I don't mind the grind but...

[Pinkeh.4207]

When you abandon obsidian armor crafting, basically none of the rewards in soto matter. All junk materials that clog your bank. 50 ectos to make amalgamated kryptis essence? Hah. Easier to delete essences and not deal with inflated ecto prices.

Edited March 22 by Pinkeh.4207

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

On 3/19/2024 at 5:58 PM, Gibson.4036 said:

That's, unfortunately, MMOs. The only way to keep people playing regularly for years is to have long grinds, because no team could ever generate enough new content.

I wish there were more multiplayer (not MMO) RPGs. Unfortunately, they are few and far between, and ones that are milder than M rating are even rarer.

That, or they go with the minecraft method.  City of Heroes has the mission architect, which lets players write and design their own missions, NPCs, enemy abilities, enemy types and placements, etc. and so on.  It is an even older MMO, now not even officially supported, so a modern version would be much different from what we have now.  There's always an option to add a dungeon creator to the game, and let the players themselves generate content exponentially faster than the devs ever could.  

Another thing done in Runescape and Bloodborne is randomly generated dungeons.  Runescape had the dungeoneering skill, which effectively let you go down into dungeons full of a bunch of randomly generated challenges, enemies, and loot.  It wouldn't work as well with GW2, because it doesn't have nearly the robust skill system that Runescape has, but there is still the option to create randomized but basic dungeon layouts.  

[Gwynnion.7364]

13 hours ago, Pinkeh.4207 said:

When you abandon obsidian armor crafting, basically none of the rewards in soto matter. All junk materials that clog your bank. 50 ectos to make amalgamated kryptis essence? Hah. Easier to delete essences and not deal with inflated ecto prices.

Yeah, exactly.  Why do the content otherwise?  It's boring and mostly worthless.  I can do dailies, weeklies, world bosses, the fun metas, WvW, and just not worry about this premium feature everyone is so possessive of.  "It's supposed to be hard!"  "It's supposed to be expensive!"  Okay, then keep it.  I don't gear swap very often.  I don't need it.  Anet made it sound like it could be a fun project to work on so I tried.  But it's not, and it's gotten too expensive for me.  I question how viable it will be in a year and how many players will actually get through it.  But I guess it doesn't matter.

I didn't buy SOTO until after the first update because I wasn't comfortable paying up front for content to be dribbled out over a year.  So I wasn't focused on the legendaries.  Everybody told me I could take my time.  Great!  I got the skyscale and then did the precursor armors, which weren't cheap either and made me reconsider the entire process.  And I've made legendaries before!  Without the starter kits!  I don't think I'm a bad player.  I keep up with balance changes, metas, I read the wiki, and I don't want to be a carry for anybody.  I don't feel "entitled" to legendaries.  It doesn't have to be "easy."  But the forums have been so hostile.

But you know, I'm over it.  My boyfriend and I play this game for fun.  SOTO and Obsidian Armor aren't fun for us.  The rest of you can enjoy it.

Edited March 22 by Gwynnion.7364

[illuminati.8453]

6 hours ago, Gwynnion.7364 said:

Yeah, exactly.  Why do the content otherwise?  It's boring and mostly worthless. 

Yes, I agree, this xpac more than others is pretty boring.  You should absolutely play the parts of the game you have fun at!  

The legendary armor is just to give some kind of goal but isn't all that important.  Anet is going to be in a bit of a situation when a significant portion of their players of the armor I think.  Many are going to say, "what's next?"

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

I'll take it over going back into PvP/WvW or Raids.

Ecto is not going to go down to what it was. Based on what we saw with the icebrood infusion and the armor set in Gyala Delves to this, they're going to use ecto in the future for more lucrative items.

[Astralporing.1957]

On 3/18/2024 at 3:32 AM, kiroho.4738 said:

Wrong, it's 80%. Check the "80,20,5 rule".

That's not a hard rule, more like a loose extimation. The actual percentages can vary (sometimes a lot) depending on specific game.

Some games by its very nature are more hardcore - there you will find the percentages rise on the activity side. And there are games that are far more casual in approach, where the percentage for more passive participation would be higher, and active one would drop.

Guess which category GW2 is closer to?

(although 99% does seem like an exagerration)

[kiroho.4738]

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

That's not a hard rule, more like a loose extimation. The actual percentages can vary (sometimes a lot) depending on specific game

That's why I used quotation marks.

However 80/20/5 is what fits for most games.

 

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Some games by its very nature are more hardcore - there you will find the percentages rise on the activity side. And there are games that are far more casual in approach, where the percentage for more passive participation would be higher, and active one would drop.

Actually no.

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, kiroho.4738 said:

Actually no.

Well, if you say so, that's definitely true [/sarcasm]

Surely, that rule that has arisen from a single devblog post with no data to support it is always correct in every case. Surely, there's no meaningful difference between player communities of, say, WoW and GW2 in that regard. Or, for that matter, between communities of MMORPG games, niche turn/based strategy ones, or, for example, Candy Crush Saga.

...yeah, right.

(hint: that devblog used data from a single game only, and even then they had to fudge the numbers to arrive at the percentages. And only for the last, most hardcore "5%" group.)

Hint: it's like the pareto principle (the 80/20 rule) that might be a nice approximation, but does not  mean it is always correct or equally applicable - i.e in current US it's more like 90/10 now)

Edited March 23 by Astralporing.1957

[starlinvf.1358]

On 3/16/2024 at 10:30 PM, Player.2475 said:

To elaborate why I said WvW armor is basically free:

Open world: Convergences and rifts give you worse rewards than just mindlessly running around a map and killing random enemies for the most part.

Raids: Only 2 gold per boss + some trash exotics and ascended, so about a couple dozen for a full clear of w1-4. Magnetite is meh, because even the trades for "discounted" clovers are barely better than just pure gambling once you account for the T6 materials and coins you get back.

WvW: You are stuck here 13-20 hours a week like it's your part time job so you might as well pop your boosters to get reward tracks faster. Semi-afk playstyle with minimal input still yields you up to 7g/hr worth of T5-6 resources and gear per hour. Reward tracks finish in about 3-4 hours until you hit your weekly skirmish chests, which depending on the reward track gives you a decent amount of gold, map resources, and 2 clovers per completion.

So as you can see, while slaving away in that god-forsaken gamemode just for the sake of hitting your weekly skirmish cap, you end up making almost twice the amount you need in clovers and material costs.

Is it efficient? No. Is it soul-crushing? Yes. Could you be making a lot more gold and materials per hours by doing literally anything else with your time, even picking up spare change from the street and converting gems to gold? Possibly! But you have to do it for the tickets anyway, so at least you can find some solace in the fact that while it took you almost 10x more hours of playtime to get the tokens for the WvW equivalent of raid armor, you at least don't have to now go and farm the rest of the materials.

You mean  wvw is quaggan forsaken.  I miss the orbs.  

[starlinvf.1358]

16 hours ago, illuminati.8453 said:

Yes, I agree, this xpac more than others is pretty boring.  You should absolutely play the parts of the game you have fun at!  

The legendary armor is just to give some kind of goal but isn't all that important.  Anet is going to be in a bit of a situation when a significant portion of their players of the armor I think.  Many are going to say, "what's next?"

I mean…..  people complain about doing story stuff, hate doing collections, hate doing other game modes, and explicitly said all they do is farm after “being forced to do story”.  So may as well just focus on farming content

[jokke.6239]

I was a bit surprised when I made the the moot from the new legendary box. 

Yay, another cheap legendary to craft ... I need some t6 mats for this  gift, let me search on trading post ... WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT 😅

[Pinkeh.4207]

Yeah the T6 price is a bit of a rude shock if you haven't crafted legendary items before. The legendary weapon box is a nice start but many players will still struggle to finish it.

Edited March 23 by Pinkeh.4207

[starlinvf.1358]

well... there was 12 years to stock pile mats.  Just passively hoard everything.