Increasing replayability on Raids/Strikes

[Dark Red Killian.3946]

One thing I have noticed as a player who really enjoys playing the new strikes and cms is this: I always cross my fingers hoping that LFG will have groups up for CMs for the new strikes. Most of the time you see one or two from eotn strikes, but it's just been scarce to find teams in LFG for EOD strikes. Sometimes no posts for groups. Enter fractals, almost always you can see groups up for T4 fractals or CMs/T4s, or recs, etc. Fractals is really different than raids/strikes in a few ways. 1. 10-man vs. 5-man. People will definately prefer 10-man over 5-man esp if it's harder to get the 10 people together. 2. rewards. Fractals has a reward for clearing each and every fractal as many times as you want. They also have rotating dailies that give excellent rewards for gold. Strikes has a weekly reward of gold, and then shards that are capped weekly. These shards are redeemable similar to fractal relics, however fractal relics are not capped at all. Increase the weekly cap or get rid of the green shard cap. Alternatively, give other ways of getting more green shards above the cap (besides dailies). This could be miniatures or ascended drops that you can trade in for green shards like in raids. Also, clearing each strike should give some kind of constant treasure chest reward (like the fractal boxes) where you have to unlock with keys that are obtains by doing dailies (or more keys can be purchased for shards like in fractals). The boxes can also be sellable on TP. These boxes can contain similar contents to fractal boxes except make it a noticable difference, like giving wood, metal, cloth, or leather pieces. Constant loot will give incentive to play more run throughs of the strike/raid rather than just 1 and done.  3. Fractals have an increasing level of difficulty based on your experience in the game mode. Raids/strikes just have lfg. Raids do have emboldened mode, but that's one wing a week. Raids/strikes could possibly benefit from an "experience" system. It doesn't have to be 4tiers like fractals, but perhaps a raid/strike level that unlocks specific tiers of LFG. For example, newcomers cannot just go to "experienced" lfg. They must choose beginner LFG and work through say, 5 clears of each strike. Then maybe semi-experienced lfg is unlocked, making you have to clear 10 of each strike. Then experienced is unlocked. Lastly, once a raid wing is cleared, allow the option to replay any boss in that wing on demand for the extra rewards outlined above.

 

I think making improvements to the reward system similar to what I mentioned above, as well as improving on the LFG to ensure the proper experience levels play together will help the replayability of strikes/raids. For me, who doesn't play every hour of the day, I can choose what game mode I want to play for the day/week and not have to worry that I'm not making as much gold as when I just grind fractals on days I need extra gold. Maybe all the modes equally rewarding to encourage more people to play, but also so one game mode does not get left behind. Variety is a must in a game, but if the variety is not worth the time to play it can be forgotten easily.

Edited January 31, 2023 by Dark Red Killian.3946

[Cuks.8241]

1 hour ago, Dark Red Killian.3946 said:

One thing I have noticed as a player who really enjoys playing the new strikes and cms is this: I always cross my fingers hoping that LFG will have groups up for CMs for the new strikes

EU or NA? Because Ive been noticing that strike and raid lfg has been positively exploding lately including plenty of cm squads.