More Info on Strike Missions, Balance, and Rewards in End of Dragons

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

Hello everyone, I have a message below from one of our developers! This is in English only for the time being but we are in the process of having it localized and will share it on our French, German, and Spanish forums as soon as possible. 

 

Hi peeps; I'm Solar, and I co-authored the blog on strikes and rewards that went up on Friday afternoon.

We’re aware of concerns the community has over the information and would like to give everyone some real numbers that should clear things up a lot!

 1: Mystic Coin drop rates in fractal Challenge Modes

Average Mystic Coins earned for a session in which you complete all three Fractal
Your average Mystic Coins earned for a session in which you complete all three Fractal CMs is 1.92. Specifically:

• 0.72 Mystic Coins for playing 98 CM
• 0.72 Mystic Coins for playing 99 CM
• 0.48 Mystic Coins for playing 100 CM

 Mystic Coin drop rates are 14% per boss kill, but because you can get 1, 2, or 3 at a time the average coins per kill are 0.24. Since this is an average, that is the top of the bell curve over a long period of consistent play. The more you play, the closer you are to that lifetime rate. Any divergence is temporary and only seen in small data samples.

 So, although you can get 3 Mystic Coins in one night, you’re just as likely to get 1. While you could get 6 Mystic Coins in one night…you’re much more likely to get zero. But it stands out as a positive moment when you get back-to-back 3-coin drops from MAMA and Siax, and you’re more likely to remember that than the times you got zero.

 2: Monthly Mystic Coin average earnings from playing fractal Challenge Modes every day
If you play all three fractal CMs consistently every day for a month (let’s say 28 days to be consistent with login rewards and weekly reward resets), your average Mystic Coin income for that month from fractal CMs is 53.76.

 Again, this is an average—the more you've played, the closer you are to that rate. In the short term you may see less or more in each month, but you have the same chance to earn either less or more.

 3: How much profit is “lost” from fractal Challenge Modes:
This means that

• Nightmare 98 CM is worth 0.72 fewer Mystic Coins than it previously was.
• Observatory 99 CM is worth 0.72 fewer Mystic Coins.
• Sunqua Peak 100 CM is worth 0.48 fewer Mystic Coins.

 Let’s say a Mystic Coin is worth 1.7 gold, using a fairly stable price from last week (as you’ll see, this weekend’s price bump won’t reflect long-term trends). You pay 15% of that in trading post fees from selling it, resulting in 1g, 45s sale profit.
So:

• 98CM: 0.72 MCs * 1.45g = 1.04g
• 99CM: 0.72 MCs * 1.45g = 1.04g
• 100CM: 0.48 MCs * 1.45g = 0.70g

But since Mystic Coins are on the same drop table as equipment and ectoplasm—and you can get multiple ectos--you're not getting nothing instead of a Mystic Coin drop. You’re getting an equipment drop or ectoplasm instead. Average value there is a little over 30s due to the drop chance for multiple ectos.

Without going into too much extra detail, the total gold reduction in dropped item value for all three Challenge Modes combined is a bit under 2.7g, which is less than 1g per fractal CM.

4: How hard will it be to earn Mystic Coins from Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons Strike Missions?
Pretty easy, actually! The expansion has four new Strike Missions. Playing through all four on Normal difficulty will award 40 Green Prophet Shards.

On your first completion of the week, you'll also get 5 more shards from a Daily Priority Strike achievement (which rotates daily), and 25 more shards from a weekly achievement to complete all four strikes.

Together, that means that your first normal-difficulty EoD strike playthrough in a given week will award 70 green prophet shards. That's enough to purchase 7 of the weekly 10 Mystic Coins from the End of Dragons strike vendor, so a second playthrough in that same week will get you enough shards for the rest!

 4: How do Strike Mission Mystic Coins compare to lost fractal Challenge Mode Mystic Coins?
To get the maximum 40 mystic coins a month from EoD strikes, a player will have to play normal difficulty strikes twice a week for four weeks.

 By comparison, to get the average 53.76 mystic coins from Fractal CMs a player must complete all three CMs every day for 28 days. Normal difficulty strikes have a much lower barrier to entry in terms of difficulty and how many you need to play to earn their Mystic Coin rewards.

 Clearing up some misconceptions:

Do most Mystic Coins come from Fractal Challenge Modes?

This was unclear in the blog post. They're one of the largest possible sources that a single player can earn, but not the most common source.

 93% of Mystic Coins come from login rewards. The remaining 7% includes Ley Line Anomaly, WvW Gold/Platinum chests, fractal daily chests, Mystic Forger daily mission, and fractal Challenge Modes. Fractal Challenge Modes are one of the smaller sources. They’re not played as much relative to other sources because the content is very difficult and exclusive.

 Will this make Mystic Coins rarer?
No, it will make them more common. Strike Missions are much more accessible than fractal Challenge Modes and are played by significantly more people—and we hope to grow participation numbers in Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons.

Earning the 40 mystic coins a week from strikes will require completing strikes twice a week, for four weeks. Getting the same number of coins from fractal CMs would have required 21 days of completing all three fractal CMs.

This is going to increase the amount of Mystic Coins generated and sold by players looking to turn them into gold.

 Will more expensive “discounted” Mystic Clovers double the demand for Mystic Coins?

Only a very small number of the Mystic Coins consumed each week are used to purchase Mystic Clovers from the fractal vendor. Nearly all coins consumed per week go into Mystic Forge recipes for Mystic Clovers or are used directly in legendary crafting. This change will not have any real impact on Mystic Coin supply, consumption, or prices across the player population.

 Will this make it it easier for more casual players to make legendaries?
Yes. Players who don't have access to some of the more difficult sources of legendary crafting resources like fractal CMs and the fractal Mystic Clover trade will be able to earn incremental legendary progress from easier sources, particularly Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons Strike Missions.

 We're hoping that once those players try out Strike Missions, they'll find that they love 10-player cooperative content and train up with their friends to try out harder things in the future, including strike Challenge Modes and raids! We want more players to craft and enjoy legendary weapons, and this is part of that.

 Challenge Mode Strike Missions

Challenge Mode Strike Missions will not be immediately available when Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons launches. We’ve been playtesting them for months internally and I think they’re a ton of fun, but we want normal mode to go out first so we can fix any bugs and polish the encounters after seeing the strategies players develop in the live game.

 These are intended to be as difficult as raid encounters, and will give 1 Legendary Insight per week, among other things. The main difference is that since those encounters have a lower difficulty mode, you’ll be able to learn them and train other players before playing the Challenge Mode version.

 Closing thoughts:
It's natural to make assumptions about what is common or normal based on our own habits and capabilities and extrapolate that out to the rest of the player community, but most Guild Wars 2 players have few methods for working directly on their legendary goals. Much of it is earned from the 7 clovers a month from the final login track reward!

 The feeling of working hard for something and finding out it’s going to be easily accessible to others in the future can feel bad, and that feeling is real and valid. But you’ve made a ton of tangible progress in fractal Challenge Modes and other people having access to that in the future doesn’t take away from everything you’ve accomplished.

 I hope this gives some more insight into how we think about reward design and clarifies some of the changes coming in Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons .

[LSD.4673]

"93% of Mystic Coins come from login rewards"

Who'd have thunk'd it? Now, the real question is what percentage of those are actual players vs login scripts...

[KurokouNekoki.7891]

Got to say I'm slightly disappointed that all the changes are pushed exclusively for the Hardcore content, rather than trying to balance both the hardcore and the casual play for this.

When you changed the Gift of Battle cost (from simple Badge of Honors to a Reward Track) a few years ago, it pushed us to yes be more involved with WvW (which is still broken now as I faced the same server for 5 weeks in a row despise having results that would tip us down one tier, several times), but this isn't really what some of us are wishing for as we just want to keep things casual and not having to burn out on the game or the progression towards our own goals for those changes.

I have several Tier 1 Precursors that I have been wanting to work on, just to end letting them sit in my bank because I just cannot be bothered doing 15x the Gift of Battle Reward Tracks as how the game is standing right now.

I also gave up on getting the Frostsaw (Ascended Greatsword, that is unique to Dragonstorm) because the droprate is so low, because the content is so repetitive; and that there is no alternative in getting it (not even tradeable, not even a recipe to craft the thing). I have more marks from those Dragon Response Missions than I even know what to do with them.

For the Strike Missions, I also abandoned playing them, because as a colorblind, I'm unable to complete some of them, that absolutely locks some rewards away (Boneskinner's Enhanced Weapons), due to the lack of accessibility options.

So you have a lot to work on, because those changes are not looking pretty, if I need to give a fair feedback. I would have been more excited if the last 2 years since IBS wasn't a complete catastrophe on the level of pleasure for me.

[Kuya.6495]

Thank you for the clarification! But I think what I've heard CM fractal raiders say is that it feels like the reward for CMs are being nerfed with nothing to compensate. You just showed how there will be more mystic coins available for most players but not what other rewards might be added to fractal CMs to replace the loss of the mystic coins and to maintain the incentive in doing them daily.

 

I appreciate that you at least let us know there are exclusive rewards to strike CMs (legendary insights).  We did not know this previously. 

[Wolfb.7025]

Thanks for the clarification.

Although I have to ask, if the MCs from Fractals CM had little impact on the MC overall supply, why remove it from the rewards anyways? Fractals CMs are less profitable and harder to do than a Daily T4 and now it feels like some sort of punishment rather than a rebalance on rewards-

[Phil.1074]

1 minute ago, Wolfb.7025 said:

Although I have to ask, if the MCs from Fractals CM had little impact on the MC overall supply, why remove it from the rewards anyways? Fractals CMs are less profitable and harder to do than a Daily T4 and now it feels like some sort of punishment rather than a rebalance on rewards-

This! Absolutely this. 

 

We get punished. If the hard content of CM has so little impact why not slighty nerf the drop rate, and add extra coins to the EoD Strikes. There are more MC sinks, why not have more MCs available overall... 

[ChaliElle.9137]

26 minutes ago, LSD.4673 said:

"93% of Mystic Coins come from login rewards"

Who'd have thunk'd it? Now, the real question is what percentage of those are actual players vs login scripts...

Probably around 95% are actual "main" player accounts. As much as "account farming" is popularized by some streamers and widely discussed on forums/reddit/discord, VAST majority of players have single account.

8 minutes ago, Wolfb.7025 said:

Thanks for the clarification.

Although I have to ask, if the MCs from Fractals CM had little impact on the MC overall supply, why remove it from the rewards anyways? Fractals CMs are less profitable and harder to do than a Daily T4 and now it feels like some sort of punishment rather than a rebalance on rewards-

You would need to have background information that were shared back back in the John Smith times. Mystic Coins as major part of daily login rewards were redesigned during montthly removal as a wealth redistribution tool. Basically, every player gets them, but not enough for their needs, so they need to buy them off other players, who may have no use for them but need gold. So, casual players get them, sell on TP to hardcore players crafting legendaries. Gold trickles down from experienced players farming endgame content to inexperienced ones whose main income are basic dailies or harvesting. Rewarding MCs for pinnacle content completely turns the whole idea around - suddenly the most experienced players have no need to buy MCs from TP.
 

Edited February 14, 2022 by ChaliElle.9137
2nd comment.

[VictorLeal.4102]

You should be removing MC gain from those who have 20 accounts and get it by daily login and not from those who farm game content.

[zealex.9410]

If barely any coins came from cms then why nerf them?

[Renegade.3659]

Change daily log-in rewards to Clovers instead of Coins, so people with many alts can't abuse this by just sending everything to their main.

[DavidBG.6194]

Well assuming I sell to tp is how much gold I lose, but how about if I didn't sell them and instead was utilizing it to craft my legendary stuff, so now (before anticipated supply increase in EoD) I will actually lose the (assuming) "buy-price" of mystic coins because "I will need to buy them" to supply my crafting processes and so I actually "lose more", anyhow it is what it is.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

9 minutes ago, Renegade.3659 said:

Change daily log-in rewards to Clovers instead of Coins, so people with many alts can't abuse this by just sending everything to their main.

 

They should shut down the gemstore too so people can't swipe the credit card for gold! 

I'd rather not be punished because of the edge case tryhard who wants to drop hundreds of dollars and run login scripts (which also risks getting bans) just to make a legendary that a lot of times gets skinned over anyway.   

[Tulki.1458]

The transparency and numbers breakdown is really good but I'm pretty much with the others here - if your numbers have determined that CM mystic coins were a tiny minority of those earned, why remove them?

This makes it look like they're being removed for a reason other than what you stated, which makes the messaging worse, not better. It's clear from the numbers you gave that this isn't really an economic decision. Lacking more info, this sounds like planned obsolescence of fractals. Not good.

Edited February 14, 2022 by Tulki.1458

[zaery.6478]

58 minutes ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

 The feeling of working hard for something and finding out it’s going to be easily accessible to others in the future can feel bad, and that feeling is real and valid. But you’ve made a ton of tangible progress in fractal Challenge Modes and other people having access to that in the future doesn’t take away from everything you’ve accomplished.

It's more about the feeling of working hard for less than that work used to be worth. I don't know about you, but at work, I'm not happy about a pay cut, but I am glad about my coworkers getting raises. Also reducing rewards definitely doesn't increase CM accessibility for anyone.

[bean.1497]

While your intent was to justify the decision, this has only made our question louder: If MCs from Fractal CMs re such a statistically minor impact on the overall economy, why remove them at all?

 

Or, is it possible ANet is removing rewards from popular endgame content in an attempt to drive us to the new expansion content? You're pitching it as a carrot but boy does it feel like a stick.

[Antina.5973]

Thank you for clarification ❤️ Seeing how you communicate is wonderful. I'm sure a lot of us appreciate that, so keep it up!

Edited February 14, 2022 by Antina.5973

[Killthehealersffs.8940]

Thanks for the info

 

I understand that CM modes that offer   a "shortcut-skip" mechanic , cost money and time .

Time and money , that can be used to create an extra Fractal or Strike :PPPPPPPP

Edited February 14, 2022 by Killthehealersffs.8940

[Kilty.4906]

Thanks for the clarification, although I don't see why there is a need to remove this as it was stated that it has little impact on the economy. While in counterpart people are farming the daily reward using multiple accounts and nothing has changed there.

Edited February 15, 2022 by Kilty.4906

[rivvyn.6257]

'Fractal CM rewards were crap before, so it's not a big nerf.'
Is that really your point?

By making established and appreciated content less attractive to the people that currently enjoy it, you do not necessarily push them to the new content you want to promote... you might drive them away altogether.

Maybe balance the rewards (encompassing, but not limited to Mystic Coins) a bit better between brainless and effortless things and challenging content that needs some actual player investment.

Edited February 14, 2022 by rivvyn.6257

[Glaswen.7926]

Experienced old players, who have already earned Fractal God title and got all fractal unlockables, already get totally worthless Golden Fractal weapons or regular Fractal weapon skins they can't do anything with, and people with full Legendary Armory already throw away ascended armor chests they get in fractals because they don't cost even 1g. The overall drop table is already worse than could be if these things would automatically stop dropping for a player after they unlocked all the skins + Armory. And now the devs take away Mystic Coins from Fractal CMs as one of the decent options in drop table, despite stating themselves that Mystic Coins DON'T affect the economy too much. 
So if they don't drop as often anyway and aren't of much effect to a player's overall drops, why remove them? 

[QueenKeriti.5176]

Gotta second what some of the others have said. This isn't making it any better. Why remove rewards from CM fracs if they're so "insignificant"?

I don't like 10 man content. It's not fun for me. I've immensely disliked both strikes and raids. I like 5 man content, especially fractals, but it looks like that, once again, you're taking the nerfstick to the 5 man content, and for why?

[ChronoPinoyX.7923]

I can understand the situation better, but the problem isn't the Mystic Coins themselves, the Mystic Coins just happen to be the item the problem revolves around. 

The real problem is the fact that there will be no real incentive to farm Fractal CM once the Mystic Coins are removed. It doesn't matter what the average probability of someone getting MC in a Fractal CM run is, what matters most is that MC is an incentive to farm CM Fractals which means that people played the content even if the RNG is stacked against them because it incentivised playing CM Fractals. 

All this is doing is pushing the incentive from CM Fractals to Strike Missions, that's not a justification, that's blatant disregard of the actual problem. You need to provide an alternative incentive to CM Fractals. Without any real incentive (Ima repeat that word cuz that's the key to this entire problem) to play CM Fractals, what's the point of having CM Fractals? People will just run regular Fractals because its rewards would be near identical to CM once the coins are removed. 

You can either provide something different to Strike Missions and keep the Mystic Coins in CM Fractals or actually provide a proper alternative incentive to Mystic Coins in CM Fractals because right now it sounds like no one at ANet actually wants to solve the problem and just wants to blurt out words to justify a flawed decision. 

Edited February 14, 2022 by ChronoPinoyX.7923

[Requiem.9648]

I mean that may definitively kill the CM group for real i dont think that real good move from Anet. I think the best thing if they want to avoid overdrop from it is to remove that World Boss Anomaly. That will actualy give more impact than just remove drop from fractals CMs. My point on this why creating CM for fractal if you dont have real benefit from it. You guys did at least provide better reward from raid CM per week for that point. Cause nobody found any real reason to do raid cm after 1 CM done on their account. What is the point removing the best possible reward from fractals CM.

Now for the balance 10 man boons i can understand the move attempt but i will be smart just create ON EVERY CLASS many variety of unique advantange of you guys are for diversity how none of the new elite have. i mean druid provide spirits and spotter how give massive advantage like banner and empowered allies are also massive advantage. Problem now if they are down to 5 people will bring mirror class for 10 man content. Cause those unique buff are only apply from those class Alac,quickness,fury and might can be provided by many other class. Problem now with many elite spect dont have unique effect how are interesting like spotter, baner, empowered allies, assassin presence. Example mesmer dosent have any share unique effect. Necro vampiric aura is so weak nobody use it. Ele shared aura are nice but not lasting long enough. Gardian have a lot of boon up time but the trait strenght in numbers is useless just to name few of the useless shared trait.

Anet should revisit other mmo and see what unique special buff allies they can bring to make spect interesting to be inside the diversity bubble otherwise they will be stuck in the pathern people will grab best dps with 2 mirror buffer/healer in PVE environment.

Edited February 14, 2022 by Requiem.9648
Not done

[thrag.9740]

I just don't see the point of taking MCs out of fractal CMs when they are such a small percentage of the MC generation. Especially now that MCs are going to be cheaper than ever.

[Izzy.2951]

I think this is a good goal for hardcore PvE longterm, specially getting people into strikes, then strikes CM, then crafting legendary and then Raids/Fractals CM.

 

However, if it isnt that impatful, maybe put it to 0-1 rng, instead of 0-3, so they dont lose THAT much.