Guild Wars 2

A lot of anger and complaints over this event, which is unusual for Arenanet.

These I feel can be broken down into 4 root causes.

1) Gameplay (tag and run, every man for himself) – There are tons of great ideas already in this thread to improve this.

2) New player rewards. Add in stuff that new players would like at the rewards vendor and don’t charge additional gold for them – they don’t have the gold to spend. Two items that come to mind that veterans wouldn’t want (why spend blooms on that which you don’t need) are bags and boosters.

3) Bloom rewards need to be revisited. They’re low.

4) And finally, GET RID OF RNG IN THE EVENT REWARDS!!

Let me elaborate on point 4. I spent 12 hours this weekend, opened up about 30 Memories of Scarlet boxes and got… worthless junk. A total waste of time.

Its pretty obvious that this happened to a lot of people. You folks at arenanet can confirm based on server metrics – but as a player there are some very good indicators of this.

Just Look at what you offered:

Case of Sand – junk.

Essence of Luck – outright ripoff.

Bag of Rare Gear – at 50s this is an outright ripoff, not even counting the 30 blooms you’re also asking.

Arid Dusty Satchel – worthwile if you get the sentinel’s insignia, otherwise junk.

Minipets – a pretty good deal if you like mini’s.

Shoulder skins, glove skins and tonics – great if you actually want these, although expensive and a massive farming requirement.

So the people going after shoulder skins, glove skins, tonics and mini’s are pretty much happy for the most part. They understand the grind commitment and have certainty on the outcome. But I doubt there are a lot of them as I have only seen a couple of players actually wearing the new skins.

So veterans that were not after the skins or tonics were after something else. The only other thing thats remotely worthwile is the Memories of Scarlet box. So logically a large number of players were doing exactly what I was doing, going for the nice items inside those boxes. But over the entire course of the event I saw exactly one player link an enameled dye in map chat. I’m pretty confident that the RNG drop rate on the good stuff sucks.

People will happily grind away for a reward that they want if the expectation is certainty – even if the gameplay is every man for himself. Now you have a lot of anger and a lot of complaints – its not coming from the people grinding certainty, and its not coming from the few that got enameled dyes or dreamthistle skins or ley line skins. Its coming from the rest of us that got screwed by the RNG and wasted their time doing an event that they would otherwise have not done if the drop rates on those boxes were known in advance.

Want a fun metric to look up for your internal laughs and giggles? Check out how many players participated and subtract the number of players that took the tonics, took the toxic skins, took the minipets for a reward, and also subtract the ones that got a lucky drop from a Memories of Scarlet box. The number that you’re left with are players that are unhappy with Arenanet. Please, go show that number to the next developer that wants to make an RNG box for an event reward.

vox.5019:

Kelvran.9047:

The full ascended armor will be rolled out slowly, probably so that the demand for resources won’t send the markets into shock. According to Linsey Murdock, “As we introduce the new high-level content, we’ll also roll out complimentary Ascended and Legendary items (to say nothing of the other rewards you can earn by playing the content).” They’re giving them away. Anet want us all to have them. At least the initial rings and backpacks. As for the rest of the set pieces they can control the difficulty of acquiring them by changing the drop rates as needed. They can’t do that (at least not directly) with crafted exotics, karma Orr exotics or dungeon token exotics, which many of us have already.

So they’re giving out free Legendaries now? Honestly it’s pretty obvious that she meant “complementary.” Gear that goes with the new content. Dunno how this free ascendeds myth is spreading.

I just quoted what she wrote. If its a myth I didn’t start it

Regardless, the point I was making was that the infusions are what will drive gem sales and resource grinding, the actual gear item probably won’t matter much in the long run.

kistell.5684:

Oh great can see it now....

(Visits mystic well to create infusion crystal)

#error 7089 The mystic well requires infusion core x 5

Please visit the on-line store to purchase your cores.

:)

Bingo.

This gear progression faction vs GW1 veteran faction thing looks like a smokescreen. I suspect its really about resource grinding and gem sales.

Think about it. Assume for the moment that we’ve been told the truth - with the exception that there’s now a single new top tier that will from now on be the top tier in the game rather than the exotics that were originally advertised by Anet.

The full ascended armor will be rolled out slowly, probably so that the demand for resources won’t send the markets into shock. According to Linsey Murdock, "As we introduce the new high-level content, we’ll also roll out complimentary Ascended and Legendary items (to say nothing of the other rewards you can earn by playing the content)." They’re giving them away. Anet want us all to have them. At least the initial rings and backpacks. As for the rest of the set pieces they can control the difficulty of acquiring them by changing the drop rates as needed. They can’t do that (at least not directly) with crafted exotics, karma Orr exotics or dungeon token exotics, which many of us have already.

We’ve been shown one ring that’s got Magic Find, Precision and Power for stats. That’s one ring only. Surely there is one that has Vitality Toughness and Power, and one for each of all the other existing stat combinations, otherwise this entire new system would be pointless.

The socket is the real key here. Infusion stones replace things like the Superior rune of the Mesmer, which has 33% increased stun duration. Linsey has stated that these infusions will be offensive, defensive and omni, and paired with their "like slot" (whatever that means), and also that they will be crafted from the new mystic forge recipes (200 or so new recipes in this patch).

Right now no one but Anet know exactly what these Infusion stones will do, but many of the ones they replace have skills very similar to the trait skills that we pick in our skill trees. What engineer for example wouldn’t want one of these if there was one that had for example something like a weaker version of the grenadier trait? Especially if the engineer had no points in the power tree. Or a generic one that granted retaliation for 10 seconds on using an elite skill. This new gear is useable everywhere except in structured PvP, which allows Anet to say that there’s an area of the game that you can always be competitive at maximum level with no extra cash investment or grinding of any sort.

Infusion stones, created at the mystic forge, possibly requiring something like 10 mystic stones, 10 lodestones, 10 wines and a stack of dust for a high end infusion stone would create a massive demand for gems in the gem store, a small sink for gold and a huge grinding requirement for the other materials. Don’t want to grind? Buy more gems and sell them to players willing to do the grinding for double the mats required to buy the gems and fill the other recipe requirements for their own gear.

Think of how many mystic stones would be needed for a full set for everyone’s main and alts. Then when the first expansion hits the stores in a year or so, we can all do it again for the new higher level ascended armor and infusions to match the new level cap. Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLHfq2lJY5A&t=58m35s Ascended armor will still be best in slot, and legendaries will still be equivalent to best in slot. But you’ll still need to upgrade your infusions and also your new ascendeds if you haven’t done the legendary grind. Anet has been telling us the truth all along, there won’t be a GEAR grind. It’ll be a gold/resource grind.

Long run will this be good for the game? Perhaps. Only time will tell, and it’ll depend on how its implemented and how greedy Anet and/or their publisher are. I’ve done a lot of speculation here (as nearly everyone has in this thread), and I’ve probably overstated the power, impact and cost to the players. But players will pay, one way or another, and Anet will profit. How much remains to be seen. Also the extent to which it will trivialize existing pve content remains to be seen. I am hopeful but not optimistic.