A lot of the rewards in the EW Ticket Exchange have lost their desirability due to the sheer amount of them in circulation and the fact that almost all of them are tradable, making them somewhat easy for any player not restricted by an Ironman status to purchase if they chose to do so. CW was overall an unpopular minigame (I dunno how much the change back to the old-style EW affected its current popularity), so grinding out the tickets to purchase these items legitimately is even less desirable as a result, possibly made even worse due to the nerf to current ticket earning rates.
If the current ticket earning rates are untouched, then I think a slight decrease to the majority of the reward prices could balance out this issue. A decrease of about 5-10% at most (possibly excluding brawlers) would suffice, not too crazy to compete a little better with the current rates.
Re-approaching the Minigame Reward System:I would like to also suggest a possible different approach to how the reward systems of current minigames work to a system more designed around the idea of sinking obsolete items via upgrades. This idea would work similar to how the current Recolored EP Items work: yield a recolored item but require the item to be recolored along with the EP. In the case of EW, this would possibly result in creating item sinks for the current massive supply of the old minigame rewards, making some of these high-tier items degradable to encourage revisiting the sinks themselves. This might result in cheaper upgrades as players could buy the required items with cash instead of with EW Tickets, but that's just an unfortunate outcome of utilizing the old rewards. Making these items untradable could fix the problem somewhat, but I feel that there's just too many of these items in circulation currently to make that a very viable option.
An example to illustrate my point: Item A would be available to the player in the reward shop from the start. Item B would appear in the shop as well, but players could not purchase it as it would perhaps appear "blacked out" (like placeholders). In order to get item B, players must first buy item A, then if they still have enough tickets, buy item B with item A and the tickets required. Item A and the tickets are lost, and players now only have item B.
Item A is removed from circulation, keeps the supply of item A down. BUT it still means that players have to actually purchase item A instead of simply skipping over it entirely for the better of the two items, in this case item B. And if item B was degradable, this might keep up a demand for item A when players use up the charges on item B.
Anyways, here are some ideas:
Initiate Armor and Proselyte Armor: While still somewhat popular due to its absurdly high prayer bonuses, the armor itself is incredibly lackluster due to its stats being designed for only level 20 defense. 74 tickets for the entire set is reasonable, but its paper-thin defensive bonuses and pathetic offensive bonuses hardly make the +26 prayer bonus worthwhile, especially considering high-tier melee armors with the SGS are still quite effective and provide much better stats overall.
Introducing the Proselyte Armor into the Ticket Exchange might be a possible idea, designing it to be more mid-tier armor (level 40-60) and providing somewhat higher prayer bonuses as an upgrade to the Initiate Armor.
Ava's Attractor, Accumulator, and Alerter: Aside from Ava's Accumulator, the Abyssal Cape, and Skillcapes/the Max Cape, there are very few ranged items in the cape slot specifically designed for the skill itself. Introducing the other two Avas could be a possibility as well.
Ava's Attractor would be the downgrade to Ava's Accumulator, either requiring a lower ranged level to wear (level 30-40) or taking its place requiring level 50. It would provide less offensive bonuses and would have a lower chance to save your arrows (25-30% perhaps), but require about 30-40% of the tickets required to purchase the Accumulator. This would be the main Ava players buy from EW to start.
Ava's Accumulator could receive a slight buff, being bumped up to a ranged level requirement of 60 should Ava's Attractor take its place at 50. Aside from that and a potential price drop adjust to this new system, the Accumulator would remain mostly untouched. To get the Accumulator, players would need to upgrade it from the Attractor with tickets, therefore requiring players to buy the Attractor first.
Ava's Alerter would be the upgrade to Ava's Accumulator, requiring a higher ranged level to wear (level 70+). To get the Alerter, players would need to upgrade it from the Accumulator with tickets, same process as the Attractor. The price should be around that of the current Accumulator to get the upgrade, maybe slightly less. The Alerter would be untradable and provide much better offensive stats (possibly better than the Max Cape) alongside a higher chance to save arrows (Around 67% at maximum). To balance this, the Alerter could be made degradable but possess a generous amount of charges once upgraded, perhaps 5,000-10,000 or so. This would keep the Alerter itself desirable to re-obtain alongside offering a potential sink for Accumulators. Other possibilities include recharging the Alerter with Accumulators, although I'm really open for any sort of suggestion regarding this.
Helm of Neitiznot (e) or Helm of Neitiznot (charged): The Nezzy currently doesn't see too much love at the moment. It's a cheap melee helmet with decent stats but now faces steep competition from the Bandos Helmet for offensive stats and from the Gladiator Helmet for prayer bonus. It basically lost two of its niches that it was already pretty mediocre in, so perhaps an upgrade to the helmet could give it some popularity again. As to what the upgrade would do, I really don't have any solid ideas in my head at the moment, so that's up for discussion. A unique "operate" effect with a cooldown could be an idea, but as to what that is I don't have any solid ideas.
These are just some quick ideas I had that I wanted to share. I feel that more could be added to the EW rewards as well to increase the desirability of playing the minigame. Revisiting the old, more popular version of the minigame is a good start, but if the rewards aren't that much different than what they were before you've really only solved half of the issue IMO. Of course these ideas depend entirely on:
A) The new rewards being desirable enough to the players to maintain the longevity of playing the game, and
B) EW simply remaining a somewhat popular minigame to play in order to be able to obtain/reobtain these rewards should they follow a system similar to the one I've mentioned.
Of course, these are completely out of my control. I would love to hear your opinions as well.
