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Request for Non-RNG Acquisition of Rare Living Story Open World Rewards


Sylum.1806

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To the devs, I sincerely beg of you to consider what Deroir and Teapot discussed in this video:

Section referred to starts from 12:52 (If you play the embedded video, the time skip doesn't work)

Regarding the replayability of Open-world meta-events in Living Story and the RNG of its most prized rewards. Speaking specifically about the Weapons of the Scion ascended weapons from Dragonfall.

First off, credit to the idea of a guaranteed drop after opening 1000 Mistborn Coffers. This is a very thoughtful consideration to mitigate RNG. However, even for the hardcore players who wish to complete the collection, the timeline could be indefinite given the RNG involved in getting another drop. I for one would like to get more of those skins as they really do look incredible. I hope the devs can consider improving these rewards to further improve their engagement and retention metrics.

  1. Dragon's Stand offers a good model for how to access such rewards. Like Pact Machetes, Mistborn Keys that open Coffers can be sold by merchants for Season 4 currencies. Example: A key can cost a total of 75 Kralkatite Ores, 25 Diflourite Crystals, 25 Inscribed Shards, 25 Lumps of Mistonium, 25 Branded Masses, and 25 Mistborn Motes.
  2. Make a new repeatable achievement that guarantees a Scion weapon with every 1,000 Coffers opened.

I'm suggesting this because some predictability on the time required to acquire a skin will get me back to playing Dragonfall regularly because presently, the design of the event is just not interesting enough for me to do it again without the lure of an attractive reward. Dragonfall does have that reward. But I don't plan on doing it ad nauseum for an indefinite amount of time in the hopes of getting only just 1 piece, especially when the meta is nowhere near as engaging as Tequatl or Triple Trouble. My suggestion will also encourage more engagement with all prior Season 4 content.

Right now, completing the collection of Sunless, Scion and Broken Voice weapon skins are among the most prestigious achievements a player can do. Offering an extraordinarily tedious non-RNG alternative to completing these collections shouldn't diminish the prestige. The amount of time required to complete would have more than achieved its (I suppose) objective of engagement and retention. An on-theme cape or infusion for completing these collections would be great for directing awareness to these endgame rewards.

Moving forward, it'd be even better if such rare weapon skins can drop as skins instead of Ascended Weapons and Armors. All 9 of my characters have multiple sets of Ascended weapons and armors almost all acquired from Tequatl and Triple Trouble. It would be healthier for the economy if moving forward weapon sets like the Sunless, Scion and Broken Voice can be in the form of skins instead, thereby requiring players to have to farm or trade for materials to craft them instead of getting them outright from drops.

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They mentioned in this video the idea of world boss weekly that you can farm for rewards. Anet has said they are going to try systems based on data and stuff they learned about the boss rushes they did for future content. Those ideas could align. Reward boss tokens from every boss, but certain bosses reward more based on difficulty and group cooperation. Based loot entirely on those numbers.

Not having a vendor for metas and even a vendor with interesting repeat purchases to buy with eternal ice shards/hatched chilis/eitrite ingots is the biggest downer. The currency conversion is trash and Asgeir's Amulet is not sustainable.

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Suggestion 3: Make that guaranteed at 1k chests a repeating thing. Make it an achievement so players can keep track.

Drakkar, Tequatl, Triple Trouble, and Dragonfall could each get one.

Dragonfall (Aurene's Gift weapons) at 1,000 chests.Drakkar (Broken Voice weapons) at 1,000 wins.Tequatl (Tequatl's Hoard weapons) at 500 wins.Triple Trouble (Wurmslayer armor) at 750 wins.

Note, I put Teq and TT at 500 and 750 because they're limited daily on an 8 hour timer. TT only has 9 pieces, which is half of the rest, so I upped it's numbers to 750. Drakkar is only on a 2 hour timer, and as best as I can tell isn't limited daily (I may be wrong, and if so, I'd decrease to 500 as well). 750/1,000 might be an alternative.

This way we're not bloating the wallet, storage, or inventory with more one-use tokens, and we're retaining the skins behind the boss rather than allowing players to farm other much easier content then do the boss once to buy it all up.

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@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:Those wins looks a bit too high. Chests are fine because you can get a couple every 5 minutes. Can barely get 100 Auric Basin victories before I never want to go back there for as long as I live.

True, for some reason my mind was thinking 1,000 Kralk events. So to do the guestimation math: considering you can get ~40 chests per meta (10 from Kralk event itself; 3*9 champ train; and 3 per camp/mender), that'd be about 20-30 metas for the 1k chests.

So I guess getting a guaranteed weapon/armor box every 25 meta wins is best. 50 absolute tops, if you wanna keep it rare.

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@MikeG.6389 said:

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:Those wins looks a bit too high. Chests are fine because you can get a couple every 5 minutes. Can barely get 100 Auric Basin victories before I never want to go back there for as long as I live.

You'll never become The Golden Child with that attitude.

Oh I made it. I wouldn't want to do the exact same content for 16 weapons, 100 runs a piece. Being the golden child is as useless as gold in a real fight.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:Those wins looks a bit too high. Chests are fine because you can get a couple every 5 minutes. Can barely get 100 Auric Basin victories before I never want to go back there for as long as I live.

True, for some reason my mind was thinking 1,000 Kralk events. So to do the guestimation math: considering you can get ~40 chests per meta (10 from Kralk event itself; 3*9 champ train; and 3 per camp/mender), that'd be about 20-30 metas for the 1k chests.

So I guess getting a guaranteed weapon/armor box every 25 meta wins is best. 50 absolute tops, if you wanna keep it rare.

Having a varying number of tokens based on how much work it takes to defeat a boss could balance it. A number of events through each world boss giving a token each to make people participate every step.

@"Svarty.8019" said:The solution to RNG fatigue is an inordinately high number of map currency from vendor as an alternate way to get things. I don't see a problem with having a HUGE mountain of currency as a goal - if I REALLY want something I'll grind the living daylights out of it.

If that "currency" is global and rewards you it by doing any one of the most epic of the game's events, that means you can work toward it in any content that you favor. Multiple ways to get there since RNG can assure you never get it with the grind.

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I say no thanks. If things are rare, then it feels a lot more accomplishing to get them when I finally do, even if locked behind RNG. Same thing happened in Korean MMO's where the grind was far worse and the rewards became obsolete the moment something new came out (vertical progression). At least here, you get something worthwhile like skins or a weapon you can use that stays relevant.

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@Kanok.3027 said:I say no thanks. If things are rare, then it feels a lot more accomplishing to get them when I finally do, even if locked behind RNG. Same thing happened in Korean MMO's where the grind was far worse and the rewards became obsolete the moment something new came out (vertical progression). At least here, you get something worthwhile like skins or a weapon you can use that stays relevant.

Wow, okay...benefit of a doubt this comment was made more in the spirit of a straw man argument than out of sheer masochism. First, NOWHERE is it explicitly stated or implied by either my original post or every other subsequent comment that there is a desire to make the rewards not rare. Less difficulty to acquire? Technically, yes, but it's also arguable that if your luck is good, the alternative is certainly more difficult.

What we are all proposing is SOME modicum of predictability in the time required to obtain these rewards.

Here is an example:

Tequatl Rising was released on September 17, 2013. Since then, more than 6 years has passed. Though I only have a sample size of 1 (myself), having done this daily from the release of that content until I finally stopped at the end of last month, I have at least 6 years of personal results to go by, which is at least worth considering even if not definitive. I get an average of 1 Tequatl Hoard per month. That's 1 per every 30 Exotic Dragon Chest. Let's assume that's a very lucky rate. A reasonable non-RNG alternative in this case would be at least double that effort. If it's trading in Tequatl Tail Pieces which can be obtained more than once per day per account, I'll suggest requiring at least 100 per weapon. That's more than 3 times the average time it takes for me to get a piece via RNG. If you want it to be even more grindy, move the Tail Piece to the Exotic Dragon Chest which can only be obtained once per account per day. That's a 100 days per weapon, 1900 days or more than 5 years and 3 months to collect all 19 pieces! If that still isn't enough retention, I don't know what is. By not implementing this, we risk having a segment of players who just give up because I've heard more than once from players who do this daily for a year without a drop. That isn't the ArenaNet way of respecting their players' time.

I'm not sure if it was your intention, but comparing GW2 to common Korean MMO fare and saying that our grind is good enough and doesn't need more improvement is frankly insulting. Again, I want to emphasize that adding a non-RNG alternative to these premium rewards will not diminish their prestige. So long as the GDs get the balance right, it can still be a very long, retention-beneficial, grindy achievement. What we want is just some way of being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

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@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:Suggestion 3: Make that guaranteed at 1k chests a repeating thing. Make it an achievement so players can keep track.

Drakkar, Tequatl, Triple Trouble, and Dragonfall could each get one.

Dragonfall (Aurene's Gift weapons) at 1,000 chests.Drakkar (Broken Voice weapons) at 1,000 wins.Tequatl (Tequatl's Hoard weapons) at 500 wins.Triple Trouble (Wurmslayer armor) at 750 wins.

Note, I put Teq and TT at 500 and 750 because they're limited daily on an 8 hour timer. TT only has 9 pieces, which is half of the rest, so I upped it's numbers to 750. Drakkar is only on a 2 hour timer, and as best as I can tell isn't limited daily (I may be wrong, and if so, I'd decrease to 500 as well). 750/1,000 might be an alternative.

This way we're not bloating the wallet, storage, or inventory with more one-use tokens, and we're retaining the skins behind the boss rather than allowing players to farm other much easier content then do the boss once to buy it all up.

FYI Drakkar loot is daily including boss chest and mastery chests. I tested it yesterday looking into the “changes” the meta

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@Svarty.8019 said:The solution to RNG fatigue is an inordinately high number of map currency from vendor as an alternate way to get things. I don't see a problem with having a HUGE mountain of currency as a goal - if I REALLY want something I'll grind the living daylights out of it.

So much this, i wish there was a guaranteed way to get the rarer items, that doesn't come down to a credit card, cause i can work an additional hour and make more gold than i can in game from farming for an hour.

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