[Dev Update] Farming and Loot Scaling

Makes a kind of sense....

... though this is still going to be encouraging more farming... and farmers are still going to be getting rich... and thus they're still able to pay far more for other items they might want... if only to resell them. And with more farmers with more gold, any potential drop in price might be countered.

I just did 'Thunderhead Keep' (They nerfed the hell out of this mission to make it a joke now) with a full team and sold all the junk and weapons I had drop for me. After deducting the cost of the one key I purchased and used I made a grand total of 76 gold.

All I can say about the loot update is, "Wow". Normally I buy around 4 keys and sell everything to the merchant after a mission and make a net profit of around 400-500 gold in that mission... I had one armor piece drop for me, it was a white item... so getting material for armor or weapons is going to be a pain now as well.

Is that the reason why the Vaabi and FOW armor is that expensive? How do you get the items needed via normal playing?

Less gold entering the economy, while not necessarily deflationary in and of itself, will cause players to ASSUME that there is/will be less gold in the economy overall. Since the flow of items hasn't slowed, and may have even increased overall with hard mode drops, we can guess that supply will continue unabated. Both of these factors together suggest that prices for the highest of goods, except for the truly unique (rollerbeetle minipet, for example, or uninscribed crystalline 15>50) will come down.

Of course, over year i've been playing, prices on most gold and green items have all followed a general downward trend to begin with. I honestly see greens truly replacing collector's items as the "everyman" gear, with nearly every player being able to afford the greens he/she wants.

Anet didn't hurt farmers. They nerfed profit margins. :P

I got kinda lost. Sorry. One minute I am reading that "These crops (gold drops, ectos, and the like) have been left the same, if not slightly increased." Then I am wondering about the Demand Side which isn't clearly defined as was the Supply Side.

My guess is the your Demand Side is the farmer who now has less money with which to inflate prices with but still more then the casual player, and the casual player which ANet, via Gaile Grey, claims will have more liquid funds. The buy/sell community could be included in the Demand Side, but, well, it really doesn't matter.

Then I read "The net result of this is that we're going to have increased supply of items that no one has the money to pay the prices they used to be going for."

So then I am wondering...why would no one have the money to pay current prices for an increased supply of items when the farmer still has more then Casual Joe and Casual Joe has more then he had before?

But, actually, I do not think that is relavent to your conclusion, which I believe has merit. Prices for given items were already decreasing and the basic driving forces for that trend haven't changed. By suggesting that the supply will increase, you have already implied that the prices will drop. That in itself is Supply Side Economic Theory.

Ecto deserves its own comments. The addition variables to consider are the flow of Ecto through the Forge Master and and Rare Material Traders, and, of course, the human psyche. To wit, the price of Ecto recently jumped by over 50% in less then 12 hours with hardly a ripple, if any, in the "Supply Side."

So, in the end, I believe that you are correct in that item prices will drop after the market worries sort themselves out. But that was already happening. Certain items will show nothing in the way of altered trends. What does the update have to do with Zodiac Weapons or mini-pets for example?

On the other hand, Hard Mode is likely to be the ringer clouding the Crystal Ball For Predicting Economic Change. Hard Mode might deserve the alternate title, Premier Farmland with More Bountiful Crops. In just a few hours of semi-serious searching, I found 3 areas to solo which included Bosses, and I am not a Pro Solo Uber Farming Wizard. The cash drops are predictably meager. However, the item drops have increased my cash-per-hour rate of income over pre-update farming by a factor of 3, and I haven't even dropped and Elite Tome yet.

And that experience has made me wonder about the idea that farmers are going to have less money. There is a possiblilty that the update will just stimulate more people to farm, whether it be solo or in teams. I strongly believe that Hard Mode will simply result in an increase in items and funds into the game without effecting one iota the distribution profile of the same. In other words, the quality of life for GW Players will remain the same. Income is worthless to evaluate without correlating expenses.

Of course...that is just my opinion. I could be wrong.

In a short, The value of money will get up; the value of items from traders will get down.

Right?

Also, I think that supply and demand are not the problem. For example, ectos, people will not want to invest in ectos because they want to keep their money that get more and more value, and people will not go farm ectos because less and less people want to go buy them.

In other words, supply and demand both will decrease, and the break-even point will also get decrease, so it means that the price of the item in trader will go down.

The harder is it to get money in game makes it more favorable for botters and plat sellers. They have millions in stock. Even though the new changes makes it more difficult for them, they can capitalize on what they have and continue botting just the same.

All in all this is a good thing. The market has been stagant for quite a while. A lot of people bemoaned the arrival if inscribe-able goods (saying this would cause a crash by 'cheapening' non inscribe-able goods in the market. If anything it reinvigorated the middle-end of sales by widening the portfolio of goods.
Nightfall also let me find and create 2 perfect Obsidian Earth staves ^_^. One of which I will probably sell in game for far less than they used to be worth (below 100k). The economic slide is a double edge sword but it's still worth it in my oppinion .

If only economics in actual countries was as easy to balance...

I don't feel like going through and quoting everything, so yeah.

Gaiaplay - I don't know if I'm being naive, but I don't think that ebayers form a significant number of players. If everyone decides to be a douche and goes and buys gold, that certainly throws a kink in things, but I really hope no one is spending that much money on it.

noocoo - Ectos are a bit tricky, as they're an alternate currency. It's really hard to say what will happen to them, but if I had to guess, I'd say they will become more valuable, reflecting the increasing value of money.

Other trader items, like runes, will almost certainly go down. Supply is increasing, demand is constant, prices go down.

Burma GW- Supply is increasing, so someone really has to use all that supply, so quality of life will probably go up. Solo farmers will still get a big piece of the pie, thanks to their ability to provide more items. However, their liquid assets will be closer to the general populace than before, so things will be a bit more even.

Item prices were dropping before because new items were being produced at the same rate - by solo farmers, but there aren't that many new players showing up who need new gear. Supply is constant, but demand is decreasing, prices go down.

Zodiacs have been pretty worthless for a while, thanks to inscriptions. In fact, pretty much any item from Prophecies or Faction is worthless thanks to inscriptions. If non-nightfall weapons aren't rock bottom already, they'll be even worse soon.

Minipets are certainly a wild card as I have no idea how the supply of them (birthdays) is changing, or how many people want the things. It's likely that they will go down though, just because of deflation.

Soticoto - Farmers can play swap meet all they want, they can't produce more gold. They'll have to sell to the general population for deflated prices, or they can sit on all their shinies.

Merlock - Solo farming for golds, greens, and other sellable stuff is alive and well. Nothing is stopping you from solo farming just for fun either.

Frojack - The real world, sadly, does not have money sinks, and has the phenomenon of compound interest. Thus, rich people get even richer.

Trade faction for a pass to Urgoz' Warren or The Deep?
Now easier than ever to get to?
No change in Zodiac Weapons?


I reckon their price will drop... as will that of the Urgoz and Kanaxai Greens.

I've not been keeping up on events in Guildwars for a while - where can I get info on what loot-scaling is? I checked guildwiki and the update notes, there wasn't any exact info in either.

Does it simply mean that you always get 1/8th of the drops, even if you solo or have only four people in the team?

1 - Learn to trade correclty
2 - FoW should be unique, like 1 outa 20 000 players should have it
3 - Lots who have FoW are farmers / power traders like me who can make 50 Ectos outa weeks ends trade
4 - Dont pm how to since you wont be able to as you dont know how yet.
5 - Learn and envy, i dont apreciate my FoW anymore as $$ is way too easy to get
6 - You have no reason to want Fow if you cant manage to work it out anyways
7 - There is no points fore anymore points as its realy clear you dont have any clues $$ has never been easier except maybee when 55 was undergroud.
8 - Last point here...i wasent there at the trader reset + 55 thing ever , period. I only power trade

The ideas mentioned in this quote show a failure to understand basic economic principles.

First off there's this misunderstanding of what 'high price' means...it really has little to do with raw gold or ecto numbers, and everything to do with price in comparison to individual income. Personally I find that prices are rather *low* for many of the most desirable items, considering just how much time has to be put into acquiring them and/or just how scarce those items really are. To a player with virtually no income, however, those prices seem ridiculous, and they are - given their income.

What's being overlooked here are two major ideas - one, just how scarce the most desirable items are in the first place; and two, how little desirable loot normal gameplay in Guild Wars produces.

Farmers aren't just producing piles and piles of vendor trash. Granted, they do, because, well, there's no auction house to facilitate trades, there's no deep crafting system, so just about everything the game does drop has no resale value. But farmers are also the ones, statistically, who are finding those really expensive weapons that everyone wants. It doesn't happen very often - those items are bloody rare, after all - but when they do drop it's usually to someone with a highly inflated drop rate, not someone plodding along trying to do quests with a full group.

When farmers do find valuable weapons, they either want to keep them, or exchange them for other similarly valuable items. Those other items are similarly owned by farmers most of the time. Exchanges are made using price ranges that are sensical for the amount of floating currency in an economy, and with respect to how valuable those rarities actually are. Put another way, people with rare weapons want to exchange them for other rare weapons or fissure armor or the like. They don't want to exchange them for piles of vendor trash. The prices are going to reflect that desire, pushing up past what people can reasonable acquire off of trash heaps and into quantities that reflect actual value.

Granted there were some shortcuts that allowed one to acquire piles of vendor trash, ala insect or vermin farming. These weren't exactly time efficient ways to make a profit, but they were an available shortcut for someone with a lot of time to kill.

But, back to the point, there's too much focus being put on gold values. It's as though you're asking the question, 'why can't a casual player buy the best items with piles of vendor trash?', to which the answer is obvious. The real question is, 'why can't a casual player find anything with real value?' - because if you could acquire items with trade value playing the game, the whole conversation about prices becomes meaningless.

The answer to that question has little to do with farming or raw prices, or anything else alluded to in that quote. Instead it goes something like this:

"The Guild Wars economic reward model is a gigantic, flaming trainwreck."

You say that players can't afford the coolest items through completing quests and missions? Well, DUH. How many cool items are *acquired* through completing quests and missions? What is the cool, desired, tradable reward for slogging through a mission with seven other players? What do you get for handing in a quest? I'll tell you - nothing. You don't produce any tradable goods that anyone actually wants by completing quests. So why would anyone, anywhere, expect any sort of exchange to take place?

If you want a rare, desired weapon type, you basically have two choices. One, you can run chests. Those kick out a wide variety of weapons and something rare and desired will pop out sooner rather than later. Second, you can massacre a phenomenal number of enemies and hope that the item you want drops. The rarest drops are really bloody rare though, and that's only made up for by really strong drop scaling by both removing loot distribution and speeding up kills immensely. Depending on what you think of the HoH chest, that's it. If you want to find something scarce and desirable, those are the relevant activities in Guild Wars.

Now, if you don't understand why all of the trade in extremely rare items is between people who are going out of their way to produce extremely rare items, through chests and farming, go take a basic economics course now.

So what do I think of this update? Well, it should be obvious by now, but I'll walk through the logic anyway.

Playing through the game normally leaves one unable to trade for desirable items. One notices that in playing through the game normally, one does not acquire desirable items in any quantity. Players with valuable items want to trade them for other valuable items. Hence it's obvious why playing through the game leaves one unable to buy anything valuable - because you don't have anything to trade!

One would (quite rightly) conclude that if you wanted players to have economic power through normal gameplay, you would reward players with desirable items and other economic tools for completing normal gameplay objectives.

The solo farming nerf doesn't change that paradigm at all. Except now, you don't have nearly as many rares entering the economy through brute force farming. But the sources of items of value are still chests, and through the moderating effects of statistics when you mass farm drops. So, solo farming has been nerfed. Do players doing missions suddenly start producing anything of value? No? So why do they suddenly matter? Answer: they don't. They're still economic deadweight.

Farmers and chest runners will redistribute themselves to find new activities that produce valuable items. They'll continue to exchange them amongst themselves for the valuable items they want. Players who don't farm or run chests will continue to look at the prices with disgust. If you still don't understand this and still think that this change helps the little guy trying to finish his quests, please go find a better economics teacher than I and come back when you achieve enlightenment. This isn't even a band-aid. Band-aids actually help, even if they are insufficient. The farming nerf is tossing deck chairs over the side when the ship is tipping over. Ultimately pointless, but you're tired when you're done.

Peace,
-CxE

I was farming Sunspear Points last night in the Sulfurous Waste and found that I was making a reasonable amount of money and getting some reasonable drops. Nothing very exciting, but I was getting regular gold and purple drops and a few tomes etc. I was certainly making enough to fund the lockpicks I was using and to make a profit on top of that.

This actually lead me to think that as making money now simply revolves round how fast you can kill things in a group of eight, that worm farming with heroes/hench is probably now the fastest (and the most mindless) reliable method of making money in the game.

To me, this has greatly detracted from the skill needed to be successful in the game. Working out and learning to play the various solo builds to farm different areas, and even taking a new character all the way through the game and then capping the skills needed just so you can try out a new build is now a thing of the past.

Just jump in a worm and let the hench/heros do all the killing for you.

I'm not entirely certain that non-farmers as as much of deadweight as they were. Keyless chests, and monetary quest/mission rewards actually give Casual Gamer Joe a reasonable amount of money. They're never going to have as much money as the farming brigade, for obvious reasons, but the gap is *slightly* shrinking. While it remains unlikely that Casual Joe will be able to afford rare skins and other premium items, theres a good chance he'll be able to pick up decent weapon mods and boring skin/high req gold, where before he had to live with what he had.

Secondly, the inscription system has made the vendor trash a lot less likely. Almost all golds and many purples now have some kind of mod worth pulling off. Many of them are usable if you pool all your mods from a bunch of things. Casual Joe can even make a few plat by selling some of those mods.

Each individual change may be a band-aid, but we're starting to get a lot of them going here.

1) Quartermaster junk - mostly worthless, but slightly lowers operating costs
2) Monetary quest rewards - not huge, but a plat every mission, and 500 gold every quest starts to add up really quickly.
3) Keyless chests - non-farmable big ticket items and cash evens the score a bit in my mind. I'm not sure just how much average players hit these up, though
4) ANet kicks farmer income in the balls, bringing them down a *little* closer to everyone else.

If you look at prices today, you'll see that most stuff is actually pretty reasonably priced. Only the really rare stuff, like elemental swords, or the really popular stuff, like fortitude mods, remains valuable. Everything else-mods, inscriptions, ugly golds- is 1-3kish, which is not so bad for even the poorest players.

Depends since the 20th whether you're after rare or conventional items.

Conventional items (whites, blues, purples) will drop in the same quantity now if you're going solo as they would if you were in a group of 8.

Dyes, Golds, Greens, Ecto etc drop the same as they did before.

I doubt this will happen. In real life it would make sense, but it's a game and it's economy isn't as fragile as a real life economy.

if you want my opinion we need to get rid of some of the ectos in the economy. There is only one thing they are for (correct me if I am wrong) which is FoW armor....Most people with ectos either A already have it or B would never get it .....so now we have all these ectos floating around with nothing to do with them but trade to other people. They should put in some type of game/whatever that uses ectos...make the rewards worthwhile.....maybe something like the HoH chest for PvE players...1 or 2 or 5 or 10 ectos to open the HoF(hall of Farmers) chest. Then others can have a chance to get a ghostly mini...or a reaper blade...or gold crystalline and start to get rid of the over abundance of ectos in the economy.

And i would argue that I have seen the opposite, that a number of casual players come to the forums and similar pages so that they can quickly learn from others the better ways to play the game without spending too much time trying to figure out how to do things themselves. This is what originally brought me to forums, and many others I know. We seek to learn from shared wisdom, and we can learn faster by reading from others' experiences here than by constantly butting our heads against the wall trying to find the right tactic to get past a tough mission. Just don't mistake "casual players" for people who won't get involved once they see a discussion that directly involves them.

But as you said, a difference of opinion.

Ok, let's take another look at what she said...
(boldface added for emphasis)

The "coolest" items. Coolest = most cool. The most, i.e, the top, the best. No, she does not specifically state FoW armor, but if this is not included in her categorization as "coolest," then what is?

Yes this is open to a certain amount of interpretation, but given the sum of her statements, I find it a reasonable conclusion that it is Anet's intention (or that she says it is Anet's intention) that all items available in the game should be within reach of the casual player. I'm not saying they should be easy to get, or not require a certain amount of dedication or effort, but it should be a requirement appropriate to the casual gamer. If that means that the "hardcore" gamer finds it too easy and no longer has incentive to continue playing, then that's fine by me. As far as I understand, this game was designed to appeal to the casual gamer, not the hardcore. At least that's why I bought it, I was tired of games that required countless hours of investment to obtain the game's richest rewards. I have a life and responsibilities in reality and can't make that type of commitment to entertainment. From everything that was pitched to me by Anet, this game was exactly that, one that did not require me to be a "hardcore" gamer to reap its benefits. Let the truly hardcore gamers go grind in a game designed for that, I thought GW was supposed to be something different.

If they have made it more difficult to ge the rarest items then i would imagine that that would either keep the price where it is now or push it up further. I haven't ever seen a crystaline weapon and don't expect to, I wont ever make millions of gold to affoard one, and i'm not too bothered by it, If I was then I would learn to farm effectively, rather than running about with my mesmer using a 55 build. I'm sitting at about 300k, not a lot but enough to get the armour i want and unlock the skills i need to enjoy the game.

Sure i would like some of these really rare things, but then I would love a Ferrari or a Monet painting, they cost a fortune and i can't affoard them nor will ever likely be able to. But I'm not bitter. I have more chance of getting these rare items in GW than of getting them.

The nerf seems pointless in the light of this statement. Prices for rare armour hasnt come down you still need some things that are difficult to get. Unless i farm i dont see me getting the vabbi gems necessary for their armours. The devs may have tried to alleviate this problem but its pointless unless they increase the drops of the items they think everyone wants, but doing that would only mean they weren't rare any more, even by reducing the gold in the economy, (and i don't think they have im getting more gold now than before, i was getting about 10k a day now i can make double that at least) and halving the price of some of these million costing items, they would not be affoardable to the average joe player. If a crytaline sword was worth 500k now instead of several million i wouldnt buy it, I just don't see the sense in what they have done.

The point everyone of you is missing is the fact that Anet wants to make the game more desirable to the casual gamer.
You are all arguing about in-game economics and fail to realize, Anet could care less. They are looking at real life economics.
There are far more...FAR MORE casual players than hard core players, as well as a large amount of them that have yet to purchase the game.
As a casual gamer, if you are forced to grind or put in a ton of time to get a nice looking weapon or neat armor, you simply put the game away and not play.
In sales, it is said, for every bad experience a person has, they tell 6 other people.
So if casual gamer A buys GW and has to grind to get a weapon, they will tell casual gamers b,c,d,e,f and g to not buy the game because you have to grind, which causes Anet to loose sales.
At the end of the day, it's about making the game more enjoyable for the community as a whole, casual gamers and hardcore gamers alike.

Apologies Ensign... but i skipped your post, too much essay reading for 1 thread after the OP ^^

I really don't see there logic for the update, specially after reading what the OP quoted from Gaile.

Anet have created the economy themselves, and now seek to destroy for some ridiculous reason that completely defies reality. Did we ASK for Purple Crystallines to drop in FoW/UW and Sorrows Furnace only? Or for several items to be unique to the HoH chest like Runic Blades, Crystalline Swords and the Mini-pet Ghostly Hero?

Their is no way they can suddenly say that farmers are the only ones capable of gaining these high end items because they're disireable (perhaps everyone in the real world should have a Mansion, a swimming pool and a a garage of nice cars just because people want them). Very few of the high end items are desirable purely on looks. Most of them are desireable because you made them so by making them so rare, imo the Crystalline Sword skin is awful. The Collossol Scimitar however does look quite good.

And of course, the recent update to the loot scaling update... They removed 'Gold drops and Ectoplasm' from this scaling.
So all they've done is nerf botters and people who occasionally farm lesser areas of the game for a few drops to merch to get that last few plat they need to buy an item they desire.
The farmers who mass farm UW/FoW for Shards and Ectoplasm and those who farm certain areas for the chance of a very valuable gold drop (ie the Moddok Caverns Corsair groups), haven't been touched. They lose out on a bit of loot every run, but once in a while they strike gold (literally) with a very valuale gold item that hasn't been touched by the droprate. So the farmers are STILL the only ones capable of affording the high-end disireable items.

Sorry, but there is no arguement for saying that a casual GW player deserves the same items a hardcore GW player gets. If you play GW casually, you don't deserve to be wielding a Tormented "tuning* Sword and a Tormented Shield while clad in your FoW armour. People who dedicate time to GW, be it by farming, playing and getting lucky or whatever, they are the ones who should get good items with flashy tags if they so desire.

I’m still having problems with Anet on this one.

1. Those that have finished all campaigns and are just awaiting the release of the next one had time, and enjoyed, to farm, I’m in this group. And no, I don’t just farm all the time. I farm when no one in the alliance needs help or when I only have a limited amount of time.

2. Those new players to the game are at a distinct disadvantage to those of us pre-update with regards to accumulating enough gold just to buy the basics, (forget the elite items!). New player- grind, grind, grind, sod this, bye, (and understandably so in my opinion).


How can Anet alienate a section of the community and discourage new players from taking up the game and think it’s a good move beats me.

Why don't you have as many rares entering the economy now? With the 20/04 update this should be the same as before, and when people manage to farm in Hard Mode I think there are going to be a lot more rares available than there used to be. While farmers will earn a lot less gold directly, the regular PvE player will get more gold and rare items playing Hard Mode than they did before. Just by playing the HM missions in Tyria with a full team I've been getting more rares in a few days than I've seen in months, and because of the merchant value of purples and better gold drop rate the amount of gold a regular PvE player earns has increased. In fact after seeing the gold drop rate in HM now I almost understand what they tried to achieve with the complete obliteration of solo farming in their first update. It remains to be seen if it's going to make any difference in the end but I wouldn't say the casual PvE player is still economic deadweight at this point.

I dont know about that.

FoW armor's price is 15k per piece + ectos and shards.

How does one propose that a casual player gain so many ectos and shards without going into UW and FoW repeatedly?

Thats no longer a casual player there.

Im making a FoW set for my ranger but i only play on the weekends, and i only really farm when my guildmates are on and when we have favor (i dont like solo farming...its lonely..even though i have a 55), since we usually trap UW. So its my ecto count is at 48. Thats about a year's worth of trapping once a weekend, thats if im lucky. I really dont recall how long ago i started anymore, i know i did some 55 IW and SS back in the beginning but i forgot now....its been so long since i began.

-=-=-===-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Heres how i interpret Anet's pitch.

Anet designed the game so that there is absolutely no need to grind for anything to beat the PvE storyline.

You reach lvl 20 easily. Thats capped.
Theres no need to constantly buy new armor since its capped at a certain defense.
Theres no need to constantly buy new weapons since its capped at a certain max damage.

Thats the content for the casual player. Thats the content to get the casual player HOOKED.

I see all content after that as content which turns the casual player into an addict. Stuff to achieve after a lot of time invested into the game.

Theres PvP, which requires MANY MANY hours of grinding either for gold to UAX, or Balth points to UAX to become fully competitive.

Theres vanity armors, armors that have no advantage, costs more, and merely look different (not neccesarily better).
Theres vanity weapons, no damage increase, costs more and merely look different.

Then they added titles.
Then they added hardmode.
Then they took maxed titles (skillcap) and cut it into 3.


I really dont see how Gaile, or anyone at Anet can honestly say that the "coolest" stuff is (or should be) within reach of the casual player. That seems really hypocritical when the coolest stuff seems made to reward the hardcore player in the first place.

"Its now what you said, its what you did" - Smokin Aces

Imagine what wouldve happened if the only way we could get ectos and shards is through regular questing/farming. What wouldve happened if we couldnt buy them at the traders? Now that is what makes rare items rare.
I never understood why traders have a bunch of stuff with no use for them but a single thing? Or nothing at all.

But the point that many of us are making is that the update doesn't make the game more desirable to the casual player.

If ANet wanted to make it easier for the casual player to get gold (or purple) weapons the only reliable way to do that would be to increase the drop rate for those items. They haven't done that.

So what did they do? They made a change that primarily affected "casual farmers" and that may or may not have some economic effect that may or may not allow casual players to get "cool items" more easily.

Because ANet's only communications on this issue involved a number of contradictory statements (which have been discussed at length) I still don't know why they chose the second method.

Here's my suggestion (I'm sure it's been suggested before, but needs to be again):

Increase the amount of Free chests. It's unfair that only Nightfall has free chests, and I personally found Nightfall the hardest campaign to make it through.

If the goal is to reward casual players, Free Chests are a great solution:

1) They only open a certain number of times, so they cannot be "farmed".

2) The items are generally Gold Max, which mean even if you don't want them, you'll probably find someone who will.

Is there any chance we'll see Free Chests in Prophecy and Factions? I certainly hope so...

The freechests rock, gold max weapons with high req ^_^

There's no need to interpret Gaile's "pitch."

So normal, casual non farming players see no difference, which means hard to get stuff is just as hard, if not more so once gold becomes more scarce and relative values increase. The only way to get good stuff, seemingly is now to play in Hard Mode, which means beating the campaign and having the drive to do it again. Grind. And what's the point of farming in Normal Mode if you don't get anything more or different than before? Making a grind easier but requiring 8 times as many runs is not skill dependent or more accessible, that's crazy grind.

Here's Gaile's response to one of my posts. First, as has been said, a person killing 8 times the monsters of another (solo vs 8 party) should get the rewards commensurate with that kill rate. That's the only way to fairly reward people in a game that is almost solely based on killing. The other part, mission and quests are rewarded based on completion, a solo farmer isn't going to get Masters reward for example.

Her 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th points all show that ANet DOES want the casual player to have access to the coolest items, and what's more cool than FoW armor and Crystalline swords? I bolded the one part for emphasis, so you can't miss it.

her last point doesn't even make sense. There's no point in farming if the reward is not commensurate with the effort of doing so. It IS more complicated to solo farm than it is to party play, at least in my experience, because you need to have exact timing and know what you're farming and how to do it. A mending sever/gash whammo cannot farm. But it keeps being said that there's no reduction in loot.

That's baloney. If your rewards as a player are the same no matter how many people are in your party, then you now have a "virtual" party size of 8 ALWAYS. So instead of other players or hero/hench "stealing" the drops when partied, now its digital ghosts!

One of the reasons for solo farming is because some were tired of partying, and seeing everyone else in the party get drops but them, or seeing 3 ectos drop for one guy while the rest of the party got skunked, GG randomness.

But if you can sit there and tell me that its easier to solo farm the Underworld, then it is to have one or two people tanking while the rest nuke, then there's no way I can possibly convince you of anything (you not lyra specifically, I mean the general public). Ease of farming does not only apply to the build itself but also to speed, efficiency and safety.

But as you said in one of your most recent posts lyra, ANet does seem to be very hypocritical, which we agree on. The update does nothing for the casual player, the supposed benefactor, except make gold more rare and thus driving up relative price and making acquisition a more lengthy prospect. If you're solo farming greens and golds in Hard Mode, the drop rates are ok, but how many casual players can or want to play that way? As I and others have said, in the long run, the update makes more of a grind for even basic items for casual gamers, meaning they'll have to spend more time not playing for fun, but playing to acquire the skills and gear they need to have fun at all.

So normal mode can now be farmed with no Mob Scatter, ok sounds fun but wait wheres my loot?

Hard mode is where its at but wait, mobs are scattering, huh?

Nice try but not good enough to bring me back.My wow realm is back up, see ya

Add me to that list. Heck, I am still occasionally farming for the Plat to buy skills, but for some reason I find farming to be tedious and boring...? Call me crazy.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

I agree that this is often the case, but those people are more likely to ask a question and leave. The people who have time to stick around discussing things (like this update) are almost all serious players.

I think part of our disagreement here comes from our definition of "casual." To me, anyone who plays significantly more than an hour a day is not casual, and I think that if we polled everyone here, we'd find that the majority of us fit that category.
I think you're still reading too much into her statement. I'd be glad to hear an official statement on this, but by very nature of the game's design, Obsidian armor has never been within reach of casual players. Period. And I don't think Gaile was implying that, or she would have mentioned FoW armor specifically.
It was designed to appeal to both.
If you read early interviews with Jeff Strain and other members of the design team, they are specifically referring to playable content, not weapon or armor skins. The low level cap, cheap max armor, and limited skill bar mean that anyone who plays through the game at a normal place will be able to access high-end areas like FoW and UW without being disadvantaged. I have never seen a single interview state that FoW armor should be obtainable by casual players.

Exactly right. That is basically what Jeff and the rest of the team has been saying in interviews since beta.

Ok I think we need to define something here.....

Exactly what is a "casual gamer"?

How many hours a day or week do they play? Can they play every day, but just certain ways?

My impression is that in general people tend to get hooked on the game and spend much of their free time on it or they only rarely play. Maybe there is a group of people who play something like 5 hours a week on a regular basis, but I haven't run into them.

In my guild if you look at the roster you notice something right away. There's a group of people who have logged in sometime within the last 24 hours and then there's the group who haven't logged in for several days, weeks, or months. I can't think of a single person who regularly signs in every 2 or 3 days.

If that second group is the "casual gamer" why is anyone trying to cater to them at all? They aren't likely to suddenly become fanatical about the game when they log on and find out that they get exactly the same loot drops as they did the last time they signed on. Or does anyone think that some of these people will think to themselves, "Cool, there's less money in the economy now overall, but no change for me. I'll now start spending all my free time here."? Maybe they'll be so happy that another group of people was negatively affected that they'll just hang around to watch.

Which group is more likely to purchase the next campaign, more character slots, or anything else related to the game which adds to profits?

I have absolute faith in Anet's intentions and motivations.
I do have serious doubts about their methods and implementations.

The scaling update doesnt really benefit the casual player. My argument is that it doesnt affect them negatively or positively (at least we cannot tell yet).

The idea for the casual player, the non-farmer, to have access to the "coolest stuff" like rare weapons and expensive armor, without farming or intensive grinding is downright delusional.

These things were designed to be hard to get. Obsidian Armor requires 75000 gold + 120 ectos + 120 shards. Lets not factor in runes. How the hell is a casual player going to get that?

It's supposed to be the vanity armor, the prestige armor. Its optional. And because its optional, it falls outside the realm of "casual players".

If Anet really wants to help the casual players, they need to:

A) Make weapon and armor collectors easier to get with more desirable stats. They need to make the trophy drops they collect easier to get in a full 8 party situation, so it doesnt turn into a farming situation.
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10147203

B) Make runes, weapon mods, insignias and inscriptions easier to get for collector equipment.

(boldface added for emphasis)

I'm glad to see more and more people giving a lot of thought to the true economic impact of the situation. I think that you're on the right track, but consider just a few more points. What happens when the total gold in circulation drops because of the new decreased drop rate (Anet has stated that they are trying to decrease the creation of "new gold" and thereby lower the amount of gold in circulation)? If the value of an individual gold piece then increases, what effect does this have on the dropped prices? Depending on the rate of increase in the value of gold and the rate of decrease in the cost of items, it is conceivable that true prices may actually remain the same or even increase. Also, if the value of gold increases, how does this affect the players who have little gold prior to the update versus those who have large quantities in storage? Lastly, if the relative value of gold increases, what does that do to the true cost of fixed-price items (armor, keys, kits, skills, etc.)? Just some food for thought, enjoy.

For anyone interested in more details of my economic analysis, please see posts here, here, and here. Sadly, the thread containing the complete analysis was removed and I haven't felt like retyping it, so these pieces and summaries will have to do.

You've made a lot of good points which many of us agree with, these changes are not good for the casual player, or "little guy" as you put it. The one thing that I would like to point out is that the quote you referenced from Burma_GW at the start of your post, while used in his post, are not his words. They came from Gaile Gray, on page 10 of this thread(see here), in response to questions about the reasons for the change. They are not, as one might think, the mistaken opinion of an individual player, but rather are the ideas of Anet, direct from the source. Anet is the one claiming that this update is supposed to be good for the casual player. It is obviously not. That's why we get upset over it.

The reason why we are all looking at in-game economics is because an analysis of such can show that while Anet says this update is supposed to improve the game for the casual player, in reality it does the opposite. Anet should be concerned with the in-game economics because it does in fact affect what you point out as their true goal, real life economics, i.e., their profit margin.

And that my friends is the crux of the issue. I'm glad we finally agree. If they truly intend these things to be in reach of the casual gamer, they are going in the wrong direction. If that's not their real intent, they need to come out and say it, or we will continue to call them on it.

/signed

If Anet really wants to help the "casual" player, they need to do more than just nerf the "hardcore" farmer.

So why is it now that Gaile Gray and Anet are saying the opposite, and has been quoted time and time again?

That its not fair that the coolest stuff is out of reach of the casual gamer?

I suppose if you want to use what has been said in the past, and the previous system as some sort of defense for what is being said now and the new system, even though one completely contradicts the other, I guess that's your right.

But it certainly looks silly, not ot mention misinformed, especially when you can read Gaile's specific posts in this very thread which contradict everything you argue for and agree with.

[edit] cce, free chests are only available in Nightfall, in a few areas that are documented by Guildwiki. You know, this brings up an interesting thought. When free chests were instituted, I argued that they should be made permanent, and that the infrequent useage of such (monthly resets I believe) would not affect the economy overmuch because they were limited in scope and had a hard cap. Others argued that this would destroy the economy, blah blah blah. And I was right. So if people decide they want to argue regarding the economy of a game world, its best to understand how economics work before posting random opinions.

When/where do free chests happen? I play often, but I've never seen one.

See the auction tab up top? That's what I use.