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

[Dami.5046]

I Just hope it's not being done from a business point of view, i.e Hoping you use your credit card to buy the legendary gear (as i feel was the purpose of the armoury)

Doesn't bode well how many MC's the new weapons will need, or if they nerf the drop rate of clovers in the forge. 

However, if I deem the new weapons too expensive I won't make any. *shrug*

[TabrisTiGraf.8591]

sorry for my english, but i really want to speak.
For a player who has only completed a couple of strike missions and had a terrible hard time closing raids, the loss of a fractal reward, no matter how small, is a very strong blow.
The problem is that "high end" community is aggressive and toxic enough to discourage any desire to play content with more than 5 people.
It is very unpleasant to lose the CM rewards in the form of MC. I really hope that at least some good reward for the CM fractal will be introduced or at least announced.
At the moment I don't see any way for me to get access to strike missions. And this means that I will have to spend much more time in other modes to get the resources I need.
And I just started to learn something outside of solo content and started to get better in the game.
Thanks ANET

[Resonance.4216]

"1.92 coins per day was too significant an increase and had to be removed" 

also Anet

50 a month from logins + daily LLA is completely fine.

[Zenli.3684]

27 minutes ago, Resonance.4216 said:

"1.92 coins per day was too significant an increase and had to be removed" 

also Anet

50 a month from logins + daily LLA is completely fine.

LLA is not fine at all for a daily run  with the timer, tiny lifespan and that blindind/lagging fest...

At least Mat at Verdant Brink allow 2/3minutes to get it for the sweet daily loot and you get to keep your eyes.

[KurokouNekoki.7891]

1 hour ago, TabrisTiGraf.8591 said:

The problem is that "high end" community is aggressive and toxic enough to discourage any desire to play content with more than 5 people.

At the moment I don't see any way for me to get access to strike missions. And this means that I will have to spend much more time in other modes to get the resources I need.

This is THE problem I have seen appeared since HoT Release and the introduction of raids, which I still heavily think was a serious mistake.
I seen someone getting kicked out of Strikes Mission for underperforming not sooner than yesterday.
I have contacted ArenaNet multiple times about this, they still have to adapt or even take actions on any of them, so we can avoid having to deal with that sort of treatment; which I believe is unnecessary if not borderline simply unneeded.

[hertigknut.8475]

10 hours ago, Yoshioka.4967 said:

Worst part about this is that is too late to refund EOD.

Imagine buying the expansion before knowing the content in it...

[HotDelirium.7984]

23 minutes ago, hertigknut.8475 said:

Imagine buying the expansion before knowing the content in it...

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.

 

[HotDelirium.7984]

50 minutes ago, KurokouNekoki.7891 said:

This is THE problem I have seen appeared since HoT Release and the introduction of raids, which I still heavily think was a serious mistake.
I seen someone getting kicked out of Strikes Mission for underperforming not sooner than yesterday.
I have contacted ArenaNet multiple times about this, they still have to adapt or even take actions on any of them, so we can avoid having to deal with that sort of treatment; which I believe is unnecessary if not borderline simply unneeded.

This unfortunately is what you get when everything is a free for all sandbox when it comes to gear and builds- the community is left to try to come up with solutions to be successful and sometimes they are a little elitist. The kinda-sorta doing the holy trinity but kinda-not-but-needing-to is very confusing and off-putting for many casual players. I wish Gw2 would have this maybe hybrid approach when it comes to gear, builds and roles- just structuring it a bit (maybe gear checks I dont know) and get on the LFG queue and go!

[MineMeMy.7854]

55 minutes ago, KurokouNekoki.7891 said:

This is THE problem I have seen appeared since HoT Release and the introduction of raids, which I still heavily think was a serious mistake.
I seen someone getting kicked out of Strikes Mission for underperforming not sooner than yesterday.
I have contacted ArenaNet multiple times about this, they still have to adapt or even take actions on any of them, so we can avoid having to deal with that sort of treatment; which I believe is unnecessary if not borderline simply unneeded.

if people got kick at 3ez they real very bad

[Asum.4960]

I appreciate the communication and agree with some of the key points such as making Legendary Gear easier to earn (esp. since the armory addition, it's just such a nice utility that I'd like to see in the hands of as many players as possible, within still reasonable effort ofc) - but there are still some things that imo just don't make sense or are bad for the game/specific game modes. 

 

For one, Fractal CM's already, with MC drops, are hardly worth running for a lot of the hardcore community. The main reason to play them is that they are fun to do, and the MC's here and there where imo a decent part of that little extra thing motivating people to still do them. 

Telling people they just earn 3g less per day for playing them (like that's nothing over weeks, months, years) is a minimisation that doesn't sit right with me. 

It's the hardest and most fun 5 player content in the game, which already isn't rewarding accordingly to it's effort over just doing T4's and Recs or short Fractal farms, especially for the most hardcore players looking for and enjoying that challenge (who to a decent extend already have Fractal God and more than a lifetime supply of Relics etc.). With even less rewards one can't help but feeling like they are just a waste of time to do now, no matter how fun a good, well oiled, CM run is. 

 

Secondly is moving those rewards (MC's earned from Hardcore content, which as you say already is a tiny fraction of the supply) from tried and tested core game content to new expansion content. 

That to me just seems like a blatant abandonment of old content while trying to funnel people into the new one, which is a mistake you've been doing over and over again with GW2, rather than supporting a variety of content. 

That's not how you keep an MMO healthy, that's how you burn players out on the one new favoured content, while burning players who enjoyed the previous content (be it Dungeons, Raids, or now Fractal CM's). 

 

People don't magically have more time to play when you add new content to still do all the now less rewarding old content plus the new additions that the rewards were shifted to. They'll at large just drop the old content, and instead of doing CM+T4+Rec runs, just do Strike+T4+Rec runs, for example. 

While that's probably your intention, that's imo not the right way to do it.  

If Strikes are fun to play, I'll play them - that doesn't require nerfs to old content. If that old content is still rewarding, it just means I have reasonable options to switch things up and bounce back and forth to prevent player burnout. 

 

If Fractal CM's are already such a small part of the supply, I don't see the harm in adding one MC as guaranteed once per day end reward to them. 

 

A few other inconsistencies, 

You state most people already don't use the Mystic Coin to Mystic Clover Fractal merchant conversion.. so why double it's MC cost - while also addition a non cost-efficient Raid version of it, when it's all done through Strikes now? 

 

Then you make the MC coin nerf for Fractal CM's sound less bad by stating you now have a higher chance to get Ectos with a smaller drop pool, but then you reduce the demand for Ectos further with the MC conversion, which already struggle with high supply and low demand, barely holding on to 20s, with who knows how many stockpiling. 

 

TL;DR

Anyway, all in all I don't personally care about the economic implications tbh, and as I said before I'm actually in favour of more accessible Legendaries and such - my gripe is more with the fact that this doesn't make more endgame content attractive, but just shifts the rewards from proven and liked content to something new. 

That's imo not "spreading the love", nor good for the game long term. No one benefits from Dungeons being dead or Raids and Fractal CM's dying - not the people who love and enjoy that content, not the people who fsr hate that content, and certainly not the Game/Anet. 

 

I want EoD Strikes to succeed, but I don't want to see that come at the cost of the currently most fun and engaging content in the game - but rather because they are just good and fun to play with competitive rewards. 

If anything, this reward shift makes me concerned that you are not confident in the product on it's own merit - that unless it's the only endgame MC source, I won't be inclined to play it.

[Dopamine.6324]

so did i get this right? you want to spread the love to other contents of the game, so you are going to remove insignificant % of mc generation from fractal cm and move it to EoD new strikes.
with this logic you should remove every mc generation even login rewards and only give them in wvw rewards? ya know spread the love to other content

[Katary.7096]

This is exactly the kind of data that I lament having so little access to, thank you very much for providing it. And since I have it now, it feels only right to put it use, so lets start:
"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."

1. Observation: Apart from login rewards there 5 more sources which can generate mystic coins in the game. (For some reason ATs and MATs were not mentioned even though they generate mystic coins.)

2. Observation: These 5 sources are not equally large/ small in their contribution to the generation of new mystic coins. Fractal Challenge Modes are closer to the low end than they are to the high end of this ranking.

Which means we can calculate the ceiling of Fractal CM generated mystic coins:

7%/5=1.4%>Fractal CM mystic coins

Meaning the contribution to total mystic coin creation of Fractal CMs is less than 1.4% of all newly created mystic coins. A fraction so small, one could question why it was even considered for changes in the first place. We know that there is no intention to keep the mystic coin price stable, because the post said so:

"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."

An overall decrease in the price of mystic coins is either tolerated or intended. There is the potential that an increase in available exchange options, to turn mystic coins into mystic clovers directly, is going to lead to increased demand for mystic coins which in turn would drive up the mystic coin price. The post has touched on this topic and had this to say:

"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."

So the developers will be making changes which will almost inevitably lead to lower overall mystic coin prices. Which in turn would lower the poteantial gold gained from daily Fractal CMs even if the mystic coins were not being removed from the content in the first place.

"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"

1.04+1.04+0.70=2.78gold

2.78/3=0.926...7gold per fractal CM

Assuming an incoming drop in mystic prices with EoD (longterm) we could be looking at something along the lines of 0.8 or 0.7 or even 0.6 gold per fractal CM if mystic coins were to remain on the loot table. Which should rule out the argument that fractal CMs are too profitable as content or that fractal CM players are farming excessive amounts of gold.

So we know that the removal of mystic coins from Fractal Challenge Modes has nothing to do with the stability of the mystic coin economy and it has nothing to do with the income potential of daily fractal CM runs. Which leaves us with the question: Why are mystic coins getting removed from Fractal Challenge Modes?

[Mayga.7241]

Both your actions and your ridiculous explanations only say one thing - you don't understand how your game works. You don't hear the requests of community, you reject all logical arguments.

You won't be able to tell in the future: "We've made new content and it's very popular compared to the old content. Our strikes are popular, our new classes are popular, look how many people are here and how few people are there."

No, this will not happen. Not in this way. Your motives are too obvious for people. You can't force someone to love something. Ofc, you can do well and people will love it. But you decided to do badly and just force us to play it. No. We are all adults here, not kids for whom parents decide. We are playing this game. We bring you money. And you can't say "we know what's best for you". Just because you don't know. You are not even interested in how your game lives, how people live in it and what they really need. You never tried to play your own game. Therefore, you cannot balance anything. Your "balance" brings only laughter and tears. Your thoughts on the economy and your statistics make me think you don't have any data at all. Or you didn't even try to look at it. You look ridiculous with these explanations. And you don't have a test team. You are replacing it with us. At the moment I find you professionally unsuitable and will not pay for your work.

I'm sad that all this happened to my favorite game. Incompetence always brings only losses.

Edited February 15, 2022 by Mayga.7241

[zianasue.2160]

so, what I'm understanding is....32 strike clears (4 clears x2 a week for 4 weeks (28 days)) versus 84 fractal cm clears (3 clears x7 a week for 4 weeks (28 days)). Time-wise it's the same for an equal-ish rate of coin droppage, but with less instanced content clears involved, and more players involved (10 player content vs 5 player content).

 

I've not reached fractal cm level yet. I'm still a newbie in my fractal journey I don't think I've made it to tier 2 yet. I have started my strike mission journey and I like the idea of getting mystic coins from that content. Especially has it would help me with my legendary that are slowly being crafted currently, and also especially since I know it will be a very very long time before fractal cms are even in my realm of possibilities. I do like getting the occasional coin from login rewards (where all my current coins have come from - haven't touched them because...legendaries (I want them))

 

[Copied from my comment on a youtube video on this topic]

[Jokuc.3478]

So if such a small amount of coins comes from the Fractal CMs WHY CHANGE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE? omg.

Please just lower the amount from fractal cms and put a few into raids and strikes instead. Just like you say, some players don't do fractal CMs and thus don't have access to those coin drops. Well you know what? They could just farm drizzlewood and buy the coins on TP instead no? But that is not as fun cause you want to earn the coins yourself. Just like me as a fractal player don't want to be forced to play strikes or whatever to get my coins. I want to get my coins from fractals, why are you stopping me from doing so?

I am not satisfied with this explanation whatsoever.

Edited February 15, 2022 by Jokuc.3478

[Akilles.6582]

Dear ANet,

Your actions and words are contradictory - you claim to do one thing, but in reality you are doing the exact opposite.

Removing MCs (which, as you have admitted, are a drop in a sea) from Fractal CMs is a completely ridiculous decision based not on the improvement of the game or the player base, but in a desperate bid to force one of the minor, but extremely active communities to buy your expansion and play the new content if they want to get their carrot.

That is a major mistake on 2 levels.

The first one is that you do not believe in your new content. You are afraid it is not going to be popular, played and that your engagement statistics will not be up to the impossible standards that your corporate suits made for you. I can see this might appear, from your point of view at least, as a shrewd business decision. But from player perspective, you do not have a solid track record in the 'old content management department' and it looks like you are about to repeat your pattern, e.g: kill the old, somewhat popular content, in hopes that players will play the new, shiny one. And while that might bring in the big bucks your excel spreadsheets desperately want, it will not bring a stable, happy and dedicated player base that actually enjoys playing (and spending money!) on your product.

Second is that you are operating under false pretense - trying to paint CM players as 'elitist gatekeepers', while in fact, you are the ones doing the gatekeeping. Why do you want to gatekeep the rewards behind a paywall, namely the new expansion? Why do I need to purchase new expac to get rewards I used to be able to get without it? That is not 'spreading the love', that is the exact opposite.

I would understand if you tried to share the MC drops between all the game modes, so all players, from all walks of life could enjoy both the content they like the most and the fruits of their labor. But you actions prove that you do not give a kitten about that.

With all due respect (and a futile hope for change),
Akilles.

Edited February 15, 2022 by Akilles.6582

[Zychuu.7294]

As you say, it feels good to get this good MC drop, even if in the long run it is meaningless fluctuation and barely contributes to average gold value of rewards. Sooo... why would you decide it is a good idea to remove that 'good feeling' entirely? That's just taking away from the experience for no apparent reason at all. I feel like if you truly wanted to 'spread the love', you wouldn't remove the drop entirely, and instead juts nerf it and then give more game modes(Fractals, Raids, heck even dungeons and IBS strikes) a slight chance to drop any coins, even one and only rarely or whatever. There is no 'love for gamemodes' in taking all the MCs from one place, and moving them to another. Especially one gated behind an expansion.

The problem is not only "how much reward is removed from place X", but also a feeling that you want to force funnel players into new content by moving stuff from existing place to ONLY new one, I repeat: there is not 'spreading love' in doing it like this.

Edited February 15, 2022 by Zychuu.7294

[The Boz.2038]

Historically, my luck with converting coins to clovers has been bad. It's something to the tune of 600 > 110 right now.

Really not happy about the options to *buy* clovers getting more expensive over here...

[GadTwo.3275]

With your current explanations, you have only shown complete disrespect for the players.
You did not name the true reason for the cancellation of mc
As mentioned above, children do not play your game and all attempts to manipulate people's opinions are recognized very quickly.

if I can play for an hour a day, I will overcome strikes or fractals and go about my business.
What if I have 4 hours?
I won't go to drm/dungee, because there is no profit (and, accordingly, there are no people).

Well, at first we will have strikes, after all, new mechanics. But then what?
As such, there is no high-end content, and you are trying to kill what is left

now you can enter the game for 1-2 days to buy clover and wait for a new week

Edited February 15, 2022 by GadTwo.3275
.

[GadTwo.3275]

and further
you're trying to give people new classes that support any boons so we don't get hung up on the same characters
but at the same time you force us to play only one content depriving people of a choice

Edited February 15, 2022 by GadTwo.3275
.

[Swagger.1459]

1 hour ago, Akilles.6582 said:

Dear ANet,

Your actions and words are contradictory - you claim to do one thing, but in reality you are doing the exact opposite.

Removing MCs (which, as you have admitted, are a drop in a sea) from Fractal CMs is a completely ridiculous decision based not on the improvement of the game or the player base, but in a desperate bid to force one of the minor, but extremely active communities to buy your expansion and play the new content if they want to get their carrot.

That is a major mistake on 2 levels.

The first one is that you do not believe in your new content. You are afraid it is not going to be popular, played and that your engagement statistics will not be up to the impossible standards that your corporate suits made for you. I can see this might appear, from your point of view at least, as a shrewd business decision. But from player perspective, you do not have a solid track record in the 'old content management department' and it looks like you are about to repeat your pattern, e.g: kill the old, somewhat popular content, in hopes that players will play the new, shiny one. And while that might bring in the big bucks your excel spreadsheets desperately want, it will not bring a stable, happy and dedicated player base that actually enjoys playing (and spending money!) on your product.

Second is that you are operating under false pretense - trying to paint CM players as 'elitist gatekeepers', while in fact, you are the ones doing the gatekeeping. Why do you want to gatekeep the rewards behind a paywall, namely the new expansion? Why do I need to purchase new expac to get rewards I used to be able to get without it? That is not 'spreading the love', that is the exact opposite.

I would understand if you tried to share the MC drops between all the game modes, so all players, from all walks of life could enjoy both the content they like the most and the fruits of their labor. But you actions prove that you do not give a kitten about that.

With all due respect (and a futile hope for change),
Akilles.

Right. Seems these changes are to inflate numbers on Strikes at the cost of Fractals. And since the bulk of MC comes from log in rewards anyway, the change is heavy handed. I think it’s creating unnecessary perception issues. 

[Kelian Ravenwood.4130]

I appreciate providing the data to us ANet and look forward to the greater dispersal of Mystic Coins to the general player base.  Thx!

[Bleed.7052]

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 ?

[Wintermute.5408]

4 hours ago, KurokouNekoki.7891 said:

This is THE problem I have seen appeared since HoT Release and the introduction of raids, which I still heavily think was a serious mistake.
I seen someone getting kicked out of Strikes Mission for underperforming not sooner than yesterday.
I have contacted ArenaNet multiple times about this, they still have to adapt or even take actions on any of them, so we can avoid having to deal with that sort of treatment; which I believe is unnecessary if not borderline simply unneeded.

The problem didn't appear with HoT. The very same community used to sit in dungeons and police them in the same way they now do with raids. If anything, raids simply became a reservation for those people, making other contet actually playable for a change. That's on one hand.

On the other hand, last week we wasted about an hour of a raid on a single moron who wasn't able to figure out what toughness is. So yes, there is a reason to kick people from squads. No, there's no adequate solution.

[Petr.4102]

Hmm, one thing I have not considered.

EoD strike missions are gated behind purchase of EoD. Fractals are not.
If I am correct, you can do Fractals even on free account without buying anything.

In short, what they are saying is: If you want your Mystic Coins, stop playing Fractals, buy EoD and start playing strike missions.
You have bought PoF or HoT? Too bad, no MCs for you anymore. 

It could be their desperate attempt to increase EoD sales, for what we know. We do not have any numbers, they know how much preorders there are compared to other expansions. They have the statistics how many hardcore players or fractal farming players there is without EoD. They could have seen "ah, fractal CM players mostly did not bought EoD, they probably do not care about casual content, lets move things they like, that do not have 'Fractal' in their names into new content, so they move too."