Piece of Unidentified Gear and/or Crests/Medallions etc. are NOT rewards..

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

On 12/21/2022 at 3:01 PM, Rogue.8235 said:

 

I think you hit on a fundamental, underlying issue.  Thus far, all discussion concerning progression has been in terms of "things" such as gear and whatnot.  While this isn't what you're saying, you do bring up the problem in the perceived blandness of loot.  The pattern I see here is that there is a general mindset that players want new, shiny things (be it cosmetic, better stats, etc.).   

I'm not saying you, personally, think the loot system is a problem in need of a solution.  I'd just like to point out a pattern that I'm seeing.  Essentially, players want a perpetual influx of new, interesting "things" (things is always in quotes because we're talking about virtual items that don't actually exist).  The biggest flaw, or rather limitation, here is the same as the American business model faces:  Growth cannot be infinite.  It is impossible to have an infinite influx of new, exciting, and interesting loot, because it would require perpetual creation of new, interesting, and exciting loot.  There is no organization that can sustain that level of exorbitant growth.

 

Essentially, no matter how "interesting," "exciting," or "valuable" loot is defined, they all have the same requirement, which is the infinite creation of new things.  I'm not aware of any human or human-run organization that is capable of doing this.  This premise subsumes the aforementioned discussion of the paradox of a stat-based progression system which does not actually change the end-state of the game.

(this last bit is directed at everyone, not any one person)

 

I do think it is interesting that your assertion closely mirror's Herbert Marcuse's argument of sustainability.  For anyone not in the know, Herbert Marcuse is a rather infamous communist who's writings underpin a large part of the culture war going on today.  I won't get too deep into the politics, but as a patriot I must clarify that there is no one American business model, and capitalism as a whole is not, nor has it ever been, about endless growth or the endless creation new things.  It's a shame this doesn't get taught in schools anymore, but capitalism is just the free and willing exchange of goods and services between individuals.  

That all said, artistry does seem to be quite limitless.  If Anet is able to keep creating new enemies, new stories, new maps, and new encounters, then it is no stretch to assume they can't keep creating new skins, weapons, and items.  The economic analogy doesn't transfer over well to artistry.  When it comes to analyzing player psychology, know that you're going to get a biased sample in this thread.  The people who are happy with the game's current economic system aren't going to come here to complain about it.  The players who are unconcerned with the game's economic system aren't going to come here, either.  The players who want a change in the volume of items they receive, and not necessarily new types, are also not going to come here.  They make other threads in more specific places of the game that they want more rewards in.  What most players really want is validation for their efforts, and this doesn't need to be in the form of increasingly novel or more powerful loot.  The reason why some people think otherwise is because the industry standard WoW does it.  

[Rogue.8235]

15 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

What most players really want is validation for their efforts, and this doesn't need to be in the form of increasingly novel or more powerful loot.  .  

Excellent point, and worded in such a general way as to not induce any form of functional fixedness.  Looking at any video game from this standpoint, without necessarily putting it in terms of in-game currency, items, cosmetics, etc. would (hopefully) spark some creative solution.  Unfortunately, I have not given this much thought into the loot system to identify any such out-of-the-box solution.

15 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

I do think it is interesting that your assertion closely mirror's Herbert Marcuse's argument of sustainability.  For anyone not in the know, Herbert Marcuse is a rather infamous communist who's writings underpin a large part of the culture war going on today.  I won't get too deep into the politics, but as a patriot I must clarify that there is no one American business model, and capitalism as a whole is not, nor has it ever been, about endless growth or the endless creation new things.  It's a shame this doesn't get taught in schools anymore, but capitalism is just the free and willing exchange of goods and services between individuals.  

I re-read my post.  I did not mention capitalism, only the "American business model" which is specifically different from other business strategies around the world.  Primarily, it is short-run driven with little thought (if at all) to long-run sustainability.  I have seen this mindset develop in most students while getting my degree (it cost me a good grade in my Strategic Management course, because my group mates were so concerned about implementing my plan which would adversely affect our stock price in the next fiscal quarter).

That said, I understand your point and agree with it.

 

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

One thing that does hurt this game is it doesn't have actual random loot. Pretty much everything you get is the same, because all the loot is specifically designed by the devs, (fixed names, fixed prefixes, and so on), so there's never that chance of rolling some epic item that no one else has.

 

I don't mean visually, either. I mean, imagine if you could get any combination of stats on dropped items of exotic quality or higher, thus matching the namesake. These stats would have no prefix, couldn't be crafted and couldn't even be selected on legendary gear (unless the stat combo already exists). It would open up an entire market for rare and unique items that fulfill specific niches in players' builds. It would come with its own downsides, but I think the fresh blood it would bring to the econemy would be worth it.

 

Also, I'm of the opinion they should introduce single-stat and double-stat sets at lv80.

Edited December 27, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Shuzuru.3651]

4 hours ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

One thing that does hurt this game is it doesn't have actual random loot. Pretty much everything you get is the same, because all the loot is specifically designed by the devs, (fixed names, fixed prefixes, and so on), so there's never that chance of rolling some epic item that no one else has.

 

I don't mean visually, either. I mean, imagine if you could get any combination of stats on dropped items of exotic quality or higher, thus matching the namesake. These stats would have no prefix, couldn't be crafted and couldn't even be selected on legendary gear (unless the stat combo already exists). It would open up an entire market for rare and unique items that fulfill specific niches in players' builds. It would come with its own downsides, but I think the fresh blood it would bring to the econemy would be worth it.

 

Also, I'm of the opinion they should introduce single-stat and double-stat sets at lv80.

Please no, leave those bad ideas for games where the playerbase like the rng to the point where it break the game. It's not this type of game

[Khisanth.2948]

It is actually possible to satiate addicts' quest for a new high? Seems like that can only end in an overdose.

LS1's 2 week release cadence was a decent attempt but the devs can't sustain it and the quality was a bit lacking.

Continually adding  new runes and sigils to support that high from a new thing is going to leave a trail useless trash runes and sigils. If it is through RNG acquisition then your chance of actually getting a good one will be constantly decreasing as well. We can't even have all the existing ones to be relevant so it is a dream to think that you can continuously add more and make them remain relevant. We can try to pretend legendary runes and sigils don't exist but most will just be salvage fodder for crafting legendaries. What if it is not RNG? Then we are just back to good old currency grind. I can already feel the excitement.

 

Actually since this is about loot drop I'll just assume it is RNG based. Lets also assume the runes will somehow always remain useful but we still need 6. What is the magical drop rate you would set it to so that it is simultaneously high enough that acquiring a set is not a massive grind but low enough that you don't end up back as square one a week after release. What is your proposal for handling the dilution that happens as new ones get added?

[Ashen.2907]

On 12/22/2022 at 12:32 PM, Hindenburg.3415 said:

 

As a person without a single legendary I can understand.

My whole bank is like 800g in mats and 300 in cash.

And in order to make that gold you need to farm group content like t4 fractals or spend many hours in Drizzlewood or something.

I don't want to do either of those things.

So I just kind of gave up on legendaries.

 

But I still like gw2 loot system.

One of the healthiest economies I ever seen.

 

Trust me, it is doable. Just hang in there. I don't normally do the content you mention either and have some leggies. 

[Firebeard.1746]

On 12/19/2022 at 7:02 PM, Milo.3840 said:

So I've been in love with this game since launch and have put in countless hours of gameplay. I love the rich depth of map exploration and achievements and the sense of agency with characters, but I have one huge complaint that I feel doesn't get much attention and I hope I'm not in the minority here..

 

Getting masterwork gear for doing countless metas/world bosses etc has now left me in a state of wondering "Why even bother doing those anymore, the rewards are the same lame thing over and over" which is just unidentified gear that has a very low chance of being an exotic that sells for less than 50s on the trading post. Once you get your ascended gear from Living World Currencies, there's really no point in doing them anymore other trading in the currency for crafting materials that rarely do you much good considering they still cost 1g per shipment.

 

Once you manage to craft a set of ascended gear, again, there's very little else to do considering you can just use an anthology of heroes in the mystic forge to stat change at will. BiS armor runes/weapon sigils are readily and cheaply available on the trading post and/or crafted leaving little to be rewarded from actually playing the game.

 

Magic Find is a joke because it does not affect boss chests, meta chests, or open world chests which more often than not give, you guessed it, masterwork unidentified gear and ascended materials that are usually considered trash to the point there are "Gobblers" like Gleam of Sentience that convert them into vendor trash for you so they don't take up space. Magic Find is also CAPPED meaning once you max out your Luck, it does nothing. As a matter of fact, Magic Find to me is now a burden because I'd rather loot junk that I can convert to Jade Slivers to trade for currency like Tyrian Defense seals and then use those to get materials.

 

I understand people don't want a "Gear Treadmill" and neither do I, but as soon as End of Dragons launched, I still had zero progression other than masteries because the gear is exactly the same, save for two new Stat Prefixes that are barely any different than any of their predecessors.

I can agree with the sentiment that things feel "unrewarding" sometimes I think the devs know this and they're trying to fix it. The only real reward is gold. I think they've been trying to keep more value in the economy by making research notes a thing as a sink to literally every resource to drive up costs. I don't think it's quite panned out how they'd hoped, but that's what I think I'm seeing they're trying. A huge criticism I can add on top of what you're saying is that a lot of valuable conversions are non-obvious. VM shipment containers are a great example. You need a website to tell you that it's worth it. More casual players won't have the prescience to look up every possible conversion and figure out what the best one is. I was probably sitting on gobs of cash when I first started playing in LWS3 and didn't know how to convert it and felt like metas didn't mean anything. That's I think the biggest issue is that it's not obvious why what you earned is valuable. 

I completely disagree with some points though:

Some metas are worth a lot of raw gold once converted. Like yes it's masked behind a bunch of currencies, etc, but if you take the time to convert stuff, you can still earn money towards your long term goals of either infusions or legendaries. On this vein I think every LW currency still has a gold-positive conversion, though it's not as valuable as it once was post-EoD because of changes to legendary mats required to craft Gen3. 

You still have to earn trinkets unless you have a full legendary trinket set if you want a new stat set. 

MF is really useful. I could feel that I was getting more rares and t6 lodestones to drop after I fully upgraded mine. I don't think that EU fast farming includes drop rates in its research, so if you're killing stuff, you're getting more money than is posted there. 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Firebeard.1746