Endgame frustration - ridiculous drop-rates, unreachable goals, lack of goals, etc.

[Raizel.8175]

Hello, friends of the sun and disclaimer time: This is going to be half parts very reasonable criticism and half parts rant, because - for a while now - I'm losing any drive to play the game.

Where do I come from: I'm at ~1.4k LI, have full legendary gear (mostly), 7 legendary runes (why not delete the aquabreather slot though? and 4 legendary sigils. I did most of the content in the game you can reasonably do as a working adult, meaning the easier raid wings, some rare dips into the more difficult ones, fractals with some dips into CMs, WvW and PvP and of course open world stuff. I'm at a point where I can play the game very - if not too - comfortably.

One of the main goals still left is getting the last few necessary legendaries - especially the underwater nonsense (map completion is tedious as kitten though) - and cosmetic infusions for fashion wars. Cosmetic infusions are actually the first reason for my frustration. The drop rates are abysmally low. It's to the degree where - Asmongold put it quite well while talking about super-rare items in Diablo 4 - they may as well not exist. For example, there have been literally no Chak infusions in the marketplace whatsoever during several months by now. The only - and very low - influx we had lately was by people gambling away their collected materials for Zephirite boxes. Should a time-limited event actually drop more infusions than the actual content in a year or so? A guild mate actually gambled away 1k gold in ectoplasm globs and got a Chak and an Aetherglob infusion - something which I didn't even get in 6 years of doing the typical infusion train almost daily and sometimes even multiple times a day. Why can't I drop one even after doing the meta event for said infusion almost 2k times (if not more)? Hell, even the no-lifers which you can see every two hours at Pinata and Chak may haven't gotten an infusion. Are these drop-rates really reasonable? Is it reasonable that an infusion - if at all available - costs the price of 5~6 legendary weapons? Why can't there be a repeatable achievement for account-bound infusions where you do the event like 1k times?

Another frustating thing with the endgame are unreachable goals and I'm not talking about some grand PvP titles or stuff like that. I'm talking about getting into decent parties/squads for the more challenging endgame content. There are some very steep cliffs from the HoT to the PoF raid wings for example as there are for normal and CM fractals and getting over these cliffs is incredibly difficult. Getting into reasonable groups is the main difficulty of GW2 endgame PvE. That's - of course - partly the communities fault, but ANet isn't quite innocent either. Most people I've talked to really dislike gimmicky gameplay (most people for example dislike the new Silent Surf fractal for that reason alone). The group building options are still trash. The arbitrary balancing doesn't help either - at least it doesn't lead to people wanting to play support-builds. As far as listening to Teapot and Co. goes, the game is apparently bleeding the hardcore-players the endgame PvE community needs. That certainly doesn't bode well.

...and true, the new expansion is on the horizon, though it's marred by what we already know. Our crafted legendary runes will get nerfed. Losing the set effect is quite horrible especially for healing builds and pDPS builds. pDPS builds lose 10% damage output. The idea of giving new weapon options to all classes sounds awesome in theory, but will probably be quite ambivalent actually. There are classes which will profit greatly from these added options while other classes will definitely get the lower end of the stick. I'm also worried for the quality of the expansion. There wasn't that much time between the latest episode and the release of the expansion and Gyala was already pretty bad both gameplay- and story-wise.

Well, just my 2 cents... Like I've said, part rant, part reasonable criticism.

[Endaris.1452]

13 minutes ago, Raizel.8175 said:

pDPS builds lose 10% damage output.

Don't discredit yourself by putting nonsense like this into your post. It is nearly guaranteed that the vast majority of builds will get a damage increase as they can run a more optimized setup with the split and the new damage relic we've seen in the preview is more damage with an easier trigger condition.

Tried RTI or any other raid training guild listed on SC for getting into PoF raids? It's far from wizardry.

[Sobx.1758]

If doing the pinata for 1k days is attainable then getting on average ~8 gold a day for 1k days also seems attainable. Especially when you don't have much to spend on anymore?

49 minutes ago, Raizel.8175 said:

Another frustating thing with the endgame are unreachable goals and I'm not talking about some grand PvP titles or stuff like that. I'm talking about getting into decent parties/squads for the more challenging endgame content. There are some very steep cliffs from the HoT to the PoF raid wings

Well, that's not exactly true. Unless you somehow talk about "getting decent parties/squads" in the meaning where it's somehow ok for you to be new, but apparently the rest of your group should be experienced, which seems like a weird expectation to have.

[Debesyla.7102]

1 hour ago, Raizel.8175 said:

necessary legendaries

Heres where you are wrong. No legendary gear is "necessary". None. Especially underwater weapons.

(I won't comment "infusions are needed for fashion", because that is simply absurd - come visit any of regular fashion contests and you will see that almost no one uses infusions for fashion/style. Being shiny does not mean being good, uniquely looking.)

[IndigoSundown.5419]

Some (few) rewards are obtained via serendipity (i.e., they drop).  In order for those drops to be considered valuable, the drop rates have to be very low.  Make their acquisition more common, and the perception that they are a valuable reward diminishes, if it does not vanish completely.

Other rewards are incremental.  Collect enough of this laundry list and get the thingy.  Getting these items can be seen as very much a grind, at least for the ones whose laundry list if lengthy and/or tedious to fill.

The reason this game has both types of rewards is that there is a subset of players who despise the uncertainty of drop rates.  Incremental rewards are for them.  There is another subset who want the anticipation of drops, and who enjoy  the long-delayed fulfillment that comes when/if you get "it."  You'll note that there are way more incremental rewards than serendipitous ones in this game.

What you're asking for seems to be either better drop rates on the serendipity items (which lessens their rarity and thus perceived value; or turning the serendipity items into incrementally-obtained items, which does the same thing.  There's a reason the setup is as is, and that is to try to please different groups.  The happy middle of the roaders like both types and so have tons to do.  The other two groups at least have something. 

Sure, understanding why things are set up as they are is the game's booby prize.  That said, I don't expect ANet to budge on the current rare items setup because any change is going to displease some players, maybe as many as or more than it pleases.

[loonatic.1689]

I'm fairly certain a lot of those high value infusions are being traded not on the TP and that's why we can't find them. 

[Parasite.5389]

3 hours ago, Raizel.8175 said:

For example, there have been literally no Chak infusions in the marketplace whatsoever during several months by now. The only - and very low - influx we had lately was by people gambling away their collected materials for Zephirite boxes.

no one sells the big infusions on the TP because they know they can get more gold selling privately

[Vayne.8563]

I saw a lot of criticism, but not much reason. 

I'm 61 years old, always saw myself as a casual, but I ended up finding a group of players that play raids. Actually two groups. I'm a full time member of one static, and almost always end up filling in with the other, at least once, sometimes twice a week. I didn't even want to raid, they dragged me kicking and screaming. Sometimes I still scream, but I have killed most of the raid bosses in the game. We've been working on Qadim 1 in challenge mode for a bit and we should have it very soon. Just a matter of practicing the end a bit more. I have no problem with the reward structure of these games.  You have a lot more LI than I do btw.   

The infusion thing isn't traded on the TP, people often go outside to communties like The Overflow Trading Company on discord. I go through a guy I know who had an account with them and brokered a couple of them. But I make connections by making friends and get stuff done through networking. This works for me, because I'd rather play with friends.  

At the end of the day, though, I don't have any of the problems you have. I have other problems, just not the ones you have.  I'm not worried about the quality of the new expansion, because I liked the last expansion, and I don't hate Gyala Delves as much as you seem to.  It's okay, not great. But I think the expansion will be better.  Being worried about something is not a valid complaint btw. I worry about all sorts of stuff that never comes to pass.

[Khisanth.2948]

That low drop rate is just a matter of whether or not they want vanity items. For vanity items the fact that you can't necessarily buy it even if you have the money is a feature not a bug. Unfortunately anyone who just wants the item because they like the look instead of wanting to show off is up the proverbial creek ....

[DanAlcedo.3281]

I had no goal ingame since early IBS. 

 

[Shadowmoon.7986]

I kinda wish anet world make all infusiond either follow the system of the frost legion infusion, an expensive alternative method, or the system of the everbloom blossom, the clockwork and now the mote of darkness, lock an account bound version behind a difficult achievement.

There no reason the chak could not be put in the merchant for 2500+ chak eggs, or confetti behind 10,000 casino coins, or ethervoid behind 100,000 reputation. These would all be account bound, and would take a long time to farm, so the sellable versions would still retain value.

[starlinvf.1358]

Have you ever considered that maybe playing the game is the fun part?  And that the rewards are just icing on the cake?    If the only thing driving you forward is obtaining best in slot gear...... what happens when you accomplish that?   Would there need to be even more Bestest in slot gear after for you to chase?   

You're setting unrealistically high for yourself without considering its context within the wider game.  This isn't WoW or games like it.  You do not "need" everything there is.  And with what exists, there are at least 5 different ways to get it.  You can't have infinite replayability and infinite reward scales at the same time; its literally impossible due to the latter's mathematical nature.  WoW has to keep learning this lesson, and its diminishing returns accelerate with each expansion. 

Its also foolish to think an an infinite scale lends itself to rapid achievement. Some of these projects have to thought of in spans of months, maybe years, depending on what you're going for.  Any singular collection or crafting project shouldn't take more then 8 months of lax pacing; and the hardest ones are often done in 4 months of regimented play. And in 80% of situations, you can trade "economic for effort" by buying Raid or PvP Carries, pay guides to help you do achievements, or trading gold or other rare items for very high value ones. 

 

Honestly, after spending a couple months playing Rouge-lites, my perception of goal setting and progression enjoyed a total reset.  And now I can enjoy a game for playing it, rather then carrot on a stick treadmills every other game exploits into making you 'think' your accomplishing something of value.  Because in the grand scheme of things, having all BiS gear means nothing in a modern MMO, where anyone could the same given enough time, and without all the stress of trying to rush through it.  For your health, you need to decouple that level of emotional investment into just one game, spread it across a couple other hobbies.     Or like get a bunch of friends together for weekend games of BG3, and find every piece of terrain you can destroy, just to see what happens. 

 

 

[Astralporing.1957]

On 7/30/2023 at 8:50 PM, Endaris.1452 said:

Don't discredit yourself by putting nonsense like this into your post. It is nearly guaranteed that the vast majority of builds will get a damage increase as they can run a more optimized setup with the split and the new damage relic we've seen in the preview is more damage with an easier trigger condition.

The new Thief relic is capped at 5%, which is not better than 5% of scholars (or pretty much conditionless 10% Thief has at the moment) . Compared to Scholars trigger condition might indeed be easier for builds that actually use their autoattacks (although one will need to see how it will interact with shroud, celestial avatar, kits and conjures).

Still, claims of loss of 10% pdps are a heavy exagerration even if someone does use Thief runes currently (and most pdps builds do not).

Edited July 31, 2023 by Astralporing.1957

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I'm not sure I'm even going to buy the expansion until the legendary relic is released.  Just know that you're allowed to stop playing the game at any time for any reason.  There's is no imperative to keep playing GW2.  

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

i'll only say that 100% random drops shouldn't exist, and they should all be obtainable with tokens. arenanet has done really good here sometime (frost legion, stoneskin, the new one from cantha strikes i forget the name of), and absolutely horribly at other times, even in most recent content introducing more rng-only drops. i don't understand why they keep waxing and waning between one or the other and not sticking with a consistent system.

 

the biggest problem with the game has always been consistency. if they would just double down and make a pass over the game to make everything more consistent, the experience would become alot better within a matter of months rather than years.

 

they really, really really really really need to get the game under quality control review, especially older collections, events and rewards.

Edited August 2, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Astralporing.1957]

57 minutes ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

i'll only say that 100% rng drops shouldn't exist, and they should all be obtainable with tokens. arenanet has done really good here sometime (frost legion, stoneskin, the new one from cantha strikes i forget the name of), and absolutely horribly at other times, even in most recent content introducing more rng-only drops. i don't understand why they keep waxing and waning between one or the other and not sticking with a consistent system.

It's probably different people doing that. I've already noticed long ago a distinct lack of "shared knowledge" pool within Anet dev group. And it's not just the case of veteran devs leaving the company taking with them all their accrued experience - it's also a seeming lack of information flow between devs working on separate things. You can have one patch introduce a certain system to the game, and then the next patches getting done as if that system never existed (or inconsistently, with some releases using it and some ignoring it). It always seems as if each group of devs (or individual devs working on smaller projects) worked in vacuum, completely independent and separated from everything else. Which, in a game so complex and made up of so many interconnected systems is just plain crazy.

But well, that's exactly why by now we all know that C in Anet stands for Consistency.

[SamuelW.2685]

I get what you're saying, and it seems to me that the game is just losing its luster to you, between legenderies and awful balancing, to terrible and vile people who play endgame hard mode PvE, nothing seems to help.
 

What do I say? I think it might just be time to take a break from GW2, maybe for a week or two, maybe for a month, maybe for months and months, or forever, and look for other games or other hobbies to engage in.

MMO's have a tendency to get dull if you play them all the time, even without other issues, sucks the fun outta them. What's worse, GW2 hasn't been going along a good path lately, between trash balancing and lackluster content updates, it's starting to get a bit old. Me personally I can't even bring myself to play more then a hour or two much anymore, partially cause I've done most of the content I care to do, partially cause of lackluster updates.

There's a overwhelming amount of boring 5/10 games out there but if you dig down far enough through the sea of dirt and muck you'll be able to find games you enjoy. And if video games are losing their flair to you, there's always other hobbies, could pick up reading as a example. Could try another MMO too, I've been thinking of picking another one up to fill the void left by GW2 and FF14 though none of the super uber popular ones interest me.

[Dante.1508]

I only just finished my legendary masteries last week.. I'm not sure how many years they have been in game.. That said i'm waiting on SoTO legendary armors.. to see how crazy they are to deal with.

I found it easier to just buy my legendary weapons. i've bought 5? now.

[Triptaminas.4789]

I reached everything i wanted in pve, now trying to git really gud in wvw, after that pvp, usually last stage should be eternal but considering the state of competetive scene i just prob uninstall the game. 

People that care about infusions should be happy it have ridiculously low drops, u at least have a reason to play and log back in.

Its grind, it tedious, but at least u playn.

 

[Luthan.5236]

I think some people just grind too much out of the game. Wouldn't hurt to take it a bit slower every now and then - getting some other hobbies besides gaming or playing some other games. Someone that has all legendaries ... probably is an exception and not the average player. And ArenaNet can't just tailor the game around those handful of top players cause it would drive away the main playerbase.

The low drop rates and certain "unachieveable" stuff are ... actually to keep such players busy. Otherwise they'd complain for "more content" every few days if they completed that stuff as well. (Instead of playing other games every now and then and not grinding out everything as quick as possible.)

Maybe switch to WoW or an asian grind game? Don't see what GW2 could change here. Most stuff is playable with ascended gear (or even exotics) and they added that other stuff to partly set long-term goals that are hard to achieve - even for infusions that might drop super rare where you then have to pay 10k gold or more.

[Alsandar.7420]

I love EOD endgame. Mounts. Boats. Bots. Fishing. Strikes. Then leggos. The leggos are spectacular and very satisfying to earn

[Tren.5120]

Honestly, I don't even consider GW2 to have an actual endgame.

[Tren.5120]

17 hours ago, SamuelW.2685 said:

I get what you're saying, and it seems to me that the game is just losing its luster to you, between legenderies and awful balancing, to terrible and vile people who play endgame hard mode PvE, nothing seems to help.
 

What do I say? I think it might just be time to take a break from GW2, maybe for a week or two, maybe for a month, maybe for months and months, or forever, and look for other games or other hobbies to engage in.

MMO's have a tendency to get dull if you play them all the time, even without other issues, sucks the fun outta them. What's worse, GW2 hasn't been going along a good path lately, between trash balancing and lackluster content updates, it's starting to get a bit old. Me personally I can't even bring myself to play more then a hour or two much anymore, partially cause I've done most of the content I care to do, partially cause of lackluster updates.

There's a overwhelming amount of boring 5/10 games out there but if you dig down far enough through the sea of dirt and muck you'll be able to find games you enjoy. And if video games are losing their flair to you, there's always other hobbies, could pick up reading as a example. Could try another MMO too, I've been thinking of picking another one up to fill the void left by GW2 and FF14 though none of the super uber popular ones interest me.

Part of the issue is that many of the people into MMORPGs have played a lot - if not most - of the good ones.  And MMORPGs tend to regress as the years go by, so something that was fun 5 years ago may be less so today - assuming it still exists or isn't a practical ghost town.

Some of the newer ones have tended to be... kind of weird in the grand scheme of things... or designed for a specific type of audience (Black Desert, New World).