What?
Remove orbs from boxes entirely.
After finishing a stratum in the arcade, you get an orb now!
Stratum 1: 1* orb = 1 required to craft something
Stratum 2: 2* orb = 2 required to craft something
Stratum 3: 3* orb = 3 required to craft something
Stratum 4: 4* orb = 4 required to craft something
Stratums 5+6: one 5* orb for both = 5 required to craft something
Optimally, you would only get credit for full clearing the levels, and only if you were there for say, 80% of it or more.
Why?
I was shadowing a new player who seemed lost. I asked him why and he said that they were stuck on a mission, which was the jelly king. What struck me was that they weren't able to make progress due to missions, and that they didn't know about the arcade, and that instead of playing the game they were just kind of in limbo, running around Haven, begging, what have you.
Because of this, I figured it would make sense to tie a rarity to completion of arcade levels, and provide them with an out. Instead of being stuck the new player would know to go craft more gear from the arcade.
This also normalizes the drop rates on a rather random occurrence, which I think would have a positive impact on the game overall.. I often hear new players complain about the orb drop rates, and I must ask why? Bad luck, of course. I often get no orbs but I also often get A LOT of orbs. Normalizing this to one per run alleviates their complaint.
The other part of this is the increased rates for crafting 4/5* items etc. and I put that in there because I think that it makes a lot more sense. 5 runs for a single 5* item to be fully heated isn't so bad, and neither is 4 runs to the end of T2, especially since you can join at the mid point.
Lastly, it grants the following balance to areas:
Bosses = boss tokens + crowns
Aracade = orbs
Missions in general = fast fire crystals
This is much healthier than bosses = everything, because it at least forces players to play some arcade every now and then. How much arcade? 1,2,3,4 or 5, which comes out to approximately 11 runs (2 T1+4 T2+5 T3) to fully orb an item.
Does that sound nice? You can't do it? You're making prize boxes and don't care? Fangel is the only one reading this and they hate me because I'm a jerk? Excellent. Glad to see I'm trash as always.
This is an interesting idea. Would you think difficulty could affect the orb rates? Something like completing the stratum on normal will give 1 orb, on advanced give 1 orb + a chance at a second orb, and elite gives 1 orb + a higher chance at a second orb + a small chance at a third?
This would be a nice change. So long as it's explained in-game via tutorials. This also forces players to play the arcade to progress if they want to be F2P, and having progress tied to the arcade in one way or another has been something I've been saying for a while now.