Will convergences/T4 motivations render regular rifts obsolete?

[GeraldBC.4927]

It's already been teased that there will be convergences, big rifts that are instanced, give essences from all tiers and that require a not yet existing fourth tier of motivation to open. 

I'm concerned that if those are too good and have no limitation, that regular rifts will be rendered completely obsolete and effectively cease to exist as a group activity, defeating any purpose in adding them to the game in the first place. Why would someone go through the trouble of farming T1-T3 rifts if they can get all the essences they need by spamming this new, better rift? 

The first solutions that occur to me are to give convergences some limitation like a timegate. 

• You can only craft one T4 motivation per day, it works the same way as ectoplasm refinement.
• You can only earn rewards from one convergence per day.
• You can only earn rewards from up to 5 convergences per week (rewards are issued via a weekly rift hunting achievement)

[PzTnT.7198]

I'm guessing they will be somewhat akin to strikes with similar group limits and requirements. In which case it comes with all the downsides of having to form/join a group able to do them. Possibly on top of a costly t4 motivation and daily rift limits on the rift side so you can only enter a t4 rift on any given map once per day or the like.

Time will tell in either case.

Edited August 31, 2023 by PzTnT.7198

[Bast.7253]

I really don’t understand this system anyway. 

Why do motivations even exist? All of the time spent making this needlessly complex system could have been spent on something else, imo.

 

I guess the tier variations factor into the new legendary armor? 

[enigmatic.3576]

2 minutes ago, Bast.7253 said:

I really don’t understand this system anyway. 

Why do motivations even exist? All of the time spent making this needlessly complex system could have been spent on something else, imo.

 

I guess the tier variations factor into the new legendary armor? 

They exist as a material/gold sink depending on how you acquire them. 

Edited August 31, 2023 by enigmatic.3576

[Bast.7253]

2 minutes ago, enigmatic.3576 said:

They exist as a material/gold sink depending on how you acquire them. 

I mean we have enough of those though.

They want a material sink let’s look at the numerous materials still flooding bags that have no sink or use! 
 

If people need help spending gold or getting rid of materials like the ones used in some of these sinks, I seem to be having no issues and can teach you how to go broke!

[enigmatic.3576]

10 minutes ago, Bast.7253 said:

I mean we have enough of those though.

They want a material sink let’s look at the numerous materials still flooding bags that have no sink or use! 
 

If people need help spending gold or getting rid of materials like the ones used in some of these sinks, I seem to be having no issues and can teach you how to go broke!

It’s a material sink for the expansion materials pertaining to those those items. It does give a singe to T5 mats and what people use for research notes. 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Special:RunQuery/Base_ingredients_query&Base_ingredients[item]=Rare Kryptis Motivation&Base_ingredients[id]=14018&Base_ingredients[quantity]=1&_run

Edited August 31, 2023 by enigmatic.3576

[Astralporing.1957]

5 minutes ago, enigmatic.3576 said:

It’s a material sink for the expansion materials pertaining to those those items. It does give a singe to T5 mats and what people use for research notes. 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Special:RunQuery/Base_ingredients_query&Base_ingredients[item]=Rare Kryptis Motivation&Base_ingredients[id]=14018&Base_ingredients[quantity]=1&_run

It is a sink to:

t5 materials - those already have ton of other sinks, and creating more normal sinks for those is never an issue.

research notes - by itself a badly designed sink system, but one that already has significant use.

Ecto - again, a general use crafting material, and one that could have been easily just added to the actual crafting costs for legendary armor (i mean, it already requires thousands of those)

and kryptis essences - the very material people are farming for.

Motivations make no sense, they are just there to actually keep an activity that is designed around groups locked behind material cost that will eventually make most people stop doing it. Especially since the rifts by themselves do not give anything of value.

Even if Anet does not want Rifts to be a profitable activity, there was no need to make them a material sink. Just keeping them as a time sink would be bad enough to kill them in a longer run. Motivations are just a coup de grace.

[Bast.7253]

5 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

It is a sink to:

t5 materials - those already have ton of other sinks, and creating more normal sinks for those is never an issue.

research notes - by itself a badly designed sink system, but one that already has significant use.

Ecto - again, a general use crafting material, and one that could have been easily just added to the actual crafting costs for legendary armor (i mean, it already requires thousands of those)

and kryptis essences - the very material people are farming for.

Motivations make no sense, they are just there to actually keep an activity that is designed around groups locked behind material cost that will eventually make most people stop doing it. Especially since the rifts by themselves do not give anything of value.

Even if Anet does not want Rifts to be a profitable activity, there was no need to make them a material sink. Just keeping them as a time sink would be bad enough to kill them in a longer run. Motivations are just a coup de grace.

And it’s a system that likely won’t last beyond this expansion’s scope. So again, was this necessary? 
 

Just burning mats to click on a rift and press some text, right? 
 

Might be cooler if these motivations were used to spawn rifts instead of open already spawned rifts. Just does not feel good.

[enigmatic.3576]

10 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Motivations make no sense, they are just there to actually keep an activity that is designed around groups locked behind material cost that will eventually make most people stop doing it. Especially since the rifts by themselves do not give anything of value.

I do think the main reason is to prop up rifts as the material cost exponentially goes higher with each tier.  It feels like only a handful of people will shoulder the cost to craft these. Just look at the number of T1 rifts you would have to do to just craft one T3 motivation assuming that you’re providing the motivations for all the rifts. It’ll just get ridiculous once we go to T4. 

I don’t disagree with you that this method of theirs lacks appeal. It’s just unfortunately the direction they have gone over the past several years and this is a glaring example of where we are at now as a result. 

Edited August 31, 2023 by enigmatic.3576

[Gibson.4036]

It feels weird to spend the thing you’re farming for in the process of farming it.

[loonatic.1689]

It doesn't help that I often get less than 20 essences on clearing the rift with the motivation. 😑

 

I was holding back on rifts thinking convergence would lighten the load of essence gathering. I'm starting to think I was mistaken, and there will be a new obs armor requirement locked behind convergences, which will need another tier of  t1-t3 essence recycling.... 

In the age of bg3, don't be a d4 l pls. 

[Astralporing.1957]

4 hours ago, enigmatic.3576 said:

I do think the main reason is to prop up rifts as the material cost exponentially goes higher with each tier. 

I'd say it's the exact opposite - instead of "propping up" rifts, it devalues them.

[Sobx.1758]

3 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

It feels weird to spend the thing you’re farming for in the process of farming it.

Yeah, I can't even imagine a concept like "investing money to make money" or using fish as bait for bigger fish 😉 

Edited September 1, 2023 by Sobx.1758

[ugrakarma.9416]

9 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

research notes - by itself a badly designed sink system, but one that already has significant use.

not so so,

is a sink for mithril + these tons of jewels we get doing dragonfall or drizellwood, viw Jewel Craft.

[ugrakarma.9416]

7 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

It feels weird to spend the thing you’re farming for in the process of farming it.

the final item is purchasable, and these rift items availiabily will grow insanely.

just need 1 guy to open a T3 rift, he can lead a squad with 50.

im already with some batchs of rifts materialis just doing it ocasionally(im focusing on achievments).

[Manasa Devi.7958]

You need to do t1 (for rhe initial essence) to craft t2 motivations, you need t2 to craft t3. You'll probably need t3 to get into t4. I have to assume t4 yields will be able to sustain t4 motivations, or doing them will be useless.

[Astralporing.1957]

3 minutes ago, Manasa Devi.7958 said:

You need to do t1 (for rhe initial essence) to craft t2 motivations, you need t2 to craft t3. You'll probably need t3 to get into t4. I have to assume t4 yields will be able to sustain t4 motivations, or doing them will be useless.

Notice that this reasoning also applies to earlier rifts. t3 rift yields, for example, are unable to sustain t3 motivations. If the already existing t1-t3 system is not revamped, i'd rather expect t4 to follow the current pattern, with their motivations requiring doing all previous tiers in order to sustain them.

[GeraldBC.4927]

14 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Even if Anet does not want Rifts to be a profitable activity, there was no need to make them a material sink.

They are a material sink, both to create a more self-sustaining material sink and to offer players a choice. Spend more gold/resources on motivations and use them on every rift so you can farm your essences faster or get together with others and take turns opening rifts so you get more bang for your buck. 

 

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Notice that this reasoning also applies to earlier rifts. t3 rift yields, for example, are unable to sustain t3 motivations. If the already existing t1-t3 system is not revamped, i'd rather expect t4 to follow the current pattern, with their motivations requiring doing all previous tiers in order to sustain them.

And that's a good thing. Any tier of rifts not sustaining itself in terms of essences is crucial to the entire system making sense. If you could sustain t3 rifts just by doing t3 rifts, what point would there be in t1 and t2 existing? It's not like you need to touch them beyond the bare minimum to get to t3. So I do hope that if convergences give all three tiers of essences, that there is some hard cap on how many of them you can farm, because otherwise it will invalidate all three tiers of rifts. 

[Luthan.5236]

Where is the source info for this T4 stuff? (Too lazy to search through all the older news they might have posted on the website. :D) There surely will be people doing normal rifts once for the main achievements with the title. Instanced stuff would not count there then. And that stuff is probably going to be in the new map which actually is already (probably?) the demon realm where a lot of Kryptis are available.

I do not think it would be a big deal if the newer stuff was totally better. Can still solo T1 rifts in old maps for the weekly stuff and for the T3 people might just have to craft it themselves if still working on a title - and then with announcing it in the map they might get help. (+ only 3 maps on rotation - the SotO maps stay fixed - for weekly there might be people "sponsoring" a T3 every now and then).

Other than that there is no concern since they are not interesting by themselves. Not a big deal if almost nobody tries to do them anymore in the older maps.

Edit: They should make this a bit like Dragonstorm. Making a big instanced map for that new thing. One new expensive motivation to open it. And then big small rift events in there to close that finish with some huge legendary rift boss.

Edited September 1, 2023 by Luthan.5236

[Astralporing.1957]

22 minutes ago, GeraldBC.4927 said:

They are a material sink, both to create a more self-sustaining material sink and to offer players a choice. Spend more gold/resources on motivations and use them on every rift so you can farm your essences faster or get together with others and take turns opening rifts so you get more bang for your buck.

An activity that is a material sink better be really good, or it will get abandoned very fast. WvW could get away with it because it offered something unique to the players, but rifts are just a mindnumbigly boring grind. Which means rifts will become a dead zone pretty fast. Because there's a third choice you did not mention - to not do them at all, and thus not lose both time and materials. Or just stick to t1 weeklies, maybe.

22 minutes ago, GeraldBC.4927 said:

And that's a good thing. Any tier of rifts not sustaining itself in terms of essences is crucial to the entire system making sense. If you could sustain t3 rifts just by doing t3 rifts, what point would there be in t1 and t2 existing? It's not like you need to touch them beyond the bare minimum to get to t3. So I do hope that if convergences give all three tiers of essences, that there is some hard cap on how many of them you can farm, because otherwise it will invalidate all three tiers of rifts. 

You are partially right - the entire system indeed does not make sense. It assumes players will be willing to sacrifice their time and wealth to keep sustaining system that is there only to rip them off, without offering anything of value back to them. Based on past experience, that rarely works, and only in a content that is fun and entertaining. WHich Rifts are not.

Hint: there's not enough players interested in legendary armor AND massive mindnumbing grinding of a single, boring and completely uninteresting type of content to sustain Rifts longterm. Most of those players have already obtained their armor from either WvW or SPvP. Those that are left are players that want to get their legendary armor while playing content that is fun to them - and rifts, like i 've already mentioned, aren't fun. And you have to pay to participate, which makes them even less appealing.

(hint: if that material sink was really necessary on top of already extensive legendary armor cost, it should have been rather included in the actual crafting costs, and motivations should either not exist, or be direct drops from rifts).

 

Edited September 1, 2023 by Astralporing.1957

[GeraldBC.4927]

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

An activity that is a material sink better be really good, or it will get abandoned very fast. WvW could get away with it because it offered something unique to the players, but rifts are just a mindnumbigly boring grind. Which means rifts will become a dead zone pretty fast.

It's not as much of a material sink if you use your motivations efficiently. And if you have someone else donating theirs, it doesn't cost anything at all. That's the thing, it's as expensive as you make it, but it consumes resources which has a ripple effect of making older content more rewarding.

WvW offered nothing unique. What, because of the siege mechanics? Oh boy siege weapons sure are something never seen in a game before. It's not like every mmo has something like this. Large online battles involving armies of players? Lineage did it, WoW did it, Ultima Online did it, Albion still does it today and they all do it better than GW2 with WvW. There is nothing fun about hyper-micro-managed zergs compressed into a single blurb consisting of overlapping player models, waiting for the comm to give the go on spamming boons and overrunning the enemy zerg. 

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You are partially right - the entire system indeed does not make sense. It assumes players will be willing to sacrifice their time and wealth to keep sustaining system that is there only to rip them off, without offering anything of value back to them. Based on past experience, that rarely works, and only in a content that is fun and entertaining. WHich Rifts are not.

First off, there is nothing uniquely less fun about rifts than other overworld content. What, you'd rather do something else? Hoo boy, can't wait to get back to dragonfall or drizzlewood kittening coast, can you? Maybe even do octovine for the bajillionth time.

And aside from that, the system makes perfect sense. Where is all this nonsense even coming from of the content 'offering nothing in return' or 'ripping off' players? It's the same system as Aurene Legendaries in EoD and just like with Aurene legendaries, it offers you legendaries in return. The only difference is that the new system for the new legendaries actually forces you to engage with it in some capacity via essences, bottled lightning and stardust. 

I actually like rifts as an overworld thing because 

• It's not stressful (unlike a lot of instanced content)
• There is no minimum time required to do it properly, you can do lots of rifts or only a few rifts and the approximate amount of essences per rift stays the same (unlike fishing where you need to commit to those stacks one way or another whether or not you use jerky)
• You can start and stop doing rifts any time you want (unlike overworld metas which have specific 2-hour timers)
• It doesn't depend heavily on RNG because while the amount may vary, you ALWAYS get essences from every rift boss, every single boss gives you some degree of progress towards whatever legendary you're farming them for, guaranteed. (unlike jade runestones which are heavily RNG outside of very few, very specific chests)

You don't even have to search or wait for the events, you essentially cause them to happen yourself. 

Edited September 1, 2023 by GeraldBC.4927

[Astralporing.1957]

2 hours ago, GeraldBC.4927 said:

It's not as much of a material sink if you use your motivations efficiently. And if you have someone else donating theirs, it doesn't cost anything at all.

So, you just depend on someone else's footing the bill? What if they'll think the same?

2 hours ago, GeraldBC.4927 said:

That's the thing, it's as expensive as you make it, but it consumes resources which has a ripple effect of making older content more rewarding.

If the older content will become more rewarding, then it's even more likely people will move to that old content, not to this one.

2 hours ago, GeraldBC.4927 said:

WvW offered nothing unique. What, because of the siege mechanics? Oh boy siege weapons sure are something never seen in a game before. It's not like every mmo has something like this. Large online battles involving armies of players? Lineage did it, WoW did it, Ultima Online did it, Albion still does it today and they all do it better than GW2 with WvW. There is nothing fun about hyper-micro-managed zergs compressed into a single blurb consisting of overlapping player models, waiting for the comm to give the go on spamming boons and overrunning the enemy zerg.

If that were true, WvW would have been completely dead long before Anet first revamped the reward system there. And even now, after multiple upgrades to it, it feels very unrewarding compared to other parts of the game. If people are still doing it, it's because of fun (and one those players can't get anywhere else), not rewards.

2 hours ago, GeraldBC.4927 said:

First off, there is nothing uniquely less fun about rifts than other overworld content. What, you'd rather do something else? Hoo boy, can't wait to get back to dragonfall or drizzlewood kittening coast, can you? Maybe even do octovine for the bajillionth time.

You know what those places have and rifts do not? They are rewarding. If rifts aren't any different from old content, but old content offers rewards, while to do Rifts you need to pay, then it's obvious where players will go, don't you think?

2 hours ago, GeraldBC.4927 said:

And aside from that, the system makes perfect sense. Where is all this nonsense even coming from of the content 'offering nothing in return' or 'ripping off' players? It's the same system as Aurene Legendaries in EoD and just like with Aurene legendaries, it offers you legendaries in return.

Every single group activity required to get materials required for Aurene Legendaries offer also rewards that are quite satisfying also for those that aren't interested in those legendaries. Rifts do not have anything like that.

2 hours ago, GeraldBC.4927 said:

The only difference is that the new system for the new legendaries actually forces you to engage with it in some capacity via essences, bottled lightning and stardust.

And is completely unrewarding for anyone that does not pursue legendaries. But, apart from T1 rifts, cannot be played as solo content.

2 hours ago, GeraldBC.4927 said:

I actually like rifts as an overworld thing because 

• It's not stressful (unlike a lot of instanced content)
• There is no minimum time required to do it properly, you can do lots of rifts or only a few rifts and the approximate amount of essences per rift stays the same (unlike fishing where you need to commit to those stacks one way or another whether or not you use jerky)
• You can start and stop doing rifts any time you want (unlike overworld metas which have specific 2-hour timers)
• It doesn't depend heavily on RNG because while the amount may vary, you ALWAYS get essences from every rift boss, every single boss gives you some degree of progress towards whatever legendary you're farming them for, guaranteed. (unlike jade runestones which are heavily RNG outside of very few, very specific chests)

You don't even have to search or wait for the events, you essentially cause them to happen yourself. 

That's T1's. From T2 up you need a group, and someone needs to foot the bill. For now it may seem okay to you because there's still a number of players interested, with some eager to craft and use motivations to help everyone else out, but it's already diminishing. See how fun will that be half a year from now.

[GeraldBC.4927]

6 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You know what those places have and rifts do not? They are rewarding.

They don't give you progress towards obsidian armor or the legendary relic, that's the difference. The essences, you know the ones that you can't just buy with gold? Those are the reward. You don't do it for the loot bag or the random bones dropped by the mobs, you do it for the essences. 

 

14 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

That's T1's. From T2 up you need a group, and someone needs to foot the bill.

That's already accounted for, I already have a system for doing t2 and t3s for a fraction of the cost, ready to go when the generous donors are finished with donating motivations. People don't see the appeal now because there's still plenty of people with deep pockets willing burn through motivations, but even in the worst case scenario where that phase actually ends, there's already ways set up to solve it. 

 

8 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Every single group activity required to get materials required for Aurene Legendaries offer also rewards that are quite satisfying also for those that aren't interested in those legendaries. Rifts do not have anything like that.

Oh really, which ones? Raw materials and trophies? The same ones that are completely worthless unless there are material sinks to drain them out of the market? Those? 

 

11 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

And is completely unrewarding for anyone that does not pursue legendaries.

Why would those matter? The goal of farming the new content is to get the new rewards. If you don't want the new rewards and you don't like the new content either, what is the issue? Nothing's changed at that point. Just continue farming old maps then. Is the issue that other people are farming it? 

[perilisk.1874]

While making people pay to play content is obnoxious, I kind of like the concept of an item people can craft to make an event more rewarding for other people -- if it were made applicable to lots of types of DEs or other content, then it could help to solve the problem of dead group content that blocks people from completing collections and achievements, especially if there was a section in LFG for help beacons, and a way to teleport to them directly as well.

[Astralporing.1957]

2 hours ago, GeraldBC.4927 said:

Why would those matter?

Because people pursuing legendaries alone won't be able to keep this content up. Not for long anyway. Remember, that this content needs to be doable not just now, but after months or years as well. They are a novelty now, and the existence of few people willing to burn through their wallets to expedite faster farming keeps the relevance, but that is not going to last. After a while most remaining players still pursuing legendaries will limit themselves to T1s (and rift weeklies - also at T1). And players not pursing legendaries will not bother to come at all.

I guess it might not affect you specifically, but it is going to affect players that will go after that content later.