Anti-Farming backfired..

Hockster

Hockster

Banned

Join Date: Jul 2005

15 Apr 2007 at 07:27 - 41
Quote:
Originally Posted by reetkever
Prices went slightly up cause of less farming. Now, less ecto's etc. are being produced in the game, so price goes up.
I'm not sure why you think ecto are rarer. Most everyone I know has little trouble farming them. There are so many UW farming builds now it's hard to keep track of them. Many people get less dropped because they have no clue of the farming flags that get set.

The orginal 55 build was fast as hell. You could agro 5 groups of smites with ease and have them killed in a few seconds.

Ectos dropped before Factions as eveyone assumed there was going to be new super elite sets of armor. There was a mass dumping of ecto. When no new set appeared prices rose back to where it was previously. It's price did not vary with the Nightfall release, other than the typical +/- 1K it does virtually every day.

EternalTempest

EternalTempest

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Jun 2005

United States

Dark Side Ofthe Moon [DSM]

E/

15 Apr 2007 at 07:37 - 42
Anet has done a great job with GW and trying to combat - here's why
  • A casual player can get great / perfect items via collectors
  • Green weapons from elite monsters
  • Cheap Max stat Armor - and cool armor you can grind after

The "perfect gold + skin" market exists with high price trades / money xfer... but you don't have to be in this circle to be great at GW.

Every massive online game has this issue..

Ebay says it cracks down... but not enough.. they could go further but they don't on purpose.

All easy money does is this = FOW Armor does not tell me skill of the player (even though there are those that earned it). All that "bling" tell me your wealthy... not leet or skillful.

Until they create an armor that can only be earned by un-tradable / unbuyable items or a series of challenges / quests / missions.. then will I say that armor => skill of player

I do think anet is trying, and this is a very hard thing to combat w/o harming legit players.

Now as an experiment... look @ Sony & Original EQ - they made it where you can convert money -> gold w/o breaking EULA in fact, they found a way to cash in on it by creating a "safe & official" method of xfer where they take a percent. Not sure of the result of this ingame EQ...

The other way is to remove trade from the game... and that would make GW far less "fun".

Also didn't they add free loot / gold item / gold drops that each character can access 1 time in elona?

-Loki-

-Loki-

Forge Runner

Join Date: Oct 2005

15 Apr 2007 at 07:42 - 43
Quote:
Originally Posted by reetkever
Especially in GW, a game with relatively nothing to do after beating the game
You could always, you know, PvP.

Fred Kiwi

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Sep 2005

[cola]

15 Apr 2007 at 11:09 - 44
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kook~NBK~
And did you report the person advertising the selling of gold?

It does work. I've reported several of them, put 'em on my friends list, and after a day, I've never seen them again. Several times, I've gotten the "we took care of it" e-mail (not the first one) within hours of reporting the weasels.
Get this man a glass of meat!

Myrkwid

Myrkwid

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Jun 2005

R/Me

15 Apr 2007 at 11:20 - 45
Quote:
Originally Posted by EternalTempest
Anet has done a great job with GW and trying to combat - here's why
  • A casual player can get great / perfect items via collectors
  • Green weapons from elite monsters
  • Cheap Max stat Armor - and cool armor you can grind after
Ok, then point me to the collector who has a 15^50 zealous sword with +30 HP. Or where is the Axe with vampiric 3 and 30 HP? The collectors weapons are far from perfect and I'm not even talking about the skin.
And where are the hundreds of collectors for Runes, Insignias, etc?
They don't exist. The problem is not the basic item, the mods needed for them are the problem.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
You could always, you know, PvP.
Basically you are right, but after finishing a campaign with a character you have an average equipment that is less than subpar. You can't tell an RPGer to delete a character for pvp to make a pvponly one. ANets crusade on anti-farming made it a real pain to get a character fitted out. And I'm not talking about skins. I have no problems with colletor stuff, but that comes without any mods and getting those takes very very long. Without any interesting and rewarding endgame besides mindless and endless farminggrind you can unfortunately forget about it.

arcanemacabre

arcanemacabre

Grotto Attendant

Join Date: Feb 2006

North Kryta Province

Angel Sharks [As]

15 Apr 2007 at 11:40 - 46
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Kiwi
Get this man a glass of meat!

It's mead. Glass of mead.


Anyway, as long as the game is popular, and has a trading system [of any kind], there will always be people buying/selling things with RL cash. Not much can be done about it, besides policing. So either get rid of the trade system all together, or do what ya can. Unfortunately, this means we all have to do our part in reporting bots and gold sellers.

I would personally love either the removal of the trade system, or at least a much improved trade system. However, it looks like we won't be getting either wish granted for a long, long time, if ever.

Zolderick

Zolderick

Academy Page

Join Date: Nov 2006

Australia

N/

16 Apr 2007 at 11:04 - 47
yeah I kind of agree....it took me about a full week of farming to get one piece of FoW but I guess it sort of does make you stand out from everyone else. While I was farming I saw plenty of Bots running into walls and sliding across them I'm suprised Anet hasn't found out yet.

Bekkr

Bekkr

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Feb 2006

Australia

[]

N/

16 Apr 2007 at 11:34 - 48
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lagg
The casual farmer farms for his entertainment.

The professional farmer farms for his paycheck.

Guess who will be put off first by making farming more difficult.

There is only one solution to farming: make it useless.

Have the game reward us shiny weapons and armor for our accomplishments, instead of our time spent farming.

This is Guild Wars' most fundamental principle, yet it is poorly implemented PvE-wise. The really cool stuff goes to people who have gold. Period.

For example, what reward do you get from clearing all the mobs and all the quests in UW or FoW with an 8-man team?

Some more XP. Maybe a couple of shards and ectos. A few golden Canes and Ghostly Staves with a single non-perfect mod on it, typically not even in the same attribute of the item's requirement. In any case a lot less than what you could have gotten killing the first few mobs over and over again, alone.

Fulfillment? There's not even a proper ending. Not even a message that says: "Hey, thanks for getting rid of Menzies' posse, they were seriously cramping my style, know what I'm saying? Love, XOXOXOX, Your favorite God of War, Balthazar." Not even a bloody "I Actually Went There Not To Farm But To Do All The Quests And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt" t-shirt.

So what do we get instead? DoA. De facto inaccessible to anything but Monks, Elementalists, Rangers and Necromancers. Maybe the odd Warrior with eight tanking skills. So hard and overpowering that balanced builds don't even stand the slightest chance. Or are, in any case, not given a chance by the community. And in any case, hard or not, simply not fun. Just mentioning the word "DoA" in my guild and people hurry away to mind some other business.

Oh, except for farming, of course. I mean, you just need to be two, really, and you just go out gemfarming. Easy peasy. Lots and lots of gold coins!

Sigh.

I know, it's too late for Guild Wars, but please, please don't make the same mistakes again for Guild Wars 2.
QFT! Didn't take much of DoA for me to realize how not fun it really is. And now, believe it or don't, they're actually going to implement hard mode in DoA as well? Will people actually enjoy this? The mind boggles at that particular brand of masochism.

silara_jorinset

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Oct 2006

AoFT

E/Me

16 Apr 2007 at 11:51 - 49
I think Laggs post on the second page stated the problem quite well. In what is supposed to be a co-opeartive team game you actually reduce your drops and gold by taking a full team. In areas like fow and uw, doing the dungeons as they were designed with 8 players isn't worth doing for many as the quests only give some extra xp and aren't as profitable as farming the area (I can't remember the last time I saw an 8 player uw group being formed).
Increasing drop rate/cash for larger parties and/or giving better rewards for quests and missions could go some way to rebalancing this (with perhaps cumulative rewards for quests so people are encouraged to do longer explorations rather than the same first quest over and over or better rewards for later quests).
It wouldn't solve the bot problem (which is always going to exist) but if more rewards were available for actually playing the game rather than farming the game, perhaps less people would be inclined to jump to ebay.

ayame ftw

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Nov 2006

Belgium

Forgot the Ghostlyyyyy

R/

16 Apr 2007 at 12:08 - 50
ectos can only be obtained as quest reward (repeatable quests)
quests that are to hard to solo, u cant use hero's
Problem solved

Dubby

Dubby

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: May 2005

D/

17 Apr 2007 at 02:11 - 51
Lol. A game that tries to get rid of farming.

Farming happens in every game I've played, as long as the game is popular enough for a demand to substantiate an industry for selling the game items.

Trying to fight farming is like trying to fight a firestorm.

The best solution, I think, is to fight fire with fire. If burn the forest ahead of the firestorm, the firewall has nowhere left to feed and dies once it hits the barren, already burned forest.

In games, such as Diablo 2 for instance, the item industry is phenominal. It is a *huge* market that is being completely left untapped by the parent industry. The company can dish out the items infinitely, and adjust prices for those that DO want to buy them, the owning company of the game can infinitely fight back at illegitimate item sellers because above all else - they control the inventory, and they can control the prices.

Honestly, this is the only way, that supports an economy, to fight back at bot farming. The other way? Make everything tagged & only usable by the person who finds it. Including gold. That, however, completely destroys any and all economy inside the game.

Of course, the other solution to destroy farming and illegal item sales, is to simply make everything free and easy to get - basically how PvP is.

But there's no fun in that for PvE'rs.

So the question, inevitably, is what is worth sacrificing - if anything - to stop item sales?

Jecht Scye

Jecht Scye

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Dec 2005

Lucky Crickets[Luck]

N/Me

17 Apr 2007 at 02:45 - 52
There's an easy solution to theses high real world prices. Don't buy it...

Dubby

Dubby

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: May 2005

D/

17 Apr 2007 at 02:54 - 53
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jecht Scye
There's an easy solution to theses high real world prices. Don't buy it...
That sounds nice and all, but to be honest, saying that is like putting your money on a prayer to have the answers.

Supply & Demand is how commerce works, if people put enough value into these things they WILL pay for them.

Parson Brown

Parson Brown

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Apr 2006

In ur base...

The one true [Hope]

E/

17 Apr 2007 at 03:02 - 54
I would consider myself a step above a "casual" player, but still nowhere near a professional, and I never really saw a need to farm. Sure, I go out green hunting when there is a double/triple drop weekend or something, but other than that, I have plenty of characters who haven't finished one chapter or another.

So even without farming, all my 9 characters have max weapons and armor (3 sets of 15k) and all their heroes have max weapons, most with max mods. I have very few weapons that would be considered "rare," but they kill just as good!

I use what I find or get from a collector. If I find something "nicer" looking but equally as good, I upgrade.

=HT=Ingram

=HT=Ingram

Forge Runner

Join Date: Feb 2005

Anchorage Alaska

Haz Team [HT]

R/W

17 Apr 2007 at 03:15 - 55
I'm sorry but the simplest way to FORCE prices to come down is to reduce the DEMAND not boost the supply... If they are asking a price of over 100K tell them to go to hell and don't buy from them. For crying out loud in an afternoon I'm sure you can find a group to go and try for whatever you were just trying to buy for that kind of money... and then its not wasted... And if all else fails you can get that rare 15^50 mod from an end game collector weapon at a millafraction of the cost. Until you can Attain the Special Green you want through playing... 90% of the time my greens and golds end up customized on Heroes anymore.

If you want something so bad, go play for it... Its a game right? its a goal to strive for!!! Buying things is tantamount to the losers way out. Might as well put the game on autoplay and sit back and watch the game play itself like the farming bots employees do in the sweat shops producing gold for resellers.

The script is out there pretty easy to attain, but WHO would want to do that? Really? Why would anyone play a game just to sit back and watch it play itself? Thats shear lunacy.

Enchanted Warrior

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Jul 2006

W/Mo

17 Apr 2007 at 17:34 - 56
Our guild gives things away all the time. I gave a gold jade sword to a lower level player on noob island and you'd have thought I gave him a real one, he was very appreciative.

I wonder, if/when the game fails to continue because enough players became disgruntled and went elsewhere and the programmers are looking for work, will they stand by their changes?

Sol Deathgard

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Dec 2005

Shadows of the Dragon

W/N

17 Apr 2007 at 17:39 - 57
Quote:
Originally Posted by Malice Black
You have to except that gold buyers are part of any MMO, there is no "easy fix" for this.

Any changes to the game would please some and anger others. I have not yet seen an solution that would benefit everyone without damaging game play.
Actually there is an easy fix; Don't buy gold or items with real money. If there's no demand for it, then the bots will stop farming because they aren't getting money for it. Unfortunatly there are so many lazy people that bought the game but refuse to actually play it. There's a guild member that likes to show off his warriors FoW armor, then brags about how he just ebayed the money and bought all the ectos & shards. He won't play the game unless someone goes with him and holds his hand, even if it a quest that's "go out the door and talk to the guy, go back in get reward." Sad thing is there are people like that, and that's why there are bots. To stop the bots, people need to stop being lazy and rushing to their credit cards to get what they want in the game.

Enchanted Warrior

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Jul 2006

W/Mo

17 Apr 2007 at 17:47 - 58
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sol Deathgard
Actually there is an easy fix; Don't buy gold or items with real money. If there's no demand for it, then the bots will stop farming because they aren't getting money for it. Unfortunatly there are so many lazy people that bought the game but refuse to actually play it. There's a guild member that likes to show off his warriors FoW armor, then brags about how he just ebayed the money and bought all the ectos & shards. He won't play the game unless someone goes with him and holds his hand, even if it a quest that's "go out the door and talk to the guy, go back in get reward." Sad thing is there are people like that, and that's why there are bots. To stop the bots, people need to stop being lazy and rushing to their credit cards to get what they want in the game.

Or even simpler, increase drop rates and remove all reason for ebaying. Gw could do this in a heartbeat. But it seems they would rather see people leave. I'm at a loss for how that is better... But I gave it up (looting etc) I spend a hour or so a day in game helping guildies or other players finish missions etc.. Their thanks is my reward, it cannot be bought and sold and I don't accept tips. (One guy was asking 8k per player to finish GCS, man some people have no ethics..)

Mordakai

Mordakai

Grotto Attendant

Join Date: Aug 2005

Kyhlo

W/

17 Apr 2007 at 18:13 - 59
Quote:
Originally Posted by EternalTempest
Until they create an armor that can only be earned by un-tradable / unbuyable items or a series of challenges / quests / missions.. then will I say that armor => skill of player
/signed for this.

Why not have free end-game armor like we do weapons?

Enchanted Warrior

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Jul 2006

W/Mo

17 Apr 2007 at 18:17 - 60
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mordakai
/signed for this.

Why not have free end-game armor like we do weapons?
/Agree
/Signed

Sir Skullcrasher

Sir Skullcrasher

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Jun 2005

California

15 over 50 [Rare]

W/Mo

17 Apr 2007 at 18:32 - 61
I went to UW this past weekend and gotten 2 ectos on a farming trip. Tried to do the same run last night and gotten nothing. Guess the code kicked in?

LoKi Foxfire

LoKi Foxfire

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Apr 2005

Florida

One Corgi Army {OCA}

R/Rt

17 Apr 2007 at 20:25 - 62
Quote:
Originally Posted by Enchanted Warrior
My latest Tin Foil Hat theroy is that is why mobs target monks. Not because they are important to the group, but because they might be farming.
This made me laugh. Nice one.

Haha, this statement should be used by one of the new henchmen monks in GW:EN.

berlioz7

berlioz7

Academy Page

Join Date: Feb 2007

D/

17 Apr 2007 at 21:16 - 63
I started playing a beta trial of LOTRO and find the drops much much more rewarding than GW drops. Not only do you get a better variety of weapons, crafting type materials, and yes armor, but you can get a few drops off each enemie. I get tired of the same old white non-max weapon or useless trader items from GW.

visitor

visitor

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Apr 2006

Kronos HQ

W/

18 Apr 2007 at 04:11 - 64
Ah but they have made a way to get money just by playing:



Hard Mode

1 up and 2 down

1 up and 2 down

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Mar 2007

Rt/

18 Apr 2007 at 04:55 - 65
Visitor is right, Hard Mode will really help with money I guess because all the drops should be of greater value than in normal mode. I am really hoping that this is true so maybe I can get a set of 15k armor.

Saphrium

Saphrium

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Oct 2006

Granite Citadel

Post Searing Ascalonian Merchants

N/Me

18 Apr 2007 at 07:32 - 66
Very simple method to nerf the problem: Make everything account unlocks and character unlocks, as long as they are unique to one character only, there is no meaning to trade and therefore make money on farming anyway.

PS: People might still sell "fully unlocked accounts", but that's up to the players.