I would love to see the ability to trade in treasure maps for resources equivalent to an average game played.
How would it work?
The user can trade in one map for an amount of resources determined by chance, plus traitstones equivalent to a less than 60 turns treasure map game.
For example: One map might give 500 gold, 50 souls, 20 glory, and 2-3 traitstones.
Chances for particular resources should be similar to chests, but the total amount should be higher because maps are rarer. The amount of resource gained should be lower than if the user has actually played the map.
Why should this be added?
Treasure maps take a long time to play, and are generally uninteresting. Players accumulate large numbers of maps that they never use. Having a large pile of maps to play is daunting / feels like an impossible task to play them. The user feels frustrated when maps drop as rewards because the user knows they will never play the map or receive a benefit from it.
What about the impact on the economy?
Concern about exchanging maps for resources might center around suddenly flooding the economy with extra gold / gems / glory. Here are some ways that could be offset:
Have a weekly/daily limit on how many maps can be exchanged
Make the rewards for actually playing the map greater than the reward for exchanging maps
Rotate/limit the traitstone colours that can be acquired be exchanging maps (e.g. one week fire, then magic, then wind, etc)
What are the pros?
Make players actually excited/happy to get maps
Alleviate some of the frustration of grinding basic resources
Gives user more feelings of agency by giving them a meaningful choice (trade for quickness or play for chance at better resources)
Might open up possibilities for building/creating map farming teams
What are the cons?
Making traitstones easier to grind might reduce some traitstone-related sales - can be offset by adjusting the rarity of traitstones that drop so that it’s still better to play the map
Short to medium term changes to the economy by introducing an influx of resources - but the impact should be modellable, and the economy should rebalance after players trade in their stock.
I doubt you’ll ever see this happen, not on an “equivalent” basis. There would have to be a cost – likely a significant one – if a Player could simply skip the necessary investment of effort and time without losing off the back end. That time and effort has to be deemed to be worth something, not just in its own right but because taking that time is an opportunity cost in that the Player cannot do other things.
(Think about how Gnome rewards were clobbered with the Nerf Bat during a Gnome-a-Palooza.)
Better the developers should introduce some creative Soulforge recipes that use Treasure Maps as a component. For example:
5 (or even 10) Coin Purse + 5 (or even 10) Treasure Map + some pre-determined number of Souls = 1 Gold Ring
5 (or even 10) Gold Ring + 5 (or even 10) Treasure Map + some pre-determined number of Souls = 1 Priest’s Chalice
And so on and so forth. Allowing a Player to trade in his growing supply of low-value Treasure Troops for a small number of higher-value Treasure Troops, as to make it easier to substantially boost a hoard without a massive number of transactions. The developers can be satisfied by how a Player’s “total Treasure Troop value” (in terms of addition to a hoard) decreases with each transaction; the Players can be satisfied by the Gold savings (and the time savings) to pad their hoards to significantly higher levels for those delves that require it.
(And because Gold is a much easier currency to farm than Chaos Shards and Treasure Troops. Also, because this would be a promotion forge not-too-different from Ingots to improve weapons.)
Hmmm… What other resources are something on paper?
Forge Scrolls
Verses
Books (a lot of paper)
Deeds
Writs
Perhaps we could have a specialist at the forge that may convert maps to something else. For a suitably high price, of course. Erasers and inks aren’t cheap in Krystara.
I don’t foresee being allowed to convert maps to deeds or books. Deeds are already craftable from writs. Books are craftable from deeds.
Verse gnomes don’t appear all that often outside of a Gnome/Vault event. How often are forge scrolls available?
I would like to be able to convert maps to writs, verses and forge scrolls.
Trading one useless resource for another useless resource?
I rather play a couple of maps from time to time to relax, than rolling them for some useless stuff