Showing Posts For Gigglepants.6734:
If it took 75 hours of playtime running a variety of content which presented challenge and entertainment, that would be outstanding. The fact is though, there’s no incentive to do anything but the first boss. The amount of tokens you get from any boss is the same, and the loot is not going to compare, not to mention the fact that simply finding a group of people willing to run the entire dungeon is rare. There’s lots of people who think it’s fine the way it is, but look at the breakdown of level 80 players right now. The people who are 80 now are people who leveled at a pretty decent pace, I myself have spent lots of time playing since the game came out. It will take many more hours of playtime before I even begin to feel the rewards of being lvl 80. Imagine in a month, when people who didn’t push as hard hit lvl 80. Those players will feel even more outcast by the current dungeon reward system.
So yes, the game has only been out for a few weeks, and it should take time to get the gear. That goal should not seem like an unreasonable goal for someone who has to go to work and spend time with his wife though, otherwise why play? If there’s this many people who feel the system is broken now, wait until the majority of the playerbase hits 80. Then the defecation will really hit the cooling device.
Side note: people seem to be neglecting my second suggestion, I much prefer the idea of specific items dropping of specific bosses, thus giving a reason to run the whole dungeon on multiple paths. Dropped loot is much more exciting than gathering monopoly money.
(edited by Gigglepants.6734)
Ok, so I did 6 runs in a PuG of Arah in exploration mode. All just to farm the first boss, because that’s all I could find a group for. It took a little over an hour for those 6 runs, so around 10 minutes each.
Already we have:
6 Runs = 24 Tokens = 60 Minutes
1 Run = 4 Tokens = 10 Minutes
1 Token = 2.5 Minutes
This is assuming you do nothing but farm an easy first boss in Arah on exploration mode. These are only estimates that I use based on my night. I only did 6 runs because I was bored out of my mind after that hour, maybe your superawesomefarmgroup does the first boss in 7.333(repeating of course) minutes, cool, there’s also a group full of window lickers out there doing it in 20, so it sorta averages out.
To get a full set of armor and two 1h weapons using Arah tokens would cost 1800 tokens, or 4500 minutes (75 hours). Minimum wage seems to be about $7.25 in most states (http://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/america.htm). This means a full set of gear costs $543.75 if you work for minimum wage.
Now 75 hours doesn’t sound too bad, maybe you sit down and grind it all out in a week. What if you’re like me though? BEST case, I can play 3 hours after work, then 12 hours on the weekend. That’s 39 hours a week, assuming I do NOTHING with my free time but farm the first boss of Arah, that’s still two weeks to get a full set of gear and I’ve now neglected my wife and friends who don’t play GW2.
“But Wait,” you say, “this gear isn’t supposed to be gotten quickly or easily, it’s supposed to be hard!” Yes, this is true, but the process to get it doesn’t feel rewarding. I’m not farming a boss for a drop from a loot table of 6-8 items, I’m farming a known amount of tokens, I can see how long it will take me to get everything.
I have two suggestions for this issue:
1) reduce the cost of the items, this one is pretty obvious
or
2) leave the cost the same, but make the loot also drop from the chests so people have a reason to actually run the whole dungeon and take different paths. This seems like the best thing, and quite frankly, the obvious way to design the game. There’s still farming, there’s still commitment, but it adds the element of chance. It becomes exciting, hoping for that drop, but you still get the tokens so if you don’t get the drop after a while you can just buy it. Another game had a system like this and it worked pretty well…
TL;DR – I did some math, the fastest way (and only way to find groups) of getting gear is an awful grind. Reward system needs to be fixed to encourage running whole dungeons, not just the first boss.