[Dev Update] Farming and Loot Scaling

Some players have been concerned about the loot scaling aspect of this week's update. They wonder whether the fact that drops are scaled according to party size will substantially affect their gameplay experience and whether it will impact upon their ability to acquire wealth in the game. We asked the design team for some insight into the design of and the intent behind loot scaling, and found out a lot of interesting reasons for its implementation, including how the changes that have been a point of concern are readily addressed within the very system itself.

The bottom line is that ArenaNet's goal is to make it easier for normal players to make money while redirecting the efforts of the expert farmers to a way to continue to reap rich rewards without having a harmful effect on the overall game economy. The loot has not been scaled across the board. Instead, the loot scaling is selective, and it preserves a means for the high-end farmer to make money.

But let's hear it from the design team itself, with this latest Dev Update:

Why would ArenaNet make changes that impact solo farming?

ArenaNet understands that people enjoy playing Guild Wars in many different ways, and our goal is to make each of those ways fun and rewarding. Solo farming sometimes becomes a controversial issue because it can damage the game for other people. In those cases, ArenaNet tries to keep the game fun for everyone while still providing fun and rewarding play for solo farmers.

A major theme of our most recent update is that the game should be friendlier and more rewarding for casual players, including casual solo farmers, and that the most advanced farmers should differentiate themselves from the crowd not through the amount of gold and common loot that they farm directly from monsters, but instead through the amount of gold that they can get from selling rare items to other players (directly or through traders).

That's a very important distinction. Advanced farmers are always going to earn more money than their more casual counterparts. There's nothing wrong with that. When farmers earn their money by finding valuable items and selling them to other players, they're making the game more enjoyable for everyone. They're facilitating trade, and the gold they acquire from doing so is gold that was already in the game. It's only when solo farming introduces a huge influx of new gold into the economy that it becomes a problem.

Because of the way that Guild Wars loot system worked, solo farming traditionally generated at least eight times as much new gold per participant as playing in a party did. And because solo farmers were motivated to farm only certain specific groups of easily exploitable monsters, they could often generate not just eight times as much, but 10, 20, or 30 times as much loot per hour as everyone else. Even more problematic was that the activity that they were performing was easy for professional gold farmers to automate, so if a single solo farmer could generate 20 times as much loot as the average player, then a network of ten computers running bots could generate 200 times as much loot. This huge influx of new gold caused inflation and made it harder for casual players to afford the items they wanted. In order to contain this problem, ArenaNet periodically added code to prevent monsters from being exploited, for example by adding complexity to the monster AI. But these types of changes made the game less fun for other players.

With the introduction of Hard Mode, we took a look a fresh look at normal mode to see how we could make the game friendlier for normal players. One thing we really wanted to do was to remove some of the advanced AI from normal mode -- things like monsters scattering from AoE, refusing to gather around individual characters, and fleeing or kiting players -- that we had originally introduced to contain botting. But in removing them, we needed to be sure that we weren't reintroducing exploits that would allow professional farmers to destroy the game's economy.

The answer to these problems was to somewhat scale loot according to party size, to bring the direct gold rewards from solo farming more into line with the rewards from other ways of playing the game. But we still wanted solo farmers to have an edge, since solo farming can be a fun way to play and a major reason why people engage in solo farming is to make more money. So we kept the direct gold rewards somewhat better for solo farmer than for people in parties, and then we added new loot which is very valuable to other players and which is exempt from loot scaling, so that solo farmers can farm this loot more effectively than other players and earn money by selling or trading it. Thus, our goal is that solo farmers can still earn as much money as they did before, but they'll have to earn it in different ways. Instead of looking for things to sell to merchants, solo farmers should now be looking for things to sell to traders or other players.

How does loot scaling work?

Without loot scaling, solo farmers received every loot drop, whereas people who played in a party received only a fraction of loot drops. Thus, solo farmers received up to eight times as much loot for killing the same group of monsters. With loot scaling in place, solo farmers still get more loot than people who play in parties, but the gap is less severe than it was before. It is impossible to quantify precisely how much less because it depends on the type of loot farmed and involves some randomness, but here are some rough guidelines:

• People who play in normal size parties, including parties of heroes and henchman, will see no difference at all from loot scaling. At the same time, they will notice that normal mode is now much easier to farm, and that the introduction of Hard Mode provides a place they can play where the loot is better than ever before. Thus, people who play the game primarily in parties will simply make more money than they previously did.

• People who periodically enjoy farming solo (with no heroes or henchmen) but are casual about it are also likely to see an improvement. They'll find that solo farming is much easier than it was before, because monsters don't have the anti-farming AI that they used to have, and because the game no longer prevents players from repeatedly farming the same monsters over and over. Many types of builds that didn't work in the past, or that haven't been effective since the earliest days of Guild Wars, can now be used for solo farming. Thus, casual farmers will find the game much easier to farm than it was before, and that they can earn more money than before even with loot scaling in place.

• People who were advanced solo farmers and who were earning vastly more money through solo farming than through playing the game normally will see the full effect of loot scaling. They will earn less gold and common loot from solo farming than they did in the past. The loot scaling for gold and common loot is not linear with the number of players in the party, and it includes an element of randomness, so while the difference is not easy to quantify, it is by no means a factor of eight. Advanced solo farmers may now earn about twice as much gold and common loot from farming solo as they would if they farmed in a party. While gold and common loot are thus reduced for these players by loot scaling, certain other types of loot are completely unaffected. For example, Skill Tomes are completely unaffected by loot scaling, so they still drop eight times as frequently for solo farmers than they do for people who play in parties. Thus, advanced solo farmers will find that certain types of farming are still extremely productive for them, but they may have to change what and where they farm if they want to earn as much money as they did before.

If ArenaNet makes it harder for players to farm, doesn't that drive players to purchase gold for cash from the professional farmers?

ArenaNet's goal is to make it easier for normal players to make money, so that they can buy the things they need without having to purchase gold for cash, and then to redirect the farming activities of the most advanced players so that the way they make money is by selling things to other players rather than by introducing a flood of new gold into the economy.

Here's how we've made it easier for normal players to make money: we removed the advanced AI behaviors from normal mode that slowed down the rate at which people could kill monsters there, we removed artificial barriers to casual farming such as certain farming builds not working or the game penalizing repeated farming of the same groups, we provided somewhat more gold and triple the number of uncommons and rares in Hard Mode, and we introduced entirely new types of loot.

Here's how we've protected the economy from a flood of new gold: advanced farmers and professionals who choose to farm for new gold (as opposed to things they can sell to other players) will only make perhaps two or three times as much gold per hour as normal players, whereas in the past they made at least eight times as much, and by finding specific exploits they sometimes made 10, 20, or 30 times as much gold per hour as normal players.

Here's how we've provided a new way for advanced players to make as much money as they did before: by introducing new items which will have a high demand from other players and thus high trade value, and then by making those items completely unaffected by loot scaling, so that solo farmers still have very effective ways to make a lot of money, but so that they make their money without hurting the game's economy.

Will ArenaNet make additional changes to the loot scaling system?

We constantly monitor the game to ensure that people are able to make good rewards for playing. Originally the list of items that were exempt from loot scaling was limited to newly introduced Hard Mode items. However, after reviewing player feedback and analyzing play logs from the past 12 hours, we've decided to make a broader range of items exempt. We want players who enjoy solo farming to have a wide variety of things that they can enjoy farming. Thus, with today's build, all of the following types of items will now be exempt from loot scaling:

• Skill Tomes
• Scrolls
• Dye
• Rare materials
• All rare (gold colored) items
• All unique (green) items
• Special event items

We hope this information is helpful and welcome your questions and comments.

LMAO. I love it, "We constantly monitor the game to ensure that people are able to make good rewards for playing".

Ectos are safe guys. Does that mean we'll see fewer complaints?

Wait, wait. I just noticed the "rare items" entry--so what the hell ISN'T exempt?

Thanks, this slightly helps me...I'll see where this goes...

So, what does loot scaling affect then?

Unless there's an additional build coming that puts this scaling in place, there's a staggering amount of bull in this dev commentary.

Now, how about some dev comments on more critical issues, like the fact that they've completely screwed up hero and hench a.i., or a justification for the ridiculous one-sided buffs to all monsters?

Uh. Hard mode? Sounds like pretty good justification to me.

Tonight at 11:
Contradictions, OR ARE THEY?

Stay tuned!

Sadly, despite the clear concise post outlining the plan for wealth distribution and stabilizing the economy, all we'll see are responses along the lines of "OMG Gaile/ANET you suxxors!"

The items that are exempt from the loot scaling are a nice touch, especially ectos. Less gnashing of teeth now?

Greens and ectos unaffected. Yay! That was all I was worried about. Thank you for getting rid of my fears, Gaile.

If Ectos and Shards are now exempt again then the problem is solved. Hoping I'm understanding it right that they are.

Uh, no? Considering the endlessly repeated advice of virtually the entire player base has been 'don't make this another doa with cheap monster gimmicks', I think it's not uncalled for to expect some damn explanation for why the devs, who make such a big deal about listening to the players, clearly DID NOT LISTEN to what everyone was saying for MONTHS. It's completely unacceptable that they would pull a stunt like this and try to pass it off as some advanced programming feat when anyone with a brain can see that it is not.

Ok I just noticed gold items not affected by the loot scaling so I also ask what exacty IS affected?

I know the goal was to limit gold currency influx but if people can just sell the gold items and ectos, doesnt that defeat the purpose?

maybe i am confused but i thought it said

if u put ectos or dye or whatever inplace of the Tomes it still only drops 1 out of 8.....which means you still won't get it if it wasn't supposed to drop for you.... Maybe i just need some clarifcation or something cuz to me ....when i soloed....i am a very casual soloer btw....i always got any dye/rare what have you...so are they saying that that hasn't changed??? or are they saying that you only have 1 in 8 chance of getting it?

That clarifies things a bit, but one thing I'd like to know is how does this work for people who don't have access to hard mode but do some more advanced farming in normal mode? People who have had the game for a while, but haven't finished, and aren't going to rush to beat one of the campaigns just to reap these "benefits" that have suddenly come up.

When I solo'd the trolls in Talus Chute in normal mode, I killed about 10 trolls and got 1 drop. Normally I'd get something from each troll, even if it was just a troll tusk. And wandering around doing quests and missions in Nightfall, I got gold, sporadically, but I was carrying my henchies and heroes with me. The only non-monetary drops I got were salvageables. I'm not really seeing the better drops here...

haha now that they EXPLAINED it its actually clever (with what they are changing today) gold farm bots are gonna merch everything including rares and stuff, where as real people will hold onto them.

Still, if this had of been explained before the update, or in the update I think we could have been spared a 50+ page thread.

Thank...god...

Ok. So I want to know one last thing:

how does any of this actually do anything when you effectively grandfathered in trillions and trillions worth of gold and made it impossible for anyone new to compete with that wealth?

There was a new build that just came out - I'm guessing it makes the exemptions Gaile mentions.

So the farmers still get 8x ecto than if they were in a team. 8x gold items. 8x green items. 8x gold, even.

Sounds like the only items that DO scale are 2x white and purple items, and non-rare salvage materials.

Hmm, haven`t got time to do an underworld smite run (trying to get fow armour and seems the only way to get it unless I keep pugging for the next 4 years) so I`ll have to take that last part as read and find out tomorrow. If true it means I will have less rubbish to sell to merchants and the same number of ectos as before, if not more in the long run - due to the AI reversal speeding up farming runs.
Looks good, Thanks for putting the fun back, was wondering what to play next, I can sleep easier now. Would have liked to tell the kids but their already in bed and still a bit peeved to say the least.

XX goodnight all..zzzzzz

what a total joke. After seeing the most overwhelming outcry from an injustice, anet is caving in, at least in words (I'll have to test this out). So if all the valuable items are exempt from loot scaling, why the hell is this charade even still going on?
this swift kick to the groin is totally backfiring (well, I guess it necessarily should). Just revert it back to before and pretend this never happened. Gaile's post must be preserved for eternity to show how ridiculous they can behave.

white items, blues, purples. did you not read the post? they're trying to stop farmers who just load up on stuff and merch it all to the vendor... aka bots.

If you really wanted to help the casual players why not give 1k+ gold for quest rewards?

I'd gladly do more quests if the rewards were actually worth doing the quests...

As for solo farming... Why force people to sell stuff to other players... I cant stand selling stuff to other players when I dont get crap for drops no matter where I go that would be worth selling to another player instead of the merchant.

so farmers are still getting 8x amount of golds and greens?
that doesnt really help. since alot of there money comes from that.

So if this is the case, then people on here (aka people who aren't bots) literally have no reason to complain.

You guys can still solo for greens, ectos, and gold weapons. What the hell are you complaining about?

Right so let me check if this is right gaile. You want us to sell the gold items to other players....BUT THERE IS NO TRADE SYSTEM.

gg

Because this was not the case prior to tonight's update. They were complaining when it was not the case.

Ok from what I understand, the drop rate for solo farmers is still 1/8. Except for all the exempt items. Which means less items overall from before the HB update if you're solo farming. Less whites and purples. But you'll still get as many gold items, ectos, etc etc as before.

Hardly a nerf for solo farmers and if anyone still complains about farming nerfs let's just shoot their computers so they can stop bothering us with their whining.

Wow. And people STILL complain. Just look at yourself man...

Are the enemies still standing on top of each other in normal mode or can I actually use a narrow passage to bodyblock? That has been my biggest gripe among the changes to make it more 'difficult'.

My biggest problem with this is that there is no existing method in-game for quick and painless trades. Unless you plan on standing around and spamming goods indefinitely, trading is practically non-existant.
I would have suggested holding off pushing towards a greater emphasis on trade until the new system to aid players with trading spoken of long ago were actually implemented.

Interesting post, but honestly, a lot of it doesn't feel consistent with the reality of the changes.

Not so irritated now. While a large part of my old farming was merching things it isn't hard to shift to farming for the stuff that drops heavily (I did a little bit, such as Ettin farming for golds).

Plus, there are quite a few hard mode areas I'm sure I can solo with my 130hp dervish or duo with a 55 monk and a ss necro hero. Both of which should be fairly profitable with golds and skill tomes.

It's not really a bad compromise and will hurt the botters quite a bit. With the new access tomes for the UW we can solo farm for ectos without needing favor.

Now, the only complaint I have is that with the major source of income for casual farmers (I would say that I am so, 100k is still a huge amount of gold to me) we *really* need something like an auction house. I merched everything unless it was something really valuable - even with the party search the trade system is too hard to sell anything unless it is worth quite a bit (and then you are better off at the auction site here). At the least, have a trade window similar to the party window that is totally global and doesn't require you to sit in a district/town for hours waiting on someone to want to purchase your stuff (usually while spamming the trade channel, or god forbid local). That would at least allow us to play until someone wanted to purchase stuff. Without the merchant being the primary source of income we *really* need traders or an auction house for most things even if it only allows "perfect" mods.

Most casual solo farmers don't solo for greens, ectos, and gold weapons. We solo for drops to merchant for money, or to salvage for materials. Therefore, we're screwed.

Most CASUAL farmers don't go on and on and on for hours on end. We do a couple of runs and quit. So no benefit from eliminating the code.

KANE

Your kidding?

There isn't a suitable trade system in this game and I'm not the only one who thinks our current "Trade" system stinks.

I haven't complained once in these forums about the solo nerf, hard mode or any of the other unloved updates in the past day/s.
Almost 2 years and counting, without a decent trade system.

PS I am not a man.

so......greens and gold are not affected by the new updates......so that means if u solo them you will still get 8x aka the normal rate b4 the update right? so my question is this, if i fight my way to a boss and flag the henchs out of the range so their names turn gray, does that mean i still get that 8x greens that drop from that boss? or i just get the normal 1/8 b/c i have henchs dispite how far i sent them to?

Ridiculous.

A bunch of farmers complain over the fact that they aren't making fifty times as much virtual money as people who actually play the game so Anet fixes it in a day.

Just about everybody is outraged with the necromancer change and Anet doesn't fix it after weeks.

Thanks for implementing a completely useless feature (loot scaling). Why not just change it to be:

Loot now scales according to party size.

Exceptions:
All drops

Well, at least I can still farm ectos and greens every now and then. I was hoping Anet would fix it so I didn't have to resort to that to make a decent amount of money. Oh well.

Hooray, I'm one of those "casual" solo farmers and for the most part things are better for me.

The ectos (which FYI I've only gotten two of in my whole life) are safe, just means more money for when I get my third ecto in, about, 5 years.

Thanks for explaining the entire system, Gaile, as well as that which is unaffected by loot scaling.

To be honest, one of the few things i was worried about at this point was the holiday items and the green weapons. so i'm glad that's staying out of all of this. I think at the end of the day this updates been a good one. The really hard to get items that required a solo farm build are being left alone and with the increased value of drops in hard mode, you can still make a pretty penny running around killing things if that's your inclination.
I'm also really glad they got rid of the code which reduced gold after entering an area a few times. That was far more annoying.

I really think it's pretty amazing how much they've done to add to the game in this latest update. with hard mode you've got basically a whole additional game to challenge yourself with. sure the lore is lacking since it's a duplicate of the other game but with a few extra titles it gives you something worth going for, and an extra challenge is pretty good.

I'm sorry to see so many people being rude to A-net and to Gaile and the other representatives. being rude isn't going to make anyone happier and really, with all the new stuff there's bound to be a few hiccups that will take a little time to iron out. I mean the fact that they added a few more items to the exempt list than they had originally planned is pretty cool.

If you've got problems with the new update...voice them by all means, they might even make some more changes you'll like but really quit being rude in your posts, it just makes the whole environment stink.

with that said...yay for new update, thanks A-net!

Even archlord has a better trade system and that game is pants.

so...in a nutshell, farming gold itself was the target of the nerf, and is supposedly offset by the dropping of better loot that can be sold to other players? that's so assbackwards i don't even know where to start.

a) the players need gold to buy the items, which they now have less of. this update makes it so the solo farmer must make their cash from selling to other players, rather than remaining self-sufficient. since when is being self-sufficient a bad thing?

b) if you wanted in-game trade to flourish, all you had to do was add an auction house (or something similar). now the trade hub spam is just going to be completely out of control, even though imo, it already has been for a very long time. this game has no effective built-in means of mass trading.

c) there was nothing wrong with the economy 2 days ago, why mess with it? everything except uber rare stuff is quite cheap and already readily available to casual players. i've played 8 characters through all 3 campaigns, and just playing through the campaigns (with the exception of prophecies) yielded plenty of money for the things i needed. the unnecessary luxury things i wanted, i solo farmed for.