Just posting this because there seems to be many people who seem to think that everyone universally wants expeditions to be limitless free runs for everyone.
I disagree and think getting access to an expedition should be difficult for a number of reasons.
Here are a few.
It gives Highly skilled players an incentive to help a lower skilled player complete an expedition. Allowing that player the opportunity to learn and grow. (I have had this issue in other games, but not in new world, people prefer to run with who they know.)
It ensures that expeditions can continue to be rewarding. If they give people limitless access to expeditions they will either have to reduce the likelihood of getting ‘good’ drops OR by default the rewards will become less valuable due to the massive influx of said items.
It serves as a valuable moneymaking method for many players who wish to sell the completed orbs. I am not among that group but I know many people who do this as one of their primary income methods, either selling slots to less experienced players. or selling the completed orbs to premade groups.
One thing i would like to state however, I do somewhat disagree with the time-gating. I do think that the gate should exist in the difficulty of completing the craft itself. That being said I do understand the logic behind it.
The time gate exists to ensure that players that grind harder than a walrus on steroids (id totally do this) don’t corner the entire market on tuning orbs. By introducing a time gate it prevents players from engaging in this excessively grindy behavior and further increases the value of the orb giving all players an opportunity to benefit from crafting the orb…
I don’t see how this helps in any way. That tuning orbs are so difficult to obtain make it whoever pays the highest gets in, and otherwise it would preferably be whoever is properly geared. How do time gated orbs give higher skilled players an incentive? If you actually do read the forum threads, there’s so many complaining that they have yet to run a dungeon because of how poorly accessible it is right now.
This isn’t fair to those who want actual gameplay to enjoy more than just loot drop rng pursuit.
It does serve as a valuable moneymaking method. But this isn’t going to be healthy for the longevity of a game when farming it becomes too much of a chore.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say it sounds like you don’t farm your own orbs. You can get 2 corrupted runes a day, and each orb costs 3 each. You need to run portals consistently, which granted isn’t bad right now. You need to either farm 7,000 faction points per orb. Do you do that? Please actually grind orbs if you have not.
If you have, then I surrender and this game isn’t for me, and that’s fine. But please know that the there’s people focusing on wanting to run dungeons for the gameplay, and there’s people counterarguing focusing on this pursuit of rng drop tables. I just wanted the gameplay.
Maybe not free but they really have to dial it down on what it requires to make these Orbs. I have been 60 for a while now and I haven’t been in Laz or Gen only because I am not paying my way into a dungeon for a game I already paid for. The idea of selling Orbs for gold is ridiculous IMO.
That can be done outside of expeditions, and not everyone who runs an expedition only wants veterans to help them, most people don’t mind running with fellow newbies. This game is not difficult.
What does paying for 5k+ slots and grinding mats to craft your own orbs have to do with making the expedition rewarding? The only people being rewarded for these expeditions are people who make the orbs and sell all 4 slots for 20k gold.
And this is why people complain about it. A good moneymaking method used to be doing faction missions in great cleave but the devs decided to make the faction missions more time consuming and difficult for solo grinders so you basically have to run a group dedicated to running hours worth of faction missions just to make good money in one day. Selling items and crafting REUSABLE gear for other players to OWN is a good way to make money.
Locking in-game content behind a paywall even with in-game currency is as scummy as doing it IRL. If I wanted to pay for more gameplay I’d buy a DLC with my real money. Not work a second virtual job for it.
I actually have only ever crafted monoecius tuning orbs, but I do have a number of corrupted lodestones I haven’t used.
I don’t rely on stonecutting for income. I don’t think PvP arenas and content should be gated by resources to enter, however if we do this I strongly feel we will need cross server matchmaking as well as some sort of ranking or MMR system.
Unfortunately the development resources for this would be quite substantial so it may take a few months before we see something like that unless they raise population caps and merge more servers.
I pay my 1.5-3.5k entry fee when I do an expedition and I don’t complain, generally the rewards are equivalent or in some cases substantially greater than the expense.
I would rather have expeditions remain very rewarding than become value-less as a result of being able to infinitely run them and I still feel my points above are valid.
By creating a barrier to entry for the expedition, the resources gained exclusively within the expedition have value. E.g Timeless Jewelry shards.
If players can run an infinite number of genesis runs in a day many people will undoubtedly grind it nonstop and subsequently tank the value of those items and ultimately lead to people becoming apathetic towards doing the expedition except for purposes of gaining expertise.
This would also likely contribute towards inflation, you’d be removing the gold-sink of the chisels etc… as well as flowing in loads of gold from the boss kills themselves.
If AGS decides to mitigate rewards in response to this then the expedition will become less desirable to complete. If they don’t then it will become less desirable to complete by default due to the influx of resources and eventual devaluation of the gold and item rewards.
If additional gold sinks are needed then the game could charge a fee for “ranked” or competitive PvP where the rewards would be greater than casual PvP.
Maybe the game could host large scale tournaments and destroy a percentage or even all of the gold used as the entry fee. (Provided the other potential rewards are justifiably offset by this fee).
I’m not going to get into game design ideas for potential PvP arena modes but I’m sure there are people who just want to be able to fight each other even with minimalistic rewards, just to test their skills against others.
There would be no need to gate that behind a barrier to entry provided the rewards in most cases wouldn’t be substantial or damaging to the in-game economy.
I disagree on all your points a d think they should either remove orbs or drastically reduce their craft cost by like 90%.
Those dungeons can actually be quite fun and a good source of gold, expertise or gear but their gated behind keys so barely anyone does them appart from laz and gen this is wasted content.
All your points 1.2 and 3 I straight disagree with for similar reasons to what people have already said.
Which would you prefer
1 Log in with an hour or so to spend and just group with some people and run a couple dungeons and have a good time.
Log in and run portals and grind mats with some people to farm part of 1x key to possibly do a run tomorrow?
Has anyone in this game ever played another MMO in their lifetime?
All MMOs have dungeons. In order to prevent players from farming them endlessly they put lockouts or cooldowns on either the dungeon itself or the loot one can get. If you run M+ in WOW you only get gear the first time you run for that day or in the case of raids, that week. This allows players to run it multiple times (to help guildies, learn it better etc) and not reap all the initial benefits.
So the resources are not “free”, just entering the dungeon is. EVERY SINGLE MMO dungeon has lockouts for gear, you mean to tell me that the NW devs dont know this? Im tired of stonecutters wanting to milk profits for content that should be available.
Because most of the best things in expeditions such as unique gear and weapons are bind on pickup. The odds of getting them at 600 are also very small anyway so it would have a minimal impact on the economy.
The main thing they should do if they removed orbs would be to reduce the guaranteed large chunks of gold from bosses to combat inflation.
Imagine this being your major concern for the game right now. AGS is adding pointless forced grind of the same content and letting servers die off daily but this is what matters. Making sure uou get some extra gold off your 200th mindless run of the same pve garbage.
Many people want everything to remain the same just with tuning orbs becoming free. If you do that it will significantly damage the economy with the way rewards are scaled right now.
What excitement would you feel finding a timeless ring shard drop if you know its now worth 50g because people are running the expedition a hundred times a day?
Whenever an open world boss is found to have “good loot” or a “good droprate” for something that item gets farmed into oblivion and whatever loot they had with a decent droprate soon becomes worth substantially less.
The only items with any value from open world bosses are those with substantially reduced droprates. e.g weaponsmith pants, chef shirt, aincient mandible. Unless you want that happening to expedition bosses also then there is going to need to be a way to limit access.
The current method of access limitation encourages players to engage in closing corrupted portals, and running PvP missions. The stonecutting requirement isnt that big a deal as it takes less than a day to get 200 stonecutting assuming your mining level is half decent (I know this because I helped 2 of my friends get is so we could all make monoecious tuning orbs).
If you have another solution I’m all ears but at present I haven’t seen a solution that i feel causes more harm than good.
Another note: I do not make expedition turning orbs, i have never made one, I have only ever made Monoecious tuning orbs. I haven’t even closed 250 portals (proof attached)
Dungeon loot drop rates are already abysmal for some items, i’ve ran close to now 500 gen runs at max expertise and have only half of the possible named legendarys.
Most people dont like tuning orbs, you are a minority, give it up.
