I thought season 1 items weren't coming back
I’m not exactly convinced that the same problem won’t appear with your system. Let’s say that the dungeons of the game got 2 to 3 unique items that only dropped with rng and not available with tokens. What would prevent everyone from farming CoF P1 (or any other because it’s faster then use the gold they earn to buy the Arah rewards?
That has to do with supply and demand (rarity).
If CoF is faster the items will automatically get a lower price (even if it is only because multiple people did try this and so more of those items end up on the TP).
At the same time, if Arah is harder and so less people do it those rewards become rarer and so more expensive.
What you would then normally see is that it balances out. So let’s say doing one Arah run is just as hard / or takes as much time as 5 CoF runs, then the price you would earn with 5 CoF runs is similar to the price you earn with 1 Arah run.
And then there is the price (tax) you pay when selling items and buying items.
So while you indeed have the option to do CoF, it will not be the faster way.
Combine tokens and RNG then this is no longer a problem. You can get your rewards by rng OR you can use the tokens to get that very specific item you want. The best of both worlds, you get the thrill of “will it drop” every time you kill the boss, however you don’t know which reward you get, you might get a sword but you want a hammer, you might want the mini of boss A but get the mini of boss B. Repeatedly. There is nothing more annoying than having a bunch of item rewards with low chances and you keep getting the same one over and over. Having both tokens and rng as rewards fixes the problems of only rng, and fixes the problems of having only tokens.
Yeah that would work, while the ‘smart’ RNG would also solve the problem. Well depends, if one type of content has many rewards people will be after this (Like SAB had) this might be the better solution.
But with less rewards the ‘smart’ RNG might be the better solution. Also the rush will be lower when you have the tokens anyway.
Then again, putting many good rewards in one type of content is a usually a bad thing imho because you end up with many people getting items they do not want and so flooding the TP and so you create the grind for gold and buy what you want ecosystem again.
What you would then normally see is that it balances out. So let’s say doing one Arah run is just as hard / or takes as much time as 5 CoF runs, then the price you would earn with 5 CoF runs is similar to the price you earn with 1 Arah run.
I made another thread on the SAB system and I think this is also off topic now
I’m not sure that’s what will happen because you need to also account for the regular dungeon drops/rewards or those won’t exist anymore? Or the “good” items will be so expensive that will dwarf the regular dungeon rewards?
Balancing reward/effort between types of content is not as easy, even if you say it will balance itself. To me it looks like a dream rather than something that can happen in reality, players will always find a way to maximize their profits for the least possible effort.
I’m not sure that’s what will happen because you need to also account for the regular dungeon drops/rewards or those won’t exist anymore? Or the “good” items will be so expensive that will dwarf the regular dungeon rewards?
They might still exist but basically set the base value for the gold. Gold and trash rewards are factors that are important to see how easy or hard it is to get gold. So you could say they set the value of 1 gold.
Preferably the gold you earn this way would be similar to the cost you make in game on things like buying items from NPC’s and teleporting and so on.
Also when designed well, an easy dungeon like CoF should also reward less of these trash-items and direct gold then a much harder dungeon like Arah. Else it is not balanced well.
In addition yes the price of the items would normally dwarf the regular dungeon rewards.
Balancing reward/effort between types of content is not as easy, even if you say it will balance itself. To me it looks like a dream rather than something that can happen in reality, players will always find a way to maximize their profits for the least possible effort.
Well we are mixing two type of rewards now. The regular dungeon drops/rewards and the items people are really after. When taking the regular dungeon drops/rewards out of the equation those normal items will indeed balance themselves out.
“players will always find a way to maximize their profits for the least possible effort.” And that is exactly why they balance themselves out. Basically this is capitalism. You see, as soon as there becomes an item more valuable people will likely maximize their profits by getting that item, but because they do that item gets less rare and so the value decreases again making it not a more profitable item anymore.
The regular dungeon drops/rewards the developer (Anet) will have to balance. You are right, that is not easy.. at the same time it is. Getting this right from the start is extremely hard. However they can monitor a lot of thing (like, how many ‘gold’ do people make every day in every dungeon) and balance it by changing some things and keep monitoring that. Then it is not so hard anymore.