SOTO rewards not so great?

[Mysty Meadows.1425]

I know gamers are rarely happy with loot, but SOTO.. well I finished the story and pretty lackluster rewards. I do better at AB Vine meta.

Is there something I am missing or not doing? My main is full ascended I don't die all the time and seem to do decent numbers of damage. So spare me the git guud nonsense lol

So educate and old man. What is going on with the rewards in this gorgeous new world we are trying to enjoy? Did the bulk of the R&D go for design and the cost of new rewards simply wasn't in the budget?

We could have bake sales to help raise the quality of the rewards..

[ugrakarma.9416]

Unless is a dev oversight, its seems this xpac is a gold sink/mat sink focused expansion.

By the way, u are benefited for increase in material demand, my mats in bank value increased, but i will do a better check later in gw2 efficiency.

another thing is that new item "krypts motivations" sells good atm.

Another possibility is that theyre leaving for the 3rd map be the "farming map", like the always do with near all xpacs(Except POF).

Ofc we can't be sure without the full release and fixes coming out.

Edited September 2, 2023 by ugrakarma.9416

[ugrakarma.9416]

i did a check with 'snapshot' tool from gw2 efficiency, the value of basic mats items have increased from 30 august to 2 september.

the xpac relies on research notes too, its a huge sink for mithril.

[ugrakarma.9416]

https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/item/100941-Rare-Kryptis-Motivation

[Luthan.5236]

Mainly interesting for the legendary armor (where they still need to add the later steps) - and of course for completion and achievements and the stuff. Then the usual: You can do events and meta events like in any other expansion's maps.

They might just go and add some infusion to the last boss in the last (yet to released) map to make it interesting to replay. (Like with any other content lol.)

[Astralporing.1957]

55 minutes ago, Luthan.5236 said:

They might just go and add some infusion to the last boss in the last (yet to released) map to make it interesting to replay. (Like with any other content lol.)

Infusions alone are not enough. There's at least one more factor needed. Either the event needs to be rewarding even without that infusion (like AB is), or it has to be trivially easy and fast (like Pinata). If neither of those two things is applicable, infusion won't change anything.

[Luthan.5236]

The meta events so far did not seem that hard. (Rarely see any fails.) Well ... far away from being trivial and fast like Pinata. But also far away from the Dragon's End meta. (Where they had to add the summoning stones as well. Though they seem to drop in price more and more with legendaries being made available easier and the kit from the vault probably getting new players to try gen 1 legendaries first.)

What I would not find that interesting: Adding stuff like unidentified gear (that some "farm maps" seem to drop) - that seems boring and uninspired to just try to create replayability by this. Then better letting the stuff be less played (since it is not that hard it should not need a lot of enforcement to get people to repeat it often) and adding one or another achievement in the future that leads back to that maps.

Though with the design now: Small expansions and no living world anymore - later content will be limited in how it can redirect players to older stuff. The seasons only did have achievements that sent you to the expansion before that (that was required to play the season), the season maps + the core maps. There might be no later stuff (except new achievements from the 3rd map from SotO) that can lead back to the first 2 maps. (Besides the regular grind for legendary armor maybe.)

[Tuna Bandit.3786]

Although I do agree that the drops on the 2 meta;s are a bit thin, I did notice that random mobs drop good loot. A lot of t5/t6 mats.

Overall the maps are decent in drops, but yeah, a lack of nice new stuff and giving us the same ol' unidentified is starting to look uninspired

[Aravind.9610]

The entire purpose of the new maps is farming for the legendary armor, which hasn't been released. You need 18000 blue essence, 7200 green essence, 3600 yellow essence, and 3600 globs of ectoplasm for one full set of armor. And the metas also give items required for the armor too, like Pouch of Stardust, Case of Lightning, etc. The third map hasn't been released yet, but the currency there is also required for legendary armor.

In short, the entire replayability of the map is for the legendary armor, which will be released at a later date.

[Okhu.7948]

Seem fine to me.

[Ashantara.8731]

1 hour ago, Aravind.9610 said:

The entire purpose of the new maps is farming for the legendary armor, which hasn't been released. You need [...]

For people who are interested in a proper overview: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Obsidian_armor

[Astralporing.1957]

9 hours ago, Aravind.9610 said:

The entire purpose of the new maps is farming for the legendary armor, which hasn't been released. You need 18000 blue essence, 7200 green essence, 3600 yellow essence, and 3600 globs of ectoplasm for one full set of armor. And the metas also give items required for the armor too, like Pouch of Stardust, Case of Lightning, etc. The third map hasn't been released yet, but the currency there is also required for legendary armor.

In short, the entire replayability of the map is for the legendary armor, which will be released at a later date.

That's a nice way of saying that the whole design of rifts and new metas is not to be rewarding, but rather to drain your resources instead.

[Mysty Meadows.1425]

I guess I'm too old school. The arcade type mechanics on metas like on Amnytas, I mean I expect a dance off to happen after the simon says with clicking colors etc.. What ever happened to knowing your class, having a desired build, you know FIGHTING, tank and spank, the trinity DPS/Heals/Tank. Oh those were the days. Todays gamers have no idea. They would spt their pacifiers if they had to face a 5 hour dungeon. The storytelling in GW is great, the mechanics.. cringe. The goal in GW seems to be who has the biggest bank account. But that is the way of the world. Anet just change the name to GreedWars.

 

 

Edited September 4, 2023 by Evon Skyfyre.9673

[Monarc.9726]

11 hours ago, Aravind.9610 said:

The entire purpose of the new maps is farming for the legendary armor, which hasn't been released. You need 18000 blue essence, 7200 green essence, 3600 yellow essence, and 3600 globs of ectoplasm for one full set of armor. And the metas also give items required for the armor too, like Pouch of Stardust, Case of Lightning, etc. The third map hasn't been released yet, but the currency there is also required for legendary armor.

In short, the entire replayability of the map is for the legendary armor, which will be released at a later date.

Right. Just hope they add more variety or dynamic events to obtain the mats or the grind for the new armor will be mind numbingly boring.

[Mysty Meadows.1425]

A player in game put it perfectly in my opinion. When 24 slot bags were added they said "Wow, 24 slots. Wish there was stuff worth picking up to put in them..".

[Manasa Devi.7958]

14 minutes ago, Evon Skyfyre.9673 said:

A player in game put it perfectly in my opinion. When 24 slot bags were added they said "Wow, 24 slots. Wish there was stuff worth picking up to put in them..".

To me, the main advantage of bigger bags is that you can ID larger amount of unidentified gear at a time.

[WeshGros.9043]

1 hour ago, Manasa Devi.7958 said:

To me, the main advantage of bigger bags is that you can ID larger amount of unidentified gear at a time.

The true endgame.

[kharmin.7683]

Still trying to understand why I get white gear drops in a level 80 zone.

[Mysty Meadows.1425]

1 hour ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Still trying to understand why I get white gear drops in a level 80 zone.

There are white gear vendors in the wizards tower.

[Cronospere.8143]

On 9/2/2023 at 4:30 PM, Astralporing.1957 said:

Infusions alone are not enough. There's at least one more factor needed. Either the event needs to be rewarding even without that infusion (like AB is), or it has to be trivially easy and fast (like Pinata). If neither of those two things is applicable, infusion won't change anything.

Lol indeed. Droprate of infusions is soo low, it wont change a thing for me. 

[Raizel.1839]

I agree, beside the new Wizard's Vault, which technically is available to all and its rewards are not exclusive to SotO (except a few).

Edited September 4, 2023 by Raizel.1839

[Bast.7253]

The thing that bothers me is that they keep adding unique skins but then making them extremely expensive. I went to do the one for the Special Ops earlier not realizing it's not only a collection achievement but a huge ecto sink. 

I guess that's not entirely different than buying the runic armor (some is likely more expensive than special ops) but then they went and did it again with the wizard's armor. 

You can't just add 1-2 whole armor sets (for an expansion non-the-less) and then make it some extremely expensive acquisition.

I can understand the reasoning being that they want something people can work towards and have a goal but I'm not pursuing them if they're going to make them that expensive. I don't understand what was wrong with the season 4 methods. Thinking Season 4. Maybe I'm misremembering and it was also extremely expensive too. 

Other than that, what even are the rewards with the new expansion? Masteries? I guess we had a few new weapon skins, right?

The scope is constantly shrinking and this content is only meant to last a year - likely far less than that when the new map comes out. (Though I imagine people will still play Amyntas because it's a cool meta.)

Stop making everything so grindy. This game shines because it's ultra casual. Under this new model it makes absolutely no sense anyway because living world is packaged with the expansion and paid for upfront. Why make it such a long-term goal to get these skins when there's no subscription model? I guess hoping people will check out the gemstore?

Idk. The rewards are definitely lackluster this expac though. Cantha had a bunch of armor skins (not my taste for most of them) but at least it had them. I'm fine with the number of maps and think (Archipelago being a bit bleak after awhile) that with an increase in rewards and cosmetics, and hopefully hearts next map, this model could work. Why are combat tonics so rare? No new infusions? (Not that infusions matter because they're a 0.0001% drop-rate) We got new guild decorations  at least. (probably still broken, haven't checked and haven't read anything about it in the game update notes)

The new acclaim system is a good idea. I don't know why everyone is complaining about it. The dailies and being locked into certain things isn't so great but it's easier to see and it's what I was hoping for in terms of achievement points a long time ago. I wouldn't even seeing this system be integrated into other things like pvp (with the rank system that hasn't meant anything in years if ever).