Why is Astral Acclaim capped?

[PixelHero.5849]

If the rate at which you can acquire astral acclaim is capped, and the rate at which you can spend it on market affecting items (gold, materials) is effectively capped, why is there a "wallet" cap as low as just over a week (ignoring special objectives).  In fact, it's possible to be saving for the highest cost item (1000) and overcap by completing a special objective (500).   **EDIT** - testing has confirmed that the game won't let you claim an objective that would put you over the cap  **EDIT**

 

Is there a reason for it to be this aggressively low?

 

 

Edited August 23, 2023 by PixelHero.5849

[Danikat.8537]

My guess is it's to encourage spending it rather than saving it. Making it possible to earn far more than you can hold means they can set the prices low enough that people who don't do all the achievements can still buy a lot of stuff, and capping how much you can hold at once means players who can do all of them can't save up enough to buy all the new rewards as soon as they come out.

Maybe also to guarantee that less restricted things continue to be bought. We know there will be some exclusive items each time, I could see some people constantly ignoring things like gold, mystic coins, crafting materials etc. to save their points "just in case" something amazing comes along later, and that would lead to an overall reduction in those things entering the economy (especially because players who don't really want them are more likely to sell them).

I could be completely wrong, but I've been wondering about the same thing and that's all I can think of. I've seen some other games limit how much of a currency you can have to make sure players spend it regularly.

It also has the added benefit that it tells us no single item can cost more than 1,300 astral acclaim (even the higher priced legacy ones), because if it did it would be impossible to buy it, but I doubt that's the reason for it.

[Asum.4960]

As all Live Service design these days - the goal above everything else is player retention, and crucially, through that MTX update exposure and engagement. 

You are not supposed to ignore the current offerings which you may not particularly care for and be able to save up to get what you may really want when you want it later, checking in at your leisure. You are supposed to play all the time and get everything every reward cycle (further incentivised by introducing fomo through all current offerings increasing in price later, if you don't get them now). And then do that over and over, playing constantly, and ideally checking the store updates meanwhile. 

[Borked.6824]

My guess is meaningful choices over capitalist choices.

[Parasite.5389]

it's to discourage account farming.
previously players with multiple accounts only needed to log in for a few seconds to earn massive amounts of laurels, spirit shards, Mystic coins, and other materials; this kind of hording has been proven to negativly impact the TP(look at the past prices of Mystic coins, where players were buying and selling amongst themselves to artificially inflate those prices)
these farming accounts will now have a limited impact on the economy.

[Gop.8713]

My presumption is that you won't be able to claim the 500 acclaim from a special reward if you're already at 1k acclaim, it's the only reason I can think of that the rewards must be claimed instead of being automatic. So 'overcapping' won't result in any waste, just force you to spend before claiming . . .

As far as why there's a cap my guess is that @Danikat.8537 is probably on the right track, but it does seem extremely low. I'd like to see it at double the price of the most expensive item, or at least enough that it doesn't force undesired spending. For example if I want a 1k item, have 900 and finish a 500 acclaim goal, I shouldn't be forced to spend 100 before I can claim that 500 and buy my 1k item . . .

[Sylvyn.4750]

I don't think we'll really know until we get past the first week, but I believe the 1,300 is just a weekly cap on AA that resets each week, where your currency continues to accumulate in your wallet.  Doing a full rotation of dailies and weeklies results in 1,255 AA earned, so only the Special tasks would have you go over the cap, if you managed to not miss any dailies or weeklies.  In a way, if you look at your dailies and know there is one you're just not able to complete, then that would be a good time to tackle one of the Special tasks, as missing one daily out of the 4 results in only 25 AA earned instead of 65 AA, and missing a few days can add up.

Here is a clue per the Wiki, which comes close to 11 weeks times 1,300 per week, or 14,300, plus maybe a little extra for those that could play at launch until reset on launch day: 

• Over the course of the 77 days players can accumulate up to 14,760 https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/a/a7/Astral_Acclaim.png/25px-Astral_Acclaim.png, 76 https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/d/d1/Gold_coin.png/18px-Gold_coin.png, and 110 https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/5/56/Laurel.png/20px-Laurel.png.

[PixelHero.5849]

@Danikat.8537  Well said!  I was unable to think of a reason for the cap from the market forces side of things as I was only thinking from the other direction.   They had already implemented a "buy X at low cost, then infinite at high cost" system that would limit market effects from Acclaim hoarders if they held on until the next cycle, but you are completely correct that that's not the whole story at all.  They actually want people to be continuously spending points on things like mystic coins to keep those entering the market.  Honestly, your response and how utterly gobsmacked I am that I didn't think of that proves that there might be a very, very good reason for that limit to be there: to implicitly steer players away from destructive FOMO hoarding.  Acclaim is not just for acquiring skins, QOL (templates), and gold, it's actually still deeply integrated into the existing market and a certain percentage of points need to be spent on things to maintain the existing market balance from the old system.

 

 

@Parasite.5389
I understand that is why they ditched the login rewards, and I'm fine with that.  Some may grouse at the rewards being too low to replace the previous system, but those are solvable with just number tweaks.  The strategic approach of rewarding active gameplay to eliminate the incentive to have large numbers of login farming accounts is sound and honestly, pretty well thought out.

But that only looks at the acquisition of Acclaim, not why how much Astral Acclaim you can have at one time is capped, which is what we're pondering here.

 

@Gop.8713 I wasn't sure if they prevented overcapping like you say, as I hadn't heard of anyone who had tested it, but thanks to the wiki (they speedy), I see that it is.  At least that is very forward thinking and prevents the scenario I outlined.  Thanks for the info!  I agree, I think the limit is a bit low, I'd prefer to be able to "bank" ONE expensive item and still get an entire week's rewards, but it's hard to say what the best path is from one day of gameplay.

Edited August 23, 2023 by PixelHero.5849

[Dawdler.8521]

3 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

My guess is it's to encourage spending it rather than saving it.

This coming from the devs that added currencies to WvW you could literally only stack for years and years because there was nothing useful to buy - and some of it still today stack up in your inventory, not even wallet.

And then they instantly learn how to encourage spending with an undercooked and hastily released PvE expansion feature. 

Hmmm... 

Well, now that I think about it, it actually make perfect sense.

Edited August 23, 2023 by Dawdler.8521

[Gibson.4036]

It has the potential to keep the currency relevant in the long term.

Look at Karma. On EoD launch there were players that were in shock. "210k Karma for a fishing hat skin!"

A whole bunch of other players scoffed. "I've got 10m karma just sitting on my account without something to spend it on!"

There's no way to set anything at a Karma price that makes sense, because the currency has been around and stockpiled for so long. New items can't be priced high enough to significantly drain the currency because there's just too much of it and players have run out of ways to spend it. Limit how much you can hold on to, and when they release another 1k AA item in the next cycle, it's still meaningful to the entire player base.

That's the reason we have so many different kinds of currency. ANet has had to keep making new ones to keep them relevant, because old ones build up to huge stockpiles. You can see they're doing it now with Prophet shards, consolidating old ones so players have the chase the newest ones, and not just log in to spend the huge pool they already built up on the new shiny.

I say this as someone who plays casually and slowly accumulates currencies over sometimes ridiculously long times. A currency limit isn't great for me, but I understand the why of it. In the end it does help me because a year from now ANet won't feel the need to issue new items costing 500k AA just to be a meaningful price for people who play a lot.

 

[Funky.4861]

1 hour ago, Borked.6824 said:

My guess is meaningful choices over capitalist choices.

What do you mean by a 'capitalist' choice?

[Dalent.9358]

3 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

It has the potential to keep the currency relevant in the long term.

Look at Karma. On EoD launch there were players that were in shock. "210k Karma for a fishing hat skin!"

A whole bunch of other players scoffed. "I've got 10m karma just sitting on my account without something to spend it on!"

There's no way to set anything at a Karma price that makes sense, because the currency has been around and stockpiled for so long. New items can't be priced high enough to significantly drain the currency because there's just too much of it and players have run out of ways to spend it. Limit how much you can hold on to, and when they release another 1k AA item in the next cycle, it's still meaningful to the entire player base.

That's the reason we have so many different kinds of currency. ANet has had to keep making new ones to keep them relevant, because old ones build up to huge stockpiles. You can see they're doing it now with Prophet shards, consolidating old ones so players have the chase the newest ones, and not just log in to spend the huge pool they already built up on the new shiny.

I say this as someone who plays casually and slowly accumulates currencies over sometimes ridiculously long times. A currency limit isn't great for me, but I understand the why of it. In the end it does help me because a year from now ANet won't feel the need to issue new items costing 500k AA just to be a meaningful price for people who play a lot.

 

I wish they would do the prophet shard thing with more currencies. HoT is "over" so it would be nice to consolidate all those currencies into one, like they did with the dungeons. I absolutely hate opening my wallet because of how ridiculously long the currency list is.

[PixelHero.5849]

18 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

It has the potential to keep the currency relevant in the long term.

Look at Karma. On EoD launch there were players that were in shock. "210k Karma for a fishing hat skin!"

A whole bunch of other players scoffed. "I've got 10m karma just sitting on my account without something to spend it on!"

There's no way to set anything at a Karma price that makes sense, because the currency has been around and stockpiled for so long. New items can't be priced high enough to significantly drain the currency because there's just too much of it and players have run out of ways to spend it. Limit how much you can hold on to, and when they release another 1k AA item in the next cycle, it's still meaningful to the entire player base.

That's the reason we have so many different kinds of currency. ANet has had to keep making new ones to keep them relevant, because old ones build up to huge stockpiles. You can see they're doing it now with Prophet shards, consolidating old ones so players have the chase the newest ones, and not just log in to spend the huge pool they already built up on the new shiny.

I say this as someone who plays casually and slowly accumulates currencies over sometimes ridiculously long times. A currency limit isn't great for me, but I understand the why of it. In the end it does help me because a year from now ANet won't feel the need to issue new items costing 500k AA just to be a meaningful price for people who play a lot.

 

Also an excellent point! 

 

Honestly, it's humbling to question what seems like an arbitrary restriction and then find it backed by multiple, well-thought out arguments that prove just how good something that goes counter to my monkey brain can be.  Honestly, I think they should have published this sort of thinking when they brought up the Vault a few weeks ago.  We've had deep dives before (such as the DirectX frame timings), and I think properly communicating why there are certain restrictions and limitations can both manage expectations and smooth out any rough edges players experience at launch day.  Seriously, in a few hours, you all have completely changed my perspective on why this limit exists.

[Asum.4960]

10 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

It has the potential to keep the currency relevant in the long term.

Look at Karma. On EoD launch there were players that were in shock. "210k Karma for a fishing hat skin!"

A whole bunch of other players scoffed. "I've got 10m karma just sitting on my account without something to spend it on!"

There's no way to set anything at a Karma price that makes sense, because the currency has been around and stockpiled for so long. New items can't be priced high enough to significantly drain the currency because there's just too much of it and players have run out of ways to spend it. Limit how much you can hold on to, and when they release another 1k AA item in the next cycle, it's still meaningful to the entire player base.

That's the reason we have so many different kinds of currency. ANet has had to keep making new ones to keep them relevant, because old ones build up to huge stockpiles. You can see they're doing it now with Prophet shards, consolidating old ones so players have the chase the newest ones, and not just log in to spend the huge pool they already built up on the new shiny.

I say this as someone who plays casually and slowly accumulates currencies over sometimes ridiculously long times. A currency limit isn't great for me, but I understand the why of it. In the end it does help me because a year from now ANet won't feel the need to issue new items costing 500k AA just to be a meaningful price for people who play a lot.

 

Alternatively they could have spent time and resources on actually developing rewards to be purchased for those currencies. Ofc they ever become irrelevant if reward pools are barely ever updated, with any new rewards coming with yet another new currency to grind once more, so retention stays up. 

Nothing prevents Anet from offering new rewards for Gold, Karma and Co. to keep these og currencies relevant - other than wanting to reap the rewards of player retention without putting in the work to provide the necessary amount of incentives for it. 

It's simply easier to make a new currency for every new handful of rewards (and/or to arbitrarily cap them now), so players have to grind anew every time they want some new offering, than it is to actually deliver meaningful rewards at a reasonable pace, so the currencies never pile up astronomically to begin with, keeping players engaged in building them up - retaining them as players that way. 

It's not that they have to, it's that they choose to. It's simply a least amount of effort for highest amount of player retention calculation - skewed heavily against the player and in favour of company.

[GoodMartin.6307]

Arenanet will probably release new mount/armor skins and unique items in the vault with each larger patch/quarter or even maybe add new dailies/weeklies/special specific to new content so they don't want players to storage tens of k of currency and buy out new stuff day one of new patch and instead earn it with time.

[Zebulous.2934]

well good news, anything added to the vault cannot cost more than the cap... Unless they copy ESO and make you buy parts of a collection and then "assemble" your mount or mini.  After all Eso has a cap on their event tickets...

[SPAM lANWALKER.6187]

12 hours ago, Parasite.5389 said:

it's to discourage account farming.
previously players with multiple accounts only needed to log in for a few seconds to earn massive amounts of laurels, spirit shards, Mystic coins, and other materials; this kind of hording has been proven to negativly impact the TP(look at the past prices of Mystic coins, where players were buying and selling amongst themselves to artificially inflate those prices)
these farming accounts will now have a limited impact on the economy.

lol at the reasoning , if this were true i wouldnt see literally 100's of bot farmers tanking the economy far worse than a few acc spammers , most of the guys affected are peole with a single extra account just to help with getting a leg up gathering ect.. or getting mc and laurels to make leggies 

go anet woooo , for fixng something that didnt require it , saves me 120gb ssd space for better game though , thanks anet!!

[ugrakarma.9416]

they hired PWE developers....

even the currency name is close "rough astral diamonds".

https://neverwinter.fandom.com/wiki/Astral_Diamond