[Dev Update] Farming and Loot Scaling

they are spread across NF. You can open them once per char then have to wait a set amount of time (unsure how long but I've heard a mth) before you can use them again.

I hardly think its right or fair for a game developer to depend on a fansite to provide what most would consider a crucial in game service/need.

The fact that its been asked for since GW was released should be a clue, and by ANet making the economy skew more towards a player-player barter system will only accentuate that need.

I think it depends. You have newer casual players who definetely fit your description, they come in, get their info, and leave. Then there's the longterm casual players, who after returning time and again to the forums for a few months, begin to understand and take adavantage of the resources here(sell forums, etc.) because it streamlines their overall play. After all this time spent around the forums, they start to become involved, and at least some will begin to take part when they happen to see a topic that directly impacts their gameplay, such as this.

It's true that there can be some misunderstanding on this definition. Personally, I do consider myself a "casual gamer," not because I play an hour a day, but because I average something along those lines. I don't play every day. There was even a period of time when I hadn't logged in for over two months. I usually play on weekends, or occasionally a weekday when I don't have work. When I do play, it's typically for a three to four hour stretch at a time, as logging in for only an hour doesn't seem to accomplish much, it's not enough time to involve oneself in the game. But then it will usually be at least a few days before I log in again for such a period of time. I will occasionally log in for just a few minutes to check on something, to see who's on, etc. but otherwise that's about it, three to four hour sessions once or twice a week. And that estimate is a bit on the high end.

I don't think I'm reading too much into it. Period. Either we have to agree to disagree on this one and stop there, or you'll have to explain to me how "coolest" does not include the best items in the game.

Then maybe I'm in the wrong game. I still specifically remember a tagline in an add, "A game for the casual player." I don't remember it saying "casual or hardcore," just casual. The problem is, that by their very nature, the two contradict and it makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to please both. When they do try to make a game for both groups, they invariably get problems just like this, changes and updates that pit one group against the other, and in the end, neither are happy with the product.

That's not to say that there isn't room for compromise, just that you have to be very, very careful how you do it. I actually had a thought on this, it may be slightly off topic, but it might help you see where I'm coming from. If the game were truly balanced for both casual and hardcore gamers, then I think that there should be no single end-game item which is completely out of reach for the casual gamer (i.e., FoW armor), rather, all items should be within the casual gamer's reach, even if some may require several months of effort. The balance would be in having many different types of these high-end items, enough that the casual gamer could never hope to obtain them all collectively. Yes, individually they would all be within his reach, but he would have to pick and choose which ones to work for. The hardcore gamer on the other hand, would have the ability to obtain most if not all of these high-end items, so that rather than having one item that serves as a badge of total superiority, it is displayed through the quantity of difficult to obtain items. Anyway, these are just my thoughts, do they make any sense?

(boldface added for emphasis)

As far as I'm concerned, all true, right up until the point that Gaile made her post on page 10, it seems to indicate the opposite. But then, we still disagree on that, so take it for what it's worth. Personally, I agree with you that it was not in the original intent of the game for all this to be accessible to every player, it seems obvious just from the basic mechanics of the game. But by my understanding of Gaile's words, I notice a disparity between these mechanics and what we are being told. This is what bothers me, the feeling that Anet is not being straight with us and trying to pacify us with PR spin. Frankly I find it insulting. You may think that it all comes from my misunderstanding of Anet's claims, but if so, they should have been more clear. If I'm wrong, and Anet does issue a statement clarifying what was said, then I will gladly recant and apologize. However, if rather than clarify, they continue to make statements or take actions which directly contradict what they have said in the past, I will continue to stand on my points and make my complaints heard.

Then you are more trusting than I, and I admire you for it. I guess I've just been burned too often before and it has left me a bit cynical. I ask others to prove their intentions to me first by their actions. I'll agree that something is definetely wrong with their "methods and implementations," but it is this that casts my doubt on their intentions. Either their intentions are not what they claim, or they are not thinking things through. Either way, it's not much to encourage my continual investment in their product, is it?

I will readily admit(and already have in a number of posts) that while we can theorize as to the eventual impact these events have on the game, the true result will only be known with time. For the time being though, since speculation and analysis are all we have, I will continue to stand by my interpretation and predictions until proven otherwise.

Please address these points to Ms. Gray, at the very least, we are in need of a clarification of her original statements.

Agreed. I rarely ever used collector weapons when levelling because I could invariably find a drop which, while considered junk to most, still had better stats than a collector item. Of course now, with white, blue, and purple drops decreased, this is less likely, but at the same time with collectible items decreased, it's harder to get the collector's weapons too. As for collector armor, it was handy at times, but it would at least be nice if the armors from the first two campaigns could accept insignia, that would be a definite improvement.

Guys it' not really that bad you can still make money, though you will just have to grind for it.

When this happened, I went to the rare material trader and looked for items that cost quite a bit and were easy to farm the thing which came up for me was amber chunks.

By playing AB I have amassesd alot of faction, faction which I converted into amber I now have a total of 84 amber chunks, which I can sell to the mercant trader for like 8.4k.

Even though it's a grind and it sucks it's my way of making money nowadays.

This is the crux of the problem for me as well. For me it's kind of like being around someone who cheated on you. You may still find them attractive, but at the same time you feel betrayed by their actions and disgusted because of it.

Solo farmers were receiving 100% of the drops - because they caused 100% of the kills. People in parties of 8 were receiving 12.5% of the drops because (if they were equal contributors) they were 12.5% responsible for helping cause the kills. People in parties of 4 were receiving 25% of the loot because of the same reason. That makes sense. That is properly scaled looting. You get to loot based on the amount you accomplish or helped accomplish.

What doesn't make sense is to claim that you're trying to help a group of people by essentially making no changes for them. I've still seen AoE scatter in normal mode btw - but not as much.

Logically if you make changes in a system and one group is mostly unaffected while another is negatively affected, you have not "helped" the unaffected group. You have harmed the other group and to try to call it anything else is disingenuous at best.

I don't like people pissing on my leg and then trying to tell me it's raining.

QFT to blackbird71. I have heard on these boards some dubious statements.

Is casual farming helped by the recent loot scaling? (or does it push players towards hardmode?)

Does hard mode encourage PUGs? (or does it further separate casual players)

Does UAS/UAX actually make players more competitive? (or is whatever you get without farming like a dog "reasonable content")

Are cookie cutter builds really required in PUGs? (are all these "I don't do that" people on this forum liars, and/or are really altruistic people who help newbies 24/7)

Are cookie cutter builds really required to complete the game? (wow I have to cap what skill in southern shiverpeaks?)

What is considered "reasonable content" for a casual player? (Lyra you are not the only person to use that statement so relax)

-----

All this culminates in, if ANet wants to bring in new players, with the above statements in mind, how can they make the game appealing? Are those players really "competitive" from the start? Example - without Nightfall, Necros are without any energy management, right? Oh yeah, except a 5 second timer on their primary attribute, yeaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

How can ANet make casual players or new players competitive without giving away half the game?

All I can say is that everything that happens that widens that gulf makes me recommend to people I know NOT to get the game. The mountain of work they would need to begin to catch up to be competitive and play PvP, or get into a PUG in PvE, let alone a "leet" PUG, is waaaaaaaay too much. 1000+ skills says it all.

So no, based on actions, ANet does not seem to have casual players on their radar.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Okay, I'll give it my best shot...

If you read Gaile's original post in the topic, she is directly speaking about loot: green and gold weapons, as well as rare materials, scrolls, tomes, dyes, special event items. Never armor. In her later post, I believe that she chose to abbreviate that to "items" instead of having to recite the whole list again, assuming that readers would understand given the context of the discussion.

The other possibility is that she may have forgotten about the cost of FoW armor when she made the comment in question. At no point in the discussion was armor even mentioned until she made that comment, at which point it was torn apart by critics looking to nitpick any possible flaw with her thinking. Everyone makes mistakes, and it is well within the realm of possibility that armor may have slipped her mind during the heated debate, which had nothing to do with the price of armor in the first place.

Regardless, I think it's absurd to take a single comment so literally when, as you mentioned, it contradicts dozens of previous statements by the game designers themselves. This discussion can't really go anywhere until we have official clarification on Gaile's comment, but unfortunately a few posters chose to show a complete lack of respect towards Gaile and the community.

First of all, if you base your entire view of a game based on a single ad, I expect you're going to be disappointed with an awful lot of games.

Secondly, Jeff and Gaile have mentioned in numerous interviews that the game was designed to be easy for casual players to get into with enough depth to keep hardcore players interested. If you missed that point after nearly two years of playing the game, I hardly think ArenaNet can be blamed.

Finally, how can you say that a single item being off-limits to casual players makes the game unfriendly to casual players? There are literally hundreds of different weapons in the game, as well as dozens of armor choices. To be upset because you can't obtain one of those, which was never promised to you in the first place, is completely nonsensical. The ratio of accessible to non-accessible items for casual players is virtually unprecedented in Guild Wars. You will be hard-pressed to find another MMO that gives so many casual players maximum stats on their weapons and armor, much less prestige designs.

In summary, enjoy the 99% of the game that you can play, and don't worry so much about the 1% that you can't.

`

FoW armor isn't the only 'coolest' thing in the game.

Stuff like Elemental Swords, Colossal Scimitars etc. Do you really think people will throw down the prices just because some poor people can't afford them? Weapon prices will stay the same no matter what, as there will always be buyers as well.

Arenanet is NOT keeping the hardcore players interested at this moment. Sure, there is hard mode, but after 2 weeks that gets old. And then? Arenanet already destroyed the other things to do. And what isn't destroyed yet is just made so boring/troublesome that nobody wants to do it anymore.

I'm not a casual player, I already got 1 set of FoW armor and I'm not lacking cash, but I DO have a half-empty guild of casual players who just quit the game cause of it's endless nerfs.

How would casual gamers be able to afford the 'coolest stuff', when they can't even afford to buy skills and basic armor/weapons? (unless collectors, but farming for certain collectibles isn't exactly easy anymore either. Especially if you need monsters that only excist in 1 part of the game, or in very small numbers.)

Most Casual Players only had Troll Farming/Vermin Farming if they wanted to buy skills/armor, and they only farmed for the whites/blues/pure cash drops.

Now that has been taken away. What's left is the tradeable stuff. I don't know any casual gamer that wants to spend his 2 hours gaming on trying to sell 1 item. That is, if he even obtains that 1 item.

From what I've gleaned from the interviews, it was intended that PvE would be an "introduction" to the game, with the hardcore players moving into meta-gaming and high end PvP.

I hardly think "depth" as it was intended involves monumental amounts of grinding, which is exactly what happens when you take FoW armor into account as well as GOLD items like crystalline swords, Colossal Scimitars, Elemental Swords, etc.

And your last comment is a pretty slippery slope. At what point should players be satisfied/not satisifed with the game content available to them? Shouldn't all players have a reasonable chance of acquisition?

And besides, the point is moot when it comes to accessing things like FoW armor, because as you have said yourself, these items provide no better stats than the cheaper versions, so how would it serve ANet and the community's best interest to keep these items OUT of the hands of the vast majority of players? Again, the image of the poor plough donkey with the giant carrot dangling just out of reach comes to mind.

You can say the players don't need them because of the equivalency of stats, I say the players should have them because of it. It makes no sense in a "game" to exclude a huge portion of your playerbase from any content without very good reason. In many MMOs, the high end PvP world is dominated by items/armor that are statistically better than what the majority can access due to the difficulty in acquiring items and the extreme level grind.

That problem is cancelled out in GW because the "coolest" items in the game are the same numbers wise as any other max item available to any player. Since the perception that high end golds, Vabbi and FoW armor are the "coolest" items, then every player should have access to them due to them not giving any playing advantage, either in PvE or PvP.

Gaile Gray has said as much, yet ANet's actions are not in agreement. That's called PR spin, or it may be that Anet is forcing Ms. Gray as part of her contract to say these things to maintain interest in GW1 while they slowly shift interest to GW2. I don't know. I hope for Gaile's sake that that's not the case, because that's a crappy place to have to be. But I don't know what's worse:

ANet intentionally changing things to get people to buy the expansion and sequel, and lieing to their players to maintain interest or

ANet being that naive and uninformed about how game economies work and honestly thinking these changes benefit anyone, ESPECIALLY the casual gamer.

Regardless of armor or weapons, some things will be out of reach of the casual player because of the game's design.

Crystalline Swords. These are ugly pieces of crap. Yet they command incredibly high prices. Why? Because they are rare. Your average player, heck, even high end farmers will never see a gold crystalline. You can farm purple crystallines, but a GOOD crystalline is only going to be found at the Hall of Heroes chest.

-------------
However GW is already great since even though theres this divide between those with money and those who dont, it doesnt really matter in the end.

Its all just vanity. Theres no advantage. Theres no instant kill, +10 agi swords. Theres no 3 slotted helms with +20% damage vs humans.

Ensign disagrees with you. He fully advocates getting Sup Death Runes for all your Necro characters and Heroes that will try (even tho gimped at) being a minion master at 3-6 plat each last I checked. The figure does vary, so I put in the range.

I do not know how many accounts and characters you have, but we're talking around 100+ plat for me to be competitive, just with this one thing. He directly states that the Sup rune, with 1 more Death attribute point, pays for itself with better and longer-lived minions.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

I dont see how Ensign advocating Superior Death Runes on a minion master necro means anything to what i said. You really love grasping at straws dont you?

1)NOT EVERY NECROMANCER IS GOING TO BE A MINION MASTER.

2) At the most you will need 3 superior death runes per account. 2 for heroes, since you can re-salvage repeatedly. 1 for your necro.

How does having Heros "pimped out" make you "competitive" in any sense in a PvE setting? Last i checked, PvE was not about competition...

DoA and Hard Mode? Seems like to survive there, you gotta be competitive.

Oh right, this is about Normal Casual Players. They should be able to get through the game without half the content that was put in, they don't NEED it to win, so we'll just make it unattainable without massive grind investment.

Oh and on top of that, lets screw with the economy, so that NO ONE can afford the cool stuff, then have our PR person spin it so that the entire community is in an uproar and nothing is solved through the din of arguing!

PERFECT smokescreen. We at ANet are so smert.

[edit] You know its funny this. What have the last few weekend events been that you can remember? Green Drop Weekend. Double LB/SS points. Festivals with events like "stand here and win/lose tickets." It seems like every special event ANet can come up with is nothing but an incentive to grind. Strange... maybe the ANet devs are running out of creative steam? Doesn't bode well for GW2.

You know, it seems like ANet is the perfect Mesmer build to counter fun in GW.

A straw this is not. You said:

Not true. Why else do players farm, a self-defined repetitive task to "grind" out additional money/items/etc?

You stated that money =/= advantage in game, because there are "cheaper" items that are equivalent in stats to so-called "uber" equipment.

I am stating that money == advantage in game. If you restrict your argument to armor and only armor, then I agree, the cheap armor is equivalent to expensive armor. As soon as runes for players and all your heroes, certain green weapons, candy canes and other holiday-themed items that remove DP, and all weapon mods come into play, and the 1100+ skills that go into the cookie-cutter builds specific to areas and bosses, then oh yeah money == advantage.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Competitive vs who?
Monsters?
Or against other players to get into PUGs?

Please clarify.

Agree or Disagree.
PvP is BIG part of the game. But PvP is not for everyone.

LOL

I take Gaile's official words with a grain of salt. Things are subject to change and to re-interpretation.

I think the economy was screwed up to begin with, but i would agree that this isnt really helping.

It may very well be that Gaile misspoke, and I'm sorry if I'm being a stickler on the use of the language, but i'm a firm believer in not using a word unless you really understand its meaning. The word "coolest" is an absolute. By definition, it is the most cool, the top, the pinnacle, the utmost. There is nothing "more cool" than "coolest." Period. If there is even one item that is considered to be "more cool" than "coolest," then "coolest" is no longer "coolest," it has been downgraded from paramount to tantamount at best. The one bit of leeway I can allow in this statement is the fact that the word "cool" is entirely subjective, and that we don't know what Gaile's personal definition of "cool" is. Maybe she doesn't like FoW armor. Maybe Gaile thinks that the coolest items in the game are devourer minipets or belt pouches. Who knows? However, even if this is the case, although not specifically stated, it would stand to reason that in wanting to make all the "coolest" items available to the majority of players, at the same time they would want the less cool items to be available as well. Yes it's possible that it slipped her mind or she made a mistake, but if that were the case, she should have corrected herself at the first opportunity, and the fact is that days later, she has yet to do so.

It may seem absurd to you, and maybe it is, but I see it as the best means I have to understanding and analyzing what was said.

I do find it regrettable that some resorted to personal insults instead of reasoning in a rational manner. However, while I condemn their actions, I also am bothered that Gaile chose to crumble under the words of the few and thereby ignore the inquiries of the many. It is by no means right or justifiable, but the fact of the matter is that in society people are prone to attack the messenger. I'm afraid that it is part and parcel of the job. If every PR rep left their post when the insults began, then President George W. Bush would have a new press secretary every two weeks. I don't believe that Gaile or anyone should be subject to attacks like that, but at the same time I believe that anyone in her position should expect it and prepare for it. At the very least, it is incentive for the PR reps to make sure that those they represent are giving them factual and accurate information to relay to the customers, and that the messages are phrased in such a way that the customers don't feel like something is being left out or ignored. Gaile has every right to be upset, but it shouldn't preclude her from performing her duties as a link between Anet and the customers.


Well, I don't base my view on a "single" ad, or even multiple as the case may be. I was just providing it so you could hopefully understand some of my perspective. My perception was that the marketing campaign as a whole was directed toward the casual gamer, and it seems to me that if the game were designed for both, it would have said as much in their campaign. That seems to be the best way to draw in more customers. So, I made the assumption that if everything (i.e., ads, reviews, etc.) said the game was for the casual gamer, without mentioning other types of gamers, then it was probably not for the hardcore gamer. It was my assumption, maybe I was wrong, but hopefully you get the idea of why I believed it to be true.

Honestly, that's part of what bothers me. I believed I had been told that this game would cater to the casual gamer, and later it seems to have changed to encompass both. When a dev team changes their direction for a game, I get nervous, because it means the game is becoming something other than what I originally chose to pay for.

Because if the game is truly designed for the casual player, why have any part of it that is off limits to the casual player? Isn't that contradictory in it's nature, regardless of how much other content there is? You say it was never promised, but I almost feel as if it had been, because I was told it was a game for people with my playstyle, shouldn't all the benefits of that game be accessible to such? I'm not asking for it to be handed to me on a platter, but after nearly two years of "casual" play, shouldn't I be able to be at least partway towards such a goal? Once again we enter the realm of what is "reasonable inference," but that's the way I feel. You're right, it would be hard to find another MMO with similar benefits for the casual player. That's why I chose this one instead of giving up on MMOs altogether. Now I'm beginning to change my mind.

Because I didn't pay 99% of the cost, or 99% of the amout payed by those who do have access to these items. How would you like to pay full price for a luxury car and be missing a stereo? Or even just a speaker or two? Hey, you've got the engine, be happy! If Anet would care to refund myself and all other "casual" players for our time and investment equal to what we have spent in pursuit of items which we will never have because they keep making changes like this which move them further and further from our reach, then I will be satisfied with having only part of the content, provided that in the future they clearly announce all parts of the game which casual players should never consider attempting because Anet will be sure to move the benchmarks long before we ever get there.

Like I've said, I've been through it before. It was infuriating in SWG to spend over a year working towards a goal that was removed from the game before I could get there. It's just as infuriating now, and I don't plan to put up with it.

You are in a better position than I am. I am still grinding to get (all) skills to get the winning cookie cutter build(s) for each zone. If you are thinking about ectos and such, then good for you! I'm not even there yet.

Just a few days ago, I went and capped earthshaker. The wiki said it was useful in the zone, so I went and got it. Amazingly enough, I had an easier time with it too. Wiki FTW.

I'm just thinking about the people who have 3+ accounts. What the heck do they do?

Hehe, now those poor people that the only thing they have in their lives is this game need something to set them apart from the rest of us slobs with jobs, and that would be the super-expensive armor. I'm with Lyra, the 1.5K stuff is just as good so that's all my characters have.

What we disagree on is all the rest of the stuff that I gotta get to succeed in PvE and PvP. The Plat adds up for me just on skills and runes. Having those easier for me to get would help me progress faster in the game.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

This is very true, heck, I'm a hardcore gamer and spending more than 15 minutes in a town trying to sell or buy anything is just beyond boring. I'd rather be playing the game and having fun rather than standing there with the "WTS" and "WTB" just to try to make a very little amount of gold or get an item. It's more fun to play a game, not just stand around spamming but when a game starts to require you to stand around spamming rather than playing the game then the game looses a lot of it's appeal and thus a lot of it's players.

As you pointed out, a casual player isn't someone that will want to waste what time they have to play the game trying to sell an item or buy an item.

Sorry, what I meant was that to remain competitive in PvE, such that when in a group you're not dragging down the rest of the team, you need to buy skills and equipment that will allow you to survive and thrive.

Now while obviously this doesn't mean FoW armor for all your characters, what I'm talking about is basic skills, a few good elites to round out your abilities, maxed weapons with mods, a few runes and don't forget for NF and Heroes inscriptions.

For example, playing Olias as an MM, to make it so he's able to beat out enemy necros with corpse exploitation, he needs the Bloodstained Insignia. Last I checked, that's about 9k, for something you can get for 1.5k in the other two campaigns.

Now multiply that by the number of PvE characters you have, assuming you want a competent hero mm ( and who doesn't) and you can see that between runes, gear and skills, the costs far outstrip the casual player.

And Tabasco, I completely agree with you, even in the skills and basic gear department. My previous post was meant in sarcasm, to indicate that the people arguing against me and others are not actually READING Gaile's initial post about what the changes are, and how they're supposed to affect the economy.

Never mind that it hasn't been explained how leaving prices static but decreasing gold drops (and white/blue merch fodder) will magically make buying power increase. Its like getting a pay cut then being told your buying power is still the same. Who would actually believe that? lol

I had rather they kept gold/green items, rares, etc to themselves and left the gold pieces and whites alone....my God is it that hard to see that all they did is make it favorable for hard core farmers because they farm the harder areas with ecto and higher value loot and us poor people who only farm mino's and trolls because we don't want to devote our characters to only farming suffer because we no longer get the whites and the gold pieces to merch? Also, in the OP it says something about "make the game more enjoyable" geezzzz I just love to stand in town and see WTS XXXXXXX spammed a gazilion times. One of the questions in the original post hit the nail on the head "will this change not make casual gamers more likely to buy gold online" and the answer is a big fat YES (at least I know of one casual farmer who will be doing internet search for GW gold this weekend) Either leave it alone or make MORE items drop if they want to kill the sellers because if EVERYONE can farm gold easily then NOBODY will be buying it.

QFTx10

Although I may not have done the Troll/Vermin farming, since I liked to figure out what I could farm on my own and maybe do that for an hour a week to get maybe 5k, (farming it more if holiday items were dropping) it really pisses me off that my farming income just got axed by 80% per trip when I need cash. I have no 15k armors, I have not burned money on lucky or sugar or liquor, I use money to buy skills and weapons and runes and a few keys here and there. I'll have to farm in hard mode in a party since I might get more gold drops there (screw keys/lockpicks) and hopefully those gold drops being like $300 each will make up for having much less money from regular farming. I didn't care that I couldn't buy any 100k+100ecto item, I didn't really want them and if I did want them I knew all I would have to do is play more often and farm more often. BIG DEAL, it's not unfair that people who play more often and farm more often had more money and cooler items than I did, and it's not like I couldn't afford to buy a nicer-looking item for like 10-15k if I wanted to.

While nerfing the drop rate to be at most double what you would get for being in a normal party might be effective in reducing income, it's more harmful to players than it is to bots, bots being where the problems really come from. The problem with this change is that by making it take 4x longer to farm the same amount of money, bots won't care but players will get fed up by how long it takes to accumulate the money they need. A better idea would have been to give better rewards (money, runes, dyes, materials, etc) for playing the game normally, or find ways that enable people to play and get stuff without having to farm, if farming invites botting so badly.

.....ALL WORSHIP ENSIGN.....
Seriously though, he's so right. The problem is from the GW drop system itself, and giving people less drops when they solo isn't going to help anything, golds and greens and popular mods are still going to cost a lot because they still won't grow on trees, and casual players will still be poor because it will still be only hardcore players and farmers that stand a good chance at getting these items that do not drop frequently.

Dear ANet:
Please hire Ensign or clone Ensign and hire his clone. If you had him to help with developing skill balances and gameplay changes and helping you guys figure out what the players feel about certain aspects of using your products, GW would be even better than it already is.

I went and farmed trolls just a few min ago.I got a one troll tusk and one raven staff,out of 20 trolls.Then I went and did the same thing in HM and got about the same,Both tries I killed all the gaints and birds.In regular mode I made a whooping 659g with the drops and everythin including useing two 750g keys.I did it in HM and got about the same,just testing what they did becuase I was in torment all weekend.

I have to say they really messed up things with this update.

PS... I didn't use any picks in HM at 1500g each who can buy em to just get a weapon thats worth 200-400g,thats a loss of 1,100-1,300 gold.... doesn't compute

It is amazing that a large part of the reason behind loot scaling was based on bots, yet Anet has been unable (or unwilling) to deal with the plainly obvious bot activity occuring in Granite Citadel. While I'm not happy with the losing the basic functionality of my 55 Monk throughtout the life of this game, I'm wondering why Anet isn't dealing with this bot issue. In addition, this isn't new, it's been going on for MONTHS.

Given past history, seems like Anet is capable of nerfing such activities with the addition of enchantment stripping monsters, so why has this bot farming ground been allowed to continue unabated? It's also pretty apparent that the loot scaling, though admittedly new, isn't causing these gold farmers to cease.

Guess this post is just another rant among many that will be ignored, but at least I've said my piece.

The keyless chests were a good idea, too bad they're bugged to hell and aren't actually reopenable for a lot of people (wish I could give real percentages on that). As for monetary quest/mission rewards, I don't really care. They could give out 0 gold, or a million gold, it's largely irrelevant because the high end market doesn't really care about gold. It's dictated entirely by the rates of the really desirable items, the gold prices just adjust to match.


As long as golds are dropping at all, yeah. The percentage of 'keeper' golds is way up. Of course the market adjusted and random gold weapons aren't worth much anymore, but they do have some value. That's just for Nightfall though, outside of a couple rare skins, all of the really valuable items are pre-Nightfall weapons.

The inscription system is a great example of an economic equalizing model that actually worked, creating more valuable drops on average and making the good stuff more accessable.


Really low end farming, vermin or whatever, sure. That's been kicked in the balls. The really profitable farming that drove prices up (ecto, greens, dead swords) hasn't been touched. You lose out on operating costs from vendor trash, but the real value is still coming in. Less vendor trash is going to up the value of gold slightly, to be sure, but it's not going to make the prices of the really valuable stuff plunge. I wouldn't be surprised if prices creeped up slightly, in fact, since the goods aren't being subsidized by vendor trash anymore.

You can't brute force the system on weak farming, but since that was really the only mechanism available for casual players to accumulate any amount of wealth in a reasonable timeframe, is that really a good thing?


There are fewer rares entering from brute force farming, because, well, brute force farming got hammered. There are more entering from hard mode. I have no idea how those relative rates line up.


Lots of desirable rare drops in hard mode will give some economic power to hard mode players. That will make the rarest items accessable, not the nerf to solo farm vendor trash rates.


I'm well aware, that was clear when I replied in the original thread but that implication was lost in the merge. I've since fixed the quote attribution.

Peace,
-cxE

Cool, I figured you probably knew, I just wanted to make sure that any newcomers who didn't bother reading much of the thread didn't get lost.

Well I am new to the forum but have been playing GW for about 9 months. The last big update really has made the game less interesting and a bit boring for me personally. I don't "solo farm" or hard core group farm but could alway just play and make enough gold to buy some of those things. Now the drops are almost nonexistent. Just seems like a waste to kill 2-3 groups of enemies and get one lousy white sword worth 50g? There's no way I could ever put in enough game time to buy 15k armor at that rate. So is ArenaNet going to sell game gold?

You're working under the assumption that the only purpose of gold is to give to other players, with its value changing in accordance with the rarity of items. That's just not true in this game, at least not for the majority of players. Armor crafters, weapon crafters, skill trainers, merchants, and all that mojo requires significant amounts of cash. To that end, most casual players *do* spend a lot of time trying to acquire gold, and don't give a crap about rare items - they can barely afford to buy skills. The high end market is flashy, but it's not particulary the important part.

I strongly disagree with you here. High end farming of greens, ectos and golds doesn NOT drive prices up. Rather, it increases the supply and causes prices to go down. Low end brute force farming, such as minotaurs and vermin, dramatically decreases the value of gold in exactly the same way - as supply increases prices fall. As the value of gold falls, more gold is required to exchange for items with other players. Hence, inflation.


I think that pretty much sums up the casual player point of view. It has nothing to do with exchanging super rares and everything to do with having enough to get by.

Gaile has a quote somewhere that I can't be arsed to find that says something about this update making the coolest items available to everyone.

That's totally retarded.

The goal should be to make baseline items available to Poorhouse Joe who never farms. No matter what you change, there's always going to be rarer items that some people will be better at obtaining than others. That's ok, it helps to add a draw to endgame PvE. I think this update, combined with all the other little things added in over the last few months, actually do a decent job of this. There's still rare stuff out there to grind away at, but baseline golds and mods are available to pretty much everyone.

Sorry If I'm Solo'ing items drop 100% like they used to do in the old days why is it that we can't do it now?

Silly as. I don't have the hours anymore to play. I work full-time and need to concentrate on other things. If I'm unable to get in some fast farming I miles well hand in my game card and say goodbye. HM FTW alright. But item cycling and loot management needs to be re-adjusted to that of the old days.

Exactly. That, is Inflation 101. The more "low-end" farming is done, the more cash is introduced into the economy. The more cash introduced into the economy, the less that cash is actually worth. The less the cash is worth, the more of it is needed to buy something - therefore, that something costs more. Inflation.

With that "middleman" of pure cash-generation out of the way, there will be less and less cash flowing around, and all the player-sold items will have to drop in price to keep up. Plus, there will be more farmers moving to farming things like greens, and chest-farming, thus more "expensive" items floating around - which means even lower prices since the supply will exceed demand.

You can't really apply real world economic theory to a system like Guild Wars where gold that is given to merchants disappears from the system instead of being recycled into the economy.

If I 'low end' solo farm just to get the cash to buy a set of armor and runes then no money has been added to the economy and the value of gold has not changed a bit.

Completely agree with you, as well. But what's stopping you from constantly "low-end" farming till you have 100's of plat, and buying some low-req rare-skinned item from another player? That kind of stuff is what drives up prices. That, and the bots that do the same, passing 1,000 plat at a time to high bidders outside of GW.

Since there is no way to determine your intention with the gold, be it gold-sink or staight into the player-driven economy that would cause inflation, would you rather just deal with the inflation anyway, saying it's a "necessary evil", just so that you can continue to supply your own fat wad?

The casual farmer spends his gold on the gold sinks. Skills, armor, items from merchants. He gets his gold from the merchants by selling white, blue, and collectible drops.

Therefore the casual farmer's effect on the economy averages out to Nil.

The hardcore farmer farms for ectos, greens, and high end rare items. Which end up having an ingame value in gold. These are traded amongst players.

Therefore the hardcore farmer's effect on the economy is the introduction/creation of wealth, which will devalue gold, and cause prices to increase.

Casual farmers want to be able to purchase skills, maybe a set of 15k for their character, and maybe a few keys just in case they hit the jackpot.

Not to mention the reduction of collectible drops, what kind of effect that will have at the next holiday event when players realize they can't farm for the drops to convert to Candy Canes, alcoholic beverages, or sweets.

There is no way for you to know this, at all. If you do that, that's just you. If your friend Bob does that, that's just you and Bob. You have no proof that all casual/low-end farmers spend all their farmed gold on only gold sinks, period.

In fact, bots/gold-sellers are an example of a very large amount of characters that low-end farm for gold that is not spent on gold sinks, period.

You just contradicted yourself. If they trade these items to other players, and I think we can agree they do most of the time, there is no "introduction/creation of wealth" at all - just exchange of wealth/gold. This is healthy. What isn't healthy is constant creation of wealth via monsters, and that wealth then being exchanged amongst players. Gold sinks are in the game to counter that, but they are also mostly voluntary. The only gold sinks that are really necessary are skills and ID/Salvage kits (since they are used to help make money, as well).

I actually like this - less gold, more bling. The hydras were boring anyway.

These aren't a large amount, statistically speaking (at least in my experience I've only seen a few dozen [seeming] bots); they are however much more prolific due to their inhuman nature. Immune to boredom, and the tedious nature of grind, they have and will continue to farm for gold without end. That is, until action is directly and aggressively taken against them, anything else is insufficient in the long-run. As such it is unfair to lump them together with other "low-end" farmers, and generalize about said farmers motivations.

You may be able to guess a ball-park figure of how many botters you notice, but keep in mind, that's only what you can see - in International Districts. Consider how many more there are in the districts on servers you aren't on, and aren't aware of. I would venture a guess (a very uneducated guess, I would add), that most of the botters are on their home districts, wherever those might be. I think you can you can draw a conclusion to where I'm thinking, without me coming out and saying it.

No one is generalizing about the farmer's motivations - except Dougal Kronik when he said:

That places low-end farmers in a category that seemingly makes them innocent of affecting the economy what-so-ever. I plainly said that was simply unfounded. That is, in fact, a generalization that is not only unproveable, but more than likely completely wrong.

Besides, if anyone can make any ascertations on how people earn their gold, and what they do with it, it would be Anet. They have claimed to keep logs, and I wouldn't put it past any online game company to keep logs of their players. They should be able to tell if low-end farmers (which would be easy to spot with "bot-like" activity, and is closely monitored anyway) spend their gold on fixed-price items (like armor, skills, ID/Salvage kits, keys, etc), spend their gold on player-controlled items (like rares, holiday items, dyes, materials, etc), or just "give their money away" in conspicuous 100k + ecto chunks for free (obvious gold seller).

This means they, above everyone else, would have the numbers to form their reasons for a nerf like this. They can tell, with these logs, exactly what is inflating player-controlled items in the economy. I would think, based on this logic, that this would be one good way of at least slowing this down - since there really is no way to stop it without removing trade entirely. Just look at RL economy, inflation happens, constantly. It's a sign of a *better* economy if that inflation can be slowed down.

I agree that if taken to a larger extreme, content restriction would be a major problem. But at the minor level it occurs in Guild Wars, it's excusable. Most MMOs restrict casual players far more than Guild Wars does.
Because it keeps the players who are enjoy that type of gameplay (progressing toward a specific goal, which some might consider grinding) motivation to keep playing after level 20, and a sense of accomplishment when they reach it. For the players who don't like to grind, it's very simple for them to ignore FoW armor entirely and enjoy the game at their own pace while still remaining competitive.

The interviews I was referring to happened before or during the game's beta stage. Appeal to both casual and hardcore players has been one of the design goals since the beginning.

If anything, the game has become more casual-friendly. Factions and Nightfall give players so much experience that obtaining skill points is no longer a problem. Inscriptions made the weapon system versatile enough so that what used to be considered junk could be salvaged and combined to make a decent weapon. Skill acquisition through PvP has been made easier several times. Unlocked chests and trade contracts provide a large chunk of easy income. And with this recent update, skill tomes make skill acquisition easier, and passage scrolls make the high-end areas more accessible.
Don't take this the wrong way, but I think you are completely misunderstanding some of the design goals of this game. To illustrate, if you read early interviews, the developers expected that many casual players would be unable to unlock all the skills for their own profession. That was one of the reasons for the eight-skill limit, so that even if you could only afford ten or twenty skills, you could purchase a few that worked well together and make a really solid build with very little time or money. UAS was expected to be a fairly "hardcore" activity for players with more time invested into the game. I'm not sure when UAS started being considered a "requirement" to staying competitive, but I am very certain that was not the original intention of the developers.

The jump from "casual players should be able to easily make a competitive build and contribute to their party" to "casual players should be able to afford the most expensive item in the game" is not something that was ever promised by ArenaNet. I honestly suggest that you do some searches for old pre-beta or beta interviews with the designers, because you seem to have very different expectations of the game than was ever mentioned.

Apologies if I sound harsh or anything, it's just that I have been really impressed with many of the design decisions in Guild Wars (that's basically the reason I started playing), and it kind of frustrates me when people don't understand why certain things were done the way that they were, especially when the team has done such a good job of laying out their intentions since the beginning.

Absolutely correct. In a post on another forum, Gaile mentioned that she has seen the data, and that ArenaNet can tell exactly how significant of an impact farming/botting has on the economy. Using basic statistics, it would be easy to make a good estimate of how the economy would look after this update. Anet would be able to easily see whether this update would have a negative effect on the economy, and not implement it if the impact would have been bad for players.

Remember the context of the original quote - that they were making this change to solo farming because the price tags of the 'coolest items' were unreasonably high. Sure, gold is relevant for really casual players who need to save up for armor, but to the players who actually acquire the games coolest items, gold is largely irrelevant. If you're worried about saving up for 15k armor, the high end player economy is not something that should even be on your radar.


The point, which I admittedly made poorly, is that the people bidding in the high end market are not farming vermin. They made fortunes power trading, or farming high end items like those mentioned. On the whole, prices are lower because of what those farmers kick out - producing supply, after all - but the bids you see being put on Colossal Scimitars and the like aren't coming from vermin farmers. Those are the high rollers getting into pocketbook fights.


That's what I thought too. Under that paradigm, solo farming is harmless, since you're mostly interacting with NPCs. Knocking down some insects just gives you a quick cash infusion to make the next purchase if need be. It only becomes relevant when you start looking at the high end player economy...which, as we all know, is weakly designed and *terribly* supported.


Peace,
-CxE

You have to look at cause and effect, Ensign. Those high rollers exchange ridiculously high-priced items back and forth - to each other. They recieved their gold from likely other players, who got it from other players and so on all the way down to the original source, monsters. That gold didn't even exist at one point, and had to initially be earned, in most cases, by farmers.

The purpose of leaving high-end farming in-tact, is because the high-end farming all involves high-end things... things that carry variable price tags, things that can be traded amongst the player community. The gold itself is still gained the same old way - low-end farming, or gold that is spawned from basically nothing. Of course there are other ways to get gold, questing, transferring faction to materials, adventuring, but none of them were as big as old fashioned farming.

When you slow that way down, you slow down the overall influx of gold. With gold sinks still the way they are, the amount of gold overall will eventually drop, meaning less gold for everyone, including the high rollers. Cause and effect. The average joe adventurer, faction transferer, quester remains untouched as far as income, and thus, are unaffected.



EDIT: Forgot to add... the only thing that would really affect the average non-farmer is when they get lucky with a Black Dye, Ecto/Shard, or expensive rune - those items would drop in price and they just wouldn't make as much selling them. So they lose a little of that "OMG, I just found a XXXX!!!" feeling. Yay.

Well i dont know what to say really, after trying out the new modes of play after the update/nerf, i can only conclude that the game for me at least is now boring to the point of where i have nothing left to do in game, and more importantly i havent the drive to do it if there was a goal i felt i needed to complete.
I have played this game now for 18 months and approx 2800 hours, i have in that time completed Prophecies a dozen times with different characters, Factions three times and NF twice, i have one set of FoW armour and one set of Vabbian and the rest of my chars i clad in 15k armour, when i needed a few extra platinum i used to farm for it , beleiving in the ethic , the more you put into something the more you get out of it, and as a result of this i have been able to furnish ny characters with the best and 'coolest' (for want of a better word) armour and weapons.
I used to farm specifically if i wanted a particular item or armour (FoW), and contrary to popular belief this can become a grind beyond belief, i also used to farm for fun, my 55 used to farm all over the place, not just trolls and minos, the closer to the stars mission was always challenging and fun with a 55. What i am trying to say here is simply, by adjusting the drop allocations Anet have single handedly cut off any enthusiasm for whatever the game has left for me, i did a couple of troll farms before i casme on here to post and the results in both hard mode and normal mode were pretty much identical, from around twenty trolls i managed to accumulate two raven staffs , one wooden buckler and 100 gold. I can assume this is going to be the same right across the board.
Regarding hard mode, i really cannot be bothered to try to grind my way through Prophecies again especially when faced with DoA types of mobs, the same applies to Factions and doubly so for NF which was a grind to get two players through it let alone do it on hard mode.
For those that support the update , then good luck to you all, for me i think this is the end , of what was once the best game i have ever been involved with , nothing else has kept me this entertained for so long, or drove me to rant on forums about particular issues. For that i would like to say thank you to Anet, but recently the game has been changed beyond recognition for me, AoE nerf, SR nerf and now this poorly though through and implemented decision to scale loot drops... oh well i guess all good thing come to an end, and on that note i would like to say see ya, to all those who i have met ingame and on this forum.
Oh one last thing to those who say 'can i have your stuff '- no you f%^$in cant go farm for it