a daily/achievement reward for opening the chest?No, it definitely came from the chest. I had checked achievements and such before. I did get a couple on my first run, too, but I hadn't paid attention to achievements then, so no way of telling if there was one from the chest or not.

@Rasimir.6239 said:It's a new activity. Nobody knows the ins and outs of it yet. Give it a couple of days for people to figure out how to best gather stacks and get a feel for how the stacks affect the loot chance before crying "nerf". Personally, from what I've seen last night this looks to me like a welcome addition for those of us that prefer cooperative to competitive activities.Then that's a couple of days we are not able to get our full 16 Divine Envelopes.It is. So what? It's a game that includes figuring out and learning stuff. It's not a participation trophy that you're guaranteed to get max rewards simply for showing up.

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@Rasimir.6239 said:

@Rasimir.6239 said:The token does drop from the end chest.Maybe the token was a daily/achievement reward for opening the chest?No, it definitely came from the chest. I had checked achievements and such before. I did get a couple on my first run, too, but I hadn't paid attention to achievements then, so no way of telling if there was one from the chest or not.

@Rasimir.6239 said:It's a new activity. Nobody knows the ins and outs of it yet. Give it a couple of days for people to figure out how to best gather stacks and get a feel for how the stacks affect the loot chance before crying "nerf". Personally, from what I've seen last night this looks to me like a welcome addition for those of us that prefer cooperative to competitive activities.Then that's a couple of days we are not able to get our full 16 Divine Envelopes.It is. So what? It's a game that includes figuring out and learning stuff. It's not a participation trophy that you're guaranteed to get max rewards simply for showing up.

Ah, but here's the rub, thats exactly what it is. To get credit for the event you only have to wait for a convenient mechanic and do that, or kill a mob. Theres no system behind it that especially incentivises to do well. This so called "challenge" is a textbook case of "participation trophy". Just stick around long enough and you get your loot. Minimal interaction - and effort - needed. Just "being there and kicking the ball once" is enough.

The fact that Anet thinks thats good gameplay just boggles my mind.

And quite honestly, seeing yet another of those afk events being added as content to the game tells me that nothing will change. Because the core design philosophy stays exactly the same as it has been since LS3. Participation trophies, anything remotely sparkly in the gemshop, total fixation on telling "a story", minimized interaction with the game and other players.

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@Rasimir.6239 said:

@"Manasa Devi.7958" said:What makes you think there's still anything to figure out? It's already obvious how it works. You get one stack per finished event.So what's the easiest/fastest way to finish 12 events before the challenge bar fills?

You get one stack for each event completed and the bar seems to have a constant fill depending on the event.There are these "special" events, which are only for filling the bar, so far I noticed they appear 0-2 times a run.In the end you always do 4-6 events until the bar is full and the chest spawns (my best was 5/run).

So, if you're super lucky with the events you need 2 runs with getting 6 stacks. But this is highly unlikely happening at all.You pretty much need 3 runs 99% of the time. This is the easiest/fastest way to get 12 stacks. Actually it is the only way to do so.

At first I thought the amount of things you do in the event does matter, but one event (the ones using the jump special skill to collect these blue bubbles) showed that collected close to 200 is the same as collecting 50. Maybe there is a threshold, but tbh. I don't see any reason why devs would want to add unecessary calculations to this simple challenge.

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I did one run last night to try it out and got 3 tokens in the end. I thought they were a reward from a chest (was actually from achie) and decided that 3 tokens per run is not worth the time doing it, but now it turns out the actual rate is 3 runs per 1 token. Wonder if anyone is actually gonna do this.

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@Rasimir.6239 said:

@Rasimir.6239 said:The token does drop from the end chest.Maybe the token was a daily/achievement reward for opening the chest?No, it definitely came from the chest. I had checked achievements and such before. I did get a couple on my first run, too, but I hadn't paid attention to achievements then, so no way of telling if there was one from the chest or not.

@Rasimir.6239 said:It's a new activity. Nobody knows the ins and outs of it yet. Give it a couple of days for people to figure out how to best gather stacks and get a feel for how the stacks affect the loot chance before crying "nerf". Personally, from what I've seen last night this looks to me like a welcome addition for those of us that prefer cooperative to competitive activities.Then that's a couple of days we are not able to get our full 16 Divine Envelopes.It is. So what? It's a game that includes figuring out and learning stuff. It's not a participation trophy that you're guaranteed to get max rewards simply for showing up.

It was exactly that for the last 5 years. Now you need to do all this just to get the same reward as you got previous years simply for showing up. :)

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I managed to get one celestial token from the chest, but the rest were from the daily or annual achievement.

Did it for the annual achievement , but anyone doing it for gold purposes is really wasting time. I guess it's worthwhile if you have it as a daily.

I need to confirm it, but it seems you get 1 stack of fortune buff regardless if you have bronze/silver/gold participation. Should have been higher stacks for gold tier participation I think.

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@Zanktus.9821 said:At first I thought the amount of things you do in the event does matter, but one event (the ones using the jump special skill to collect these blue bubbles) showed that collected close to 200 is the same as collecting 50. Maybe there is a threshold, but tbh. I don't see any reason why devs would want to add unecessary calculations to this simple challenge.From what I've seen last night, 200 actually is the limit on that one, and the faster you reach those 200, the faster you'll get to the next mini event. If those mini events actually do give a set amount of bar progress, then reaching the goal quickly looks like the best time-investment, as it will make those challenges considerably faster. I participated in one challenge so far where we reached all the mini-goals well within the time limit, and one where time ran out on almost all of the events, finishing made a world of a difference in getting to the final chest quickly.

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@Rasimir.6239 said:

@"Zanktus.9821" said:At first I thought the amount of things you do in the event does matter, but one event (the ones using the jump special skill to collect these blue bubbles) showed that collected close to 200 is the same as collecting 50. Maybe there is a threshold, but tbh. I don't see any reason why devs would want to add unecessary calculations to this simple challenge.From what I've seen last night, 200 actually is the limit on that one, and the faster you reach those 200, the faster you'll get to the next mini event. If those mini events actually do give a set amount of bar progress, then reaching the goal quickly looks like the best time-investment, as it will make those challenges considerably faster. I participated in one challenge so far where we reached all the mini-goals well within the time limit, and one where time ran out on almost all of the events, finishing made a world of a difference in getting to the final chest quickly.

While it does indeed make it a bit faster, it still means that you need to do 3 runs with a considerable waiting time inbetween.Cutting the overall event time down from 2 to 1 minute and also the threshold from 200 to 100 in this case would be an acceptable change, then even 3 runs would be considered "okay". I'm still not sure why I have to wait 15-30 minutes for one token, but that is a different story.

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Unfortunately, to max out your ap, you must play the "challenge " for 15 hours. Of course anet will look at this, and think players must love it, even though it is just ap farming. Probably anet will do nothing this year because metrics will show many people spending 15 hours there and assume they must love it. Next year if the game isnt dead, when participation isn't thete because there is no longer ap to farm, then they will realize how bad the content is. For example, lunatic inquisition was a awful minigame, but anet did nothing because people kept playing it for 25 ap you got every year. When they removed the ap, then the mode truely died, and then they started to fix it.

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OK, just in case it was not clear in the preceding discussion: The stacks of Lucky Aura carry over to the next round only if you do not open the chest.I let my aura accumulate to 12 before opening the chest and did not get any token plus it only counted as 1 chest for the AP of opening 8 chests. But if I opened every round I tended to get 1 token per every 2-3 runs plus each chest counted for the AP. I found it better by far to just open at the end of each round as it contributed both to the AP and got me more tokens than allowing luck to accumulate. I will probably play through for the full 25 AP over the next few days and then move on to more profitable activities.

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