@darthpotater the problem is with older dungeons and scaling you're still looking at half an hour a lot of the time. (not if you're in a full end game party but if you're tossed in with a bunch of honest low level players or if you're running as a low level player in a group of low level players.
I landed in a crl that I did not leave the other day because even with scaling I'm super end game and can solo.. just not true. I cannot solo crl. 1.5 hours later proves that. the newbs left and was replaced with end game players and we finished after 2 fails with the shield at the end (i don't blame the dude with the sword he knew what he was doing it was just glitchy) and the rewards still didn't feel like they had a chance of giving anything good. in the days before this change I feel like the newer scaled content still had a chance of a decent reward. now it doesn't.
the real problem that they're trying to tackle here is making scaling ok somehow and they're still failing.
I don't feel challenged or like I'm getting anything from scaled content in chests and yet it still takes at least 20 minutes across the board because of various artificial time dilators they've inserted or because.. I don't know why. but they still can suck up a lot of time and the reward is still poor. more poor than it was before. (and I was ok with where it was before except for the really old dungeons like valindra where all you'd ever get was some blue rp)
i really think they should just go from average time it takes for all the people who run a dungeon to finish and scale the rewards based on that.
fastest runs should be the new consumables as highest chance (basically like it is now for all content) as you get into longer average time or more often failed content you should have it be no or only diamond and ruby chance of rp, new consumables in that drop table. mounts and comps in the table it was in prior to this change (as well as the other things that dropped) and your new chance at a ultra rare leg drop. and whatever unique rewards that dungeon has to offer.
and if the fastest runs turn out to be things like tong or lomm which are far newer content than older they need to consider that. those dungeons by their very nature should be better drops than older content and they should still hold some challenge. maybe they could think about making newer dungeons level 80 content with no scaling. scaling just doesn't work and by its nature makes things not fun.
Back on the topic at hand "Meaningful Rewards" is a matter of personal opinion. Like the old song lyrics, "You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself". The other part of this discussion was it being a fraud or hoax. Some of us told the OP and others that only 5 days was too short of a time frame to judge any new system. We were met with anger and rejection. All that was said was, too soon to complain, and I listed the items I thought were of any real value to me.
I think @plasticbat said it best, "My burning question is: is this worse than before?" @hanzohasashi#5461 ignored or failed to answer "Alright,, describe how you where expecting this new system should work." by user @hadestemplar#9918
I am not a snowflake and I don't bruise easy. I was then told my opinion doesn't really matter because of how I choose to play this game and I am not being materialistic about my rewards for winning. If you pay close attention, my reward is community, not how much can I loot from a box to resell in the auction house just make me hit 0.1% harder. I don't want people to play as I do unless they enjoy it and have fun.
It is @hanzohasashi#5461 opinion that Cryptic is committing a fraud or a hoax on the players. It would appear the mob mentally rules, and worthless minorities such as myself don't matter. So if you don't want me to keep coming back here to relay this information and giving my point of view, stop using my @ handle.
Not even 10 days passed and you guys complaining that you didn't receive high/top end rewards.
Give a month to this new reward system, then complain if you like to do so.
Just LoL….
You think players will keep rerolling this now once they have burned through enough of their re-roll tokens. Players will run out of tokens in a week with the abysmal drop rates this crazy system has unleashed for these so called "premium" items. This is just a steer to keep players online for as long as possible and drain down their VIP reroll tokens. The 50 rerolls (1 per account) free drop they granted us this week wont even make up for the average single toon for a VIP its just a big fat con. As soon as I have done all I have set out to do, I will likely be heading back to other MMO's cos this kind of rubbish is what pushes players away.
Back on the topic at hand "Meaningful Rewards" is a matter of personal opinion. Like the old song lyrics, "You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself". The other part of this discussion was it being a fraud or hoax. Some of us told the OP and others that only 5 days was too short of a time frame to judge any new system. We were met with anger and rejection. All that was said was, too soon to complain, and I listed the items I thought were of any real value to me.
I think @plasticbat said it best, "My burning question is: is this worse than before?" @hanzohasashi#5461 ignored or failed to answer "Alright,, describe how you where expecting this new system should work." by user @hadestemplar#9918
I am not a snowflake and I don't bruise easy. I was then told my opinion doesn't really matter because of how I choose to play this game and I am not being materialistic about my rewards for winning. If you pay close attention, my reward is community, not how much can I loot from a box to resell in the auction house just make me hit 0.1% harder. I don't want people to play as I do unless they enjoy it and have fun.
It is @hanzohasashi#5461 opinion that Cryptic is committing a fraud or a hoax on the players. It would appear the mob mentally rules, and worthless minorities such as myself don't matter. So if you don't want me to keep coming back here to relay this information and giving my point of view, stop using my @ handle.
Have fun! Wendy Black</p>
Maybe if your worthless minority wasn't actively trying to keep the game worse for the extreme majority of players, you wouldn't be getting pushback. You want everyone to be happy treading water with you, when everyone else wants upward progression for their characters. Upward progression requires rewards that aren't worthless. "The friends you made along the way" don't help me reach the power floor to get in a ToMM group, unless those friends are giving me R15 radiants, empowereds, and a compy. You know what DOES get me closer to the power floor for ToMM? Rewards out of dungeons that I can sell to help cover the millions upon millions of AD needed to get the enchants and companions required, or rewards that can be used to make those enchants or upgrade those companions.
Even people that AREN'T trying to gear for ToMM/Zariel want their character to get stronger. It's the main driving force for almost everyone playing an MMO. Getting stronger, and seeing the effects of getting stronger in-game, keeps people playing. It's the other half of why people despise scaling. Scaling nullifies your character's growth, AND the loot in scaled instances is total trash.
The rewards that are there are fine...it's the rate of acquisition and amount per acquisition that are the problem. At the current drop rate, for it to not feel like an insult, it should be 25 pres wards, 50 trade bars, 100 charge health stones, 10 scrolls of life, etc. At the current drop amount, for it to not feel like an insult, it would legitimately need to have a 100% chance to get at least 2 trade bars. The amounts are so inexcusably low that getting them from literally everything you do is the only thing that could even attempt to make it acceptable.
The mount/companion issue is a case where nothing but an increase in drop chance will work. It's too low. Period. If I had opened the same number of chests I have after the change in the previous system, I would have 10+ companions and 4+ mounts, one of them most likely epic. I have gotten 0, ZERO mounts or companions after the change, other than a Batiri, which isn't connected to premium loot.
Problem with your exemples and bigger numbers and/or more frequent drop rate is the competition with the Zen store. Pres wards are probably one of the top best sellers in the Zen Market (and are already in competition with alt-armies of invokers to get huge amount of celestial chests with the 3% coalescent 30% pres inside). Getting more pres wards = being able to stuff up quicker, hitting the endgame "maxed out" / "remaxed out after new mod and stuff" status sooner (and then be bored because nothing to chase) . Lockboxes used to be almost the only source of tradebars, and you can't open those without Zen buying keys or Zen renewing regulary your VIP (both probably among the best sellers too). Tradebars allow you to buy health stones and scrolls of mass life (and other things) and are one of the reasons lockboxes, though quite in a bad shape since almost 2 years (and especially in my opinion since resurgence ones disappeared from the "week before new mod" periods), were still marginally ok to open.
It is very understandable Cryptic is quite cautious and conservative about drop rates and amount for those (we still need to remember Cryptic must earn money from Neverwinter as it isn't a non-profit organisation).
Note that I don't say it wouldn't be nice for the players to get more in frequency and/or more in quantity, nor that it would cripple Cryptic on the $$ side to do so, nor that they couldn't include something else in the premium rewards that is not really competing with $$ (but what ? ^^).
For what it matters, for wards only, maybe an idea would be to delete the "celestial chests system" (honestly, with 53 toons, it takes 10 minutes/day to do their 1st praying only resulting in ~150 celestial chests/month, so something like 40 pres and 4-5 coalescent/month for doing nothing...), and in the same time enhance the pres/coalescent droprate in premium rewards to somewhat match this amount/month for someone doing dungeons during 4 hours/day/month (and adapt the droprate on each dungeon depending on the average time to complete it, so farming the shortest one wouldn't drop more than achieving the longest one). Would cripple a bit more the alt-armies (I have one so it would hit me quite a bit), but at least the rewards would be given by playing the content, not by batch praying.
I 100% do agree with your second part (mounts and comps).
@kierlakx while I agree with most of what you said, you might want to leave out personal insults. they'll just get your otherwise meaningful post sent to the lower depths and that makes the conversation less valid.
"The friends you made along the way" don't help me reach the power floor to get in a ToMM group, unless those friends are giving me R15 radiants, empowereds, and a compy.
That's strange. I help(ed) my friends, my friends help(ed) me. The help doesn't necessary come from direct "gifts" (though it has happened numerous time that people gave me or lend me something valuable and vice-versa). But surely knowledge, tips and advices, reliability for party dungeoning, presence for collective farming, ideas/insights/skills in business to enter/exploit markets, trust in each other, etc , etc... It certainly shorten the time to get up to endgame for them and me...
Maybe you got the wrong friends, or maybe i'm lucky (but i don't think so, social skills are part of playing a MMORPG.)
@kierlakx while I agree with most of what you said, you might want to leave out personal insults. they'll just get your otherwise meaningful post sent to the lower depths and that makes the conversation less valid.
@kierlakx while I agree with most of what you said, you might want to leave out personal insults. they'll just get your otherwise meaningful post sent to the lower depths and that makes the conversation less valid.
I was quoting him.
she said she was in the worthless minority? (key word being worthless?)
"The friends you made along the way" don't help me reach the power floor to get in a ToMM group, unless those friends are giving me R15 radiants, empowereds, and a compy.
That's strange. I help(ed) my friends, my friends help(ed) me. The help doesn't necessary come from direct "gifts" (though it has happened numerous time that people gave me or lend me something valuable and vice-versa). But surely knowledge, tips and advices, reliability for party dungeoning, presence for collective farming, ideas/insights/skills in business to enter/exploit markets, trust in each other, etc , etc... It certainly shorten the time to get up to endgame for them and me...
Maybe you got the wrong friends, or maybe i'm lucky (but i don't think so, social skills are part of playing a MMORPG.)
You can be the best friends in the world, with all the knowledge among you, but if the game has mathematically sabotaged you with worthless rewards and even worse drop rates, there's very little anyone can do or say to make up for the game HAMSTER you over. Barring, or course, them actually giving you stuff or letting you into their little club of secret exploiters. Or just pulling out your credit card and swiping your way to victory. With the notable exception of somehow getting in with a group that can 9 man ToMM, and they just carry you over and over till you get your weapons, which I am sure has happened to someone, somewhere. But let's be real, that's going to be so rare as to not even be relevant.
@kierlakx while I agree with most of what you said, you might want to leave out personal insults. they'll just get your otherwise meaningful post sent to the lower depths and that makes the conversation less valid.
I was quoting him.
she said she was in the worthless minority? (key word being worthless?)
"and worthless minorities such as myself " it's in the quote box in that post.
You can be the best friends in the world, with all the knowledge among you, but if the game has mathematically sabotaged you with worthless rewards and even worse drop rates, there's very little anyone can do or say to make up for the game HAMSTER you over. Barring, or course, them actually giving you stuff or letting you into their little club of secret exploiters. Or just pulling out your credit card and swiping your way to victory. With the notable exception of somehow getting in with a group that can 9 man ToMM, and they just carry you over and over till you get your weapons, which I am sure has happened to someone, somewhere. But let's be real, that's going to be so rare as to not even be relevant.
Reading this, I feel sorry you have this mindset...
In my ally, which i have to admit is quite healthy (probably the biggest french speaking ally), we have some endgamers who organize ToMM/Zariel trainings to help players unfamiliar with the mechanics so they can then be up to "completed" that are also organized. Some others help players (at least those who have a nice mindset ^^) to stuff up to the caps. Others propose "discover mode" for dungeons. etc, etc
Something like once in every 6 months, I organize an event (was some Miss and Mister elections lately, but I also did a PvP tournament, a "our ally have talent", and olympic games). Some endgamers and myself are sponsorizing these events with prizes, and the last event saw 3 winners, each winning over 3M AD worth in prizes. Next week, my guild will throw a party (because we hit level 20 after 5 years), and we will shower our members with gifts (ranging from coalescent to mounts and pets, from legendary insignas to set of artifacts).
One of my ingame friend is very into the avernus hunts (which I very much dislike). Tonight he will just offer us more than 120 hunts to do for our group of friends and simply share the loots. I have barely make 4 or 5 bait, but it doesn't matter for him if I kind of "leech", as well as it didn't matter for me when he was leeching TiC with us months ago, as well as it didn't matter for me when i lend him some legendary insignas (that he doesn't give me back yet xD) and offer him a bulette pup some 8 months ago. And plenty of my closest ingame friends are in this kind of mindset.
If I drop something intersting, rather than selling right away, i always thinks "maybe one of my buddies would need it, let's keep it and ask before selling". And most of my closest ingame friends do the same.
Maybe mindset and "culture of a guild/ally" may radically change how someone can experience the social part of Neverwinter. Maybe being myself quite altruistic make me bond with other altruistic people, and we just help each other without second thought. Mindset and culture in a guild is something you can build up over the time, it only requires to find the right one to initiate it, and the right people to enter the loop along him. You can say whatever you want, but I never forget someone who one day have helped me, and if I can help him back another day, I will do so. After a while, we just stop counting how many more "services" one had given to the other, and just naturally help whatever the "count" is beetwen us. And this friend may be today not an endgamer, but in 6 months may ride on the top of the wave, and here you are, you get yourself a reliable friend who will always give you a hand and to whom you will always give a hand : one less player to get as a random picked guy for you runs and help you stuff up...
@tchefi Now, take those examples you've given, and replay them in your mind with the drop rates we have now. Your prizes for your contests have dried up. You have no, not just bulette pup, but no companion drops at all to give your friend. Don't look at your stockpile of AD from however many years you have been playing, imagine starting the game NOW, and trying to gear up with the AH prices that do nothing but keep going up, and with no effective way to supplement the daily refine. You don't get an epic mount every couple weeks, or green mounts/pets to sell every other day.
Now you have a sub-10% chance at 2 tarmalune bars.
Sure... It's a huge crisis, like when the useless epic stuff could be recycled into AD + 36kAD/toon refinement disappeared and we got the 100kAD/account without recycling instead. Or like when we went from 1zen=500AD max to 1zen=750AD max. I dunno, it doesn't seem my friends who started the game after that had too much hard times to get up to decent stuff and wealth : a couple went from scratch to ToMM completed within 6 months (case 4h+/day of average playtime), some others are decently TiC-able after roughly those 6 monts the game (case ~2h/day of average playtime) (they were "confinement" recruits in march ^^). So i would bet someone starting today would still be fine, as long as he has some patience and either a good intuition or good "advisors".
Whatever man. I also don't know how big is your stockpile of AD (if any) from how many time you have been playing, but let's do the replay in my mind. Again, as 4 years ago, i would do nearly exactly the same. I would join a low level guild (<level 5) to participate in (or maybe create one), because I value more the "build together" than the "I take the max boons, i'm not interested in anything else". I would accept to slow down a bit the progression of my main, take my time to deeply explore each single activity I can engage in, dig the opportunities in order to shape my first plan, then diversify and slowly build my account, get heavily involved in guild stuff, making friends in the mean time to play on a regular basis along with them, and in the end put myself in a very good place some 6 months later (though more likely 9-10 months if i'm starting today as the jubilee is in ~9-10 months), and then forever snowballing during the next years. I'm pretty sure i will just do well, be endgame on my main on the 1 year mark (if not before) then be able to "fund" gifts to giveaway during events (especially as my ingame AD income never really relied too heavily on dungeoning) while also getting to BiS status on my main + starting to stuff-up 2 other toons to have 1 dps, 1 tank, 1 heal doing at least their job (if not more) in all the content so i it provide my friends and myself flexibility to get in content (would probably be done 1 more year later).
I'm just a patient guy who have one-year longterm plans, slowly but steadily progressing and catching up. And that's how I play any MMORPG since Ultima Online in the late 90s. I'm not into "consuming" the game as quickly as I can. And thanks to that, i don't get bored quickly nor burned-out.
But yeah i agree with you : the rewards in the endchests are currently (or maybe since a much longer time according to some vets) not something that can be viewed as worth the run at all. Does it bother me ? A bit. Is it the end of the world ? Not at all.
By the way, we had fun this night, 200+ onestar hunts done as a party of friends :P.
Comments
I landed in a crl that I did not leave the other day because even with scaling I'm super end game and can solo.. just not true. I cannot solo crl. 1.5 hours later proves that. the newbs left and was replaced with end game players and we finished after 2 fails with the shield at the end (i don't blame the dude with the sword he knew what he was doing it was just glitchy) and the rewards still didn't feel like they had a chance of giving anything good. in the days before this change I feel like the newer scaled content still had a chance of a decent reward. now it doesn't.
the real problem that they're trying to tackle here is making scaling ok somehow and they're still failing.
I don't feel challenged or like I'm getting anything from scaled content in chests and yet it still takes at least 20 minutes across the board because of various artificial time dilators they've inserted or because.. I don't know why. but they still can suck up a lot of time and the reward is still poor. more poor than it was before. (and I was ok with where it was before except for the really old dungeons like valindra where all you'd ever get was some blue rp)
i really think they should just go from average time it takes for all the people who run a dungeon to finish and scale the rewards based on that.
fastest runs should be the new consumables as highest chance (basically like it is now for all content) as you get into longer average time or more often failed content you should have it be no or only diamond and ruby chance of rp, new consumables in that drop table. mounts and comps in the table it was in prior to this change (as well as the other things that dropped) and your new chance at a ultra rare leg drop. and whatever unique rewards that dungeon has to offer.
and if the fastest runs turn out to be things like tong or lomm which are far newer content than older they need to consider that. those dungeons by their very nature should be better drops than older content and they should still hold some challenge. maybe they could think about making newer dungeons level 80 content with no scaling. scaling just doesn't work and by its nature makes things not fun.
I think @plasticbat said it best, "My burning question is: is this worse than before?"
@hanzohasashi#5461 ignored or failed to answer "Alright,, describe how you where expecting this new system should work." by user @hadestemplar#9918
I am not a snowflake and I don't bruise easy. I was then told my opinion doesn't really matter because of how I choose to play this game and I am not being materialistic about my rewards for winning. If you pay close attention, my reward is community, not how much can I loot from a box to resell in the auction house just make me hit 0.1% harder. I don't want people to play as I do unless they enjoy it and have fun.
It is @hanzohasashi#5461 opinion that Cryptic is committing a fraud or a hoax on the players. It would appear the mob mentally rules, and worthless minorities such as myself don't matter. So if you don't want me to keep coming back here to relay this information and giving my point of view, stop using my @ handle.
Have fun!
Wendy Black
You think players will keep rerolling this now once they have burned through enough of their re-roll tokens.
Players will run out of tokens in a week with the abysmal drop rates this crazy system has unleashed for these so called "premium" items.
This is just a steer to keep players online for as long as possible and drain down their VIP reroll tokens.
The 50 rerolls (1 per account) free drop they granted us this week wont even make up for the average single toon for a VIP its just a big fat con.
As soon as I have done all I have set out to do, I will likely be heading back to other MMO's cos this kind of rubbish is what pushes players away.
Even people that AREN'T trying to gear for ToMM/Zariel want their character to get stronger. It's the main driving force for almost everyone playing an MMO. Getting stronger, and seeing the effects of getting stronger in-game, keeps people playing. It's the other half of why people despise scaling. Scaling nullifies your character's growth, AND the loot in scaled instances is total trash.
Pres wards are probably one of the top best sellers in the Zen Market (and are already in competition with alt-armies of invokers to get huge amount of celestial chests with the 3% coalescent 30% pres inside). Getting more pres wards = being able to stuff up quicker, hitting the endgame "maxed out" / "remaxed out after new mod and stuff" status sooner (and then be bored because nothing to chase) .
Lockboxes used to be almost the only source of tradebars, and you can't open those without Zen buying keys or Zen renewing regulary your VIP (both probably among the best sellers too).
Tradebars allow you to buy health stones and scrolls of mass life (and other things) and are one of the reasons lockboxes, though quite in a bad shape since almost 2 years (and especially in my opinion since resurgence ones disappeared from the "week before new mod" periods), were still marginally ok to open.
It is very understandable Cryptic is quite cautious and conservative about drop rates and amount for those (we still need to remember Cryptic must earn money from Neverwinter as it isn't a non-profit organisation).
Note that I don't say it wouldn't be nice for the players to get more in frequency and/or more in quantity, nor that it would cripple Cryptic on the $$ side to do so, nor that they couldn't include something else in the premium rewards that is not really competing with $$ (but what ? ^^).
For what it matters, for wards only, maybe an idea would be to delete the "celestial chests system" (honestly, with 53 toons, it takes 10 minutes/day to do their 1st praying only resulting in ~150 celestial chests/month, so something like 40 pres and 4-5 coalescent/month for doing nothing...), and in the same time enhance the pres/coalescent droprate in premium rewards to somewhat match this amount/month for someone doing dungeons during 4 hours/day/month (and adapt the droprate on each dungeon depending on the average time to complete it, so farming the shortest one wouldn't drop more than achieving the longest one).
Would cripple a bit more the alt-armies (I have one so it would hit me quite a bit), but at least the rewards would be given by playing the content, not by batch praying.
I 100% do agree with your second part (mounts and comps).
But surely knowledge, tips and advices, reliability for party dungeoning, presence for collective farming, ideas/insights/skills in business to enter/exploit markets, trust in each other, etc , etc...
It certainly shorten the time to get up to endgame for them and me...
Maybe you got the wrong friends, or maybe i'm lucky (but i don't think so, social skills are part of playing a MMORPG.)
In my ally, which i have to admit is quite healthy (probably the biggest french speaking ally), we have some endgamers who organize ToMM/Zariel trainings to help players unfamiliar with the mechanics so they can then be up to "completed" that are also organized. Some others help players (at least those who have a nice mindset ^^) to stuff up to the caps. Others propose "discover mode" for dungeons. etc, etc
Something like once in every 6 months, I organize an event (was some Miss and Mister elections lately, but I also did a PvP tournament, a "our ally have talent", and olympic games). Some endgamers and myself are sponsorizing these events with prizes, and the last event saw 3 winners, each winning over 3M AD worth in prizes.
Next week, my guild will throw a party (because we hit level 20 after 5 years), and we will shower our members with gifts (ranging from coalescent to mounts and pets, from legendary insignas to set of artifacts).
One of my ingame friend is very into the avernus hunts (which I very much dislike). Tonight he will just offer us more than 120 hunts to do for our group of friends and simply share the loots. I have barely make 4 or 5 bait, but it doesn't matter for him if I kind of "leech", as well as it didn't matter for me when he was leeching TiC with us months ago, as well as it didn't matter for me when i lend him some legendary insignas (that he doesn't give me back yet xD) and offer him a bulette pup some 8 months ago. And plenty of my closest ingame friends are in this kind of mindset.
If I drop something intersting, rather than selling right away, i always thinks "maybe one of my buddies would need it, let's keep it and ask before selling". And most of my closest ingame friends do the same.
Maybe mindset and "culture of a guild/ally" may radically change how someone can experience the social part of Neverwinter. Maybe being myself quite altruistic make me bond with other altruistic people, and we just help each other without second thought. Mindset and culture in a guild is something you can build up over the time, it only requires to find the right one to initiate it, and the right people to enter the loop along him.
You can say whatever you want, but I never forget someone who one day have helped me, and if I can help him back another day, I will do so. After a while, we just stop counting how many more "services" one had given to the other, and just naturally help whatever the "count" is beetwen us. And this friend may be today not an endgamer, but in 6 months may ride on the top of the wave, and here you are, you get yourself a reliable friend who will always give you a hand and to whom you will always give a hand : one less player to get as a random picked guy for you runs and help you stuff up...
Now you have a sub-10% chance at 2 tarmalune bars.
Sure... It's a huge crisis, like when the useless epic stuff could be recycled into AD + 36kAD/toon refinement disappeared and we got the 100kAD/account without recycling instead. Or like when we went from 1zen=500AD max to 1zen=750AD max.
I dunno, it doesn't seem my friends who started the game after that had too much hard times to get up to decent stuff and wealth : a couple went from scratch to ToMM completed within 6 months (case 4h+/day of average playtime), some others are decently TiC-able after roughly those 6 monts the game (case ~2h/day of average playtime) (they were "confinement" recruits in march ^^).
So i would bet someone starting today would still be fine, as long as he has some patience and either a good intuition or good "advisors".
Whatever man. I also don't know how big is your stockpile of AD (if any) from how many time you have been playing, but let's do the replay in my mind.
Again, as 4 years ago, i would do nearly exactly the same. I would join a low level guild (<level 5) to participate in (or maybe create one), because I value more the "build together" than the "I take the max boons, i'm not interested in anything else".
I would accept to slow down a bit the progression of my main, take my time to deeply explore each single activity I can engage in, dig the opportunities in order to shape my first plan, then diversify and slowly build my account, get heavily involved in guild stuff, making friends in the mean time to play on a regular basis along with them, and in the end put myself in a very good place some 6 months later (though more likely 9-10 months if i'm starting today as the jubilee is in ~9-10 months), and then forever snowballing during the next years.
I'm pretty sure i will just do well, be endgame on my main on the 1 year mark (if not before) then be able to "fund" gifts to giveaway during events (especially as my ingame AD income never really relied too heavily on dungeoning) while also getting to BiS status on my main + starting to stuff-up 2 other toons to have 1 dps, 1 tank, 1 heal doing at least their job (if not more) in all the content so i it provide my friends and myself flexibility to get in content (would probably be done 1 more year later).
I'm just a patient guy who have one-year longterm plans, slowly but steadily progressing and catching up. And that's how I play any MMORPG since Ultima Online in the late 90s. I'm not into "consuming" the game as quickly as I can. And thanks to that, i don't get bored quickly nor burned-out.
But yeah i agree with you : the rewards in the endchests are currently (or maybe since a much longer time according to some vets) not something that can be viewed as worth the run at all. Does it bother me ? A bit. Is it the end of the world ? Not at all.
By the way, we had fun this night, 200+ onestar hunts done as a party of friends :P.