The mutator orbs have really turned up the heat on the key/orb debate. Frankly, I am tired of people thinking they can get something for nothing in every game they play. I see most people want keys removed entirely or made so cheap they are essentially free and therefore the reason for them to exist becomes irrelevant. I know we live in a society these days where everyone wants everything for free, but that is simply not healthy for the game, and I think the key system not only INCREASES the game’s health and stability, but also makes it unique from other games.
First, especially after recent patches, expeditions are the No 1 way to increase gear score, get incredibly valuable loot, and BiS items. You want no orbs? Then be prepared for all that valuable loot to become irrelevant bc when you can grind out 5-10 expeditions in a day, your loot progression will be over in a week, shards will be valueless, and everyone will be howling about there being nothing to do (in game that already has painfully little to do right now, If I’m being honest.) The game NEEDS timegates in order to extend content and create a somewhat balanced experience. This is true of both hardcore and casual players. Hardcore need the timegate to slow them the heck down. Casuals shouldn’t be affected by gates because they don’t play enough for them to matter. If they DO matter and you consider yourself “casual” then maybe you aren’t that casual after all. If they do ever remove keys, they will reduce the rewards down so much that you will NEED to do the expedition 15 times in order to get anything good. Is that REALLY want you want? I rather prefer my run to be meaningful each time I do it.
Let’s take WoW for an example. Even the mythic key system provides essentially unlimited runs, but the loot from those runs is INCREDIBLY restricted by comparison to New World. You do a whole run, you get maybe one loot drop at the end. That is, no gold, no other items, nothing, at all, until your one drop at the end. Unless you are doing high level keys, that one piece of loot is probably trash anyway. Then at the end of a WEEK you get ONE piece of loot to match your HIGHEST key. Sure, you can run the dungeon fifty thousand times if you want, but you’re only going to get a few scraps of trash unless you bust your ass on level 12-15+ keys. New World’s tuning orb system allows them to make the loot in a single run very impactful without feeling like they are flooding the game with easy, powerful loot.
Second, it is NOT HARD to get an orb. I am an orb crafter primarily, I do it literally all the time. Granted, it’s not always thrilling gameplay, I mine a lot of rocks, but I actually do like challenging myself to solo 45 breaches or do them with a friend or two. I LOVE mangled heights both for loots from chests and faction tokens (recently discovered how great it was). I then can go and sell these keys to those who don’t want to partake in the craft. I usually run the key with them and sell the slots. This system creates a MARKET, which is unique to this game, and I love it. It is just like for gear. I keep my prices reasonable so that the average player is definitely making more from the run than they spend buying their slot. You DO NOT have to partake in the craft if you don’t want, there are endless keys available for sale (at least on my server, granted I am a higher pop). Stop whining and be willing to pay for something that is valuable. Keys are easily available and they are (now, after changes) not that expensive at all for what you get out of a single run.
I would even go on to argue that the key system is BETTER than both a free for all or a lockout. As stated, a free for all would require a dramatic lowering of the loot from a single run, so I guess you can spend way more time doing gen and laz than you will ever want to. A lockout would mean you can only progress so fast, hardcap, which I don’t think is nice for those who have the time and want to spend it. I do not see the key system as it is now creating ANY meaningful limitation on players. Instead, it opens up unique possibilities and incredible loot value that I argue does not exist in system that have a “free” access system (looking at you again, WoW).
The choice really comes down to this: Do you want orbs to stay and have a single run be very valuable to match or do you want orbs to be gone and have a single run be nearly worthless and have to run the expedition ten or twenty times more to get anything useful? Think on that for a while.