Mettle and relic balance adjustments post Zadnor

[Darkshuda]

I have finished the last steps for a first relic, and went back in Bozja, Castrum and Delubrum, and some things need to be reviewed.
I'm gonna start with the mettle rewards.
Due to the new content and the increase in ranks, the mettle rewards in Zadnor are exceedingly higher than they were in Bozja, we're at 600k+ rewards for CEs at rank 25, and 3.3M for Dalriada. However the rewards in Bozja, Castrum and DR have barely been increased. CEs rewards (around 19000) don't even cover a death penalty (61300). Castrum gives a bit more than before (195k), DR gives 600k which is a CE in Zadnor for close to 10 times the run time in a baseline DF party.
Most of this is due to the algorithm for rewards in previous zones which induces a flat increase as your rank goes up, but the step up in rewards in Zadnor is so big that it broke the algo in previous zones, and do not help motivating players to go back to previous content if you're hoping to get the 600M mettle necessary for a full set of ray buffs.

The relic balance has already been mentionned in another post, so I'll just add that since for the last step the option to run lvl 70 dungeons was added, why not let timesworn artifacts drop in synched lvl60 dungeons, after at least raising the drop rate in Potd. Because this step is gonna be a real bottleneck, and I for one haven't finished my first relic to keep the Irrestible quest active to not miss out on raw emotions while doing Dalriada runs.

[DrWho2010]

if you bumped up old zone rewards too much then people will hang out there instead of the new zone.

[DrForester]

They need to do something to the balance in The Southern Front.

With people going back there to farm the field notes, there's TONS of people just idling around, waiting for what they need to spawn.

And I can't blame them. A death at rank 25 still has you losing the same amount of mettle, but even the norther area fates will then only give you 16k back (about a fourth of what a death cost you). There's absolutely no incentive for them to help out because they have nothing to gain, but can actively lose something.

I really think the southern front skirmishes should be scaling the same as the Zadnor ones. Encourage people at the very least to farm mettle while they wait. Even if it was half as much as you get from Zadnor skirmishes, it would at least be something. But losing more mettle than you can gain just encourages idling.

[DrWho2010]

No, people idle because they're lazy and want other people spawn stuff for them. That's the main issue. It's been this way since Eureka.

[SamiMoshantu]

And to top it off, SE made a weekly quest that requires a CLL clear, making you think that you're supposed to go back to the Southern Front at RR25. But no, it's a trap, and it soon becomes very clear that there's nothing for you here.

[Duskane]

I think south front be more popular later skirmishes and CE are way more common so itll be better to level there with reaper and sage than Zadnor
also with people doing field note,duels and CLL not just for weekly but relic steps atm
south will be plenty populated