@realitysquared wrote:
BfN is certainly lacking in features when compared to its predecessor but I would argue that it is not more grindy than GW2 but rather that the grind is different and time gated.
its easy to forget that obtaining cosmetics and character variants in GW2 was tied to a Sticker Pack RNG system which badly frustrated many players and I’m glad to see that RNG plays no role in BfN.
What BfN does is introduce the same sort of grind, only now items are time gated and that is clearly intended to psychologically introduce a fear of missing out which in turn pushed the susceptible towards the micro transaction system. It’s not as predatory as it could be but it’s still there.
I think this hurts player retention and time investment in comparison to GW2 because in the game you knew you could get everything just by investing the time even if the system was designed to make 100% acquisition be as hard, and take as long, as possible.
BfN has forced the majority of us, in my opinion, to accept that we’ll never own all the cosmetics, costumes, expressions, gestures and emotes because they are either strictly time gated or locked behind in game purchases which require months and months of playing to unlock the most expensive items and that mindset eliminates the drive to play more in the hopes that we’ll get that thing we really want a little sooner.
I practically lived in GW2 but I quit the game after the sticker packs demanded even more time from me by changing the Sticker Pack content to have fewer collectibles and more consumables when I got close to finishing my Sticker Book.
With BfN the day Rux’s Store opened I accepted the fact that I would ultimately move on from the game before coming close to owning everything and as a result I play it far less than I ever played GW2.
Like you I spent a lot of time in GW2. I was checking my numbers in Origin this weekend and I have almost 4x the time invested in GW2 compared to GW1 and BfN combined. When they added the community portal and the chests, and when we learned how many rainbow stars it would take to unlock Torchwood and Hovergoat, there were a lot of unhappy folks in the forums. Of course once everyone I knew had them already, they sold them in the store which also made a lot of people upset. I eventually filled that sticker book with those last community events before BfN launched to get those community challenge only hats.
The Rux store is one of my least favorite aspects of BfN. It is as we've discussed, not as bad as we first thought, but still something that I wish had been handled better. Far too many of the items he sells should be in the reward-o-tron, especially stuff like victory slabs and punchers which feel like a waste when you can only use so few of them. I'm also curious about the prize maps in future; will some of the legendary items come back? Will they be sold like the items in the feastivus pack? We just don't know yet and we have no sticker book to confirm or deny the amount of items we're getting in this game.
The idea behind the prize bulbs is two-fold. First, like other games that are intended to be played online and often (Fortnite, Apex Legends, all MMOs, etc.), to get people to logon and play consistently; a game like this that relies on an active player base needs people playing as often as possible. Secondly, they want people to spend money when they feel they can't keep up. The reduction of XP per bulb from 15k to 5k was a significant change that I was very glad to see, so that it feels like playing only for an hour or so is still productive. One thing I did strongly dislike in GW2 was once you were at max level, your XP was worthless, in BfN, it still earns you bulbs.
I've been finishing them every month and while I have bought rainbow stars, I've never spent them on bulbs, I'd rather just play more, but if you have time constraints I can see where you'd feel the impetus to spend RL money for bulbs so you don't miss out. I'm looking forward to see the weekly changes from coins to rainbow stars for all steps, but I wouldn't mind if they addressed the idea of making the prize maps shorter/less bulbs to finish, giving players more rainbow stars for playing, and letting regular coins be more valuable long term. That would make things much better for more players.
