WvW Skirmish Claim Ticket system and requirement for Conflux.

[Anasate.5408]

Hello. I decided to make this post because I take issue with the way WvW Skirmish Claim Tickets are awarded, and the time investment required for filling one of the item slots with the best-in-slot option, specifically Conflux.

First of all, skirmish claim tickets are pretty toxic as far as game currencies go, it's a very non-GW2 system. You have to sit through ~15 hrs of WvW per week to maximize claim tickets, but the acquisition is non-linear. Curve is (roughly) as follows:

• wood - 0.17 tickets/pip
• bronze - 0.2 tickets/pip
• silver - 0.22 tickets/pip
• gold - 0.25 tickets/pip
• platinum - 0.26 tickets/pip
• mithril - 0.27 tickets/pip
• diamond - 0.27 tickets/pip

The average person with a job, kids and/or school doesn't have 15 hrs of game time per week to begin with, but making it non-linear with a positive feedback curve makes it way worse because it promotes addictive behavior. This makes no sense at all in the context of GW2 (neither financially for Anet, nor from a player enjoyment perspective).

Coalescence (raid legendary ring) requires 6 weeks (at 25 legendary insights/week, using only raid encounters). All raiding guilds I've played with complete all raid wings in about 6hrs every week, so that's 36 hours of playtime required for Coalescence. Admittedly, this is anecdotal, but I have no data for raid clear times and empirical evidence feels good enough here. Now, assuming the best case scenario of 4 weeks (with 455 tickets/week, including weeklies) for getting enough claim tickets to make Conflux, at 15 hrs/week, that makes ~60 hrs total time investment. In a typical scenario, Conflux takes 66% more hours to make than Coalescence which is very imbalanced!

This post will probably get buried, but just in case someone in charge reads this, my humble suggestion is to change the WvW Skirmish Claim Ticket acquisition curve and drastically reduce the amount of WvW Skirmish Claim Tickets necessary to put it on par with its counterpart.

The ticket acquisition curve should at least be reversed to create a player friendly environment within the game mode. A negative feedback rewards system promotes responsible play time and caters to all player types, not just to enthusiasts of the game mode who also have a generous amount of play time at their disposal.

Edited December 12, 2023 by Anasate.5408
Small change for clarification purposes; reworded something to avoid bias.

[Linken.6345]

well 1 need 1 person to complete namely you the other need 9 other people in addition shouldent the soloable option be more time consuming to get?

[vares.8457]

Didn’t they already make it easier and faster to get skirmish tickets with the weekly rewards? 
I made two Conflux just by playing the game mode I like the most, so I don’t really see a problem here. 

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

19 minutes ago, vares.8457 said:

Didn’t they already make it easier and faster to get skirmish tickets with the weekly rewards? 
I made two Conflux just by playing the game mode I like the most, so I don’t really see a problem here. 

Yes.  What we're seeing here is the reduced version of the ticket grind, from just before EoD was released.

You have to play WvW, but in the weakest sense of the word.  To get Conflux and the WvW Legendary Armor I did the lazy method of sitting hidden behind an enemy camp and just taking it every 10 minutes or so.  So long as you take a camp or stomp a fool every once in awhile, you'll maintain participation, which will then give you all the skirmish chests.  

[Biziut.3594]

Agree with all peoples that answered You op.

From myself I will only add that legendaries are a long term goal, they are supposed to take time to get them. If You don't have time to play, than thats kind of a "You problem", not the game itself, especially when You take into consideration that You don't need legendary to perticipate in any content in the game. Exotic are fine enough and Ascended is the same stat wise as Legendary. Only diffrence is QOL and that wierd balls.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

The word toxic lost all meaning.

[Dawdler.8521]

If you want instant BiS, play sPvP.

While it’s not the fastest, skirmish tickets (and GoB) is literally laziest way to progress toward something because you get it by doing absolutely nothing in addition to playing WvW for the simple pleasure of playing WvW, whether that be roaming, zerging, guild raiding or whatever it is weirdos do in EB all day.

Kitten me I remember when I built Bifrost a decade or so ago and had to spend over half a year or so gathering materials. 

Everything about legendaries is super simple today. If you don’t like playing WvW well that’s a you problem not a reward structure problem. Which is fine, we don’t have to like everything.

[Biziut.3594]

4 minutes ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

The word toxic lost all meaning.

Ikr. But he is totally right. Those toxic skirmish tickets whispered me the other day and called my look ugly, my dps weak and my mother a kitten. Xd

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

Comparing Conflux to Coalescence is pointless considering that you can finish Conflux by just flipping camps, while the same effort earns you a kick from pretty much any squad when it comes to Raiding.

You can get up to 455 tickets a week, that's 4 weeks of WvW, since the weekly WvW reset is Monday while the skirmish reset is Friday. Be happy it's not like before, considering now you get a minimum of 5 pips per tick, while in the same situation you would have gotten 3 in the past.

[Minna.7895]

The raid legendary ring also got a little "devalued" by the LI/LD change, before this you only got the LD you needed from wings 5, 6 and 7 - not only did it take way longer, it also was only available through completing the percieved "harder" raidwings (maybe harder is the wrong word, more like: the wings where more people have to actually know what's going on and not just few do mechanics and most can oogabooga ).

But ye, I was annoyed at the wvw ring aswell, but that's just cause I don't like wvw much (would have wished for a duplicate raidring at the time), thankfully back then it was possible to keep participation up by repairing walls and gates or escorting dolyaks (that last one btw still works- every 5 min). 

[Farohna.6247]

As a person who does not spend or have time for 15 hours of WvW a week and is also working on Conflux, I have to disagree.  Toxic is a much overused word these days.  If it causes you addictive behavior, that's on you...seek help if you think you have an addictive personality and need help regulating it. 

I think what you really want to say is you find it discouraging how many tickets it takes.  But as many have mentioned, you can earn them just by flipping some camps.  It may take time, so just do WvW dailies and weeklies and they add up, and don't stress about it. 

One could argue that locking Coalescence behind raids is gatekeeping and exclusionary and against the game's philosophy too, and not everyone has time to raid or to join guilds who are structured enough to coordinate one.  But it's one of the very few things that are raid exclusive, and that's good to get people to maybe try it.

As for myself, I'll continue to gradually work on my skirmish tickets.  

 

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

1 hour ago, Minna.7895 said:

The raid legendary ring also got a little "devalued" by the LI/LD change, before this you only got the LD you needed from wings 5, 6 and 7 - not only did it take way longer, it also was only available through completing the percieved "harder" raidwings (maybe harder is the wrong word, more like: the wings where more people have to actually know what's going on and not just few do mechanics and most can oogabooga ).

You could convert ~170 LI into LD before Anet got rid of the separation between LI and LD.

[Ashen.2907]

Best in slot would be ascended. Legendaries have no better stats and are largely a convenience item. 

I think you can still get bonus akirmish tickets from reward chests for capturing some objectives. Not a lot, but some.

[Minna.7895]

28 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

You could convert ~170 LI into LD before Anet got rid of the separation between LI and LD.

Wasn't that like depending on how many LI you earned in w5 before it got changed to LD when POF released? Maybe I just don't remember because I swapped that stuff back and forth for storage/easy ping purposes  (at that time I didn't even want the ring, just made it when the legendary armory was announced and had more than enough anyways by that point I believe)

[Chaba.5410]

8 hours ago, vares.8457 said:

Didn’t they already make it easier and faster to get skirmish tickets with the weekly rewards?

Yes.  Some people came to the forum and gave all the same arguments as the OP and Anet listened to them.  Fast forward to today and players still asking for it to be made easier/faster, unaware of what has already been done.  Go figure.

[Anasate.5408]

Wow. Everyone here is superficially arguing semantics or trying to gatekeep instead of addressing the topic.
This post is about:
1. Claim ticket acquisition curve;
2. Heavily skewed time requirement for Conflux, compared to PvE counterpart.

8 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

well 1 need 1 person to complete namely you the other need 9 other people in addition shouldent the soloable option be more time consuming to get?

Just because it's a different game mode doesn't mean that the time involvement should be calculated differently. You're way off topic.

7 hours ago, vares.8457 said:

Didn’t they already make it easier and faster to get skirmish tickets with the weekly rewards? 

Not good enough. The math speaks for itself.

7 hours ago, vares.8457 said:

I made two Conflux just by playing the game mode I like the most, so I don’t really see a problem here. 

That's a "you" problem. Your achievements are yours, they don't have any bearing on the current state of the system. If a person is born with the ability to survive by eating only candy doesn't mean that there should be more candy shops in the world. You're just gatekeeping.

7 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

You have to play WvW, but in the weakest sense of the word.  To get Conflux and the WvW Legendary Armor I did the lazy method of sitting hidden behind an enemy camp and just taking it every 10 minutes or so.  So long as you take a camp or stomp a fool every once in awhile, you'll maintain participation, which will then give you all the skirmish chests.  

It's still 15 hours/week of "stomping a fool every 10 minutes or so". It requires your attention.

7 hours ago, Biziut.3594 said:

From myself I will only add that legendaries are a long term goal, they are supposed to take time to get them. If You don't have time to play, than thats kind of a "You problem", not the game itself, especially when You take into consideration that You don't need legendary to perticipate in any content in the game. Exotic are fine enough and Ascended is the same stat wise as Legendary. Only diffrence is QOL and that wierd balls.

 Legendaries are indeed a long term goal. Trust me, I know, I have a nearly full armory. I worked hard for it, but I wouldn't mind if Anet made the items I got easier to acquire as it would not invalidate my achievement. Do you have anything to add that's actually on topic?

2 hours ago, Farohna.6247 said:

As a person who does not spend or have time for 15 hours of WvW a week and is also working on Conflux, I have to disagree.  Toxic is a much overused word these days.  If it causes you addictive behavior, that's on you...seek help if you think you have an addictive personality and need help regulating it. 

I think what you really want to say is you find it discouraging how many tickets it takes.  But as many have mentioned, you can earn them just by flipping some camps.  It may take time, so just do WvW dailies and weeklies and they add up, and don't stress about it. 

One could argue that locking Coalescence behind raids is gatekeeping and exclusionary and against the game's philosophy too, and not everyone has time to raid or to join guilds who are structured enough to coordinate one.  But it's one of the very few things that are raid exclusive, and that's good to get people to maybe try it.

As for myself, I'll continue to gradually work on my skirmish tickets.  

Finally someone who puts in a modicum of effort into addressing the topic. Honestly, thank you!
However, at the risk of repeating myself, I would like to point out that ticket acquisition is not linear. Because of this, if you don't put in 15 hrs per week, the total hour commitment only increases, as opposed to any other legendary system in the game. When a system gives compound returns, it does promote addictive behavior, and addictive behavior is toxic, hence the system is toxic. You can argue semantics all you want, whether or not it's intentional, it doesn't change the fact that it's a predatory design.
I don't find it discouraging, and I'm not stressing about it, I'm merely pointing out a flaw in the design.
Coalescence and raid armor are locked behind raiding just as Conflux and WvW armor is locked behind WvW. The systems are analogous to each other, which invites the opportunity for a direct comparison between the two. I am making that comparison.
 

[Anasate.5408]

21 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Yes.  Some people came to the forum and gave all the same arguments as the OP and Anet listened to them.  Fast forward to today and players still asking for it to be made easier/faster, unaware of what has already been done.  Go figure.

It's not enough. Check the numbers.

[TexZero.7910]

Your math is off by a large margin and only factor in chest.
Please come back with actual math that factors in playing/capping/defending objectives that give tickets too otherwise your math doesn't speak for itself like you claim.

 

It takes me roughly 8hrs of gameplay to get my diamond chest done for the week.

[Anasate.5408]

Just now, TexZero.7910 said:

Your math is off by a large margin and only factor in chest.
Please come back with actual math that factors in playing/capping/defending objectives that give tickets too otherwise your math doesn't speak for itself like you claim.

 

It takes me roughly 8hrs of gameplay to get my diamond chest done for the week.

I'm not accounting for WvW rank because people who have WvW rank have already put in the hours. I did however account for weeklies (capping/defending/playing). If you think my math is off, prove it.

[Kirevey.5079]

Can pve players stop coming to WvW asking for things to be easier. Just grind it or don't get it. Is that easy.

[TexZero.7910]

Just now, Anasate.5408 said:

I'm not accounting for WvW rank because people who have WvW rank have already put in the hours. I did however account for weeklies (capping/defending/playing). If you think my math is off, prove it.

Already did as did you by admitting to using biased samples that are intentionally made to look worse than acutal with your statement.

[Anasate.5408]

Just now, TexZero.7910 said:

Already did as did you by admitting to using biased samples that are intentionally made to look worse than acutal with your statement.

What's biased about having to spend 15 hrs for diamond at personal rank 1, with Commitment pip, and assuming your team is placed first for the entire duration? That's 8 pips per hour. If anything, I used the best case scenario.

[Chaba.5410]

12 minutes ago, Anasate.5408 said:

1. Claim ticket acquisition curve;

What's wrong with it?  You play more, you get rewarded more.  There's no reason for it to be linear.

[Chaba.5410]

"Completing these achievements each week will reward players with 8 gold and up to 35 additional WvW Skirmish Claim Tickets (a ~10% increase in max weekly tickets). "

 

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/wvw-january-31-preview/

[TexZero.7910]

2 minutes ago, Anasate.5408 said:

What's biased about having to spend 15 hrs for diamond at personal rank 1, with Commitment pip, and assuming your team is placed first for the entire duration? That's 8 pips per hour. If anything, I used the best case scenario.

Assuming they stay at personal rank 1 is the flaw. If you were good at math you'd understand that's not going to happen as they are actively encouraged to play the mode. This means they will naturally rank up (something made easier). It ceases to be 15hrs a week real quick. Please math correctly.