Rux needs to come more than once month. He should come every week. With all the stuff he has not sold yet it will take years to get and Ain't nobody got time for that. Seriously, who is in charge of RUX and why are they stalling so bad? Why do they think it will be so bad if players are able to get everything? What is the big hold up??
The reason why Rux is showing up once a month is because PopCap and EA is extending the life of a very old game. From Reddit discussions, there is speculation that a 3rd installment is in the making. So, they want to keep die hard fans to keep on playing and coming back and the only way to do that is to slow down the death of the game and keep the gamers interest up high and to keep coming back. It is an absolute grind for everyone to level up and collecting stickers and farming coins and earning rainbow and gold starts and doing the quests.
You know, even with the life extension argument (which is a terrible strategy to begin with) there is no reason RUX couldn't show up more frequently. Remember, in addition to the exclusives (which most people are focusing on) RUX also sells stickers a player may be missing. There is no reason RUX couldn't show up weekly offering past exclusives for people who missed them along with his special consumables and other items the player could be missing. (Particularly the endless supply of CP items which take years to acquire normally.) They still have the ability to bottle neck new items and abilities to once a month. (or more accurately once a blue moon) It's not even like this is a "great" deal for players either. RUX's insane prices are a huge drain on coin supply. But, even still it is a better situation than we have now.
*edit: I wanted to add that in no way is GW2 a "very old" game. It came out Feb 25, 2016. It has barely reach a year and a half. If the game was sold and untouched I would not mind. But, for an updated always online game this is no way to treat it.
I think when GW2 is referred to as "very old" it's more of a reference to the attention span of the average player more than the actual age of the game.
In a lot of cases a dedicated player grinding a game with no time restraints or limitations can pretty much easily squeeze out everything worthwhile within 3-6 months. After that point many players will lose interest and wander off to new properties or return to old favorites. It's a natural consequence for a lot of players who play the game in a "goal oriented" fashion- when running a marathon when you reach the finish line (100% game completion) many players don't see a reason to keep going.
GW2 makes certain that finish line representing 100% completion is far off in the distance but in my opinion they've put it way too far off and in addition they further extend that completion date by deliberately slowing down your acquisition of Stickers by changing the drop rates as you close in on the end.
Because of the relentless grind the game has actually lost some of the more dedicated players due to the discouraging timeline for actually completing the game.
As a long time MMO player I have to 100% with you @realitysquared . I still play everyday and especially for the events but even though I can see the goal line in my sticker book at being less than 500 away it feels a bit grindier than I like. Still at least we can just play the game and events to get stuff and aren't stuck camping the same rare mob for weeks on end for a single drop but I can see the grind even if it's less onerous than many games.
I'm currently playing another MMORPG and like with all of them the grind process is obvious and the random drops are random however the primary difference is that it's a consistent grind and when you are grinding for better equipment the random drops don't make you wait very long before you get something beneficial or at least marginally better than what you are using. For stuff which is clearly time gated the "rules" and waiting time is clear and you know exactly what to expect and when to expect it.
I find the grind there tolerable, just as I found GW2's grind tolerable as well at first, mostly because I had better luck with character piece drops than many other players, but GW2 finally lost me when they dramatically increased the grind as I closed in on finishing that Sticker Book.
I know that grinding in these games is unavoidable and exists to keep players coming back and interested but I hope that if they produce a GW3 they have the decency to keep the grinding consistent from start to finish and don't insert the deliberate slowdowns and long drawn out and evidently random and inconsistent time gating that they did in GW2.
