People want to know … why the high cost?

[Shadowmoon.7986]

> @"Pifil.5193" said:

> > @"Shadowmoon.7986" said:

> > Your basing it on mystic aspects costing 10g each, but the chat code recipe have their cost around 2.5 g.

> > That removes 7.5g x 50 from the cost.

>

> The current TP cost is about 10g buy order 15 sell order, where did you see 2.5g? Has the recipe been unlocked?

 

I will no show information obtain from data mining chat codes. But reddit has the information you seek.

[XenesisII.1540]

up up down down left right left right b a start.... do I get to see the reduced price now?

[Gop.8713]

If there WASN'T anything to spend all our loots on, wouldn't that be worse . . ?

[Khisanth.2948]

> @"ZDragon.3046" said:

> But by comparison if you look at something like "Mystic Coins" They are much more rare as you can only get them via log in rewards once a week or so. They are used in a great deal of high end equipment such as legendaries making them a high demand item. So their price is naturally high. What do you think would happen if anet made mystic coins drop from casual mobs. The prices would drop faster than rain in a hurricane. Not because anet said "We want to change the price" But more so because the community no longer sees it as a valuable item.

 

That is actually leaving out a bunch of other options ... especially right now where the festival daily completion gives a coin as well.

 

An individual player can also get the equivalent of nearly twice as many coins per day(not counting the additional RNG sources) now compared to back when they were dirt cheap. Some of that is in the form of mystic clovers but that is also the biggest repeatable consumer of coins as opposed to stuff like making a mystic weapon which is a one time thing

[Pifil.5193]

> @"Shadowmoon.7986" said:

> > @"Pifil.5193" said:

> > > @"Shadowmoon.7986" said:

> > > Your basing it on mystic aspects costing 10g each, but the chat code recipe have their cost around 2.5 g.

> > > That removes 7.5g x 50 from the cost.

> >

> > The current TP cost is about 10g buy order 15 sell order, where did you see 2.5g? Has the recipe been unlocked?

>

> I will no show information obtain from data mining chat codes. But reddit has the information you seek.

 

Gotcha, thanks!

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

> @"Voltekka.2375" said:

> Pvp armor needs some shards, wvw skirmish tickets, pve legendary insights. All are timegated. Leggy runes dont, as far as we know. So, there is your answer. And it seems fair.

 

Runes and Sigils have significantly less impact and half the utility of weapons and armor themselves. Upgrade, stats and infusion swapping versus just a stat swap. They need Provisioner Tokens too so there's somewhat of a time gate.

 

Overall it looks like 50 of each charm for a Rune and 75 of each symbol for the Sigil. The Mystic Clover cost is the big problem otherwise.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

For those using ascended gear, I've tried to compare the material/coin costs and the amount of clicking required:

 

**Costs**

 

* The endless upgrade extractor is trading at around 2000 gold (https://www.gw2tp.com/item/86497)

* A single legendary rune includes 474 gold in materials, of which ~120g comes from charms & lucents. A set of six would cost ~2850g (~2200g without the charms/lucents).

 

**Convenience**

 

* With extractor: reserve a slot for each type of rune. Mouse-actions-per-build-change: ~26 (open extractor, drag+extract each gear, open hero panel, select each piece+replace rune)

* With legendary runes: no slots for runes needed. Mouse-actions: ~19 (open hero panel, select each rune, scroll to find stat, select, confirm)

 

****

For me, that makes legendary upgrades not worth it:

* It costs more for even one character than using the upgrade extractor.

* It's only modestly more convenient (it's still around a dozen mouse actions)

* It's only good for a single character

 

If I was on the fence, the clover requirements (20 mystic clover per rune) make the decision easy: unless there's a user-friendlier source of clover, it's not at all worth the effort.

 

****

What would push me in the other direction:

Potentially, build templates/loadouts that can swap upgrades stats on the fly. That convenience depends heavily on the implementation.

[Menadena.7482]

> @"Game of Bones.8975" said:

> How the Devs go about assigning numbers of mats (price) to craft certain pieces of equipment?

>

> With the most recent release of Legendary Runes and Sigils, our latest shiny gotta-have-it, some people have broken down the actual cost and found it to be (for some) to be OUTRAGEOUS.

>

> Sure, they are Legendary and people expect them to cost more than Ascended gear for the ‘privilege’ of swapping stats, but not exponentially more.

 

That is what I was wondering too when I looked them up on the wiki. Since most people will not switch their builds all that often and out of the remaining they often have characters or banked armor for different situations it reduces the demand for stat swapping. So, what effects do we get? Oh, none. I can see legendary runes/sigils being a few gold just in case you want to change stats in the future but this is ridiculous.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> If I was on the fence, the clover requirements (20 mystic clover per rune) make the decision easy: unless there's a user-friendlier source of clover, it's not at all worth the effort.

Is 10 days for t4 + recs for the clovers a user-friendly source? I know 300 fractal relics seem alot. But 15 pristines can be converted into 225 relics and doing 7 fractals should easily cover the last 75.

Add cms to get 140 per cm and you will be swimming in relics.

The only issue is if you are going for fractal god or unlimited tonics, which again is choosing one luxury for another.

 

 

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"Shadowmoon.7986" said:

> > @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> > If I was on the fence, the clover requirements (20 mystic clover per rune) make the decision easy: unless there's a user-friendlier source of clover, it's not at all worth the effort.

> Is 10 days for t4 + recs for the clovers a user-friendly source? I know 300 fractal relics seem alot. But 15 pristines can be converted into 225 relics and doing 7 fractals should easily cover the last 75.

Not for me, because my fractal relics are already allocated to other uses. And not for me because I already had allocated my next 77 clover. Twice. And not for me because it's not less effort or faster than using the mystic forge.

 

Mind you: it's a really great QoL sink for fractal relics.

 

****

I think you've also missed the point I was trying to make: ignoring the Clover, the cost of Legendary Runes is steep, and the QoL benefits are modest at best. So at best, I'm already on the fence and _any_ level of annoyance would push me in the other direction. I picked Clover as that annoyance, because a lot of people are familiar with it. I could also have mentioned the difficulty in navigating the rune-stat-selection UI or having to reselect the same stat six times, rather than just once.

[Ashantara.8731]

> @"Mil.3562" said:

> So is this the direction ANet is gong from now on?

>

> Now almost every good stuff in this game are reachable only by hardcore grinding, paying thousands of gold, gambling on RNG?

 

I'm getting a similar impression.

[yann.1946]

> @"Ashantara.8731" said:

> > @"Mil.3562" said:

> > So is this the direction ANet is gong from now on?

> >

> > Now almost every good stuff in this game are reachable only by hardcore grinding, paying thousands of gold, gambling on RNG?

>

> I'm getting a similar impression.

 

Weren't legendaries always expensive? Why would this one be any different?

[Ashantara.8731]

> @"yann.1946" said:

> > @"Ashantara.8731" said:

> > > @"Mil.3562" said:

> > > So is this the direction ANet is gong from now on?

> > >

> > > Now almost every good stuff in this game are reachable only by hardcore grinding, paying thousands of gold, gambling on RNG?

> >

> > I'm getting a similar impression.

>

> Weren't legendaries always expensive? Why would this one be any different?

 

This isn't just about legendaries; I crafted about a dozen by now, so it's not like I am crying over expensive items per se. (Gen 1 legendaries, for instance, include journeys, which are fun to do.)

 

Anyway, the comment I responded to was about hardcore grinding (which isn't gameplay but plain boring), gambling and RNG (which both have become significantly more prominent in the game). That's not an enjoyable path the game has been pursuing.

[Svarty.8019]

> @"Game of Bones.8975" said:

> How the Devs go about assigning numbers of mats (price) to craft certain pieces of equipment?

>

> With the most recent release of Legendary Runes and Sigils, our latest shiny gotta-have-it, some people have broken down the actual cost and found it to be (for some) to be OUTRAGEOUS.

 

While I agree that there are some problem recipes, for example;

* It's absolutely preposterous that utility station recipes (yes, they still exist)cost 30 gold each. That's a consumable that buffs for an hour. There appears to be a concerted effort to AVOID a pass of ridiculous recipes such as this one because it's already been brought to the devs' attention several times.

 

When it comes to legendary items, however, I completely disagree with you - there are expensive items and it's a lot of effort to make them, but you can make do without - you don't have to have everything. I guess the logic is that only very few people should be able to get everything, and if that's the case then it's working as intended.

[yann.1946]

> @"Ashantara.8731" said:

> > @"yann.1946" said:

> > > @"Ashantara.8731" said:

> > > > @"Mil.3562" said:

> > > > So is this the direction ANet is gong from now on?

> > > >

> > > > Now almost every good stuff in this game are reachable only by hardcore grinding, paying thousands of gold, gambling on RNG?

> > >

> > > I'm getting a similar impression.

> >

> > Weren't legendaries always expensive? Why would this one be any different?

>

> This isn't just about legendaries; I crafted about a dozen by now, so it's not like I am crying over expensive items per se. (Gen 1 legendaries, for instance, include journeys, which are fun to do.)

>

> Anyway, the comment I responded to was about hardcore grinding (which isn't gameplay but plain boring), gambling and RNG (which both have become significantly more prominent in the game). That's not an enjoyable path the game has been pursuing.

 

To be fair I don't really see an increase in these things. (maybe if you count the festival but that always as been a goldsink).

[ZDragon.3046]

> @"Khisanth.2948" said:

> > @"ZDragon.3046" said:

> > But by comparison if you look at something like "Mystic Coins" They are much more rare as you can only get them via log in rewards once a week or so. They are used in a great deal of high end equipment such as legendaries making them a high demand item. So their price is naturally high. What do you think would happen if anet made mystic coins drop from casual mobs. The prices would drop faster than rain in a hurricane. Not because anet said "We want to change the price" But more so because the community no longer sees it as a valuable item.

>

> That is actually leaving out a bunch of other options ... especially right now where the festival daily completion gives a coin as well.

 

The key words you used was "A Coin" this does not decrease the its rarity by much as its a "A" coin for a few weeks over an even that happens once a year. This is still quite rare which is why i did not touch up on things like events like Festival of the 4 winds.

 

If it was "A coin" with no time restriction i could udnerstand what you mean but thats simply no the case here. Coin prices will still remain quite high even with the event running.

 

>

> An individual player can also get the equivalent of nearly twice as many coins per day(not counting the additional RNG sources) now compared to back when they were dirt cheap. Some of that is in the form of mystic clovers but that is also the biggest repeatable consumer of coins as opposed to stuff like making a mystic weapon which is a one time thing

 

To address this comment directly

The reason they are not dirt cheap even though you can get twice as many now possibly is because the demand increased more than the obtainability even though obtainability increased from where it was in the past. More legendaries exists now and more ways of crafting some of those legendaries exist as well. Then there is legendary armor and now runes and sigils. Anet could probably increase it to be 3x the mystic coin gain from the point in the past you are referencing and the prices would still remain high ish.

 

I based my comment on an example that is accurate and easy to measure. Not everyone who plays does bonus festival events for coins or RNG's for coins. But every player who plays does take their login rewards (more than likely) this includes pvp and wvw mains. What you can measure accurately is coins given out for login rewards. This remains constant and is something that every casual and serious player can obtain but is still time restricted. Simply its one of the most easiest rare items that will have a constant rarity so long as people take daily rewards regardless of how much they play the game after that.

 

Thats easy enough to consider more very consistent than any other form of obtaining that item in this example.

 

for anet to really want to dictate the price of something like a "Mystic coin" They would have to dramatically increase or decrease its obtainability or demand which is not something i think they purposely do.

 

Very few people have the gold to shift the market but i feel like there is a much higher chance of a single or small group players shifting the cost of an item purposely than there is of a anet purposely doing it.

[Game of Bones.8975]

If these runes/sigils came out at the same time as build templates and all stats were automatically changed with the new build, I'd say the cost was worth it.

 

It would be nice selling point if the devs came out and specifically stated they were working on that synergy.

[Gehenna.3625]

> @"Game of Bones.8975" said:

> How the Devs go about assigning numbers of mats (price) to craft certain pieces of equipment?

>

> With the most recent release of Legendary Runes and Sigils, our latest shiny gotta-have-it, some people have broken down the actual cost and found it to be (for some) to be OUTRAGEOUS.

>

> Sure, they are Legendary and people expect them to cost more than Ascended gear for the ‘privilege’ of swapping stats, but not exponentially more.

>

> Even in the lifetime of the rune/sigil, if I swap stats constantly between characters, professions, play-types, and playtest, the time and money are just out not worth the effort.

>

> Many people will say: “Well, just don’t craft them.” “They’re optional.” “Legendry’s are supposed to cost more and be hard to acquire.”

>

> They would be right, but for all the time, effort, and money the Devs put into coding if no-one is using them; isn’t it a waste? I ran a poll to see if people were crafting the over-sized storage bags. Most people’s comments (when negative) were about the overly high cost with little return.

>

> You will always get a few people who HAVE to craft the item no matter the cost.

>

> I say reduce the overall cost by at least half, create a set of increasingly harder quests to complete through the core worlds, and let people enjoy the fruits of the Dev’s coding labor.

>

It's a trend in online games to make something ridiculously long and repetitive to acquire. They call it long-term goals but it's really just psychological marketing because they know that for a lot of people it's insane to do and so the option to buy gems to convert to gold looks more and more interesting. They want your real money and a lot of people can't stand the excessive grind so they put excessive grind in and a way to buy it off with real money. Ka-ching!

 

And the people who don't mind the grind will defend it as fair because they consider their ridiculous ability to grind as normal and therefore it's fine. My mind already starts objecting when I do the same thing twice in one play session. What can I say? I either pay for some things with real money to skip the grind or I go insane doing it. That's the reason I just gave up again and took another break. I don't hate the game, it has grown on me over time, but I do hate those excessive grind things that just bore me to death.

 

If they reduced the cost by half, which would be great from an enjoyment point of view for me, they probably would sell a lot fewer gems because a big chunk of their money is made there. If you wonder how that works, go to youtube and search for "tribeflame ceo let's go whaling". It's not about ArenaNet but you might find it interesting to get a glimpse of what goes on behind the mtx in online games these days. When you understand what they explain a lot of this stuff makes a lot more sense is what I'm saying but judge for yourself.

 

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

Honestly the amount of materials (except for Mystic Clovers) do make sense for what we're making here, especially when build templates come out. Its just that the endless upgrade extractor exists. Until then, runes and sigils won't be worth making.

[Psientist.6437]

> @"Gehenna.3625" said:

> > @"Game of Bones.8975" said:

> > How the Devs go about assigning numbers of mats (price) to craft certain pieces of equipment?

> >

> > With the most recent release of Legendary Runes and Sigils, our latest shiny gotta-have-it, some people have broken down the actual cost and found it to be (for some) to be OUTRAGEOUS.

> >

> > Sure, they are Legendary and people expect them to cost more than Ascended gear for the ‘privilege’ of swapping stats, but not exponentially more.

> >

> > Even in the lifetime of the rune/sigil, if I swap stats constantly between characters, professions, play-types, and playtest, the time and money are just out not worth the effort.

> >

> > Many people will say: “Well, just don’t craft them.” “They’re optional.” “Legendry’s are supposed to cost more and be hard to acquire.”

> >

> > They would be right, but for all the time, effort, and money the Devs put into coding if no-one is using them; isn’t it a waste? I ran a poll to see if people were crafting the over-sized storage bags. Most people’s comments (when negative) were about the overly high cost with little return.

> >

> > You will always get a few people who HAVE to craft the item no matter the cost.

> >

> > I say reduce the overall cost by at least half, create a set of increasingly harder quests to complete through the core worlds, and let people enjoy the fruits of the Dev’s coding labor.

> >

> It's a trend in online games to make something ridiculously long and repetitive to acquire. They call it long-term goals but it's really just psychological marketing because they know that for a lot of people it's insane to do and so the option to buy gems to convert to gold looks more and more interesting. They want your real money and a lot of people can't stand the excessive grind so they put excessive grind in and a way to buy it off with real money. Ka-kitten!

>

> And the people who don't mind the grind will defend it as fair because they consider their ridiculous ability to grind as normal and therefore it's fine. My mind already starts objecting when I do the same thing twice in one play session. What can I say? I either pay for some things with real money to skip the grind or I go insane doing it. That's the reason I just gave up again and took another break. I don't hate the game, it has grown on me over time, but I do hate those excessive grind things that just bore me to death.

>

> If they reduced the cost by half, which would be great from an enjoyment point of view for me, they probably would sell a lot fewer gems because a big chunk of their money is made there. If you wonder how that works, go to youtube and search for "tribeflame ceo let's go whaling". It's not about ArenaNet but you might find it interesting to get a glimpse of what goes on behind the mtx in online games these days. When you understand what they explain a lot of this stuff makes a lot more sense is what I'm saying but judge for yourself.

>

 

That video is very useful for understanding why Legendary upgrades are so expensive. And as a bonus, they even depend on loss aversion for part of their value. I may be wrong, but I think upgrade overwriting is the only example of monetizing loss aversion in the game. If we need an indelible marker for predatory monetization, I would suggest monetizing loss aversion.

 

The most maddening part of that video is his opening; "We won't talk about the morality, hahahaha" and the frequent laughs from the audience whenever he talks about monetizing players by manipulating our reptilian brain. I don't know where modern gaming would be without manipulating our reptilian brain.

 

 

 

 

[Stalkingwolf.6035]

> @"Game of Bones.8975" said:

 

> They would be right, but for all the time, effort, and money the Devs put into coding if no-one is using them; isn’t it a waste? I ran a poll to see if people were crafting the over-sized storage bags. Most people’s comments (when negative) were about the overly high cost with little return.

 

pretty simple. Some whales buy gems -> gold and craft the items. thats a win for Anet/NCSoft.

they are not supposed to be craftable by players who don't invest money or ridiculous much time in this game

[Ayakaru.6583]

If you go into raiding its far more cost efficient to just have several sets of armour in your inventory to swap out on the fly.

You can deck out 5 class with 2 or 3 sets of ascended gear , and still be cheaper of than legendary