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

[The Boz.2038]

10 minutes ago, Bleed.7052 said:

This post kinda makes the situation even more confusing, can we just adress the "WHY" ? The number's dont add up, you can't say you're taking away an already minuscule amount of MC's (According to your statistics, I thought it would be much more ) because players are profitting off too much, you even make the point that the raw gold value loss isn't huge, WHY then, can we get a clear answer ?

I think the problem was concentration.

Daily LLA and monthly login is 48 coins in a 4-week period for an "average" regular player. This type of player probably doesn't engage with any other content that rewards MCoins (why they chose the name Mystic Clover, with the same abbreviation, I'll never know, but it's getting increasingly annoying in these discussions). Maybe they do a fractal here and there, so they're getting, like, 50 a month.

A fractal CM clearing player gets at least twice as many MCoins per month, and while the total mount generated on the game level is not "huge", the concentration of MCoins does get lopsided much faster. Maybe that was the thing that was bothering ANet? Cause just adding on top of that even more content that is intended to be raid-level challenging (in the raid-lite normal mode and full-raid with the CM) that rewards MCoins could even further exacerbate the disbalance.

Another issue, and I think the one that really was the crux here, is that they didn't want fractals to provide clovers by themselves. A daily clear of fractals will reliably give you 2+ coins and very nearly enough relics to buy 2 clovers each day. No need to interact with the market to go from 0 to 2 clovers in 1 hour, each day, every day, reliably.

[Mayga.7241]

I have a question. Why did Solar post this on reddit in the first place? He did it personally. He talks to people and answers questions. Why do we see on the official forum "I have a message below from one of our developers!". This is NOT message.

So where is our answers? Where is Solar? Too busy on reddit?

Everyone who writes here "we appreciate that you communicate with us" - be sure that no one communicates with you. It's just a repost from reddit, lol.

[Dovahkiin from HighRock.46]

I won't play strike missions more than nowadays as I get bored really really fast with this kind of arenas (big circle, big slow thing at the center moving from time to time, damaging drawings on the ground with timers...) but great thanks for all the details and comforting stats.

[Bleed.7052]

37 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

I think the problem was concentration.

Daily LLA and monthly login is 48 coins in a 4-week period for an "average" regular player. This type of player probably doesn't engage with any other content that rewards MCoins (why they chose the name Mystic Clover, with the same abbreviation, I'll never know, but it's getting increasingly annoying in these discussions). Maybe they do a fractal here and there, so they're getting, like, 50 a month.

A fractal CM clearing player gets at least twice as many MCoins per month, and while the total mount generated on the game level is not "huge", the concentration of MCoins does get lopsided much faster. Maybe that was the thing that was bothering ANet? Cause just adding on top of that even more content that is intended to be raid-level challenging (in the raid-lite normal mode and full-raid with the CM) that rewards MCoins could even further exacerbate the disbalance.

Another issue, and I think the one that really was the crux here, is that they didn't want fractals to provide clovers by themselves. A daily clear of fractals will reliably give you 2+ coins and very nearly enough relics to buy 2 clovers each day. No need to interact with the market to go from 0 to 2 clovers in 1 hour, each day, every day, reliably.

 

I dont think you're wrong, but it also doesnt add up with the intention, the intention is to give new players more ways to generate MC's when it comes to endgame pve content, wouldnt giving them two potentially good options better than just funneling them into mostly just one (EOD Strikes ) ? I'd argue that adding even more MC's to any content that's labelled as hard and end-game would only incentivize even more new players into engaging with more end-game activities.  How I see it is that endgame PVE is supposed to be very very attractive so that players engage with it, even if we think CM's are problematic, why not just raise the bar for every other form of content, how is that bad for the game, it for sure wouldnt be half as bad for the economy as giving out login rewards for 0 effort (They should at least lock them behind dailies imo but that is a whole other debate ), there are very little reasons to run the content consistently because prestige in guild wars is mostly attributed to legendaries, and at the end of the day they are not necessarly gated by hard content, you could have a full legendary armory with just smart planning and farming gold, or even swiping and completing collections. I feel like there's a vicious circle where Anet creates content, doesnt see player engagement on it, and then moves on to the next piece of content. What happen to trial and error, and tweaking rewards until players actually start engaging. I dont know man, sorry that I got sidetracked here, this is PTSD from playing the game since launch. For me, this just feels like a slap in the face and Anet telling us "You will need to buy the expansion and engage with the new toys now, okay ??" and that's about it. This game is about evergreen content, content from 8 years ago is supposed to be equivalent to anything they release now in terms of rewards, not take away rewards from an old game mode to lock it behind an expansion, they need to find the right balance, make more fractals, make more dungeons, the heck make everything that isnt super mindless rewarding, the fact that blindly following a commander in open-world ends up being a more enticing solution for most people is mindblowing to me (Yes its less gph, but it averages up extremely quickly, and when you add the convenience to it and the lack of any sort of responsibility, it is better than running the actual endgame pve content ). Now yes I hear you, T4 dailies are overpowered, I'd 100% agree with that statement, i'm strictly talking about the CM content in the game in general

 

I quote from the initial post :

"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."

 

This further support that Anet KNOWS the very insignificant RNG mc's you drop are part of a positive feedback interaction, why would you take it away from players at all is something that sounds mysterious to me. One of the only good justifications I could come up with would be that Anet is intended to create more CM fractals, to the point where having MC's on the loot-table could start getting problematic, and indeed as you said, heavily lopside the mc generation (Although it would still be ages away from just swiping a few alt accounts and take the login rewards ). And this is all people are asking about, positive reinforcement in-game, and the fact that there needs to be any nerf to cm's (Even if its just by 0.5 gold per hour ) without a proper justification, is negative reinforcement, something the endgame content in guild wars DOESN'T need at the moment. Anet has a poor track record so the players are much much more demanding, is it fair ? Maybe not, but that's the way it is, they kittened up a lot before, so its only normal that we are so critical.

 

Anyway apologies for the long rant and my bad english.

 

Edited February 15, 2022 by Bleed.7052

[hertigknut.8475]

5 hours ago, HotDelirium.7984 said:

Imagine assuming ANET was doing anti-consumer practices with this nerf yet they certainly didn't have to release this information at all until the patch notes. Give them some credit. Its probably a business decision to herd people to EOD....at least they aren't Activision Blizzard lol.

 

 

 

Thank you anet for making my gw2 experience way worse by locking the mystic coin drops locked behind a paywall

[Sploogesque.2801]

20 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

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.

Shouldn't this read 10 per week, total of  40 a month? The wording is very off-putting. 

Edited February 15, 2022 by Xunlai.3460

[Jski.6180]

10 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

Well it is happening in the summer so they got plenty of time to give us info closer to release.

I guess ppl should hold off on buying EoD till summer then.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

I just hope this plan of yours works out. It was quite entertaining to read between the lines.

Big thanks for the detailed explanation, highly appreciated. 
 

[Heart of the Geass.6732]

19 hours 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-

That was my first thought too! It is nice to see that they seemingly want to make legendaries more accessible but they also make their decision to take MCs away from fractals CM even more confusing.

[Minion of Terror.1948]

Ok it has been a full Day since this post has been up and I have been able to rest and think about everything in it. I have been able to talk to others and I have seen other opinions. With that in mind in the end I am still quite upset. I think even more so then some of the other comments but with that in mind First let me give you a idea as me as a player. At this current time I do in fact basically “No Life” this game. As I type /age I have 14,744 hours played. Since day -3. So I am in fact as long as a term players as you can have since I have been playing Guild Wars since the start. The points I hope to get across are as follows.

1.Doing all the possible End game content that gives Mystic Coins in total will be less with this update then now.

2.The increase from 1 coin to 2 coins for vendor conversions makes it so you have more weekly clovers you can obtain but you can't get enough coins to get them all. With the feeling that the rate will no longer be worth doing and you might as spend that currency on other items.

As somebody who plays this game a lot I do not stick to one game mode. I do play everything. As such I can say for me Fractal CM's was where most of my Mystic Coins came from. Lets do the Math. With login rewards 2,4,6,8 per week it is an average of 5 coins per week. With (LLA) LeyLine Anomoly event is one coin a day so 7 per week. Getting to Diamond Chest In WvW Grants 6 coins per week. According to above math in the post of 53.76 every 28 days that is 13.44 per week. Just rounding down that is 13 coins per week. More then any other source for active players.

Note on the one source I did not count PvP Tournaments. Something I don't do. Heck even this post did not mention them to show how this source dose not really matter. The good thing about Tournaments is you can see how many coins in total are put into the economy. To total is 1280 Per day. That is it. From both NA and EU the most PvP has for the whole playerbase is 1280 coins per day.

So from what it seems my Coins per week will go from 31 “ish” coins to a consistent 28 from the new strikes. If that was just it It would not be so bad. So now I have come to the real issue I have. The change in conversion rate from 1 mystic coin to 2 mystic coins not only for the fractal vendor but the two new sources being added. So with 28 coins you can only buy 14 Clovers out of 25 from all the vendors.

As stated “Only a very small number of the Mystic Coins consumed each week are used to purchase Mystic Clovers from the fractal vendor” I wonder this is because of the cost of currency necessary to obtain them? At current cost you had to do Fractal CM's to even have the daily currency to buy them. And with the Clovers you are adding to raids you have to use ALL OF YOUR CURRENCY per week to buy all available Clovers. This to me is the thing that is disgusting. Not only are they 30 shards each for raids but the fact you still have the cap of 150 of the two currency's per week makes no sense to me. Since doing a Full clear you max out on currency before you finish.

It also seems the amount of currency gained from the new Strikes will be plenty to get the 10 coins and 5 clovers with more left over. While people doing raids only will get more currency from turning in Mini's and salvaging ascended weapons they get to spend on other things that are worth more then clovers due to the other cost (infusions).

In the end I wish all of the conversion rates to stay at one coin for one clover. You are already gating how many you can get per week so make it worth the wait. Or worth it to play all the content to get the full 25 per week.

Edited February 15, 2022 by Minion of Terror.1948

[rivvyn.6257]

Given this some further thought:

I do not think long-time endgame players already enjoying your game will need much further incentive to buy the expansion other than the promise of new and fun content.
We'll buy it. We'll check it out. If it's cool, we'll continue to play it.
There is absolutely no need to artificially drive us away from the old the content we cherish.

I understand, however, that you also must appeal to new players and casuals.
So adding low-skill / low-commitment content is necessary.

A while ago, you marketed strike missions as an entryway to endgame content like fractals and raids.
With a mediocre raid team, you can just yolo the strike missions already in the game, without problems or much thought about their mechanics.
We are waiting for the strike mission CMs to actually pose some challenge.
We are praying for new raid wings (!) and fractals.

As a person with 'a life' and a job, I do not much enjoy repeating content or faming maps for currency (let alone gold). I play the game the way I like it, mostly because it is fun.
Of course, there should be some reward (also unique rewards!) to the different game modes.

I very much like the weekly rewards you added to fractals and raid CMs.
Now, it would be nice to have any real incentive to not only repeat the easy raid CMs, but also stuff like Dhuum CM - maybe on a monthly basis?
Try to maybe reintroduce some value to dungeons (with the legendary runes and sigils, those got even more obsolete).
Please give us a nice platter of options to select from each week, rather than pushing repeated strike missions or login rewards.

Edited February 15, 2022 by rivvyn.6257

[Darkvramp.5640]

21 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

 

 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.

 

If such a small percentage was being earned from fractal CMS, WHY DID YOU REMOVE THEM!  It only seems you removed them because it removes access to mystic coins to free/core accounts from fractals to only incentivize people to buy the expansion WHICH LOOKS BAD. No one at ArenaNet knows how to market their product worth a kitten.

[mythical.6315]

If it’s such a small percentage being earned, why does it matter if they were removed?

[Bleed.7052]

14 minutes ago, mythical.6315 said:

If it’s such a small percentage being earned, why does it matter if they were removed?

I can't tell if its sarcasm or not, but the answer is simple, it feels bad getting things taken away from you, it can be as less as 0.01 gold, it'll still feel bad because it's a negative reinforcement.

Edited February 15, 2022 by Bleed.7052

[blp.3489]

Given that you can buy them on the trading  post, why are Mystic Coins so significant?  If they had replaced the 1-3 coins with 2-6 gold would there still be a big issue?

[Shadowmoon.7986]

This is as transparent as mud. All the fanboys need to read and critically think before praising. Solar cited a price for mc that is historically low. For years they were over 2g each. There was the great 2g wall that only got removed after the duper who made it got banned. Then he further  disengeniously lowered their value by adding the tp tax. Most people like me were using them either for buying mystic clovers or the mystic tribute. Because they are increasing the cost of clovers and not touching the mystic tribute, players now have to pay full price for the shortfall.  

And we do not even know how many coins will be needed for gen 3. Will it still require the mystic tribute? How much of a shortage would occur if gen 3 does require a mystic tribute and are sellable. I can tell you the tp barons are already getting ready with their world completion farmers to start flipping gen 3.

[gren.7160]

immediately sorry for my English.

I want to say that developers either do not understand how the economy works. Or they think they understand how it works.
I also want to add that until the developers realize that it would be nice to play the game more than once every 5 years on the eve of the release of a large add-on. And at least once a week to go to raids or fractals or to your own DRM!
Then they would understand what they are doing with their reward updates.

But the problem is that you can't hear us.  And where can I talk to you? on the forum you ignore. in the game, all my letters as an example are also ignored.  

My God, this balance is something.

The main thing for us is the player.

And what have you done for the player? Are you giving him more content? WE HAVEN'T SEEN ANY CONTENT FOR A WHOLE YEAR. A YEAR.
The last episode of the Eisbrood saga was released for almost six months. Added an achievement worth 500 gold more than one such.

And tell me how a beginner can make a unique weapon from the Spirit Crafter collection
Or an Elem-style weapon.
Or weapons from special collections of the HoT class?

There are a lot of questions, and few answers.
Yes, and decide whether many percent of the fractals are mc or not

Edited February 15, 2022 by gren.7160

[Saniyah.1984]

I think the closing thoughts are a bit trying to shame people who think Fractal CM's is hard work too
Also doubling clover costs AND removing drops from fractal CMs is terribly selfish and felt like you forced people to bought EoD Not to "spread it out more" it should be spread it out more OR increase cost NOT AND

Edited February 15, 2022 by Saniyah.1984

[mythical.6315]

1 hour ago, Bleed.7052 said:

I can't tell if its sarcasm or not, but the answer is simple, it feels bad getting things taken away from you, it can be as less as 0.01 gold, it'll still feel bad because it's a negative reinforcement.

It really wasn’t meant as sarcasm but simply a reversal of the same argument that people have been posting over and over. 

[leila.7962]

22 hours 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.

  

That would make even less people loging in every day than the way it is right now. Also, the majority of the players don't really care about having legendary items.. either because it seems like a way too long term goal, way too expensive for "just a skin" or don't want to put so much effort for one item. If they start receiving as log-in rewards something that is account bound, that they can't make any gold out of it, it will become just another problem. There are already a bunch of stuff that a lot of people don't really need anymore such as the bags of luck, transmutation charges or chest of exotic equipment.

 

21 hours ago, thrag.9740 said:

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.

 

I do see a point in removing them from fractals while I cannot agree with Anet's reasoning behind it. If the Mystic Coins from Fractal CM's are really under the other 7% sources that were mentioned by the dev, it shouldn't matter that much. It's not like CM's are being exploited and people are cashing tons of them but, it is one of the main reasons why some people still do CM's these days. It's not about the fun or challenge anymore. Whoever runs fractal CM's isn't there just for the amusement, they expect to play and make some gold out of it. It's around an hour long content to run T4's and CM's.

 

What does this change mean to me though? I believe they want the more experienced players to try out the new content and maybe stick around because of the MC's. But if it's that the real idea behind it, it is a fail in my opinion, because the player should be able to enjoy the new content because it is good instead of just doing it because of the final rewards like CM's are nowadays.

 

The thing is, I think it should be another source of MC rather than what they are doing, taking a reward from the old content to give it to their new content. And if the amount of MC's that may be generated having it as a reward on both contents is really a real concern to Anet, then why not make the new legendaries require some other new material that would substitute the mystic coin on their recipes so people could still get both as they play? If they want old legendaries they would go after old content, if they want the new legendaries they will go after the new content... 

 

 

 

 

[Gorem.8104]

6 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

I think the problem was concentration.

Daily LLA and monthly login is 48 coins in a 4-week period for an "average" regular player. This type of player probably doesn't engage with any other content that rewards MCoins (why they chose the name Mystic Clover, with the same abbreviation, I'll never know, but it's getting increasingly annoying in these discussions). Maybe they do a fractal here and there, so they're getting, like, 50 a month.

A fractal CM clearing player gets at least twice as many MCoins per month, and while the total mount generated on the game level is not "huge", the concentration of MCoins does get lopsided much faster. Maybe that was the thing that was bothering ANet? Cause just adding on top of that even more content that is intended to be raid-level challenging (in the raid-lite normal mode and full-raid with the CM) that rewards MCoins could even further exacerbate the disbalance.

Another issue, and I think the one that really was the crux here, is that they didn't want fractals to provide clovers by themselves. A daily clear of fractals will reliably give you 2+ coins and very nearly enough relics to buy 2 clovers each day. No need to interact with the market to go from 0 to 2 clovers in 1 hour, each day, every day, reliably.

Why shouldn't the hardest 5 man content the game has on offer, be rewarding though? And as you say, its not Gatekeeping at all as casual players already are getting everything they are getting, just slower. If you put in effort, and work, learn the game, get better, work on fractals, do the highest end game content, and its not rewarding to do... what was the point of all of that? 
Is this a test? Are they gunning for the rest of Fractal rewards next? removing dailies from Fractals? 
Since the actual amount gained is small in the grand scheme of things, it was hurting nobody for top end players to get more rewards, as all that allowed them to do was support the lower end players easier. 

Seriously Anet, just please, revert the CM change and the double priced "Discounted" clover change and leave everything else and we'd all be good. 

[aeris.5846]

Hello Anet!

 

I don't understand very well your MC loot rate on CM.
I keep track of my loot during 51 days, and I got 261 MC overall, with an average 5.11 MC per full run (CM+T4).
It's 143.29 MC per 28 days, compared to your theorical 53.76 MC.

On my alt, it was 62 MC overall on 14 runs (4.42MC per run average), so 124 MC each 28 days.
And according to GW2efficency, my CM rates of the last 14 days is 152 MC per 28 days.

Seems real loot rate is around 140-150MC per 28 days, 3 times your theorical rates.

I was very lucky or you miss something on your loot rate?

Edited February 15, 2022 by aeris.5846

[Havardmj.8570]

On 2/14/2022 at 9:21 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

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.

Oh yeah 21 days is way longer than 4 weeks.

Not only did you not give back all the MCs, playing strikes should have its own rewards.

With these changes, when you do fractal CMs + strikes, you get fewer MCs than we're getting right now, by only doing CMs.

On 2/14/2022 at 9:21 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

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

 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.

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.

Well, people on gw2 exchange seem to go between 1.7g and 1.9g

Who said anything about selling it on tp?

1.92*1.9g = 3.648g, 1.92*1.7g = 3.264g

So that's a loss of 3 - 3.5 ish gold every day.

You need to atleast give something back.

[Dielfazor.3142]

1 minute ago, aeris.5846 said:

Hello Anet!

 

I don't understand very well your MC loot rate on CM.

I keep track of my loot during 51 days, and I got 261 MC overall, with an average 5.11 MC per full run (CM+T4).

It's 143.29 MC per 28 days, compared to your theorical 53.76 MC.

 

On my alt, it was 62 MC overall on 14 runs (4.42MC per run average), so 124 MC each 28 days.

 

I was very lucky or you miss something on your loot rate?

bro they're only talking about the boss DROPS, your numbers are IMPOSSIBLE to attain with boss drops lol

[aeris.5846]

1 hour ago, Dielfazor.3142 said:

bro they're only talking about the boss DROPS, your numbers are IMPOSSIBLE to attain with boss drops lol

MC drop from chest is (0.06+0.1+0.02)×4×51=36.76 MC on the overall 51 days. So only from boss, it's 261-36=225 MC in 51 days, so still 123.52mc/28days, twice loot rates given by anet.

For people want my rates, it's available here https://lite.framacalc.org/nwv6qluz7p-9skm
MC column is net balance, so you have to add 2 MC for the 2 clovers I bought each day on my main (attu 4 columns, attu 0 is my alt, no clover bought).

Edited February 15, 2022 by aeris.5846