With the release of the Secrets of Southsun update today, the new set of Eyeball Weapons are now attainable. However, Anet has, again, limited it to a very rare drop from a chest.
Now, for a long time, players have complained about, and continue to complain about, the use of RNG as the sole way of acquiring certain skins or items. To prevent this issue, AnenaNet developed a token system to better distribute rewards to those who want them, or allowed you to buy it for a much more expensive price, yet ignores their own design wisdom in many other cases. My question is, why can’t we have these skins be both something that is RNG and something that we can purchase with gems or tokens?
We’ve seen both Rox’s and Braham’s weapons go onto the store without an RNG tie, and we’ve seen RNG weapons during the Wintersday festival also appear as direct purchases through the gem store if you want to possibly spend more money in order to guarantee the skin. So why do we not see these same strategies put in place for the Fused Weapons or for the Sclerite Weapons? Especially since we’ve seen strategies that ArenaNet has taken before?
RNG is inherently unfair because it relies so heavily on chance. Why can we not balance this unfairness with alternate ways of acquiring skins?
Relying solely on RNG in a game that emphasizes personalizing your character’s look seems very anti-player. If a skin looks appealing, I shouldn’t have to rely on RNG roles in a game that sought to remove this issue because it is not fun.
The simple fact that the price should be high enough in the gem store, and the content temporary enough, should mean that the skins should remain sufficiently rare for those who only get the skins for “uniqueness” (which I don’t understand, why get a skin you don’t like just because no one else has it? Why not get a skin because you like the way it looks?).
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A similar issue has also persisted for 7 months in the form of Fractal Weapon skins. Even at higher levels, where skin drops are more common, you will get stuck with a weapon skin you do not like because it relies solely on RNG. In every other dungeon in GW2, a token system exists to prevent this very situation.
Taking into consideration the scaling difficulty of fractals, it is possible to reward players with tokens or progress without removing the RNG element or providing the same rewards to lower levels. Why can’t we have both rewards for skilled play and rewards for a lucky RNG roll?
It is especially frustrating when, just last month, ArenaNet demonstrated that they could implement a system to reward players for doing the content in the Super Adventure Box, while also having the skins be a possible RNG drop. Why couldn’t this be implemented into Fractals, albeit with a much greater difficulty to account for the difficulty of high level fractals?
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The last RNG situation I want to bring attention to is the situation with Legendary Precursors, which rely on massive amounts of luck through the Mystic Forge or world drops. Since the goal of a legendary requires so much time and money, the use of RNG frustrates players because it could mean that months of hard work could easily result in no reward, or result in massive punishment because the player wasn’t “lucky enough”.
ArenaNet has at least acknowledged this issue with the Precursor Scavenger hunt, though we have heard no news of it’s progress in many months.
But this itself is also frustrating, because ArenaNet acknowledges that RNG is something that players do not enjoy, yet continue to solely use this system whenever it releases new content.
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I understand ArenaNet is a buisness, and needs to make money, but that doesn’t stop them from offering the skins directly at a higher cost in addition to using RNG systems. More people would have a chance at making their character look the way they want to if there were alternative ways, and ArenaNet would still make money off of gem purchases.
I, for one, would be much more inclined to buy gems ever month if the gem store items were items you could actually buy, and not just items that you have to gamble for.
Of course, doing that does not mean you can’t still get the item out of RNG by using the gamble method.
tl;dr: Use the Wintersday method of gem store skin acquisition, and offer both direct purchases of weapons, and gamble tickets through the boxes.
tl;dr2: The Fractal Weapon Chronicles: Reward Skilled players for their efforts.