Changes to Motes/Ember/Figments

[Harvain]

What are you on about? Have you been on the game? Go the Steepset.

It's the HoR T3 teals for 4k.

The prices may change, your right, but on live, thats a good price.

But we don't care about what is happening right now.

That WON'T matter if Update 32 goes ahead with the current direction.



If Update 32 goes ahead as is, granted it might not be right away, the example of the Houses of Rest Vendor of current 1,000 - 1,200 - 2,500 - 4,000 Embers Options for Items would increase upwards of 2 or 3 times as much (if not even more).

So that 4,000 Embers Item atm could cost 8,000 to 12,000 Embers either with Update 32 or soon after Update 32.

Then Raid Items which base cost Pre-Update 32 would be even higher than such and would see much higher 2x or 3x Post-Update 32 amounts.



So even with just say 3 Weeklies giving 1,500 Embers on 1 Character would be 4,500 Embers.

If going based off a 8,000 or 12,000 Post-Update 32 Scenario for just 1 Houses of Rest Item from the Vendor would be: 2 weeks or 3 weeks respectively with some excess Embers in both scenarios for just 1 Item with just 3 Weeklies on 1 Character.

Which obviously still requires a Character to have completed Tier 1 to 3 of Houses of Rest to even Barter for such Items.

[bohbashum]

...could...

Hence why I'm giving my feedback...

I like the prices as they are now on live...

Is this difficult to understand?


SSG could make chicken run session play reward 100k embers. It's not impossible! but it's not somthing I'll think about.

I don't need a mountain of text to say "I like that, can you keep it?". I don't need to theorise over unknowns.

[Seregthol]

Exactly. Raninia did not explain why there is a need to make figments significantly harder to obtain, or the reasons behind increasing the figment cost of housing decos/cosmetics, so we are left to assume this is about nothing more than attempting to push the housing/cosmetics community towards lootboxes. He states that they "expect that most players will get a bit choosier in terms of what cosmetics they prioritize." Again, why is there a need to limit the amount of cosmetic items players can earn, other than a desperate attempt to push us to lootboxes?

I think there are a LOT of players who would like an answer to this question. Devs?

[JH15547]

"With Motes no longer being barterable, we can also add more catch up things to it" --If the intention is to increase the routes of catch up mechanics with this change as well as the LI changes .. Why do we have a vendor for the 6man gear but not a vendor for the 3man gear? The 6man is newer than the 3mans. The 3man also occupies gear slots that the 6man does not.

I'm concerned that you said "Embers being barterable into Motes and Figments never made a lot of sense to me" -- As this has never been the way it worked. We've never been able to barter Embers into motes. We've been able to barter both 'gear currencies' into a single cosmetic currency known as 'figments'.

This to me suggests you haven't taken the time to learn our past history of issues with these kinds of currency systems 'Ash of Gorgoroth" and the pitfalls that lead to where we are now. Like LIs I feel you're swinging the pendulum back to some of the problematic issues without learning any of the lessons we did last time.

Great point. Makes me much more worried.

[BigLotroFan]

Hence why I'm giving my feedback...

I like the prices as they are now on live...

Is this difficult to understand?


SSG could make chicken run session play reward 100k embers. It's not impossible! but it's not somthing I'll think about.

I don't need a mountain of text to say "I like that, can you keep it?". I don't need to theorise over unknowns.

This is a thread about feedback for the proposed changes in update 32. Not about what is live now. The prices are going up. Raninia said so already. Among the many changes things will cost 2-3 times as much. So it's good that you like the 4k price. Take advantage of it before it turns to 12k.

Kind of strange that you are wondering why others are on about update 32 when that is what this thread is about.

[Harvain]

Hence why I'm giving my feedback...

I like the prices as they are now on live...

Is this difficult to understand?


SSG could make chicken run session play reward 100k embers. It's not impossible! but it's not somthing I'll think about.

I don't need a mountain of text to say "I like that, can you keep it?". I don't need to theorise over unknowns.

Your original comment was also a mountain of text and was based on something that won't be a reality.

The only way prices would remain the same is if SSG 180s their intentions or puts them on hold.

Prices are going up and the only "could" is how much but we've been given a target range of 2 or 3 times as much.

So there is no theory or an unknown beyond how much it will be increased if things proceed as they've been talked about.

[ShireDweller]

Exactly. Raninia did not explain why there is a need to make figments significantly harder to obtain, or the reasons behind increasing the figment cost of housing decos/cosmetics, so we are left to assume this is about nothing more than attempting to push the housing/cosmetics community towards lootboxes. He states that they "expect that most players will get a bit choosier in terms of what cosmetics they prioritize." Again, why is there a need to limit the amount of cosmetic items players can earn, other than a desperate attempt to push us to lootboxes?

The limited availability of the curator and seasonal vendors was frustrating enough, even when I was able to keep motes banked for quick conversion. Without that option, I'm having nightmares of grinding festivals ad nauseum only to have the curator disappear a day or two before getting enough figments for the item I am after... how does that sound even remotely fun?

This is cosmetic fluff we are talking about. What problem is it causing if I choose to run missions for motes to convert to figments so I can dress my hobbit as a lumberjack, or fill my premium house with pets? Those activities were what I enjoyed most in Lotro, and the cosmetic rewards made tedious, grindy content like missions worthwhile to me. If you remove my reward for doing grindy content, I simply stop doing that content, which makes me less engaged with the game, with less reason to login. I know a lot of people with similar playstyles feel the same way. I have no interest in raiding or getting the best gear, so cosmetics and housing were my main reason for playing (aside from the story).

This change will alienate casual players who play mostly for roleplay, housing, cosmetics, etc. As someone who returned to Lotro after a long absence and has spent a lot of time grinding cosmetic and housing items to "catch up," it is enough of a challenge to do so, even with converting motes from missions. Eliminating the conversion will be especially frustrating to new or returning players when they are met with dozens of items they would like, and little means of obtaining them without resorting to lootboxes. Not to mention it will sap all the fun out of festivals, which will become a necessary time-limited grind that must be done on as many characters as possible. If that had been the case when I returned to the game, I can guarantee that I would not have played nearly as much as I have, nor spent nearly the amount on Lotro points/VIP/expansions that I did.

It looks like this part of the player base wasn't hitting enough of their targets...too much having fun, not enough grinding/spending.

[JH15547]

Perhaps you could outline what those sources will be, before you remove the largest non-paid ways that people earn figments via - namely exchanging motes for figments. So far what you have outlined is that you are making changes because of how you perceive end game raiding gear - which is largely irrelevant to a section of the game's players who are focused on living a hobbit-y or dwarf-y life in Middle Earth.

It is disenfranchising to say you will add more sources without outlining them, especially when you say it immediately after you've said "we'll keep an eye on how acquisition looks for those," - you say it's not about pushing people towards loot box keys but it clearly is, otherwise what else are you going to see? The only other option people have is festivals.

There is literally a section of the game's community that only run missions to earn motes to exchange into figments, and to get other furniture / cosmetics via the mission reputation systems. You're saying that one of their primary reasons for running missions is now closed. Hardly makes sense and might not be pay to win but is certainly bordering on pay walled.

Until you add multiple ways to balance out your change, it is absolutely about pushing cosmetic / furniture fans towards loot box keys, which will not result in as many sales as you might hope, let's be real. Net result, those players will run less missions or none, and you'll make less cosmetics and furniture available via figments because you'll claim it's not popular - but who made it unpopular? - and thus the system becomes a victim of unnecessary change.

No one swapping motes out for figments is doing so to "win" at end game raiding, yet they are being penalised by this change. They're doing so to live a virtual life in a virtual world, and the "proposed" change (which is clearly set in stone before we get a say,) is shutting a door on many of the people who can't afford loot boxes or disagree with the loot box model. Instead of taking 3-4 weeks to get enough figments for one item, they now take 6+ months and likely miss the curator in the process.

Again, I put it to you - continue to allow for exchange, but if you feel 1:1 is unreasonable - make it an exchange rate rather than 1:1. 2:1 or 3:1.

Removing motes to figments entirely is making a bad change for the sake of change.


One thing I will hand your team - you do communicate better than what some people give you credit for, and kudos for that - but the horse has clearly bolted and the peasants are revolting. Throw non-raiders who like their cosmetics and furniture a bone.

It’s clearly a case of they want us to pay more real money for cosmetics. But they need to be more forthright about it. He danced around it explaining the theoretical underpinnings of the Figments currency, but it wasn’t really made clear. Not the best transparency …

[Altair6]

Embers:
- The purpose of Embers was to act as a way to mitigate being unlucky with RNG.

Gee! Anyone would think the RNG was totally outside your control. Like it's somehow impossible for you to check what class a character is before you dump some useless gear in its bag. Or check if they've already got one (or two) piece(s) of that gear. Thanks for rescuing us from the dreaded RNG beast that's uncontrollably roaming your system causing chaos.

[Lillira_of_Gladden]

Figments
- We're looking at the pricing structure we currently have. Giving the player a bigger cap will make it a bit easier for us to adjust pricing, but we're not planning to double the cap and then double all the costs, there's no value in doing so. We aren't increasing or changing Figments as dramatically because they're still an eternal currency in this model - however many you earn today is as many as you'll have until you spend it. And similar to how Embers are, whenever we add new cosmetics to the barterers, they're available for Figments directly, so your Figments have nominally infinite value. Of course, cosmetics tend to be a bit more subjective than power comparisons, so we expect that most players will get a bit choosier in terms of what cosmetics they prioritize. This is definitely trickiest for players who liked to collect 'em all, but we'll keep an eye on that and see what we can do.

- We're also going to add more sources for Figments, just like are with Embers, again such as with landscape quests and the Reward Track. We'll keep an eye on how acquisition looks for those, as we want to avoid the problems that caused us to make the change for Embers.

So was problem to be solved here that some folks had collected too many cosmetics???? How did this imbalance the game?

As it sits right now are we supposed to stop questing in case figments are getting added to the current quests we are doing?

We definitely need more information than taking it on faith that there will be some method for cosmetics/decor collectotrs to continue to play the game without having crack open our wallets more than we already do. Cause right now shutting down the convestion is saying hey you can get a few hundred every couple months off festival wrappers, but until then feel free to gamble on spinning the wheel of lootbox purchases as this is the only option between festivals.

Of all the things to address I'm shocked this somehow made it to the top of the pile.

[JH15547]

Here is what I would do in Raninia's shoes:

Embers
Daily Stairs T1 runs made embers too plentiful. But in killing that off, you're also killing off any incentive for people to do lots and lots of pug AD, Remm, etc. runs once they're geared. The best part about 130 cap was the amount of PUG runs for those raids. Those with the skill to help people experience that content won't have any incentive to do the same thing now at 140.

So I suggest do one of two things - reduce the number of possible ember disenchants, perhaps limit to raid gear. Even T2+ raid gear if needed. Second option - use the 1 hour timer feature we have for binding. Keep the embers cap at 10,000, and allow disenchants like before. But only for that 1st hour. After that, they either convert to be Motes disenchantable or nothing at all. This will stop people hoarding embers in anticipation of a gear-cap increase or barter NPC release.


Figments
The plentiful amount of embers resulted in a situation where people had so many they were bartering them into figments. This impacted key sales for lootboxes. This is a fair point from a business perspective ... cosmetics are cosmetics, and in a F2P game that is the best stuff to charge real $$$ for. But just be up front about it, and perhaps just put this stuff in the LOTRO Store so the game has fewer perception issues when it comes to being greedy. Give out a handful of LP for finishing the festival wrappers.

[DLevel]

Alright, gonna go ahead and see if I can provide some answers and context on stuff here. I was the big driver of this change, so any frustrations or questions can be (politely) directed at me and I'll do my best to address it. Any successes are the team's. I don't ever really remember to look at my Private Messages, so I encourage you to keep responding to this thread, and I'll continue to read and respond as I'm able.



Embers:
- . We'll have more ways to earn Embers when this goes live, and we'll be balancing around how many Embers a player can earn without opening lootboxes, as that's how most players play and we want to make sure you're still able to consistently get the gear you want... but the way we want you to get most of your pieces is by running the content where it drops.



I'll try and come back to this thread periodically over the next few days!

Leave my wallet alone, This is Wrong.
I have earned and built the embers in my wallet, just as we have earned and built our old Li.s How can we believe that you will honor [QUOTE]"We'll have more ways to earn Embers"[QUOTE], when you plan to take these Embers away. I earned at level cap and at tier caps 1/2/3/4 & yes T5. Took days/weeks/months without rewards as well as having completed a few of them. The Embers in my wallet should be mine to keep and save as i see fit and when i am ready to make a selection to use as 'EMBERS EARNED'. The value is now 1/10 of the original and you.re worried it is not what i want ? [QUOTE]"we want to make sure you're still able to consistently get the gear you want... "[QUOTE]
This is Wrong.

[Caladria-Gr]

but the way we want you to get most of your pieces is by running the content where it drops.

You want us to get gear from where they drop and run those instances at the appropriate difficulty level... Right........

Is this the reason that the so far mentioned future methods of acquiring embers consist of:

a) do 2 weekly quests of completing 20 Solo daily quests, and from running t1 lvl131 possibly solo versions of Gundabad instances
b) the reward track which uses IXP runes we can get from doing any instances in existence (also that reward track was meant to be for LI resources, now it seems you are throwing in it any kind of resource that comes up)
c) crafting with resources that have nothing to do with the instances but come from landscape farming
d) as rewards from Epic and other quests
and e) buying black steel keys

I see... I see... Actually I dont.. Could you elaborate further please?

Embers were a currency that only ever increased in value as you kept it. The best times to spend it were either when you were capped out or in the next Update, because the gear in the future would generally be better than the gear in the past. That turned it a completely different thing than we wanted it for. As mentioned above, the goal for Embers is to give you a way to mitigate bad luck, but if spending it is often the wrong move long term, it doesn't feel great no matter what you do with it. Versioning Embers into Motes lets us make it clear what Embers are for and give you lossless value without making you want to hoard it forever.

So running instances to get gear that we could hoard and disenchant them at the opportune moment is a bad thing, but buying keys at the opportune moment so we can get thousands of embers to barter new gear is fine.... How is this not encouraging spending money over playing and grinding the game and the instances?

[Firin]

i'm not a big endgame player but i do love buying housing decorations for figments so for me the figments change is more important. All i can say is that if the only source of figments would be festivals and lootboxes then i'd simply stop buying stuff for figments. I sure as hell don't wanna get aneurism trying to run every damn fest on every toon till i burn out.

[Axxe]

I don't raid and am glad i can get embers from gear in lootboxes. More bang for my buck!! Games have 2 currencies, dollars and time. If i don't put the time in like raiders do, but still want good gear, i am glad dollars will give me that. What do you care if i got my gear from lootboxes or raiding? Some may prefer to raid and that is ok too. It is good to have choices.

[Harvain]

One point I would raise is: SSG expressed in 2021 looking at how other Games were doing things and not only in the MMORPG Market.

I would then ask: Has anyone at SSG looked at what occurred and started with Electronic Arts aka better known as EA and their Game: Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2017) and their Lootbox System which led into the Lootbox Controversy and all the changes not only across the Gaming Industry but in various World Governments?



Look how EA has handled such a popular Franchise in the form of Star Wars: They have no games officially being Supported, their latest Star Wars Game: Star Wars Squadrons received it's last Update in May 2021, they abandoned Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2017) and never delivered Features that are a staple of Multiplayer Games such as Server Browsers as a key example and in recent times said Game has been plagued by Hackers who put a hack into the game where even after they LEAVE everyone on said Server once they get down to 1 Health Point CANNOT die.

Modders have taken up the banner and fight and have done a lot of things EA refused to allow their Developer Dice to ever attempt when it comes to Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2017). Granted this isn't unusual and is seen with many games especially ones that no longer have Official Support as it's much easier to Mod when the Developer isn't making changes.

And EA has lost their exclusivity to Star Wars because they rested on the fact they had the ONLY RIGHTS to a Franchise and didn't take advantage of such and especially seen during their 2017 SW Battlefront 2 Game tried to milk their Customers of their money with Lootboxes and the fallout forced them to rework such fully. LOTRO also moved away from Lootboxes to an extent during a climate that was Anti-Lootbox and Anti-Exploiting the Customer.

So why make a move that to X amount of folks looks like a return and embracing of such a System again?



Another example and another EA Game with their Developer Dice: Battlefield 2042.

Now granted this game doesn't have Lootboxes but it has all kinds of controversy from their decision for how Classes play in Battlefield 2042 going away from their original 4 Class Model: Assault, Support, Recon and Engineer moving into a 10 Class System. Which pretty much isn't liked but was very akin to what we've seen with LOTRO & SSG. EA did X amount of work and had to justify it and went forward with it even though plenty of indications were that folks weren't wanting such a direction.

There are so many issues with that Game, lack of features that won't be coming, bad Communication, bad decisions, the Game Performance not being good, a almost non-exist Update Cycle or so slow it feels like such and so on with the Game being at 33% Overall & 32% in the Last 30 Days on Steam for the Game's Rating Score by the Community with Reviews.

Granted I'm not stating SSG is akin to EA or LOTRO is akin to Battlefield 2042 but in all honesty we're trending in a way akin to both of them which should be avoided at all cost.

[StinkyGreene]

Gotta suck being the team that NGEd LOTRO after taking darn near a million dollars from the American treasury during the pandemic. Ridiculous.

[Syranthian]

I don't raid and am glad i can get embers from gear in lootboxes. More bang for my buck!! Games have 2 currencies, dollars and time. If i don't put the time in like raiders do, but still want good gear, i am glad dollars will give me that. What do you care if i got my gear from lootboxes or raiding? Some may prefer to raid and that is ok too. It is good to have choices.

Right on! This post is awesome in its brazen honesty. My favorite part is where you say "some may prefer to be rewarded by actually playing the game, and I guess as an option that's OK too."

Actually when the marketing veneer is so thin you can see the greedy truth beneath, as in Raninia's post, I'd almost have more respect if they just straight out admitted that all of these changes are to push key sales. It's just so painfully obvious in this case...we see you.

It's actually kind funny, not gonna lie.

R: We are in charge of the restrictive, poor RNG for gearing, and don't like players having to use a safety net mechanic to gear up.
Players: Thank god so you're fixing the RNG then?
R: We are removing the safety net.
Players: Doesn't that make it harder to gear?
R: We somehow want even more control over how you obtain gear. We will offer extra ways to get embers.
Players: Oh awesome, what ways?
R: Unspecified.
Players: That's not very encouragi--
R: We are also restricting currencies for cosmetics.
Players: What? Why would you do that, it doesn't even have anything to do with gearing?
R: We will also offer extra ways to get figments.
Players: Let me guess, those ways are also unspeci--
R: Unspecified, correct.
Players: Damn, it's the 'LI system today, reward track tomorrow' all over again. These things should really be worked out before you launch these things, you know?
R: We're collecting feedback.
Players: Awesome! Here is a detailed breakdown of why your stated aims here don't actually come close to--
R: Clarification, we look forward to your feedback *after* the system has been forced in.
Players: Wait, you can just buy keys to avoid all these new restrictions, can't you?
R: No comment, but yes, you totally can.
Players: Doesn't that fact overshadow all your lengthy arguments and justifications? So that's what all this boils down to?
R: That's certainly not the official line we're going with.

[Zvim666]

Hence why I'm giving my feedback...

I like the prices as they are now on live...

Is this difficult to understand?


SSG could make chicken run session play reward 100k embers. It's not impossible! but it's not somthing I'll think about.

I don't need a mountain of text to say "I like that, can you keep it?". I don't need to theorise over unknowns.

Copium.

I hope that crash to reality doesn't hurt too much when we get the adjusted values in update 32.

[sapienze]

Gotta suck being the team that NGEd LOTRO after taking darn near a million dollars from the American treasury during the pandemic. Ridiculous.

DBG cut was $6,000,000

To think GM's don't make much. Wait... LotRO has none.

[Curuer_Bauglir]

How exactly am I supposed to earn 7500 figments that it takes to barter for ONE FREAKING COSMETIC, much less multiple items? I don’t run a ton of endgame content anymore and mostly stick to questing with alts and housing, yet motes and embers conversion to figments was still the number one way to acquire figments. Even with my extremely casual play style, endgame currency was the most common way for me to acquire casual currency. How does that make sense? And now you’re taking away the number one source of figments. I don’t need embers and motes, so what am I supposed to do with them now? Why would you want to make it harder to acquire housing items for figments when you are releasing a new housing neighborhood? I don’t understand how you can be so generous with the free content code and then turn around and bend us over a lootbox. Raninia, I challenge you to play the game for a week and come tell us how many figments you have acquired. Then open 10 lootboxes and compare the two figures. And then tell us with a straight face that these changes are about the content and not the lootboxes.

I defend SSG all the time when people complain about the cost of VIP or LP or expansions because I understand that this is a business and a company needs revenue to keep the doors open. LOTRO has long provided us with quality content, so I have no problem paying for said content. But lootboxes aren’t content worth paying for. I was elated about Erebor housing and looking forward to more housing areas to come in the future. It is so disheartening to see LOTRO going down this path. For years, players have been eagerly anticipating seeing the Scouring of the Shire in the game, but we never expected it to be a real life occurrence. You cut the Party Tree down and replaced it with a stack of lootboxes.

[road.rage]

I don't raid and am glad i can get embers from gear in lootboxes. More bang for my buck!! Games have 2 currencies, dollars and time. If i don't put the time in like raiders do, but still want good gear, i am glad dollars will give me that. What do you care if i got my gear from lootboxes or raiding? Some may prefer to raid and that is ok too. It is good to have choices.

I don't care about your way of obtaining items, honestly.
But this hits all of us, so we do care.

They put barbed wire in all the fun places so the only painless way is past the toll station.

[Wyllshire]

R: We are in charge of the restrictive, poor RNG for gearing, and don't like players having to use a safety net mechanic to gear up.
Players: Thank god so you're fixing the RNG then?
R: We are removing the safety net.
Players: Doesn't that make it harder to gear?
R: We somehow want even more control over how you obtain gear. We will offer extra ways to get embers.
Players: Oh awesome, what ways?
R: Unspecified.
Players: That's not very encouragi--
R: We are also restricting currencies for cosmetics.
Players: What? Why would you do that, it doesn't even have anything to do with gearing?
R: We will also offer extra ways to get figments.
Players: Let me guess, those ways are also unspeci--
R: Unspecified, correct.
Players: Damn, it's the 'LI system today, reward track tomorrow' all over again. These things should really be worked out before you launch these things, you know?
R: We're collecting feedback.
Players: Awesome! Here is a detailed breakdown of why your stated aims here don't actually come close to--
R: Clarification, we look forward to your feedback *after* the system has been forced in.
Players: Wait, you can just buy keys to avoid all these new restrictions, can't you?
R: No comment, but yes, you totally can.
Players: Doesn't that fact overshadow all your lengthy arguments and justifications? So that's what all this boils down to?
R: That's certainly not the official line we're going with.

Laughed so hard when I read this! Partially because it's absolutely true!

[Zvim666]

I don't raid and am glad i can get embers from gear in lootboxes. More bang for my buck!! Games have 2 currencies, dollars and time. If i don't put the time in like raiders do, but still want good gear, i am glad dollars will give me that. What do you care if i got my gear from lootboxes or raiding? Some may prefer to raid and that is ok too. It is good to have choices.

if you hit 140 and have done all the quests in quest gear or 130 gear you don't really need ember box gear. Characters I don't raid with I leave in ghetto gear because they can do the rest of the content in whatever it is I have accumulated for them.

The problem is there is a haphazard system of progression when it comes to gear upgrades for non-raiders so you feel compelled to go for lootbox gear if you want something to work towards at various points in time. It doesn't have to be this way, and it isn't the way in most other MMOs, the devs have just chosen it to be this way for people who don't raid, they have a significantly inferior pathway when it comes towards working towards gear progression.

Over the life of the expansion, however long it is, there will be periodic content introduced that will give you better rewards than what exist from questing, crafting and low-tier instancing. Ie, Stairs T1 dropped some reasonable teal pieces with two essence slots, was fairly easy to acquire. Limlok had some upgrades as did three peaks... i guess that was a mini expansion, whatever. Periodically there will be stuff that you can acquire that has a low requirement of effort or skill requirement.

When you raid, there is a more complete pathway of upgrades, from high tier instances, to throwing a million alts at Storv to get the few pieces you are after, to the whole raid progression gearing.

Anything that is an artificial barrier, like favourite loot, etc is something that can be overcome with a mountain of alts, if your main is a minstrel and you only have 1 roll on a T5 chest for a week the solution is simple, roll 4 more minstrels and you funnel upgrades to your main. Same that has happened with every method to limit the amount of embers, as soon as you can acquire something that is shared account wide, like embers or bind to account gear, you can overcome those limitation by just piling on more and more alts that feed your main character. They can't resolve this problem without introducing bind on acquire and that will open a can of worms that will make this thread seem like positive feedback.

For pretty much anyone it would be more practical to work a few extra hours and use the overtime to just buy keys and ignore all the garbage they throw out at you but for the vast majority of people it is working towards an objective rather than the objective itself that is the reward. Everyone knows whatever it is they have now will be obsolete in a month or so, it is getting there and doing so with friends which is the entertainment and the more that gets siphoned off to barterers or to just an exchange of money it loses that sense of accomplishment. It stops becoming fun.

There should be better pathways for you as a non-raider to get progressively better gear. It doesn't need to be the same quality as raid gear, you don't need that kind of power for the content you do, but there should be fun ways for you to progress and perhaps entice you to take on more challenging content at some point.

[spaltung]

If SSG would sell "acceleration drop boosts" for solo & fellowship instances to increase chances for drops to gear up and even increase 1 or 2 drop sockets for a boss, instead of actually giving away endgame gear at 2 clicks of distance that would make way more sense.

Because that requires buyers to actually play the game. And any dedicated MMO player can respect that.

Getting endgame gear just opening boxes at the main city it's something very disrespectful for dedicated players that actually bought many parts of the game and its expansions, and this is well known around most mmorpg players if you get into reddit communities and forums almost everyone thinks along the same lines of thought.

Giving away endgame gear for cash it's something that can only lure people that are clueless and don't mind spending ridiculous amount of cash on an online game while dumping away most of their dedicated players (and that's why p2w games had been a recipe for failure for the last decade).