Guild Wars 2

To me I think the Rewards of Winter’s Day are really half hearted, have really less to do with Christmas (if at all) and consist in like 50% of all times mostly only out of useless items, which are absolutely unrewarding.

I think it would be much better, if Anet would significantly reduce the amount of Winter’s Day Gifts by felt like 33%, if then the gifts would feel then also like 33% much more rewarding in terms of reward quality with things, that are actually really useful or have some other kind of value for the player somehow somewhere in the game.

There’s tons of things, that are plain stupid in the loot table of the Gifts, which are 100% useless and totally worthless garbage which only clusters your inventory full.
So I suggest and propose to make following changes to the Loot Table of Winter’s Day Gifts:

Removal

• Fancy Holiday Tonic Cabinet (Move this item to the Wintersday Vendor for Socks)
• Heirloom Toy Chest (its already in the Vendor, so why make some stupid RNG Loot out of it too, total pointless and waste of space for senseful rewards!)
• Dragonite Ore
• Empyreal Fragments
• Bloodstone Dust (The game has already more than enough of this worthless junk, dont need more options that flood the game even far more with this junk faster than Mawdrey and Stars can eat that junk all up for also mostly unrewarding gifts, where you think to make just better bricks out of this stuff than to flush it away in the toilet that is Mawdrey/Star)
• All the single Giver’s Recipes (Move them to the Winter’sDay Vendor for Socks, Hats, Sweaters ect.
• All the Concquerors Kits & Selections (This stuff is just pointless clicking junk!!, Move just only the new Superior Sigil and Rune to the Vendor for Hats, Sweaters and Socks, no one needs minor or major versions of these runes)
• Page of Winter’s Days Rituals… (Move it to the Vendor!!)
• Unsafe Winter’s Day Gift (Remove it, move the Winter’s Day Weapon Skins to the Vendor for Socks)

Add to the Loot Table

• 5-10 Random Tier 4-6 Materials
• The Recipes for the Endless Winter’s Day “Minipet” Tonics
• The Winter’s Day 2012 Minipets (Infinirarium Foostivoo ect.) (make them sellable)
• 1-5 Random Lodestones
• Laurel Bags (Rare or Exotic)
• Weapon Skin Tickets for Winter’s Day Weapons (Exotic)
• New Skritta Claws Bagpack Skin (as Beginning for the much wished by the Commmunity Skritt Skin Bagpacks – we have enough of Charrs and Quaggans, lets get started with Skritt Bagpacks) – sellable
• Black Lion Keys (rare)
• Black Lion Ticket Scraps (rare)
• Recipes for Light of Dwayna and Shadow of Grenth
• Ascended Crafting Materials, like Elonian Leather, Bolts of Damask ect to help reducing a bit the Grind for Ascended Equipment Crafting. Especially around Bolts of Damask!!!)

I think with “stuff” like this in the gifts it would feel alot more rewarding, with the replacing of the Loot table, each item in itself stays rare and valueable as the chances to get what you like get naturally lower to bigger the Loot Table is and so more variant things you can get from it, so lower is the chance for each item in itself to get it from the table. But the quality of the loot you’d get from the gifts, would be alot better, because everythign of it would be useful to the player.

The current loot table is again such a big sign for it, that Anet seems to fear about it, that they might over reward us, if the Loot Tables of such floods of gifts get too useful for the players.
The most easiest solution to this is to reduce simply the amounts of gifts that you give ot as rewards…
When i see, that a player can get easily after a Toycapolypse Run of 10 rounds far over 100 Giant Winter’s Day Gifts, then its an easy tell, that players will quickly get very annoyed from all the inventory blasting junk that you’d get out of those which is of absolutely no use for you most of all the time, once youve unlocked the recipes, the skins ect., especialyl when such thigns get so flooded, that they have absolutely no value (to the point that you can’t even sell them in the TP, as their value is lesser than 1 laughable copper basically)

I agree, they really messed up badly this year, there is simply nothing to do and not worth doing anything aside from the grawnk chain. The gift rewards are disgusting, I am a casual farmer and was hoping to be able to kill some time farming gifts and assumed it would follow the model of silverwastes and haloween. BOY was I wrong, theres a reward from a gift where you get to choose a MINOR sigil or rune??? Are you kidding me anet, its all absolute useless garbage. They have already ruined Wintersday for me by putting it in crown pavilion, a tiny narrow arc, the rest of DR isnt even decorated as I had hoped to see. Only thing going on is people running back and forth waiting for a dolyak to crap out gifts with garbage inside. Aside from doing whatever achieves/dailies I can, theres no point in wintersday.

Agree OP. You hit the nail right on the head.

3rd thread I see touching this topic. I guess I’m not the only one who has an issue with the quantity versus quality balance in GW2. We get way too much worthless junk as loot, not just with Wintersday but with the game as a whole. But Wintersday really does take the crown. Opening 200+ gift boxes after playing a few Wintersday events really feels like a chore. Opening those boxes is something I really don’t look forward to at all. Does anyone else feel this way? I doubt that’s the experience Anet wanted us to have.

This would make the me play more and open more the presents, I would love to see this implemented.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

3rd thread I see touching this topic. I guess I’m not the only one who has an issue with the quantity versus quality balance in GW2. We get way too much worthless junk as loot, not just with Wintersday but with the game as a whole. But Wintersday really does take the crown. Opening 200+ gift boxes after playing a few Wintersday events really feels like a chore. Opening those boxes is something I really don’t look forward to at all. Does anyone else feel this way? I doubt that’s the experience Anet wanted us to have.

Loot has always been a problem in ths game. Wintersday presents are horrible. You don’t even get a chance at a rare skin. I am in your boat, I opened a about a stack. The only thing the giant presents offered that was worthwhile was a mini. Of course, I didn’t get one. I would have liked a rare skin and a mini, but I am not jumping through anymore hoops to get one.

There’s a larger loot problem than this event though. I’ve leveled 10 toons. I’m all in exotics and ascended jewelery. For me, that is where it ends. I don’t do fractals or grind out a legendary.

I like playing and all but I’ve done the content. Once in a while I’d like a drop or there’s no incentive for me to play. It’s all junk. I almost never get an exotic. I’ve certainly never gotten a valuable one. Sure I get the occasional rare, but I am geared so if it isn’t better than what i have equipped = its junk to me. Most of the exotics too me are generic junk anyway.

perhaps if they added some nice boss set of armor and weapons? or made exotics fall with more regularity? I always seem to get on the wrong side of the RNG.

I dread getting rewards this Wintersday because I have to work more to process the loot than I have to actually get it. I’m not saying the rewards are too easy but they are definitely too complicated and too much of a hassle to manage.

Your ideas are reasonable and you took the time to outline what would be a rewarding drop table. Kudos to you!

Yep reasonable and constructive post, too bad they will ignore it along with the hundrets of other constructive posts.

Orpheal.8263:

To me I think the Rewards of Winter’s Day are really half hearted, have really less to do with Christmas (if at all) and consist in like 50% of all times mostly only out of useless items, which are absolutely unrewarding.

I think it would be much better, if Anet would significantly reduce the amount of Winter’s Day Gifts by felt like 33%, if then the gifts would feel then also like 33% much more rewarding in terms of reward quality with things, that are actually really useful or have some other kind of value for the player somehow somewhere in the game.

There’s tons of things, that are plain stupid in the loot table of the Gifts, which are 100% useless and totally worthless garbage which only clusters your inventory full.
So I suggest and propose to make following changes to the Loot Table of Winter’s Day Gifts:

Removal

• Fancy Holiday Tonic Cabinet (Move this item to the Wintersday Vendor for Socks)
• Heirloom Toy Chest (its already in the Vendor, so why make some stupid RNG Loot out of it too, total pointless and waste of space for senseful rewards!)
• Dragonite Ore
• Empyreal Fragments
• Bloodstone Dust (The game has already more than enough of this worthless junk, dont need more options that flood the game even far more with this junk faster than Mawdrey and Stars can eat that junk all up for also mostly unrewarding gifts, where you think to make just better bricks out of this stuff than to flush it away in the toilet that is Mawdrey/Star)
• All the single Giver’s Recipes (Move them to the Winter’sDay Vendor for Socks, Hats, Sweaters ect.
• All the Concquerors Kits & Selections (This stuff is just pointless clicking junk!!, Move just only the new Superior Sigil and Rune to the Vendor for Hats, Sweaters and Socks, no one needs minor or major versions of these runes)
• Page of Winter’s Days Rituals… (Move it to the Vendor!!)
• Unsafe Winter’s Day Gift (Remove it, move the Winter’s Day Weapon Skins to the Vendor for Socks)

Add to the Loot Table

• 5-10 Random Tier 4-6 Materials
• The Recipes for the Endless Winter’s Day “Minipet” Tonics
• The Winter’s Day 2012 Minipets (Infinirarium Foostivoo ect.) (make them sellable)
• 1-5 Random Lodestones
• Laurel Bags (Rare or Exotic)
• Weapon Skin Tickets for Winter’s Day Weapons (Exotic)
• New Skritta Claws Bagpack Skin (as Beginning for the much wished by the Commmunity Skritt Skin Bagpacks – we have enough of Charrs and Quaggans, lets get started with Skritt Bagpacks) – sellable
• Black Lion Keys (rare)
• Black Lion Ticket Scraps (rare)
• Recipes for Light of Dwayna and Shadow of Grenth
• Ascended Crafting Materials, like Elonian Leather, Bolts of Damask ect to help reducing a bit the Grind for Ascended Equipment Crafting. Especially around Bolts of Damask!!!)

I think with “stuff” like this in the gifts it would feel alot more rewarding, with the replacing of the Loot table, each item in itself stays rare and valueable as the chances to get what you like get naturally lower to bigger the Loot Table is and so more variant things you can get from it, so lower is the chance for each item in itself to get it from the table. But the quality of the loot you’d get from the gifts, would be alot better, because everythign of it would be useful to the player.

The current loot table is again such a big sign for it, that Anet seems to fear about it, that they might over reward us, if the Loot Tables of such floods of gifts get too useful for the players.
The most easiest solution to this is to reduce simply the amounts of gifts that you give ot as rewards…
When i see, that a player can get easily after a Toycapolypse Run of 10 rounds far over 100 Giant Winter’s Day Gifts, then its an easy tell, that players will quickly get very annoyed from all the inventory blasting junk that you’d get out of those which is of absolutely no use for you most of all the time, once youve unlocked the recipes, the skins ect., especialyl when such thigns get so flooded, that they have absolutely no value (to the point that you can’t even sell them in the TP, as their value is lesser than 1 laughable copper basically)

Totally agree with this. I got tired very quickly of all the junk and have ended my Wintersday activities for this year. Half the stuff I am having to destroy because the TP is so flooded with this stuff it becomes unsaleable. At least let us salvage it for something useful. It just is not worth my time to have to deal with junk. The holiday just did not feel the same. I really enjoyed last year and had a lot of fun. This year felt like an obligatory grind for little to nothing of value. Lets not even go into the salvage the sweaters, hats and socks game….. I don’t even attempt the Wintersday Daily as I cannot do the jumping puzzle and the bells are beyond me.

Orpheal.8263:

Add to the Loot Table

• 5-10 Random Tier 4-6 Materials
• The Recipes for the Endless Winter’s Day “Minipet” Tonics
• The Winter’s Day 2012 Minipets (Infinirarium Foostivoo ect.) (make them sellable)
• 1-5 Random Lodestones
• Laurel Bags (Rare or Exotic)
• Weapon Skin Tickets for Winter’s Day Weapons (Exotic)
• New Skritta Claws Bagpack Skin (as Beginning for the much wished by the Commmunity Skritt Skin Bagpacks – we have enough of Charrs and Quaggans, lets get started with Skritt Bagpacks) – sellable
• Black Lion Keys (rare)
• Black Lion Ticket Scraps (rare)
• Recipes for Light of Dwayna and Shadow of Grenth
• Ascended Crafting Materials, like Elonian Leather, Bolts of Damask ect to help reducing a bit the Grind for Ascended Equipment Crafting. Especially around Bolts of Damask!!!)

1. 5-10 is too much. You said it yourself how easy it is to get gifts, this would just crash the markets on the tp. I mean, sure, t6 bloods at 20c or less would look great, but there would eventually be way too much supply and not enough demand. I could go 1-2, and make the likely hood be CLOTH. As cloth is what is holding most people crafting ascended back.
2 and 3. Ok, but again, this would be VERY RARE. Not just RARE.
4. Same as number one. And I would make this a rare event. Again, you have to remember how easy it is to acquire gifts. So the rarity of the item should go up.
5. As rare as 2 and 3.
6. No. That would require having the skins be under a second currency, creating another tab.
7. Maybe next wintersday
8. As rare as they are dropping in the world randomly (again, the ability to acquire so many gifts)
9. Ok, but as rare as the keys.
10. no
11. I wouldnt say the final product items, but instead how bout the time gated items? Again, ascended wouldnt be as frustrating as it is today (except for cloth users) if it wasn’t for Bolts of Damask. I believe thats the one item holding people back the most.

You just have to remember how easy it is to get the gifts to determine how rare some of these drops should be. Its probably too late to include any of this now, since holidays and stuff. Plus, some holiday stuff should stay (sigils/runes [remove the select boxes though], frost bitten tools, tonics, and weapon skins) to at least stick with the wintersday theme.

I was expecting to be spending a lot of time in the Wintersday events this year, but as of this afternoon, I’ve completed all 11 of the achievements to get Adept Toymaker, 3 sets of orichalcum snowflake harvesting tools, the Skritta Claws mini (and selected the Toy Soldier mini from the final achievment chest), and frankly, I’m done with Wintersday except for the Grawnk event chain (which has the only reward left worth getting, the Star of Gratitude). Virtually all the loot you get from the presents is, put simply, junk, and not even good junk at that. I’m for the Silverwastes again, where the loot is actually worth something and where I still have a couple of thousand crests to harvest for the last two pieces of armor next month.

Wintersday this year has been a crashing letdown.

I love wintersday. compared to rs or any other mmorpg, you cant really beat it. runescape was all moneygrabbing this year. there is nothing wrong with how it is. also you get tons of luck doing the event and that translates to better loot all around

The recipes for the endless tonics are in there. I got one yesterday.

Still, I think the number of people complaining about how free gifts in this season are disgusting and worthless really says more about humanity than anything else.

Maybe they should just remove presents entirely and leave it up to everyone else to furnish their own holiday cheer.

Orpheal.8263:

…
Removal
major versions of these runes

Spot on.

Just remove the worthless minor and SUPERIOR runes/sigils and keep the major ones.

At least I can drop those in the forge for a chance of a decent one – strength, scholar etc. Thats’ the reason only the major runes and sigils have a TP price of a couple of silver rather than just copper.

Also, give us a way to get sigil of generosity again.

After they did so well at Halloween, the loot for Wintersday is horrible.

Orpheal.8263:

have really less to do with Christmas (if at all)

They have nothing to do with Christmas. There are no Christians in Tyria.

I agree that the stuff you only need one of should be only in the exchange vendor.
I agree that recipes like Dwayna, Grenth and even Lyssa backs should be in the drop table.
I agree that the sigils and runes while fun for a bit (a very short while actually) should also be only in the exchange vendor.
I would also love to see higher tier mats find their way somehow into the drops.

Agree with the removals but the added things are waaaaaaay over the top. Nerf those with 100 and it’s a good suggestion.

Hmm, can’t really agree with most of the “plz add” suggestions. Festival rewards are fluff. Tonics, sweets, toys. If there is nothing in the gifts that interests you, you can always farm heavy bags and ignore the pressies.

Yargesh.4965:

I agree that recipes like Dwayna, Grenth and even Lyssa backs should be in the drop table.

Dwayna and Grenth are in the drop table.

hmm, but those thigns that peopel say are in the drop table, must be super low drop chances, because they officially aren’t listed as loot in the loot table on the official wiki page for Winter’s Day Gifts that either the Recioes for the Backpacks, nor the recipes for the endless tonics can drop from them.

The added things aren’t too good.
I would agree with your opinions of those added thigns being too good, if the loot table would be alot smaller and it wouldn’t have so many different things that can drop from it, but the loot table is rather large and so larger the loot table is, so smaller is automatically the chance that you get that valuable stuff besides of the stuff self being rare to drop with their own drop chances which are RNG in a RNG container

5-10 T4-6 Matas means, that you should not get that amount of materials from all 3 tiers at the same time.
It means just that you can get by random either 5-10 T4, 5-10 T5 or 5-10T6 materials and that is the same maximum amount of mats, that you’d get from mystic forging for mystic clovers, there you can even get more T6 out of a try if you are lucky, than 10 units and that with am uch smaller loot table, where chances in itself are already bigger, that you could get T6 mats from there and that in large amounts, if you take the risk to use up more mystic coins ect.

However, I said, yes, Gifts are rewarded way too much currently, they get flooded into the market too fast. *Thats why I said, if you would have read properly, that I propose,d that if ANet improves the loot table as like I suggest, that they should also reduce as a balancing counter the quantity of the Gifts that we can receive – either that or put somewhere a DAILY LIMIT, that you can get per say only up to say xxx Gifts.
That would be good counter messures to ensure, that the quantity/quality ration of the gifts would become significantly better plus it woudl also have the nice side effect, that the value of those gifts in itself woudl become alot better, because a limit would massively increase the demand for those Gifts together with the improved rewards from them, because people would want to buy gifts from other players, once they would have reached their daily limit to get quicker what they want.

People asked so far every year for the Wintersday 2012 minipets to return. This year would have been the perfect moment to do so and Anet lets us wait for another year while giving as a like 99% same copy of the event from last year, that feels just like only warmed up coffe with tons of salt in it (the obsolete clicking junk that lets our inventories explode in no time, that should be put only in the vendors for those people which want to buy it from there with socks, hats ect., more than this isn’t needed for all this clicking junk, puttign it into the giufts is just stupid and only done to artificially stretch the loot table to reduce the chances to get what you would want rather, than all this junk that no one needs and where Anet slowly puts just now in first some forge recipes, so that all that junk liek the tons of 15 min tonics at least get a tiny usage for us)

With the last bullet point I also meant just only the time gated materials, like Bolts of Damask, not products out of those materials, cause especially Bolts of Dasmask has to get more in line with the other materials. Currently those bolts simply cost way too much, where crafting medium and heavy stuff is alot lesser costing.

ANet should put in those time gated materials also into the reward table for the login calendar rewards and maybe into the daily/monthly achievement rewards (we don’t know yet, if we even stil lhave after december monthlies in the same style as like the dailies work now oO, but I do hope so, cause this would give anet the chance to reward us for doing certain taskas in a month with some more valuable and useful rewards, liek the time gated materials to help us a bit to equip our characters (especially alts a bit faster with ascended equipment, so that the game becomes again more alt friendly)

Orpheal.8263:

T.
Add to the Loot Table

• The Recipes for the Endless Winter’s Day “Minipet” Tonics
• Laurel Bags (Rare or Exotic)
• Weapon Skin Tickets for Winter’s Day Weapons (Exotic
• Black Lion Keys (rare)
• Black Lion Ticket Scraps (rare)
• Ascended Crafting Materials, like Elonian Leather, Bolts of Damask ect to help reducing a bit the Grind for Ascended Equipment Crafting. Especially around Bolts of Damask!!!)

ot y)

These are terrible suggestions. Gemstore Stuff Needs to stay Gemstore. Crafted Ascended stuff needs to stay exclusive to crafters, and laurel need to stay what they are, or laurel prices will be unbalanced or people who messed the festival.

What would be a good reward is: take limited-time rewards whose supply has dwindled and reintroduce them in with the festival. I’m not talking about exclusive rewards (like the scarlet’s rifles, the non exclusive stuff is rare nd overpriced now too. It should come back.

Here is a better list of stuff to come back

• Sigil of Generousity
• Lump of Coal
• Keeper’s recipes
• Wintersday Gift Bag (account bound, 15 slot, was a 2012 meta reward)
• Watchwork Sprokets / Spores / Ambrites
• Recipes for Grenth / Dwayna / Lyssa back pieces
• Dungeon Food Recipes (eg Butternut Squash Soup)
• 2012 Toymaker bag (a lot of ppl deleted this no stat bag before wardrobe)
• Red Skinned 2012 Toymaker bag (in the game but nobody has)
• Formerly exclusive pvp weapons that were never attainable in PvE

I am ok with things like the Doll Tonic Recipes being Pvp exclusive. Pvp exclusive stuff is good.

The snowflakes do seem to be dropping more readily from the gifts. I really appreciate that.

Still too many runes/sigils dropping (all rarities).
Don’t need anymore of the collection starters (should just be at the vendor).
The tonic recipes are there…but they come out as a bag within a bag. So there’s RNG in my RNG.

WHY must we get bags that contain one item out of another bag. Why do you keep putting RNG bags in RNG bags. I’d understand if they had more than one item but they don’t. Oh look a minor rune/sigil bag dropped out of my RNG box. Let’s click some more for more RNG. Gee thanks. Sure they look pretty, but dear god why do you keep adding more bags within bags within bags? It is not helpful or desired. Just have the wintersday gifts directly drop the item that would be contained in the container.

Please save our hands from this incessant clicking bags that contain bags that need more clicking.

In regards to the above:
+1 to sigil of Generousity

A new version of the toymaker bag would be nice (maybe one that looks like the skrittaclaws bag). The original toymaker bag would be nice too (I have both versions and it would be nice to have an exclusive item, but I honestly don’t care that much)

The other stuff that isnt’ wintersday stuff though I wouldn’t put in there. I like the rare chance at 10 T6 mats as we currently get though. Please keep that.

At least you get some sort of loot from it at all- unlike most of wvw which rewards you with ‘server pride’ which will keep you interested in same old maps for years, apparently….

I figured it out! We were all hoping for that pony for Christmas but since ponies in that quantity are cost prohibitive and make a mess around the house, they are going to shower us with small, inexpensive gifts so we forget all about that pony being so overwhelmed with presents!

Come to think about it I used the same trick on my kids years ago and if memory serves my parents used the same trick on me!

Caveat: Pony in the above text is used as a metaphor and is not intended to be a literal translation as it would be cruel to beat a dead pony so close to Christmas.