Opinions on how the new items and skins released with Living World Season 4 Episode 1 are obtained.

[Phyb.6704]

I would like to hear some opinions about things such as sunspear and sunscythe from the new istan map.

1. Only available from istan
2. Extremely low drop rate just like lightwards battlestaff from HoT
3. Price inflation because of the above

I feel that the item should primarily come from the new map it is released with but not 100%Implementing things like tokens from dif zones in base tyria, HoT, and PoF would work magic.Anet wants the game playable in a way that you can play pof with no requirement to buy hot. So just have no items req a mix of hot and pof tokens.an example would be..

Sunscythe10 event tokens from Iron Marches5 event tokens from Mount Maelstrom30 event tokens from Istan30,000 karma20g

This means...

1. Meaningful chance to revisit base tyria zones
2. Majority of the charge for item is from the map its released with. Still focusing on said release.
3. Flexability to switch between different areas to gain said tokens if one area becomes boring from things like replaying the same event over and over
4. 100% chance to get the item. It is not a gamble. You are not gambling your time away trying to get a item that may never drop. You are working toward it like you would a legendary
5. Continue the trend. We have skins from map completion achievements in lws3. We also have skins from wvw reward tracks. We also have skins from legendarys. This would be similar
6. More then just 1 currency sink. People will not just farm 1 event because it gives the highest gold like they do for griffon. They would need to do events that focus on different currency types. Thus diversifying activity's.
7. Let monotonous hours of replaying the same event over and over. Keeping things fresh.

I have thought about such a thing for a long time and over and over anet apears to release things with just one currency sink.Griffon = goldIstan items = istan eventslightward weapons = HoT chests

What do you think?

[Coulter.2315]

Why would you want to take away a reward which draws players to Istan? This makes no sense unless you just want the item for cheap, which is not a valid reason. You could make the same argument about the Chakk Egg, it would destroy the rarity and put people off going to Tangled Depths.

Unique rewards for locations keep people coming back, this is a good thing. Rare rewards keep people coming back, this is a good thing.

[Phyb.6704]

@Coulter.2315 said:Why would you want to take away a reward which draws players to Istan? This makes no sense unless you just want the item for cheap, which is not a valid reason. You could make the same argument about the Chakk Egg, it would destroy the rarity and put people off going to Tangled Depths.

Unique rewards for locations keep people coming back, this is a good thing. Rare rewards keep people coming back, this is a good thing.

The cost was an example... it could be 500 tokens. I just want a actual sense of progression when trying to obtain the item. Not a random gamble. It would still draw people to istan because it could for example be 20 tokens from 1 zone, 20 from another, x amount of karma and gold and then say 100 tokens from istan making you spend most of ur time there to get the item. However its low drop rate at the moment just means you farm the same 2 events over and over till you start to get bored of doing them. I would just like some sense that I am not just spending 20 hours for nothing. Making it take long and be hard is fine. Making me not know if I will ever even get it. Is another story. In comparison even ascended items can be gained by chance from things like teq or through progression in things like fractals.

[Coulter.2315]

@ohericoseo.4316 said:

@Coulter.2315 said:Why would you want to take away a reward which draws players to Istan? This makes no sense unless you just want the item for cheap, which is not a valid reason. You could make the same argument about the Chakk Egg, it would destroy the rarity and put people off going to Tangled Depths.

Unique rewards for locations keep people coming back, this is a good thing. Rare rewards keep people coming back, this is a good thing.In comparison even ascended items can be gained by chance from things like teq or through progression in things like fractals.

The Tequatl skins are unique to Tequatl.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

The game absolutely needs some items that have tiny drop rates limited to specific locations. That keeps things interesting for everyone.

Sometimes, there's a coveted skin that is part of that and it can be frustrating. But that's exactly what we ask for when we say, "we want good drops."

Incidentally, you mentioned the Lightward Battlestaff, which is cheaper now than it's been historically — although still at more-than-Black-Lion-skin price of 200-300 gold, it's cheaper than the week before PoF (270-380) and much cheaper than its peak (400g-620g). You didn't mention another item that drops at approximately the same rate: the Lightward Battlehammer. That can be obtained for 16-37 gold. What's the difference? People love the staff (one of the few melee-oriented skins) and don't much like the hammer.

In other words, it's not just the drop rate; it's also the level of interest from players. Plus, compare to gem shop skins: those go for 600 gems, i.e. 150 gold at current exchange rates; the staff isn't that much more these days.

tl;dr The OP is incorrect about the prices for the examples listed and assumes that the only reason is due to low drop rates. (Besides that, it's good to have some high-value drops and that requires low rates.)

PS it's been less than week since LS4.1 launched; it's hard to say what's going to happen to prices.

[Erasculio.2914]

Heh, I wonder what will people think if the recipe for the Astral weapon is as hidden as we think it is - behind a time-gated collection that requires you to gather from multiple of those meteors and lasts for at least a week.