With all this style of paying to get into expeditions to carry some farmers or/and getting scammed, it would be only normal to make the Expedition orbs (or at least the mats) tradable.
How is a casual player with fultime job and a family gonna farm the mats for the orbs? I mean, getting 1.5k for a run might not be hard to pay, but the chance of getting scammed is way too large.
I sorta understand the orb requirements (although this should be an attunement style quest, to get a permanent orb to open the expedition), but current system screams for abuse.
If the orbs could be at least safely bought from the stores, it would be a step towards more safer environment.
All Orb mats and Orb should be tradable. it is stupid that it is BoP.
Making it free to trade means scamming is more easily avoided, but more importantly, it means getting the mats together for an Orb is actually a team effort which makes sense since the Orb is for a team activity
Expeditions are part of the few real content. When I log on in the evening for a hour or two, I would like to run an expedition. But AGS first want me to do:
craft an orb
Level up stonecutting
-farm the corrupted runes (max 2 a day) so do it twice.
Farm the portals to get these mats
farm hundreds of motes etc.
So AGS tells me to spend hours of farm and grind so I can finally do the content I like?! Are u serious??
Making an economy out of them seems like a fantastic harmony between ‘people content with literally just gathering and crafting providing a soft but durable backbone to the game’s economy’ and ‘people near apoplexy because they have to get this expensive ass orb to open a dungeon only to have Todd the healer fuck off two minutes in because Benny the tank wore purple pants on alternative Tuesday.’
If players could make and sell orbs it would feel less bad.
In fact, if all 5 players needed their own orb, and orbs cost something like 40% less, didn’t have nearly the restrictions on them, and could be traded and sold I think it would liven up a part of the economy and help prevent dungeon griefing.
Could even tie orbs to difficulty so you could do a one-orb dungeon to have a difficult but doable solo experience up to five orbs so you’re challenged at a five man level but much, much more equipped for what it throws your way. I dunno, just rattling ideas…