[2021] PNXLabs, you are losing players everyday. Aethersparks need to be fixed NOW. NO MORE waiting

Hey there,

Thanks for bringing this up. There are a ton of conversations in the studio happening right now around aethersparks. We set out to create a meaningful loop that had players engaging with all aspects of the game in order to progress, and this still needs some tuning and work.

To start, we're buffing aethersparks in the next patch in order to find the sweet spot. We may even increase their drop rate more in the future or have them show up in new places. There's still a lot of work to be done!

Be sure to let us know how sparks feel after the patch on Thursday as well!

Thanks for the feedback. We appreciate everyone's patience as we fine tune the economy. The next patch that lands in a few days will have a hefty buff to Aetherspark drop rates.

There are bunch of factors that are distorting the economy right now, with the recent migrations, the holiday event, and a lot of players coming back into the game over the holidays and getting the hang of the new Reforge loop. There are also some pain points with some players sticking mostly to Escalation while we introduce private queues and level gating, making it more difficult to get sparks. Overall this has made it more challenging for us to tune a few of our currencies.

We'll keep gathering data once this next patch lands and we'll keep listening to your feedback.

Yes we did discuss this at length, but we still think there's value in having sparks. To keep the game healthy, we want a good variety of activities for players, and that means putting some exlusive or semi-exclusive rewards in each activity type. Trials has Marks, Escalation is your path to Legendary weapons, but Hunting Grounds needs something. For end game players who have all the parts they need, they could just skip HG entirely if there wasn't a reason to go there, which would lead to stale play patterns. If some players don't like playing in Hunting Grounds, that's something we can improve over time to make it more fun and engaging or less frustrating, but we don't want to remove the need to engage with any of our activities.