Jump to content
  • Sign Up

What would bring more players regularly to DRMs?


Fleabite.7528

Recommended Posts

If they were integrated into the game to appeal to how most people interact with the game ... that would be a start.

As far as I'm concerned, Anet has lost the farm here. Trying to entice people to content with rare, infrequent drops and progression locks in instanced content ... everything that DOESN'T appeal to the initial adopters of this game. If they continue with this, I predict a quick end.

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@"Alexchaos.6528" said:Maybe they should've made the DRMs as new semi-Meta events in old maps instead of instanced content. I find it more engaging while doing events with lots of people and it also makes the world more "alive" hence why it's called living world I guess. This doesn't feel like a living world update at all imo.

They'd end up as other maps' events. Unfortunately the biggest driver to keep players playing are rewards which hold their value over time.

They could do it meta on older map and still give us good reward. Just like Anomaly: everyone come there for their 1 MC a day

A meta event on the map itself would make it nothing but a boring zerg fest. The reward shouldn’t be tied to a single item as a reward as it would tank the price of that item and we’ll be right back to where it’s not worth doing.

Well, we always get new currencies with a new low episode, so give this currency, [bring back trikey chest] — actually, literally anything, even plain zergs, are way better than what we have now in drm

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@nopinopa.4861 said:

@"Alexchaos.6528" said:Maybe they should've made the DRMs as new semi-Meta events in old maps instead of instanced content. I find it more engaging while doing events with lots of people and it also makes the world more "alive" hence why it's called living world I guess. This doesn't feel like a living world update at all imo.

They'd end up as other maps' events. Unfortunately the biggest driver to keep players playing are rewards which hold their value over time.

They could do it meta on older map and still give us good reward. Just like Anomaly: everyone come there for their 1 MC a day

A meta event on the map itself would make it nothing but a boring zerg fest. The reward shouldn’t be tied to a single item as a reward as it would tank the price of that item and we’ll be right back to where it’s not worth doing.

Well, we always get new currencies with a new low episode, so give this currency, [bring back trikey chest] — actually, literally anything, even plain zergs, are way better than what we have now in drm

So the pinnacle of PvE content when it comes to greatness is content which all players in the map just mass up and wait their auto attacks? I guess I see why this game isn’t so as well as other MMOs. Such appeal!

Making DRMs open world wouldn’t fix anything. They’d be no different than the majority of the other metas which players have abandoned once they got all of the unique rewards and/or achievements.

DRMs already have a currency. Actually, they technically have three at the moment. What they need are better rewards which won’t lose value over time. But let’s be honest, this is LS and likely not intended to be done over the long term like the majority of the other LS content.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@"Alexchaos.6528" said:Maybe they should've made the DRMs as new semi-Meta events in old maps instead of instanced content. I find it more engaging while doing events with lots of people and it also makes the world more "alive" hence why it's called living world I guess. This doesn't feel like a living world update at all imo.

They'd end up as other maps' events. Unfortunately the biggest driver to keep players playing are rewards which hold their value over time.

They could do it meta on older map and still give us good reward. Just like Anomaly: everyone come there for their 1 MC a day

A meta event on the map itself would make it nothing but a boring zerg fest. The reward shouldn’t be tied to a single item as a reward as it would tank the price of that item and we’ll be right back to where it’s not worth doing.

Well, we always get new currencies with a new low episode, so give this currency, [bring back trikey chest] — actually, literally anything, even plain zergs, are way better than what we have now in drm

So the pinnacle of PvE content when it comes to greatness is content which all players in the map just mass up and wait their auto attacks? I guess I see why this game isn’t so as well as other MMOs. Such appeal!

Making DRMs open world wouldn’t fix anything. They’d be no different than the majority of the other metas which players have abandoned once they got all of the unique rewards and/or achievements.

DRMs already have a currency. Actually, they technically have three at the moment. What they need are better rewards which won’t lose value over time. But let’s be honest, this is LS and likely not intended to be done over the long term like the majority of the other LS content.

Hmm. Looks like we start to argue about different things now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The rewards need to be proportional to the time investment and DRM's need "long fractal" time investment but frankly give near "open world dynamic event" rewards

Simply wandering around a lvl 80 vanilla map and doing events is more materially rewarding and feels less tedious

I'll give any instanced content a fair shake since I get tired of meta zerg blob auto attack fests rather quickly but even I stopped giving a fuck once i got the axe skin

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@nopinopa.4861 said:

@"Alexchaos.6528" said:Maybe they should've made the DRMs as new semi-Meta events in old maps instead of instanced content. I find it more engaging while doing events with lots of people and it also makes the world more "alive" hence why it's called living world I guess. This doesn't feel like a living world update at all imo.

They'd end up as other maps' events. Unfortunately the biggest driver to keep players playing are rewards which hold their value over time.

They could do it meta on older map and still give us good reward. Just like Anomaly: everyone come there for their 1 MC a day

A meta event on the map itself would make it nothing but a boring zerg fest. The reward shouldn’t be tied to a single item as a reward as it would tank the price of that item and we’ll be right back to where it’s not worth doing.

Well, we always get new currencies with a new low episode, so give this currency, [bring back trikey chest] — actually, literally anything, even plain zergs, are way better than what we have now in drm

So the pinnacle of PvE content when it comes to greatness is content which all players in the map just mass up and wait their auto attacks? I guess I see why this game isn’t so as well as other MMOs. Such appeal!

Making DRMs open world wouldn’t fix anything. They’d be no different than the majority of the other metas which players have abandoned once they got all of the unique rewards and/or achievements.

DRMs already have a currency. Actually, they technically have three at the moment. What they need are better rewards which won’t lose value over time. But let’s be honest, this is LS and likely not intended to be done over the long term like the majority of the other LS content.

Hmm. Looks like we start to argue about different things now.

We're not talking about different things..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@"Alexchaos.6528" said:Maybe they should've made the DRMs as new semi-Meta events in old maps instead of instanced content. I find it more engaging while doing events with lots of people and it also makes the world more "alive" hence why it's called living world I guess. This doesn't feel like a living world update at all imo.

They'd end up as other maps' events. Unfortunately the biggest driver to keep players playing are rewards which hold their value over time.

They could do it meta on older map and still give us good reward. Just like Anomaly: everyone come there for their 1 MC a day

A meta event on the map itself would make it nothing but a boring zerg fest. The reward shouldn’t be tied to a single item as a reward as it would tank the price of that item and we’ll be right back to where it’s not worth doing.

Well, we always get new currencies with a new low episode, so give this currency, [bring back trikey chest] — actually, literally anything, even plain zergs, are way better than what we have now in drm

So the pinnacle of PvE content when it comes to greatness is content which all players in the map just mass up and wait their auto attacks? I guess I see why this game isn’t so as well as other MMOs. Such appeal!

Massing up fits a Massively Multiplayer Online game ¯\(ツ)/¯If i'd want to play a instanced lobby game, I'd rather play PoE / PSO2.No wonder high-end instanced content has such a low appeal even in other MMOs, just have to wait for cooldowns to be up, then press them in a rotation.Hell, games like BDO don't even have instanced stuff like that. I guess I know now why BDO is doing so good recently, while attempts at creating "Hardcore raiding experience MMORPGs that will dethrone WoW" failed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Raknar.4735 said:Hell, games like BDO don't even have instanced stuff like that. I guess I know now why BDO is doing so good recently

BDO is doing so good because it released on multiple platforms, it released on mobile (majority of revenue comes from that), released a remastered version. Also, it's doing very well because they took advantage of the pandemic by offering the game completely free on Steam for a time, allowing thousands of players to try it out, together with a good marketing campaign and very generous cash shop offers (for free) to new players. BDO on PC was a wasteland in late 2019, it exploded in popularity in Q1/Q2 2020, for the above mentioned reasons, it had very little to do with whether they have instanced content or not.

BDO mobile revenue =/= BDO revenue. Also completely missing the point that is just about BDO, not mobile.It being a wasteland in 2019 isn't actually true, would like sources on that.

There's also a reason for they've changed their plans on Crimson Desert from coop instanced content to a single player game. So yeah, has a lot to do with instanced content. I doubt people are playing BDO for its instanced content heh.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Raknar.4735" said:BDO mobile revenue =/= BDO revenue. Also completely missing the point that is just about BDO, not mobile.

Right. The game launched in 2015 and the company announced it reached 1$ Billion sales in April 2019. The game reached 1.7$ billion (+700 million) from April 2019 to September 2020. So 4 years (45 months) to reach 1$ billion and 17 months to get another 700 million. That's a massive change in revenue in late 2019 plus 2020.https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-09-10-black-desert-online-has-made-usd1-7bn-in-revenue-to-date

You can also check their revenue reports where they tell us where their income is coming from. These are the percentages coming from PC:Q1 2019: 31%Q2 2019: 27%Q3 2019: 31%Q4 2019: 33%Q1 2020: 35%Q2 2020: 44%Q3 2020: 46%As you can see the revenue percentages of Pearl Abyss coming from PC have been on the rise. Given how their other game (EVE Online) has been mostly stable (with much lower numbers than BDO) it's easy to say that this difference is because of the emerging PC revenue in late 2019 and 2020.

It being a wasteland in 2019 isn't actually true, would like sources on that.Someone asking for sources when providing none for their arguments...

So yeah, has a lot to do with instanced content.Lineage 2 has no instanced content... look where it is now. You see this argument of "the game did well because it doesn't have instances, the other game did badly because it did have instances" doesn't really work.

I was indeed mistaken about the game being dead in late 2019, more like 2018, the game earned 234% more money in 2019 than in 2018, a figure that only increased in 2020.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Raknar.4735" said:BDO is a MMORPG that is doing great even without a focus on instanced content, that's my point.

And it's doing well not because it doesn't have instanced content, which is what I pointed out. I don't know why someone would get so confrontational about it, I merely provided an observation that although BDO is doing well, without having instanced content, it's not the absence of instanced content that is making BDO a success. You didn't even dispute that (why would you?) but instead kept insisting on your previous argument, which mine doesn't really invalidate does it? Your argument of "BDO doing well without instanced content" and mine of "instanced content isn't what makes BDO a success" can actually coexist and be accurate at the same time... Peace out

Edited to make it shorter

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have no idea why DRM thread derailed into talking about BDO...All I have to say is BDO is a typical Asian grindfest with limited "choice" and selectively better visuals along with no level cap. It's essentially the antithesis of GW2 which strived to be accessible and "pick up where you left off".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Infusion.7149" said:I have no idea why DRM thread derailed into talking about BDO...All I have to say is BDO is a typical Asian grindfest with limited "choice" and selectively better visuals along with no level cap. It's essentially the antithesis of GW2 which strived to be accessible and "pick up where you left off".

Given that GW2 keeps putting more and more emphasis on Open World activities, grinding and stupidly low RNG rates,it keeps growing closer to the "typical Asian grindfest" rather than being the opposite.While I was ok with Legendary collections, because they were supposed to be something special, I definitely disagree how some of the newer collections are handled. The worst offender in my opinion is the DRM Stormcaller weapons collection.

And episodes being locked behind a paywall since season 2 directly contradicts the "pick up where you left off" idea.

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

In short:

  • Missions that are longer, but not artificially long like now. You could remove some of the timers and waiting around and reduce the health bars on the bosses and easily have room to add a few more encounters in the time left. The current missions are both too long due to artificial elements, and not long enough because when not waiting around on a timer or health sponge boss, its over in a flash.

  • Rewards that are consistent with other game modes, like dungeons or Fractals.

  • Some kind of progression system, which is missing entirely. Aside from rewards, there's just no reason to repeat DRMs at all because it doesn't get any more challenging. Once you learn the mission and complete it, thats it.

The DRMs are good for bringing us to old locations, but somewhat poorly implemented. As I've said before, Fractals could've done the job better, and I know the devs like to avoid them because they're available to F2P players, but its just reinventing the wheel.

What makes Fractals, WvW, etc. not feel grindy despite repetition is they're always changing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Fueki.4753" said:Given that GW2 keeps putting more and more emphasis on Open World activities, grinding and stupidly low RNG rates,it keeps growing closer to the "typical Asian grindfest" rather than being the opposite.While I was ok with Legendary collections, because they were supposed to be something special, I definitely disagree how some of the newer collections are handled. The worst offender in my opinion is the DRM Stormcaller weapons collection.

Well said, and if I may add the "grind" for mastery points as well. I have this wish that when we get the rest of Champions we'll have an easier way to get the DRM collections finished, which could eventually lead to more players running DRMs regularly. Maybe when we get the full experience the problems we see in DRMs will vanish, or maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"maddoctor.2738" said:

I was indeed mistaken about the game being dead in late 2019, more like 2018, the game earned 234% more money in 2019 than in 2018, a figure that only increased in 2020.

TLDR; BDO's changes in 2019 solved problems for old and new players alike, and ironically demonstrated ANet's idea of "shouldn't need to prepare to have fun" very well. In contrast, Champions/DRMs don't really do anything useful for anyone, and they're not even fun. For once, I'm actually looking forward to ANet abandoning a form of content for the future.

Just to resurrect, then beat the dead horse a bit more: The upticks in BDO's late 2019 revenue probably have a lot to do with the Seasonal system they instituted in summer 2019. Seasonal servers allow players to get much closer to both level and gear cap at extremely low cost. Basically, you can get a character into the entry level of endgame content with great ease now. What used to take players years (and gallons of RNG tears) to achieve can be easily done in the space of two weeks of smart but casual play now. If you're casual but not particularly smart about the game, you have 2-3 months to get it done, which is more than enough time. BDO is currently running its third Season, and those Season servers are always absolutely packed with players, every single day of the week, at almost all hours of the day.

Seasons took the primary two pain points for players (needing to no-life the game to reach level and gear cap) and found a way to get players very respectably close to both caps without nearly as much effort. This was also done in a way that didn't invalidate the efforts of veterans who worked to reach hardcap on things - it's still another huge step to reach actual caps, and it takes advanced knowledge of the game (either in terms of grinding out money efficiently or knowing how the gear upgrade system works) to get there. They've also stepped up their attention to narrative in a big, big way - while lore considerations used to be a total joke, the devs clearly got a better writing team, better localization, and decided to make narrative touches for various classes that differentiate how they experience the still-unified 'story' of the game, as it were. All of this came, as you noted, hand in hand with a smart marketing ploy to basically start giving the game away for a time during the pandemic.

In short, BDO knew what to give and how to give it, and it appears to have worked out quite well.

In contrast, I think DRMs fail on both the "what" and "how" questions. We've covered in the thread already that the "what" is just not there - the rewards are bad, and the gameplay is not interesting. The "how" is just as disappointing. As if the missions themselves being somewhat boring wasn't bad enough, they're just not designed for repeatability. Things we've already covered here - the initial mission not being push-able or offering greater benefits for over-completion, dialogue not being skippable, the whole fiasco with LFG only allowing squads to list, etc. - quite severely reduce the replay value of this "content."

Although I'm always complaining that ANet is too quick to abandon content instead of iterating it, I think DRMs are an exception. I really see no potential in them, and will be glad to see them wither away into irrelevance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

On the final day of DRMs before Champions: Power (after what feels like endless runs), I finally got my first Volcanic Stormcaller weapon box. Had I sold it, I'd have got 800g for the shield I chose. If I want the other 15 weapons for that Mastery point, then the current TP cost is 9,000g more. This. Is. Broken.

There are some great suggestions for improvements in this thread and others. If Arenanet again drags out the second instalment with miserable rewards, over-long instances and dull bosses, then I fear for the game. What's the point of a new expac, if half the player base has gotten bored and wandered off?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Fleabite.7528" said:On a Saturday afternoon just a few weeks after DRM launch, and almost noone is grouping for the new content. Reward-to-play incentives are surely putting people off. Too much hassle for too little benefit. Four changes could I think immediately be made to incentivise people to play DRMs more:

  • Significantly increase the droprate for the Volcanic Stormcaller weapons. Nobody I've run DRMs with has ever received one, reflected in the 300-400g TP price - valuing this collection (complete with Mastery point) at an insane 4,800-6,000 gold. So please double, or even triple, the present pitiful drop rate.
  • Change the Prismatium Crystals home node drop to 3 a day like every other node, not the present 2.
  • Having Prismatium Crystals account bound is probably fine - but forcing players into a glacier-slow daily grind is not. Each of the 16 Dragon Slayer weapons takes 30 crystals. That's 480 crystals in total needed for the collection. Just relying on the daily node (if you can afford the 50g upfront) would take eight months of grind. Even adding the (capped) crystals from daily DRM runs will still take you more than 30 days of tedious grind. Again, consider boosting the DRM drop rate - or give an extra bonus for running three a day (whether regular or CM)
  • Allow craftable Prismatium Ingots to be sold on the TP. Players should be abler to grind for profit, if they choose.

What else would incentivise you to run more DRMs?

You could do all of this (which are good suggestions) and I'd still barely play them. The problem is many of us do not find them enjoyable. Making people feel like they "need" to do them for the incentives leads to burnout. I finished the new ones and felt like I spent nearly the entire time avoiding never ending aoe spam. They need more strategy and less aoe spam.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:Anet is asking too much of players again when it comes to crafting weapons. The rate of getting this new material is awful and the drop rate of those weapons that have an MP behind it is just the flies on that kitten cake.

Yes. I've done the first three DRMs almost daily in CM and have not received a single weapon drop. That's crazy! :angry:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would do alot more DRMs/Strikes/Raids, if they moved all these small scale instances out into open public maps and converted them into map meta events instead. (I don't like smallscale instanced content, its doesn't give the "GW2 atmosphere". Every game has smallscale instanced content, and there are much better ones out there for that.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't think there is a way to get me to do them all the time, because I don't think there's anything I'd want to keep doing over and over like that. There aren't any meta-events or bosses or anything I do on a daily basis, I don't even play GW2 every day. There's books I adore which I haven't re-read in over a year because I'm reading other things.

Within GW2 I'm always moving around doing different things. I'll do the story to a new episode not long after it comes out but it might be months or even years before I finish everything. I only did the Druid's Henge collection in Season 3 last summer and I still haven't finished the one for the golem backpack in Season 4. I did the Whisper of Jormag strike for the first time since it was released last week and then ended up down in Kourna doing a collection.

I doubt I'm the only one who is like that, who doesn't want to be tied down to a routine of doing the same parts of the game and over and over and over again, so I think there's always going to be a chunk of the population who don't repeat them regularly no matter how good the rewards are or whatever changes you make to encourage them.

The way I see it as long as there's enough people that it can be completed it doesn't really matter if it's not a lot of the total population doing it at once. I've never been in a public DRM alone, and I see people in my guilds putting groups together for the private version fairly often so the population seems fine to me. It's the same with strikes. I don't do them very often but when I suddenly decided I wanted to do Whisper of Jormag for an achievement I was able to find a group to join that afternoon, and we completed it on our second try.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"hugeboss.5432" said:I would do alot more DRMs/Strikes/Raids, if they moved all these small scale instances out into open public maps and converted them into map meta events instead. (I don't like smallscale instanced content, its doesn't give the "GW2 atmosphere". Every game has smallscale instanced content, and there are much better ones out there for that.)

Yep, these really are old school open world "current events" just made a lot less fun by sticking them in a 5-man instance. I'll do them for a few days but not more than that.

One other thing that would get me to spend a bit more time is if the volcanic stormcaller weapons were worth even trying for! The current drop rate for a not particularly special weapon set is, as someone said on page 1, insane. Yes, I know we don't need to bother with it, but if the point of it is to get people doing the DRMs it clearly is not working! Someone else has probably suggested the same or better already, but I'd say you should just get a chest that gives you a choice of a weapon for each 3 DRMs or full CM DRMs you complete. The whole set would then take 48 DRMs, which is a reasonable grind that a significantly greater number of people (not everyone clearly!) might buy into.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

What else would incentivise you to run more DRMs?

First Run : Allow ppl to normally kill the boss . Telling us phrases like :"Why do you resist" , "Submit" etc every time he stuns you (every 20% hp) .Mid Section : Allow us to scout the new map for clues/notesSecond Run : (Tenet) You play as the boss , with 10% hp , while the "hero" with the hood is stunned before you + 10% hp.Each hit fills their HP + yours (like Rage) .Every 20% of your HP , you aoe stun and you say the exact same phrases + reciting the clues/noes in your mind ."Why do you resist?" (this will cause you more suffering , as i know...) etc .If you succed collecting all the nodes , you will see a cutscene with the Thano....Bigger Lieutenant , ordering you to kill the hero + on the right -on the wall , you can the location of a chest with loot /or which next event has bonus loot .Third Run: Regardles if you succed , you spawn as "corrupted hero" , next time a person push CM mode , with 50% reduced stats(or the hero gets 300% HP ) + hop in various spots like Aurene vs Balthazar to do massive attack animationsFourth Run : Repeat 1 (with cm passively ON vs corrupted player :P) , OR Random Step

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...