What's with the insane requirements on new skins added with expansions and season episodes?

[Deathanizer.3716]

Just for fun I decided I wanted to craft some of the astral/stellar skins added with Istan. After looking at the numbers I realized it would be more cost effective to just buy Black Lion chest skins off the trade post.

Why add these self defeating requirements for new content? There must of been a team of artists working on this set that nobody will ever use.

These aren't the big special skins like legendary or premium Gem Store items. I don't understand the point of having these incredibly expensive grinds for them.

This has been an issue since Hot and still ongoing. What's the point of wasting money on art assets if you're going to make getting them punitive?

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Some players prefer to 'earn' their skins doing content, than purchasing off the TP or Gem Store.
It's best to have something for everyone, no?

[GrubySzymek.1362]

Such mechanics are designed to ensure player retention.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

Some people like that sort of thing. And so ANet has set up a tiny fraction of the game's skins that reward returning to the same maps again and again. The vast majority of the wardrobe remains available as easy-to-obtain items, whether from the gem shop or as drops or from the TP. It's good for the game to have a balance.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of "grind is good, because it incentivizes people returning to the same maps." All the same, I can see that people who love farming Istan til their eyes bleed might like to have some sinks for the various local mats/currency they get.

[Theocraft.6053]

This is MMORPG, this is a game that is meant to require long commitment in order to achieve anything. While most single player games can be FULLY completed in 10-100 h, here you usually have nothing substantial earned up to 500h of gameplay - this answer why so grindy

Why is such mechanic on every map on LS3 and now LS4? Because thanks to that those maps are not empty. Look at them. Look at the HOT maps - still full whenever and wherever I go there while POF maps are mostly empty because there is basically no replayability like that.

[Blocki.4931]

There have only been very few NEW weapon skin sets and these ones are supposed to be some high-tier crafting reward for the people who want to count themselves towards the few people who actually bother going for them.

[Malediktus.9250]

Do PvP/WvW Istan reward tracks for Kralkatite if you do not like farming. 2 reward tracks will give you enough for one weapon

the rest of the ingredients should be easy to get or buyable on TP

[Bast.7253]

The achievment requirements for the armor skins like the shoulders and gloves I usually just get from a reward track solely because it’s significantly less effort. But this time around I wanted to the AP so I actually did the sub achievements.

It should probably be revised in future episodes though. When it takes you doing 35 achievements versus a few hours of pvp or wvw something isn’t quite right. And some of those achievements were really not fun to have to do. Lol

As far as the weapons from daybreak I have a couple and have like 2000 kralk ingots from reward tracks but haven’t taken the time to make any weapons because I’m bad at keeping up with my ascended dailies.

It would be nice if we got a full armor set at some point instead of just a shoulder or a glove but that is easy money taken away from the gemstone.

I’m saving a lot of this seasons map currencies in case they do another legendary item like aurora but may wind up turning it all into material crates at some point anyway.

Off topic, but the meta achievements I can agree are a bit over the top sometimes.

[Hyper Cutter.9376]

Yeah, the achievements have been getting progressively worse and worse lately, and it shouldn't be easier to do the reward track in PVP/WvW to get living story rewards than it is to do the actual achievements (I'm afraid the boat on that one has sailed, though).

@"cptaylor.2670" said:It would be nice if we got a full armor set at some point instead of just a shoulder or a glove but that is easy money taken away from the gemstone.The gem store doesn't do armor sets anymore, that's expansion material. Been that way for years.

[Fundor.2098]

Its called playable content? The skins are rewards you can earn by playing the game. As it should be.

Personally I'm not a fan of time gating though. It's the most annoying and boring way of making things "hard to get". Take for example collecting the 28 fractal research pages for each of the four Ad Infinitum collections, when you can only earn three per day. Or collecting the rune stone shards for the Wayfarer's Henge backpack, when you can only earn 5 per day, which makes one rune stone per day, and you need who knows how many of them for the collection itself.

[Blocki.4931]

@"Fundor.2098" said:Its called playable content? The skins are rewards you can earn by playing the game. As it should be.

Personally I'm not a fan of time gating though. It's the most annoying and boring way of making things "hard to get". Take for example collecting the 28 fractal research pages for each of the four Ad Infinitum collections, when you can only earn three per day. Or collecting the rune stone shards for the Wayfarer's Henge backpack, when you can only earn 5 per day, which makes one rune stone per day, and you need who knows how many of them for the collection itself.

To be fair the Henge is required for the Aurora. A legendary should have a ridiculous timegate associated with it

[Bast.7253]

@"Fundor.2098" said:Its called playable content? The skins are rewards you can earn by playing the game. As it should be.

Personally I'm not a fan of time gating though. It's the most annoying and boring way of making things "hard to get". Take for example collecting the 28 fractal research pages for each of the four Ad Infinitum collections, when you can only earn three per day. Or collecting the rune stone shards for the Wayfarer's Henge backpack, when you can only earn 5 per day, which makes one rune stone per day, and you need who knows how many of them for the collection itself.

The problem isn’t having to play the content, the problem is that it’s faster and easier doing a reward track for the same thing you have to do 30 achievements for. The older episodes didn’t require as much and you only had to do a few here and there, not nearly every one of the episode.

Doing every achievement should just reward extra ap, which has also gotten significantly reduced it seems.

[Fundor.2098]

@Blocki.4931 said:

@"Fundor.2098" said:Its called

playable content

? The skins are rewards you can earn by playing the game. As it should be.

Personally I'm not a fan of time gating though. It's the most annoying and boring way of making things "hard to get". Take for example collecting the 28 fractal research pages for each of the four Ad Infinitum collections, when you can only earn three per day. Or collecting the rune stone shards for the Wayfarer's Henge backpack, when you can only earn 5 per day, which makes one rune stone per day, and you need who knows how many of them for the collection itself.

To be fair the Henge is required for the Aurora. A legendary should have a ridiculous timegate associated with it

I kinda think a legendary should have a ridiculous amount of work associated with it, instead of time gates blocking the progress all the time. :/

[Fundor.2098]

@"cptaylor.2670" said:

@"Fundor.2098" said:Its called

playable content

? The skins are rewards you can earn by playing the game. As it should be.

Personally I'm not a fan of time gating though. It's the most annoying and boring way of making things "hard to get". Take for example collecting the 28 fractal research pages for each of the four Ad Infinitum collections, when you can only earn three per day. Or collecting the rune stone shards for the Wayfarer's Henge backpack, when you can only earn 5 per day, which makes one rune stone per day, and you need who knows how many of them for the collection itself.

The problem isn’t having to play the content, the problem is that it’s faster and easier doing a reward track for the same thing you have to do 30 achievements for. The older episodes didn’t require as much and you only had to do a few here and there, not nearly every one of the episode.

Doing every achievement should just reward extra ap, which has also gotten significantly reduced it seems.

I've noticed the reduced achievement points too. It doesn't feel worth it doing all the achievements anymore and you're right about things being even worse, if the skin is so much easier to get from doing the pvp reward track.