[2022] Clearing up some misconceptions from this weekend:

Hi peeps; I'm Solar, and I co-authored the blog on strikes and rewards that went up on Friday afternoon.

You probably don't know me unless you play with me regularly in game. And that's OK- I don't use social media aside from a few guild discords (I just made this Reddit account to come here and post this)

When writing a blog for website publication, we try to keep it to the most necessary details, because those blogs have a large and more casual audience (compared to say, the small but hardcore audiences on places like discords or Reddit!)

And here, lack of those details really hurt, because it created a space ripe for misinformation- and I'm sorry. It's my fault, and I'd like to clear that up by giving everyone some real numbers that should clear things up a lot!

So, dev infodump incoming:

1: Mystic Coin drop rates in Fractal CM's
Your average Mystic Coins earned for a session in which you complete all three Fractal CM's is 1.92. Specifically- 0.72 coins for playing 98 CM, 0.72 for 99 CM, and 0.48 coins for 100 CM.
(The chance of having a mystic coin drop is actually only 14% per boss kill! But because you can get 1, 2, or 3 at a time, that means that the average coins per boss kill are 0.24.)
Being an average, that means that it is the top of the bell curve if you look at a long time of consistent play. The more you play, the closer you are to that lifetime rate. Any divergence from that is temporary and only seen in small enough data samples.
So no, it's not 3 coins, or 4 coins, or 5 coins- although you CAN get 3 in one night, you're just as likely to get 1. While you could get 6 coins in one night... you're much more likely to get 0.
But it definitely stands out as a positive moment when you get back to back 3 coin drops from MAMA and Siax, and since that's how mammal brains work, you remember that dopamine hit and forget all the times you got 0.

2: Monthly Mystic Coin average earnings from playing Fractal CM's every day
So; if you play all three fractal CM's consistently every day for a month (lets say 28 days here to be consistent with systems like login rewards and weekly reward resets), your average mystic coin income for that month from Fractal CM's is: 53.76
Again, this is an average- the more you've played, the closer you are to that average rate. In the short term you may see less or more in a given month, but you have the same chance to earn less than that as you do more than that.

3: How much profit is 'lost' from Fractal CM's:
As you saw above, this means that Nightmare 98 CM is worth 0.72 fewer Mystic Coins than previous.
Observatory 99 CM is worth 0.72 less Mystic Coins.
Sunqua Peak 100 CM is worth 0.48 fewer Mystic Coins.

Lets use a fairly stable MC price from last week (because this weekend's price bump is not rational and so won't reflect long term trends, as you'll find more out about from reading on)
And say a Mystic Coin is worth 1.7 gold. You pay 15% of that in TP fees from selling it, resulting in 1g, 45s sale profit.
So:
98CM: 0.72 MCs * 1.45g = 1.04g
99CM: 0.72 MCs * 1.45g = 1.04g
100CM: 0.48 MCs * 1.45g = 0.70g

That's not all though. Mystic Coins are on the same drop table as equipment and ectos; and you can get multiple ectos. You're not getting nothing instead of Mystic Coins, you're hitting an equipment drop or ectoplasm instead. Average value there is actually a little over 30s, due to the drop chance for multiple ectos.

But there's a point where we can go into too much detail; and this is past it.
Suffice it to say that the total gold reduction in dropped item value for all three CM's combined is a bit under 2.7g, which is less than 1g per fractal CM.

4: How hard will it be to earn Mystic Coins from EoD strikes?
Pretty easy, actually!
End of Dragons has four new strike missions. Playing through all four on Normal difficulty will award 40 Green Prophet Shards.
On your first completion of the week, you'll also get 5 more shards from a Daily Priority Strike achievement (which rotates daily), and 25 more shards from a Weekly Achievement to complete all four strikes.
Together, that means that your first normal-difficulty EoD Strike playthrough in a given week will award 70 green prophet shards.

That's enough to purchase 7 of the weekly 10 Mystic Coins from the End of Dragons strike vendor.

So; a second playthrough in that same week will get you enough shards for the rest!

4: How do Strike Mystic Coins compare to lost Fractal CM mystic coins?
To get the maximum 40 mystic coins a month from EoD Strikes, a player will have to play normal difficulty strikes twice a week, for four weeks.

By comparison, to get the average 53.76 mystic coins from Fractal CM's, a player must complete all three CM's every day for 28 days.

It should be clear from this information that Normal difficulty strikes have a much lower barrier to entry in terms of difficulty and amount they need to be played to earn their Mystic Coin rewards.

Clearing up some misconceptions:
Misconception 1: ANet just said most MC's come from Fractal CM's!
Sorry! I was very unclear here. I meant they're one of the largest possible sources that a single player -can- earn, not that they are the most commonly earned source.

In reality, 93% of mystic coins come from login rewards. The remaining 7% includes sources such as Ley Line Anomaly, WvW Gold/Platinum chests, Fractal daily chests, Mystic Forger daily mission, and Fractal CM's. Of those, Fractal CM's are one of the smaller sources- they're just really not played by a lot of people relative to other sources, because the content is very difficult and exclusive.

Misconception 2: This will make Mystic Coins rarer!
You've probably figured this out from the details on how they'll drop from strikes already... but no. It's going to be the opposite. Strikes are much more accessible than Fractal CM's, and can be and are played by significantly more people- and we hope to grow that in End of Dragons.

Again- earning the 40 mystic coins a week from strikes will require completing strikes twice a week, for four weeks. This is a much lower difficulty and effort barrier than Fractal CM's. Getting the same amount of coins from Fractal CM's would have required 21 days of completing all three Fractal CM's.
More people can play Strikes. They can earn a significant chunk of coins quickly. This is going to increase the amount of Mystic Coins that are generated, and sold on by players looking to turn them into cash gold!

Misconception 3: More expensive 'discounted' clovers will double demand for Mystic Coins
Only a very, very small amount of mystic coins consumed each week were used on the Fractal vendor purchase for Mystic Clovers. Only players who play Fractal CM's really have the disposable excess Fractal Relics to do so- and that's a very small group.
(You CAN also manage just enough with T4+Recs+selling all of your Pristine Relics... but that's daunting, and few people do it, because they're trying to save those for other goals!)

Nearly all coins that get consumed every week actually go into the Mystic Forge for clovers, or are used directly in Legendary components.
This change will not have any real impact on coin supply, consumption, or prices, when looking at the macro (non-individual player habit) scale.

Not A Misconception: This makes it easier for more casual players to make legendaries!
Yes. It really does. Players who don't have access to some of the more difficult current legendary progress sources like Fractal CM's (and the Fractal clover trade) will be able to get incremental legendary progress from easier sources- particularly End of Dragons' Strikes.

Even just nabbing the 10 coins a week from the Strike Vendor and, when needed, turning up to 5 of them a week into clovers (also with strike currency, for those who don't have access to raid or fractal currencies to use those trades too!) represents a form of discrete weekly legendary progress with a much lower difficulty barrier to access. And yes, we're hoping that once those players try Strikes out, they'll find that they love ten player cooperative content, and train up with their friends to try out harder things in the future, including strike CM's and raids!

We really do want to get more players making and enjoying legendary equipment. This is absolutely part of that.

Closing thoughts:
It's pretty natural that a player of a game will make assumptions about what is common or normal based on their own habits, and what they are capable of, and extrapolate that out to 'players in general', 'the community at large', or 'everyone does this'. That's how humans work- we make meat brain hypothesis based off our own experiences, and assume everyone else is working off of those experiences and that knowledge too.

Fact is, for most GW2 players, having a way to work directly on a legendary is very uncommon- much of it comes down to the 7 clovers a month from the final login track reward!

It's absolutely true that if you feel like you've worked and practiced hard and earned something (mystic coins from Fractal CM's in this case!) and you find out that now it's going to accessible to other people in the future more easily... it can feel bad. That feeling is real, and valid. But you've been playing Fractal CM's, and have made a ton of tangible progress- not just the highest overall reward rates in the game, but you've earned and used those Mystic Coins, and have gotten that progress. It being easier for other people in the future doesn't take away the progress you've made.

I know this is probably just going to make a few people angrier. I am sorry about that. I at least hope it also helps give some more context into what we're thinking and why, and helps digest some of the changes coming with EoD.

-solar

External link →

Hi peeps; I'm Solar, and I co-authored the blog on strikes and rewards that went up on Friday afternoon.

You probably don't know me unless you play with me regularly in game. And that's OK- I don't use social media aside from a few guild discords (I just made this Reddit account to come here and post this)

When writing a blog for website publication, we try to keep it to the most necessary details, because those blogs have a large and more casual audience (compared to say, the small but hardcore audiences on places like discords or Reddit!)

And here, lack of those details really hurt, because it created a space ripe for misinformation- and I'm sorry. It's my fault, and I'd like to clear that up by giving everyone some real numbers that should clear things up a lot!

So, dev infodump incoming:

1: Mystic Coin drop rates in Fractal CM's
Your average Mystic Coins earned for a session in which you complete all three Fractal CM's is 1.92. Specifically- 0.72 coins for playing 98 CM, 0.72 for 99 CM, and 0.48 coins for 100 CM.
(The chance of having a mystic coin drop is actually only 14% per boss kill! But because you can get 1, 2, or 3 at a time, that means that the average coins per boss kill are 0.24.)
Being an average, that means that it is the top of the bell curve if you look at a long time of consistent play. The more you play, the closer you are to that lifetime rate. Any divergence from that is temporary and only seen in small enough data samples.
So no, it's not 3 coins, or 4 coins, or 5 coins- although you CAN get 3 in one night, you're just as likely to get 1. While you could get 6 coins in one night... you're much more likely to get 0.
But it definitely stands out as a positive moment when you get back to back 3 coin drops from MAMA and Siax, and since that's how mammal brains work, you remember that dopamine hit and forget all the times you got 0.

2: Monthly Mystic Coin average earnings from playing Fractal CM's every day
So; if you play all three fractal CM's consistently every day for a month (lets say 28 days here to be consistent with systems like login rewards and weekly reward resets), your average mystic coin income for that month from Fractal CM's is: 53.76
Again, this is an average- the more you've played, the closer you are to that average rate. In the short term you may see less or more in a given month, but you have the same chance to earn less than that as you do more than that.

3: How much profit is 'lost' from Fractal CM's:
As you saw above, this means that Nightmare 98 CM is worth 0.72 fewer Mystic Coins than previous.
Observatory 99 CM is worth 0.72 less Mystic Coins.
Sunqua Peak 100 CM is worth 0.48 fewer Mystic Coins.

Lets use a fairly stable MC price from last week (because this weekend's price bump is not rational and so won't reflect long term trends, as you'll find more out about from reading on)
And say a Mystic Coin is worth 1.7 gold. You pay 15% of that in TP fees from selling it, resulting in 1g, 45s sale profit.
So:
98CM: 0.72 MCs * 1.45g = 1.04g
99CM: 0.72 MCs * 1.45g = 1.04g
100CM: 0.48 MCs * 1.45g = 0.70g

That's not all though. Mystic Coins are on the same drop table as equipment and ectos; and you can get multiple ectos. You're not getting nothing instead of Mystic Coins, you're hitting an equipment drop or ectoplasm instead. Average value there is actually a little over 30s, due to the drop chance for multiple ectos.

But there's a point where we can go into too much detail; and this is past it.
Suffice it to say that the total gold reduction in dropped item value for all three CM's combined is a bit under 2.7g, which is less than 1g per fractal CM.

4: How hard will it be to earn Mystic Coins from EoD strikes?
Pretty easy, actually!
End of Dragons has four new strike missions. Playing through all four on Normal difficulty will award 40 Green Prophet Shards.
On your first completion of the week, you'll also get 5 more shards from a Daily Priority Strike achievement (which rotates daily), and 25 more shards from a Weekly Achievement to complete all four strikes.
Together, that means that your first normal-difficulty EoD Strike playthrough in a given week will award 70 green prophet shards.

That's enough to purchase 7 of the weekly 10 Mystic Coins from the End of Dragons strike vendor.

So; a second playthrough in that same week will get you enough shards for the rest!

4: How do Strike Mystic Coins compare to lost Fractal CM mystic coins?
To get the maximum 40 mystic coins a month from EoD Strikes, a player will have to play normal difficulty strikes twice a week, for four weeks.

By comparison, to get the average 53.76 mystic coins from Fractal CM's, a player must complete all three CM's every day for 28 days.

It should be clear from this information that Normal difficulty strikes have a much lower barrier to entry in terms of difficulty and amount they need to be played to earn their Mystic Coin rewards.

Clearing up some misconceptions:
Misconception 1: ANet just said most MC's come from Fractal CM's!
Sorry! I was very unclear here. I meant they're one of the largest possible sources that a single player -can- earn, not that they are the most commonly earned source.

In reality, 93% of mystic coins come from login rewards. The remaining 7% includes sources such as Ley Line Anomaly, WvW Gold/Platinum chests, Fractal daily chests, Mystic Forger daily mission, and Fractal CM's. Of those, Fractal CM's are one of the smaller sources- they're just really not played by a lot of people relative to other sources, because the content is very difficult and exclusive.

Misconception 2: This will make Mystic Coins rarer!
You've probably figured this out from the details on how they'll drop from strikes already... but no. It's going to be the opposite. Strikes are much more accessible than Fractal CM's, and can be and are played by significantly more people- and we hope to grow that in End of Dragons.

Again- earning the 40 mystic coins a week from strikes will require completing strikes twice a week, for four weeks. This is a much lower difficulty and effort barrier than Fractal CM's. Getting the same amount of coins from Fractal CM's would have required 21 days of completing all three Fractal CM's.
More people can play Strikes. They can earn a significant chunk of coins quickly. This is going to increase the amount of Mystic Coins that are generated, and sold on by players looking to turn them into cash gold!

Misconception 3: More expensive 'discounted' clovers will double demand for Mystic Coins
Only a very, very small amount of mystic coins consumed each week were used on the Fractal vendor purchase for Mystic Clovers. Only players who play Fractal CM's really have the disposable excess Fractal Relics to do so- and that's a very small group.
(You CAN also manage just enough with T4+Recs+selling all of your Pristine Relics... but that's daunting, and few people do it, because they're trying to save those for other goals!)

Nearly all coins that get consumed every week actually go into the Mystic Forge for clovers, or are used directly in Legendary components.
This change will not have any real impact on coin supply, consumption, or prices, when looking at the macro (non-individual player habit) scale.

Not A Misconception: This makes it easier for more casual players to make legendaries!
Yes. It really does. Players who don't have access to some of the more difficult current legendary progress sources like Fractal CM's (and the Fractal clover trade) will be able to get incremental legendary progress from easier sources- particularly End of Dragons' Strikes.

Even just nabbing the 10 coins a week from the Strike Vendor and, when needed, turning up to 5 of them a week into clovers (also with strike currency, for those who don't have access to raid or fractal currencies to use those trades too!) represents a form of discrete weekly legendary progress with a much lower difficulty barrier to access. And yes, we're hoping that once those players try Strikes out, they'll find that they love ten player cooperative content, and train up with their friends to try out harder things in the future, including strike CM's and raids!

We really do want to get more players making and enjoying legendary equipment. This is absolutely part of that.

Closing thoughts:
It's pretty natural that a player of a game will make assumptions about what is common or normal based on their own habits, and what they are capable of, and extrapolate that out to 'players in general', 'the community at large', or 'everyone does this'. That's how humans work- we make meat brain hypothesis based off our own experiences, and assume everyone else is working off of those experiences and that knowledge too.

Fact is, for most GW2 players, having a way to work directly on a legendary is very uncommon- much of it comes down to the 7 clovers a month from the final login track reward!

It's absolutely true that if you feel like you've worked and practiced hard and earned something (mystic coins from Fractal CM's in this case!) and you find out that now it's going to accessible to other people in the future more easily... it can feel bad. That feeling is real, and valid. But you've been playing Fractal CM's, and have made a ton of tangible progress- not just the highest overall reward rates in the game, but you've earned and used those Mystic Coins, and have gotten that progress. It being easier for other people in the future doesn't take away the progress you've made.

I know this is probably just going to make a few people angrier. I am sorry about that. I at least hope it also helps give some more context into what we're thinking and why, and helps digest some of the changes coming with EoD.

-solar

External link →