[Dev Update] Farming and Loot Scaling

This just isn't much fun anymore.

I don't really farm but it was a lot of fun to complete an area and then count the cash - most of it from white and blue items and cash drops. The gold and green drops were exciting but not enough of them to keep me interested.

Now, almost nothing.

Ran through one area in hard mode - less than 500g because I had full heroes and henchies. (completely cleared Pongmai valley with full heroes and henchies and got less than 1k)

Thought maybe I would do better in normal with out the heroes etc - no better.

Ok - how about pre north of the wall - only 2 person groups max, surely the update didn't affect that! Five charr in a row and not a single drop. Averaged just slightly over 1/2 normal drops.

So golds, dyes and greens are exempt from nerf? Big deal! Most golds aren't maxed and might as well be merched for less than 300g. Greens have dropped in price and continue to do so - plus they take forever to sell. Dyes, except for black and white, have dropped since preview window was introduced.

I'm a casual player. I don't want to have to learn how to run the high end areas just to get anything. I don't even want most of the 15k armor. I just want enough rewards to keep the game interesting and to have a little hope that if I really want something nice I actually have a chance of saving up for it.

It was fun seeing something fancy someone else had and thinking i had a chance to get it myself someday, or finally getting that new armor and showing it off. Now the rewards are so meager there is no point in looking at that new knight's armor - I'll never be able to afford it.

Now, once you have completed the story line, the game is just killing a lot of mobs for almost nothing - not my idea of a rocking good time!

Ah well, it was fun while it lasted - I'll keep an eye on the forums and if I see a change for the positive, I'll play again. But for now, yawn.

Well I'm happy that they at least tried to un-nerf solo farming. It's one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game for me and the drops always made it seem worthwhile.

The only problem I see with this is the market was already flooded with items and selling anything lately has been iffy at best. Actually I've had the best luck selling common and rare materials in the last month over rare weapons and such. Now since I'm only going to get rare items when solo farming I'm forced to sell these items to other people to make money.

I really wish that blue and purple items were exempt as well since one of my best solo farming spots is mostly runes. Since minor runes are normally worth much more than superior runes (besides a handful) then this really hurts my profit. And lastly the best part about rune farming was not having to spam/sell I/G since there is a handy merchant that will gladly purchase the runes from you!

But all in all-thanks for listening ANet and semi-unnerfing solo farming. This one act probably ensured that I will be buying GW:EN and sticking around a bit longer.

Who am I?
What do I do?

I am the person who reads these forums daily. Who puts up with the name calling and the insults and the questions of my worth to try to answer your questions, listen to your concerns, relay matters of import to the designers, and share their wisdom, insight, reasoning, and updates with you.

I am a member of the design team, a member of the company that made the game that you play.

I am a human being, with a passion for my job, a caring for other people, and a real interest in communicating and helping out.

And I have now left the building.
If anyone wonders why, just read this thread.

Where, when and how people solo is up to them, player choice.

And you can't even generalize about people getting it easily. If its so easy, then why aren't you and everyone else also doing it? Therefore eliminating the disparity?

Of course, you don't want to put in the effort, you'd rather ANet hand it to you by taking it away from others.

I don't mean you specifically, but that's effectively what Anet has done, and I disagree with it.

Remember, in a dynamic economy, the equation for Reward is:

R (reward) = # of monsters killed (k)/# of players present (P)

R=k/P, whether its 1 or 8 should give a fair and equitable share of loot dependent on the amount of work done (kills) divided by how many players it took to accomplish those kills (P).

I am surprised they listen to the community anymore (which they do, even though it's not on every topic) I have never seen Gaile lose her temper but this thread would be enough to drive anybody to outright rage. And then instead of being sympathetic to somebody who has such an overbearing job and has finally lost their temper, you continue to bash them.

I'm all for constructive criticism, but this is ridiculous. this is no longer criticism it is insulting.

This is complete nonsense the rational you show to justify why you needed to loot scale DOWN Gaile and you either know that.

A simple analogy is someone who is casually playing notices in your latest A NERF run you hit a number of skills they normally used in there build. So they need to go replace say, 3 kills seems fair on a moderate size nerf run. So realisticly speaking thats 3K.

Now the casual player is casual so they in fact need to detour there playing to gain this extra cash to get there new skills.

In the pre farm nerf that was a simple 30 to 40 minutes spent farmin vermin for the raw gold and white and blue rare weapons, anything above was pure bonus. But theyed grab the gold, sell the white and blue rarity weapons and go buy there new skills and be on there way in about an hour and continue to casually play.
Now with your nerfage statisticly they now have to spend 8+ hours to get those 3 new skills which for a casual gamer can span upwards to there whole week of free time they have that they can dedicate to your game.

THAT is highly unrewarding and totaly gimps your casual players to the point that even the slight above casuals are now hurting into falling into poverty.

"COOL" skinned weapons is completly subjective. To be frank ive seen collector skin weapons that appeal to me even more then say a zodiac skinned weapon. I find the butterfly sword skin nice but the dead sword skin apallingly gross. However there will people people out there with the opposite view.

Fact is though everyone looks at the skins of weapons when there done the game and say "Ohhh thats a nice one" and then go about seeing how they can get it. They try to farm it on there own, or they look at how much that skin weapon costs and decide which route they want.

The pre nerf economy worked real well where anyone could afford the armor skin they liked be it 1.5K, to 15k to vabbian or FOW. nd then they could afford time wise and patience wise the method they chose to FARM the wealth they needed for that vanity. The money was an outlet to an enjoyment factor and sense of pride and victory. With your new method of farming that effectivly throws out the window to the casual gamer any realistic chance to FOW or even Vabbian, and rather possibly any 15K as well. That is unfair and for you to sit at your chair and try to justify this is for the better is completly unacceptable.

Another thing people strived for after they beat the game that gave em replay value well waiting for a new add on to GWs were the titles. HOWEVER the mass majority of these titles require a high investment in both time and money. With this new nerfing you have made these titles horrible masochistic grind fests that are more likely to fail and upset your casual gamer for the simple fact they cant afford the title on either aspect. In order to get the title they need money, but now they need to spend 8 times that time just to get the money needed. By the time they get that money there more frankly to be bored and sick of the thought of spending more time on a vanity title and that is a horrid thing for you to willingly do to your gaming community.

If you were intending to hurt bots this method fails on every account. The only viable method to stopping them is to make a team of GMs who moniter the high farm areas and find the easilly discoverable farm bots and start laying out bans to the bots. The fact you instead cast a blind eye or a half arsed attempt and stalling them only encourages them to stay and get more farm bots in here. The simple fact is they do not fear you because you do not stick up to your rules on botting and selling GW gold for real money. If you started laying out reprecusions to the botters they would start to hesitate instead of being so openly public with there botting. Lets face it you sit in the citadel for 30 minutes well you adn your guild set up plans to finish a titan quest(which is a very common thing for many in GW) and if you even devote maybe a quater of your attention to the portal you will pick out a number of bots.

The other option that you coul of made this nerf for that also fails is HM. I understand completly and agree HM should not suffer the same degree of farmability as DOA recieved however the fact you leak this out into normal mode is a poor tactic to do and even more appaling that you not ony try to sneak it into the game via hidden in an almost fine print method behind the good of the intro of HM but also that your now in damage control to try and justify this nerfing to save grace and pride and avoid the truth that you did in fact willingly upset and harm a large portion of your gaming community. The casual gamer. The actions you did this weekend leave a terrible taste in many peoples mouths like no other bad thing ever done before because this in fact HURTS FUN FACTOR on all levels of GWs PVE at the very least.
What would of been more effective is that you have shown you can keep HM and NM seperate entities from each other. So show its able to implement this current farm code into HM to keep it farm free but leave NM alone so the casual game can maximise there fun with time spent. This current fine printed nerf does nothing to promote your game and keep the masses in till EotN and even longer till GW2 and does not encourage newcomers to come in before hand.
This new nerf will create a larger loss of current players then help promote it to new players and satisfy and keep current. Basically this nerf does A NET a hell of a lot more harm then good.

The fact is A NET has in fact slapped there gamers in the face and naturally the gamers are upset but to see that your now in damage control instead of saying oops sorry we screwed up is junk. You dont slap your customers in the face and expect them to remain loyal and faithful customers. This weekend you probably just made a decent chunk of your customers start looking at alternative games to invest there money into. A game that wont be hypocritical and stab em in the back like this. Weve all seen the quotes and read the articles of your stances on farming but then you do the complete opposite in a hidden manner this weekend. Wow.

Im sorry too Gaile because when I first heard of you being the voice of the people I thought it was great and how you would ask questions a lot but to see actions like you pull in this thread... To be frank I dont view you as my voice. Im a casual gamer and you say this is what we wanted? Well I believe the mass majority of the community is saying they didnt want this. Im sorry but dont come into my house and fart and then blame it on the dog.

Gaile - I know it's no fun to get your feelings hurt.

But let's face it. There have been hundreds - or is it thousands now - of post stating that the new update keeps the game from being fun.

So, if you insist on telling us how wonderful it is when our experience is telling us otherwise, you're gonna stand a good chance of getting flamed.

But then most of us get flamed and called names by those who disagree with us, just like you - that's nothing new. No, it's not right. But that's life.

Meh, you guys can still whine over your 'nerf'. Ill go back to farming in hard mode and getting 1-2 golds every 3-5 minutes. Have fun.

Great update for the most part ANet, I was kinda dissapointed about the loot 'nerf' but after the certain items have been excluded from this, I am much happier overall.

I couldn't agree with you more than ever, in fact more than a handful of people in my own guild are researching new games for us to get into. I'd like to say that this will only increase the amount of gold sellers and buyers, thus ruining the economy even more.

If nothing else, I believe that the Design Team's comments only goes to demonstrate that they haven't got a clue of how to manage the in-game economy in a meaningful way. Reading between the lines, it is obvious they have made changes in the past that admittedly made the game less enjoyable (friendly) in an attempt to contain bot farming. They further admit that, even though these changes had a negative impact on the community-at-large, the changes did not contain the bots or deter what they deem to be extreme farming.

In reading through their comments, it is apparent that they really have no idea of how this loot scaling scheme will affect the overall game. Rather than part of a well thought out strategy to improve the overall game economy, this appears to be nothing more than a "quick fix" with unknown consequences. This is bolstered by the fact that they made substantitive changes (expanding the exempt loot) within a very short time of introducing the update. Whether or not loot scaling will have the desired effect on the economy, it certainly has drawn the ire from a large segment of the existing player base.

Even after reading, and rereading, the Design Team's comments, I didn't come away with a clear cut understanding of exactly how loot scaling will improve overall game play or solve the perceived problem of bot or extreme farming. In reading the posts to this thread, apparently I'm not alone. I, for one, did not see the clear and concise plan for wealth distribution or stabilizing the economy as did one poster. I only saw supposition and then an immediate change (expanded exempted loot) that had a huge impact upon their supposed "plan".

Perhaps Anet should expend more effort upon determining what would benefit the majority of players overall, rather than introducing half-cocked measures (nerfs) to deter those they feel are "abusing" the game (yet affect everyone). Personally, I'm tired of the Design Team catering to the minority of "advanced" players. Shouldn't more consideration be given to providing for a character's normal development so that, over time, even a casual player would be able to play all areas of the game or to get the loots wanted? Why force the vast majority of the community (casual players) to grind farming gold in normal mode to buy items that only the few advanced players can obtain? If this is the future of PvE in Guild Wars, then it's pretty apparent the the game will be pretty short-lived for the casual player.

Dude, Kane, please chill out... No one is out to get you on these forums man...

This guy has some sense, please listen to him. I dont even work for Anet and I'm getting pissed off at the amount of rudeness from everyone.
Us players are probably ruining Gaile's life if she takes this to heart, c'mon, be reasonable. Hard Mode is one of the best features in the game that has ever been implemented, and we're all acting like 8 year olds trying to prove each other and Anet wrong, this should end here, some of us are sick of this nonsense already, and even our own nonsense trying to help everyone else out. This is no longer about loot-scaling, but it has turned into a flame war.

Please, any moderator or admin out there, help!

Liberations, you have to see that most people get to reduced to 8 year olds when they think that solo farming is nerfed to hell. Most of the people here haven't fully farmed yet post update (that corrected the original issue)

They like to think that everything is ruined before they've even tried. So they become rude and insulting, yippee.

Why don't we just remove loot scaling once and for all and throw a special apology event and open sayings of "we didn't anticipate this, we're sorry, we should have tested this more". This is causing too much harm. Then make a poll on what could be improved, and work on it together, Devs and Players, to get the best result. It's jut too much nonsense and the fact is solo farmers may not have been as detirmental as this is. I'm tired... i'm going to bed. i hope everyone doesn't kill themselves because of this.......

This is what happens when big updates are released. People get upset. IMOH GW is not as great as it used to be. Sure there has been many cool new things that were implemented, but mostly masked by other updates that weren't so. GW has a special part in our lives, and destroying what we used to love isn't exactly going to be pleasant. People do not get angry if they do not care about something.

Alright.. where to start...

First of all I understand that there are different views on this issue, and I'm not here to moderate which one is right or which one is wrong. I can't let a lot of these posts go, though, because they're done without tact and without courtesy.

So, to put it succinctly, at GWG the staff and I personally will not tolerate rude posts, and I have made sure those responsible for them have been dealt with accordingly. Whether your view is merited or not, if you can't put it in a way that won't offend the reader, you should not post it. If you do, you're setting yourself up for a ban or possible complete removal from the forums (among whatever else I might find suitable for you).

I think that after a year of posting here some people would understand that but they can't, and regardless of their time spent here, they won't get away with it.

I would also like to personally apologize for the lack of moderation, and resulting nosedive this thread took. It was a failure on our part to do what we are here to do and for that I'm sorry.

Now, please continue the discussion civilly. I will not be afraid to ban you for over a month if you decide to ignore this post and continue bashing other people. Play nice, keep things clean, and this will go fine.

Additionally, if you have a comment on this post specifically, please e-mail it to me and do not reply to it in this thread. I will also not be afraid to delete your post without reading it if you ignore me.

Thanks.

There's no money to pay for the rare items anymore. The only difference is everyone and their pet will be running around with greens and rares, the value of gold is still going to increase just the same as they intended.

The problem is inflation. Solo farmers whether bots or casual make 8 times as much money playing as everyone else, which in turn drive up the prices of anything they purchase on the market, putting it out of reach of anyone who *doesn't* solo-farm. Anet is reducing the solo farmer advantage for the sake of people who just play through with parties of humans or hench. I seriously doubt the majority of players spend most of their time solo farming trolls and vermin, so this is beneficial to them.

As the value of gold increases, the solo farmer will be able to buy almost the same things on the market anyway. They make less gold, but items will sell for less as well. Only static costs are going to significantly rise for them (skills, 15k for armor) The drops sound more like 1/4th instead of 1/8th so soloing vermin isn't a bad way to make money compared to groups, it's just not so amazingly better than parties anymore.

Note: I tried posting this earlier, and a major power failure cut me off mid-post. By the time the power came back on, I tried posting again only to find the thread had been closed. I felt strongly enough about my opinions that I'm posting it now. Although it may seem slightly out of place at this point in the conversation, I still believe it is pertinent. Also, it is difficult to properly convey emotion in simple text, so just to set things straight, please don't read any anger into my post. There is a degree of indignance, and even frustration, but it is not intended to be directed at any individual. Thanks

Many posters have mentioned inflation and the effect of these changes on the economy within Guild Wars. The problem with trying to gauge the impact of any single event on an economy is that any two economists will give you opposite opinions on what will ultimately occur. The fact is that unless what is being tried has been done before in the exact same circumstances(and even then sometimes), there are too many variables to be absolutely certain what impact the change will have until it has been implemented and tested in reality. With that caveat in mind, I have my own analysis on how these changes will affect the GW economy. I've posted my position already, and I'm not going to type it again. If interested, you can read it here, and to sum it up, I believe that this will effectively raise the value of the gold which players have already in storage prior to the update, effectively keeping prices near their current level, while reducing the availability of new gold within the game and making it harder for players to obtain such gold, raising relative prices for everyone.

I can't speak for Kaleban, but many of us are tired of having the game changed with no explanation other than PR spin with no real logical argument or factual evidence. Personally, I do my best to remain civil, but I don't like being patronized and I'm frustrated with the poor responses we have so far received, so please understand if we seem a bit upset.

It is important to keep in mind that these players were also doing 800% of the work as other players. The game has always had a choice with a tradeoff, work together with other players and get through the enemies faster but with less loot, or work alone (or in a smaller group) and work harder and longer, but have more to show for it in the end. Unless I greatly misunderstand, a choice of how to play with accompanying consequences and rewards is a major part of the Guild Wars experience. What else would you call the option to use the new "Hard Mode?" Until now, there has always been an equality of opportunity, as all players could choose their method of play. There was equity in the system, any inequity between players was a result of player choice (or skill, which I thought was also a major part of the game).

I think that the best(but certainly not the only) example that debunks this argument is the Obsidian armor. This armor has two major components, the first being a large amount of gold (60k-75k depending on if the armor includes a headpiece). This gold is a fixed price, it does not nor has it ever fluxuated with the in-game market economy. The other major component is a large quantity of rare crafting materials, Globs of Ectoplasm and Obsidian Shards, 105-120 of each. In a typical trip to the Underworld or Fissure of Woe, there are usually one or two drops of these items. So, in an eight player group, and assuming a high average of two drops per run, each player would get 1/4 of an ecto or shard in a single run to the UW or FoW. Therefore, it would take a player between 840 and 960 runs to obtain enough materials to craft this armor. While the prices of these materials have fluctuated over time, their rarity has ensured that they have been and always will be relatively expensive. By design, the armor and its components are high priced to the point that the only feasible way to obtain it is by farming, either for the components themselves or the gold to buy them. If farming the components directly, the only truly viable method is to do it solo or in small groups so as to lessen the number of runs needed. I understand that the drops of these items have been restored in the recent update, but the point is that these armors are intentionally costly and near "unattainable" by the design of the developers, not because of any influence in the in-game economy, the actions of farmers, or the amount of gold in circulation. If prices in game are high, bear in mind that a great deal of that is because high end items were given those fixed prices by the game's designers, not the players. In fact, any inflation in the game would have made these fixed-price high end items more attainable by players by lowering their relative cost.

As pointed out before, if this is true, then it has been by the design of the developers. If rewards available in-game from completing quests and missions is not enough to purchase the high-end items in game, then of course players must turn to alternate methods of obtaining gold if they want to buy the high end items. In short, if you have to farm to get the "coolest" items, it is because Anet set it up that way, not because people farm. Many players consider the "coolest" items in game to be the "designer" armors (15k, Vabbian, Obsidian, etc.), they are certainly among the more expensive items, and claiming that they can only be attained by farmers because there are farmers is a blatant falllacy.

I'll agree that farming is less fun for many players, myself included. I hate farming, but I have resorted to it to obtain the items in game that I want. But I don't place the blame for the need to resort to farming on other farmers.

If farming is truly "ok" with you, stop making it more difficult or less profitable to do. If you don't intend for it to be "required," then either improve the rewards in other parts of the game or lower the fixed prices so that we can accomplish the goals you have made available in game without resorting to farming.

So instead of experiencing a decrease in loot after a few trips through an area (which is about all a "casual" player would be doing in one sitting), players experience a constant and permanent decrease in loot any time they try to farm with less than a full group. How is this more "fair" or "appropriate?" You're probably right, this most likely will not "punish" the "expert farmer," but rather it punishes the casual farmer. My understanding from the first day I picked up the GW box was that the game was designed to cater to the casual gamer, but more and more I see changes that provide content only attainable by players who devote massive amounts of time to the game, and this change to the loot system only serves to underscore this trend.

I am a casual player. I enjoy games for their plots and stories, as well as the development of my character. I don't have a lot of time in my life to devote to gaming, and I'd prefer to get the most out of the time I do have. This means that I'd rather spend as little of it farming and as much of it playing missions and quests as possible. These new changes do not remove the need to farm, but rather increase the farming time required to achieve the same goals. Rather than farm even more to reach these goals, casual players like myself are more likely to become frustrated and give up on such goals altogether. This change does not raise the fun value of the game for anyone, it just makes it more of a pain and more likely to receive less attention and playtime from players like me.

This loot change, the change to soul reaping, and many others in recent months have made it appear that Anet has been coming up with "fixes" without considering their full impact on the game. Half-formed explanations that can't stand up to a cursory examination have done nothing to improve their case. Truly casual players who don't spend a great deal of time in a game tend to rely on using the same tactics over a long period of time because they don't want to constantly have to spend their time rethinking how they play, they just want to play. Constant changes to skills, abilities, and game mechanics that require frequent changes to play styles only serve to alienate the casual gamer. Anet had better do some research on the history of MMORPGs such as SWG if they want to keep their playerbase, especially if they plan on the bulk of current players buying GW2.

unfortunetly we can't expect people who get their jollys by exploting a system so they can feal "ub3r l33t" to have the ability to be respectfull of other people when attempts to fix the economy effect their ability to screw it up.

on behalf of those of us who have fun playing the game, instead of haveing fun by takeing advantage; and as someone who apreciates a dev team that interacts with the players to silicit ideas - i will appologie for all the [removed: let's not fuel the flames] here who can't express themselves without launching personal attacks at others.

i just gotta say ive been reading these forums for a while now and only recently starting postin myself on here(by the way i have my wife workin on my avatar as we speak itll be up soon) im with the majority that i used to sample solo farm a few non to good but paid decent areas to come up with items to merch or salvage to earn my living in GW now this is gonna be so much harder with most of the ways i earn money to be gone now btw i supply all the nicites for me an my wife she just plays im the one who hooks her up not to mention our heroes now thats a money sink all in its own but i gotta keep my baby lookin hot in her 15k threads u feel me but now its not gonna be as easy if at all hell as it was it would take me roughly a month to save up enuff to buy me an her a new set of 15k and i was really hopin some day to be able to put some fow on her monk all in blak ...

i think imo if u wanna kill the bots make gold and loot even more availabe whereas the normal playerbase can gain massive amounts of gold and there wont be a need for ebay gold at all anymore and for the cool wpns an such just have them drop a lot more often ....or not....

actually i liked it fine the way it was myself...

my main 2 gripes was the heroes and henchies i mean they (heroes at least) r controlled by me outfitted by me and ect ect... so how come they take a share of my loot they r mine (as my char my acct) all those items they take away from me sorely makes playin with them less enjoyable u know...

my idea to kill the bots is GM their asses outta existance sure they will buy anther acct and try it all again but u catch em at the game again (its called ip addys and email accts and computer id's) an u just ban em agian and again as long as it take for em to get the pik they r not welcome here in our GW game...

and lastly but definately not leastly we really need an aution house and shop sytem sooooo badly it hurts...

Gaile ... A-net... i love u guys like ur my family and in a way u have been for almost 2 yrs now i believe in u and if anyone can turn this around into somethin awesome then its u guys ...

Gaile i would like to apoligize for all the rudeness u have received from all the flame posts on this site...quote Jesus:they know not what they do forgive them

Maybe someone can correct me, but how is the loot-scaling of ho-hum whites/blues, collector items, and gold really affect hardcore farmers, or even casual farmers? Especially since Hard Mode gives such greater rewards on the whole. You are still able to farm, in fact, with mobs gimped in Normal Mode, you can farm almost as good as the "good ol days". They just made it so that Hard Mode and overall adventuring will reap better rewards. That, to me, rewards the average Joe even more, which to me is a win/win.

But again, please correct me.