First of: I am a huge fan of the wizards vault and I believe it is a very good system for the average GW2 enjoyer. However, I am quite concerned with the amount of transferable wealth, farmable via alt-accounts and the general amount of gold farmed by the player base. To demonstrate it, let us take a look at some basic currencies: Astral Acclaim (AA), Gold (G), Mystic Coins (MC) and Laurels (L). (The Legendary Weapons starter kit will be excludet here, since its not directly transferable between accounts and is only available if you own SotO.)
(Edit 3: Heavy crafting bags are also excludet since they require SotO.)
For a basic Timeframe we use 3 Months = 13 Weeks = 90 Days.
Lets look at Astral Acclaim and how much you can get (ignoring the special tab and extra tasks):
- Dailies: 65 AA + 1 G
- 7 Dailies: 455 AA +7 G
- 90 Dailies: 5850 AA +90 G
- Weeklies: 690 AA + 10 L
- 13 Weeklies: 8970 AA +130 L
Now lets look at 3 different types of alt farmers:
The 2-Klicks (login, open vault, get 5 AA, logout):
- gets 90*5 = 450 AA = 75 G
- net loss compared to old system
The Efficient Farmer (buys all 6 AA Gold, all MC and all BL Mastery Coffers (1 G sell)):
- needs 6* 90 + 9* 60 +15* 20 = 1380 AA
- 1380 AA = 2 Weeklies (or 22 Dailies)
- gets 110 G, 60 MC, 20 L via Weeklies (or 132 G, 60 MC via Dailies)
Edit 1: Buying laurels instead or in addition of BLMC might increase your overall profit but would also increases the number of Weeklies/Dailies.
The Full Clear Farmer (all Dailies + all Weeklies):
- gets 14820 AA (spends 1380 like Efficient Farmer)
- spends rest (13050) on 30 AA Gold = 448 G
- gets 648 G, 60 MC, 130 L
Edit 2: Buying laurels instead of Gold 598 G, 60 MC, 280 L
As a point of reference, the old system gave 180 G, 60 MC, 165 L and a few Materialbags + Booster for a similar amount of effort (90 days login rewards + 90 dailies).
My biggest worry here is the increased amount of gold now comming into the Economy by the general community and a few efficient Farmers, with a lot of alt-accounts. From my experience over the last few weeks: it did not take more than 2 hours to complete the Weeklies. Making it on par with the best farms in the game, with a few major differences: The reward is raw Gold, Weeklies are a lot easier, they require less coordination and it is directly scalable to the amount of alt-accounts used.
TLDR: the wizards vault drastically increased the amount of raw gold you are able to generate with the same amount of effort.
True. Before 1 alt was able to get ~225 Gold in mats in 3 months just by logging in, now its 75 Gold in the same time. However this same account is now able to generate 150-200+ Gold (partially in mats), in addition to the 75 Gold, within just 2-4 hours of gameplay in 3 months, with no setup beyond a high enough level character in cheap gear. This makes alt farming one of the best possible farms in the game. Especially if you are able to use ToS complient multiboxing (which can currently be used to do pretty much all pvp dailies on multiple accounts in 10 minutes by having them in your own private Custom Arena).
I do think the PvP dailies all being doable on custom maps is bad. But idk how annoying that would be if they weren’t able to, and if that’d be bad for the game modes population.
Being able to put in some time/effort to make the same amount as before is not bad. People who play the game should be rewarded, and it’s probably mean to super harshly punish people who did spend a shit load on the game buying multiple accounts as long as they are following ToS and putting in time.
I think research notes (making shitty materials worth money) and rift hunting (making ectos worth money) are both good efforts. A little bit of inflation along with changes like those isn’t always bad.
They gave away keys for the core game a few years ago so there are a lot of ~1 Dollar accounts out there but yeah completly agree with you