So, I will start by saying I love all the content! I love how most of the content has been so smooth this year from launch. Don't get me wrong we have had a share of mishaps, but overall it's been a lot of fun. That being said, can we talk about the grind requirement for this x-pack and how it is burning everyone out at only the second month into the X-pack. 1. We have to complete Chrono missions for a very low return and its looking like it could be the end of the xpack to get all that's needed. And that's only if you run them religiously 3-5 times a week, circulate alts in for weekly bonuses. (For those that work this is an incredible ask.) 2. Avatar Coins and Masks - Much like the Chrono's this is eating a lot of play time as you have to have someone monitor when the quests are up, hope they don't interfere with you chrono schedule and run them A LOT to make it meaningful. (Again, those with jobs are at a very big disadvantage as it's not possible for everyone to have an army of alts.) 3. Weekly missions for a chance at bonus crates and coins. Solo | Heroic 1 | Event Heroic | Heroic 2 4. Raid schedule for most is three nights a week for 2-3 hours (Speaking for raiders only here) 5. Harvesting requirements - The harvesting requirements for scrolls alone this year are absurd in my opinion. If you don't have a ton of alts with ponies and plant's it is impossible to keep up. Now add in links | temps | Food & Drink | Spell crafting... It is truly overwhelming... Again, I love all the content! But the gates if you will (Harvesting amounts needed - Chrono Dungeon Weekly's - Event Coins - Raid coins - BoZ coins - Rare masks - Daily Overseers - Ponies) It's truly a lot. Can someone please take another look at these requirements and possible make some adjustments, even subtle ones across the board would be worth it and appreciated. Lot's of fun to be had, but the rewards should match the investment of time. I am putting in more than double the amount of time in game as compared to the last couple of x-packs and the burnout is becoming real!
I agree with most of this. I cannot agree on the harvesting requirements. Everything except the den node drops are already copper on the broker for the regular harvests. The rare harvests seem to be dropping at a pretty good pace as well.
My problem with it is sure it can be purchased on the broker. And while I have no problems spending, there are a lot of new folks and returning folks that cannot and honestly should not be expected to get their harvestables that way. So it is still an added task to go along with everything else. That's all I meant, just another box to check throughout the week. And the cost of all those recipes is really high in rares.
Yes, the timesinks are adding up to a very unreasonable amount of time required in game per day to scrape by. It leaves no time for individuals to select an enjoyable game activity to take part in. Holiday events, deco...forget it. If you want to keep up you can't do any of the fun non-grind stuff. A lot of long-time players are burning out completely and considering cancelling. They're finding it hard to even want to log in, and these are people who willingly logged in and spent happy time with friends when the 'work load' felt reasonable. Radio silence from those who could fix this is not doing you any favors, Daybreak. Please acknowledge posts like this and recognize the problem. Please, look into the time you're asking of people and find ways to make it more reasonable. Currently, you are failing to value the real-life time of your players. That's not good, and won't work for the vast majority of us long-term.
You are talking handcrafted, he's talking mastercrafted, essentially if I'm reading things right. Sure I can make food/drink/painlinks with non-rares and no big deal, buy em off the broker for copper. But as a raider, I use the mastercrafted, so on top of needing rares for my spells for me and my alts, I also need them for the food/drink/painlinks/scrolls etc, and that IS another time sync. I agree with the OP, while I like the content, the amount of reward is not commensurate with the effort right now, it just takes too much. Can you imagine what it will be like once we hit 18 avatar camps?
Actually if you read, I said regular for coppers, rares are dropping pretty decent. And the rest of that isn't really a harvestable as you do not harvest it.
No that this needs to be a debate but rares are still pretty expensive. 12m plat vs copper is quite a difference. And the rares really only drop at a decent rate if you have all the rare harvest gear. Go out as a new harvester and you'll see the drop rate isn't that great. I'm not trying to argue, just saying that rare drops are just as RNG as anything else in the game.
Time sinks are brutal for sure this time around. Miss a couple days and you're falling behind greatly.
And the amount of rares required for the nicer things vs. the common is drastically out of proportion which is what is making it even more challenging. I also pride myself in being able to get a lot of things in game done for myself rather than spend plat on them as it should be. I hope they will consider this post and these comments. Maybe even provide some of their own thoughts as to the intent behind all these different grinds that have been added. Althoug, again, I am loving all the content, just wish all of it wasn't required as much as it is currently and I could spread it out a little more so I could enjoy some goofing around. Our current static group has a very specific schedule when we log in with what we need to do and try not to waste any time getting it done.
Thanks for joining the conversation and your feedback Evil! It's not that the harvest are ultra rare. 1. They require nearly double what was required last x-pack to craft things. 2. They only craft with those increased amounts, half of the usable items they did in x-packs past. 3. Most importantly, it is a task to farm these things added to all the other "Things" in this x-pack. I was merely trying to point out All of the Things required to do right now. While keeping in mind new/returning players, casuals, and the raider communities as it has an impact across the game when you tally all of it together.
Oh I understand. If you look at that list as a whole, it is daunting. I "retired" a few years back from group/raid content and only do solo content. So for me it's not as huge a list but it is still a lot to do and trying to keep multiple characters caught up, forget it. The crafting and harvesting I hesitate to say anything about too much simply due to the fact that taken alone, they aren't that bad. Add to that, someone seems to hate crafters and keeps cutting the content more and more, I would really hate to give them a reason to do away with it and throw the stuff on their new baby, the researchers.
"That being said, can we talk about the grind requirement for this x-pack and how it is burning everyone out at only the second month into the X-pack. 1. We have to complete Chrono missions for a very low return and its looking like it could be the end of the xpack to get all that's needed. And that's only if you run them religiously 3-5 times a week, circulate alts in for weekly bonuses. (For those that work this is an incredible ask.) 2. Avatar Coins and Masks - Much like the Chrono's this is eating a lot of play time as you have to have someone monitor when the quests are up, hope they don't interfere with you chrono schedule and run them A LOT to make it meaningful. (Again, those with jobs are at a very big disadvantage as it's not possible for everyone to have an army of alts.) 3. Weekly missions for a chance at bonus crates and coins. Solo | Heroic 1 | Event Heroic | Heroic 2 4. Raid schedule for most is three nights a week for 2-3 hours (Speaking for raiders only here) 5. Harvesting requirements - The harvesting requirements for scrolls alone this year are absurd in my opinion. If you don't have a ton of alts with ponies and plant's it is impossible to keep up. Now add in links | temps | Food & Drink | Spell crafting... It is truly overwhelming... Lot's of fun to be had, but the rewards should match the investment of time. I am putting in more than double the amount of time in game as compared to the last couple of x-packs and the burnout is becoming real! This is a great representation of a majority of players across multiple servers that I speak with. This "game" has turned from a fun escape after working all day, into a second job that requires more hours than most typical careers. This is ridiculous. Never have I seen the players subjected to more hoops and time-wasting efforts by the dev's in order to stretch out content longer. This is doing nothing except force players to look elsewhere for other games etc. that again don't waste 95% of the players time with nothing to show for it. Rares are at an all-time high of overpricing due to absurdly low drop rates compared to the needs. Rare should never be a static 50 mil plat each on the broker leading to a single food item for example being 2 mil plat. While the older players with a plethora of plat, any new or recently new player never stands a chance to use these type items unless they themselves happen to find them. Rare harvests need to be removed or have the drop rates increased 50-fold to make them trivial and put the prices back down to fall in line with the typical economy. This will bring down spells, scrolls, food, drinks, etc. Everything that a new player would need to even begin to keep up with the game. Chrono missions should have their coins returned to the original amount but also have the coin costs on the vendor slashed 75%. No new player, or any alt for that matter is going to have the status needed, nor the coins from the chrono runs to level the amount of adorns they need to compete. Avatar coins, this is an absolute joke and slap in the face. Remove this from the game and do not bring it back. If folks want to do it as a celebration event, then so be it, but remove all gear etc. items from the vendors. All best in slot items should be removed from these vendors. Forcing the players that are already pushed over their limits on time to now have to do more time-wasting events is lazy programing and planning. Raid Loot: this is laughable honestly, most of the loot goes to waste or is transmuted as no one wants it. ALL of the items from the avatar events should be moved to the raid tables to make raiding worthwhile. I enjoy raiding but the loot should be worthwhile of the time and effort of a raid teams efforts and times.
I'm certainly one of those who's getting burnt out on the grind. I'm having to pick and choose where to spend time. Chrono's are rapidly becoming my least favorite thing to do. I generally don't even get my weeklies done on chrono's. I've been missing the H1 weeklies for a while(only doing h2's) and only now doing them because i'm getting to the end of shiny research but that means less time elsewhere. Avatar camps aren't bad for me but it's an additional grind and I only choose the best reward vs time quests and if those 'good' quests aren't available during your play time I can see it being a real issue for some people. I'll add a couple more grind's to Jrox's list. - status grind for those players newly returned. I returned about a year ago after being gone for 8 years. On my main coming into this xpack I had around 180mil status. I spent 144 on the top mount research and the rest is going to research's so far so status is always something i'm trying to get. - overseer - OK you could let this go completely but those in need of status, need leveling potions or lockout baubles more or less have to do this. You then end up spending time deleting all the crap you get from overseers that are no use. All of this stuff takes time away from actual enjoyable activities in game.
Sadly this isn't just a problem with the current expansion although it certainly sounds as if they've made it far worse than it's ever been. It seems that these days all new content is just another time sink piled on top of all the existing time sinks and the whole mess is made worse by the fact that they all have to be done on Daybreak's schedule, not the player's. All this 'once every 18 hours' nonsense just makes a bad situation worse. Heaven forbid if you can't log in for a few days as that is progress of whatever kind lost forever since there is no mechanism available to make it up later. The situation is particularly bad at the moment as we just entered a period of Live Event hell. For most of the next 4 months there is going to be an annual live event of some sort running. Add to this the Year of Darkpaw which is just a series of time sink tasks and deadlines, plus the new expansion content, all added on top of any existing time sinks a player may already be dealing with. Not to mention any RL time committments players may have. I said not to mention RL since DPG obviously aren't figuring any of that into their efforts to turn the game into a 24/7 time sink. When are we supposed to find time to play the rest of the game? Maybe we're not. Given the amount of effort DPG are putting into trying to bully everyone along to endgame maybe that's the plan. Get everyone up to max level save a ton of money on dev and server resources by deleting everything in the lower levels. Who knows? Whatever they think they're doing I'd say it's not getting the results they wanted. Various people here have already mentioned the amount of burnout it's causing and I can personally attest to that. After working out the appalling time/reward ratio of the non end game portion of the new Darkpaw event I haven't been motivated to log in at all for nearly a week now. And if it continues I'll cancel the sub as I can't afford to pay for something I'm not using. Pretty sure that's not the end result DPG were aiming for.
Trust me, having an army of ponies doesn't solve anything as it becomes its own time sink, so just add that to the list. I have 29 ponies across 4 servers. If I attempt to rotate them all my gameplay turns into: log in, click pony a few times, click depot a couple of times, log out, rinse and repeat. By the time I've done the last one the 2 hours is almost up and I can start all over. How exciting - I can spend my entire game time in a single room and never have to brave the outside world of Norrath! Except ponies are hardly reliable for rares so you still have to find time to go out and do that for yourself. So now I have all the materials I need but no time left to actually craft anything with them ... I don't do plants but I expect it takes the same time to cycle those as it does ponies, except I believe you can only do them once a day, right? Surely that means you never have enough and have to go out and get the extras too? Especially with this new stupidity of needing multiple rares per combine.
I feel the same way--way too much time spent on just doing the basic needed stuff and no real time to just enjoy the game. I'm getting burnt out.
I disagree with some of what has been said. - Most of what has been put in this xpac has been a huge benefit to people that play different toons with the ability to move coins between toons. Very alt friendly IMO. - It's about time they started introducing lots of different currency this early in the xpac. Gives options of which direction you want to go. Not everyone wants to follow the same path as others. Now if they can make the differences relavant later... - There is a benefit to those returning players or new players running chrono dungeons along side "main" toons. Encourages grouping and they can get those coins to get "up to speed" with other more hard-core players. - I don't see a problem with the harvests at all. Yes, this early in the xpac, with everyone needing new spells and upgrades, of course its going to cost and be hard to get, supply and demand. From what I've seen, there is lots here for encouraging grouping, however, the action of grouping hasn't come to fruition yet, at least not on HoF server. The "open grouping" is almost non-existant and that in itself is a death-nail for most group-based games. Yes, I understand there is tons of grouping happening, but its with static groups. Any "new blood" coming in or coming back is out in the dark on grouping... again, not good for growth.
Altfriendly please take of your pink glasses , in the case of the Live Event the option to drag coins from toon to toon dose not wight out the mass of coins you need to get any benefit on toons , the chrono SH...T is the same you need tonns of coins if only want play one Toon on Highend not think about a Alt or evan ALTS thier is no Accountflag on any Addorn from the Chrono dundgens this is kinda pita. The Amount of status and coins for a Alt playing Gamer is a joke it was a bad situation last expa with the miraculas and now the made a bad systhem into a worse not to mention the massive number of coins you need after this unwanted patch and gamebraking cut of mobs from Tower of Frozen Shadows was the worlds worse idea in history of bad ideas. This expack is a grind madness 100% and this is not fun this is a reason to quit because this is not content this is TIMESINK
