Research Notes are antagonistic to players

[Flapjackson.1596]

I understand why such a system exists. It is a material sink. There is no subtlety in its intentions. The problems with Research Notes are that they are:

 

1. Unintuitive for regular gameplay, particularly for new players.

2. Playing whack-a-mole of constantly updating what can’t be salvaged, causing confusion.

3. Extra hoops to jump through to acquire a currency.

 

Every other salvage kit in the game is used with your inventory as you play. The player is trained to understand this as the core of inventory management. Research kits instead can’t interact with 99% of a player’s inventory. This is incredibly confusing to a new player. Particularly when new updates create a constantly decreasing list of things they can salvage. This system is now also affecting holiday bag drop tables, ruining easy food and utility access for players rather than change a flawed system.

 

This system is blunt and doesn’t mesh with regular gameplay. It has been forced upon the game to sink materials. I can’t present a better picture of how absurd this system is than the recent update to let you automatically salvage things you craft. Building something…. To immediately salvage it. What is the point here? Is there not a method here that doesn’t feel at complete odds with players?

[Witch of Doom.5739]

To sum it up, I hate Research Notes and don't know anyone who likes them.  ANet, please reconsider and get rid of them.  There's too much darn currency as it is, and these are the worst of the worst.

Edited October 19, 2022 by Witch of Doom.5739
spelling

[Will.9785]

The removal of holiday foods from the bag is going to ruin Wintersday karma farming.

Edited October 19, 2022 by Will.9785

[Khisanth.2948]

Did you not read the patch notes?

[Shuzuru.3651]

Research notes are somehow fine now, they removed what make them annoying to get (the salvage part), it also gave us the salvage indication which is kinda nice to have. 

About the removed food, this is dumb as the food were already in the "acceptable" price for research note before they even introduce research note and could have been a good sink for those item too. So having them in the bags would have changed nothing.

So I would rather blame the decision than the system, which is ok now (could probably be better, thought) 

[Linken.6345]

1 hour ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

Did you not read the patch notes?

Could you quote them since I seem to have missed what you are refering to.

[Sobx.1758]

I don't see the issue, but I also rather quickly crafted ~13k notes to have them just in case. As I'm currently running out of them, I... actually still don't see it as problematic, especially with the addition of automated salvaging on craft on top of the earlier introduced "salvage stack". Restocking thousands of them again will be rather easy.

 

2 hours ago, Flapjackson.1596 said:

2. Playing whack-a-mole of constantly updating what can’t be salvaged, causing confusion.

Was there any change related to that recently?

Edited October 19, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Khisanth.2948]

21 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

Could you quote them since I seem to have missed what you are refering to.

• 3 weeks ago ...

Quote

 

• You can automatically salvage crafted items for research notes from the recipe window. Using this option does not consume charges from your research kits; you don’t even need to have one in your inventory.
• Item tooltips now display the types of salvage kits that can be used on that item.

 

 

[Gibson.4036]

10 minutes ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

• 3 weeks ago ...

 

So this makes research notes, a terrible idea, slightly, minutely, narrowly less terrible, and... what exactly?

[ugrakarma.9416]

2 hours ago, Flapjackson.1596 said:

I understand why such a system exists. It is a material sink.

not even material sink, they blocked "cheap" stuff to be salvageable for it...., on first days was doing good sinking tons of cheap potions, ... then they blocked it.... so thres no point to sink only already expensive stuff.

now they removed festival foods from bags....,

theyre messing economy every  month, im worried about gw2 future; its resembling more and more greed pwe games. 

i wonder if they will hit fractal economy again to promote that 'strikes'.

 

Edited October 19, 2022 by ugrakarma.9416

[Khisanth.2948]

25 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

So this makes research notes, a terrible idea, slightly, minutely, narrowly less terrible, and... what exactly?

It makes it a craftable currency or an extra step in spending gold.

The actual process is now trivial so the only thing left is to go back to complaining about the cost of stuff.

Edited October 19, 2022 by Khisanth.2948

[Vilin.8056]

At least comparing to their predecessor, the Mystic Curio, I would say it's an improvement.

[Astralporing.1957]

21 minutes ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

It makes it a craftable currency or an extra step in spending gold.

The actual process is now trivial so the only thing left is to go back to complaining about the cost of stuff.

I am not complaining about cost of research notes. I wasn;t aiming at those anyway. I am complaining about Anet gutting access to cheap karma+mf food and utility source (and access to some cheap replacements for some meta food too, btw).

[Flapjackson.1596]

1 hour ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

It makes it a craftable currency or an extra step in spending gold.

The actual process is now trivial so the only thing left is to go back to complaining about the cost of stuff.

Making the hoop easier to jump through doesn’t remove the question of why it exists in the first place.

 

As I said, improving the system to instantly salvage what you craft only highlights the absurdity of the action. Why must we craft something to then salvage it to then get a currency to buy what we want? Why can’t there be a more direct path of sinking materials?

[TheNecrosanct.4028]

I'm sitting on almost 14,000 Research Notes at the moment and not a single one I got through crafting. I salvage dropped ascended armor and weapons to get between 200-300 per gear piece. If it's a unique skin, I use the Mystic Forge to change the stats and therefore the skin (they revert to standard ascended skins and you can always salvage those, whether they're crafted or not). Granted, that's only viable for Fractals and Raid players since those are the only 2 places where ascended gear drops with any regularity, but it's still a decent way to get them.

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, Gibson.4036 said:

So this makes research notes, a terrible idea, slightly, minutely, narrowly less terrible, and... what exactly?

How is it terrible now?

[kharmin.7683]

1 hour ago, Flapjackson.1596 said:

As I said, improving the system to instantly salvage what you craft only highlights the absurdity of the action. Why must we craft something to then salvage it to then get a currency to buy what we want?

Agreed.  I found this to be a dumb process.

[Flapjackson.1596]

1 hour ago, TheNecrosanct.4028 said:

I'm sitting on almost 14,000 Research Notes at the moment and not a single one I got through crafting. I salvage dropped ascended armor and weapons to get between 200-300 per gear piece. If it's a unique skin, I use the Mystic Forge to change the stats and therefore the skin (they revert to standard ascended skins and you can always salvage those, whether they're crafted or not). Granted, that's only viable for Fractals and Raid players since those are the only 2 places where ascended gear drops with any regularity, but it's still a decent way to get them.

This is a strategy worth highlighting if the system is to remain as is. I agree it’s not the most viable strategy given that ascended drops aren’t easily sacrificed for the average player.

[JTGuevara.9018]

So..I'm going to go even further than just the research notes. There is just a LOT of redundant loot in this game. Rewards that don't really serve a purpose other than to say, "Here ya go! Congratulations! (pat pat)"

Map currencies are the biggest culprit, imo. They're so redundant that a WALLET was needed just to keep track of them. Just an unnecessary middle layer between the player and the actual reward chest. Bags for "choosing" your own reward are another. Obsidian shards are another, although I admit they're more of a problem for pvp/wvw players. Select rewards for achievement chests are another(Are the Queen Jennah minis and repair kits really necessary?) This is just off the top of my head, I'm completely sure there's more...

The game just hands out so much loot that people have to actively manage it, lest they be completely inundated with it.

[Sobx.1758]

4 minutes ago, JTGuevara.9018 said:

So..I'm going to go even further than just the research notes. There is just a LOT of redundant loot in this game. Rewards that don't really serve a purpose other than to say, "Here ya go! Congratulations! (pat pat)"

Map currencies are the biggest culprit, imo. They're so redundant that a WALLET was needed just to keep track of them. Just an unnecessary middle layer between the player and the actual reward chest. Bags for "choosing" your own reward are another. Obsidian shards are another, although I admit they're more of a problem for pvp/wvw players. Select rewards for achievement chests are another(Are the Queen Jennah minis and repair kits really necessary?) This is just off the top of my head, I'm completely sure there's more...

The game just hands out so much loot that people have to actively manage it, lest they be completely inundated with it.

The map currencies aren't redundant, they have a rather simple purpose of being a direct bond between completing/playing x content and getting the x content-related rewards.  Just because you don't understand that simple purpose doesn't make those currencies redundant. Considering they're simply thrown into the wallet anyways, it's hard to think how they're somehow a bad thing for anyone actually wanting to play through the content.

Edited October 19, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Vancho.8750]

The whole thing with the research notes smells of not well thought out Dev Pet project that they couldn't let go and they constantly gamed the rules of the TP to mess around with something that wasn't that broken. At first it was a sink for garbage items but they started swatting the sinks and nerfed the salvage of items without telling anyone about it, then they kittening DOUBLE DIPPED on sinks by removing the supply of some items like the festival bags(who knows what else they axed) cause that ain't messing with the system at all no no.

Smells on stupid like the leather nerfs long ago, which took years to stabilize with random farms and what not instead of reducing the costs back down and it is still stupid that Medium armor crafting costs way more than the other two.
They are trying to address the hoarding problem since people just keep everything and the funny part is systems like the Research notes are the reason people hoard even more cause you never kittening know what the kitten it will be useful and who the kitten will buy out 1 minute into the patch everything from the TP to scalp it (yet another nonsense of the game, can we get some restrictions on how much you can buy from the needed items on just day 1 so more people idk see the the new content craft the new item).

I get that they are balancing and padding their Gold/Gem conversion but this is way too lame and obvious at least they should try to lie about it properly, tickle peoples fancy so they don't feel cheated. 
 

[Labjax.2465]

6 hours ago, Flapjackson.1596 said:

There is no subtlety in its intentions.

This sums it up well, honestly. When people try to say it's justified because of its intention (and I've seen that said numerous times since its implementation), they are missing that the majority of gameplay systems work because their intentions are subtle and you have to really put on a designer hat to think about them. It's sort of like a stage play in that way. The audience isn't supposed to see the behind the scenes while the playing is going (unless that's the point of the play or something lol). They are supposed to forget they are watching a play and become immersed in the experience. Research notes are like "here's a heavy-handed item/material sink mechanism, we're just going to lug this into full view and tinker with it in front of everyone in the most transparent and disruptive way possible." Some real avant-garde stuff.

[draxynnic.3719]

I think the biggest problem is the inconsistency in the intention. It's clearly a sink, but when people use it to sink unwanted items they have too much of...oh no, that's not what you're supposed to be sinking, we apparently want you to be sinking stuff that's actually valuable!

Seriously.

Just let it be a sink, and the market will sort itself out. People are using it to sink tier 1 materials? Congratulations, you've made tier 1 materials actually worth something! Don't worry, if they start being worth too much, people will find something else to research salvage and it will self-correct!

It's not actually a bad system in and of itself, but the strength of it is that it'll self-correct if it's just allowed to function. Bringing in a ton of exceptions or adjusting drop tables specifically because the system exists just compromises the whole approach.

[Eekasqueak.7850]

They really should just fix the festival loot tables. 

[Khisanth.2948]

2 hours ago, Flapjackson.1596 said:

Making the hoop easier to jump through doesn’t remove the question of why it exists in the first place.

 

As I said, improving the system to instantly salvage what you craft only highlights the absurdity of the action. Why must we craft something to then salvage it to then get a currency to buy what we want? Why can’t there be a more direct path of sinking materials?

Well anet apparently wants a material sink for all crafting materials in a game.

Any system that can take any crafting material in the game and convert it to something else is going end up looking pretty similar. In fact we have several other similar systems: the  four winds traders, faction NPCs that took donations in eye of the north and the similar daily trader in Drizzlewood.

 

They had a goal: a material sink for all materials in the game

They made a stupid solution. Then they improved the solution.

As to why that sink is needed, it is probably to replace the demand that used to be taken up by legendaries that have now dwindled away due to the legendary armory.