[Dev Update] Farming and Loot Scaling

OK, let's go through the list:

Skills are certainly available by just playing the game. Some Elite skills are harder than others to get, I admit, but that's part if the fun in playing the game. I don't want all Elite skills available right away.

Runes: You don't need runes to play the game, that said, as long as you don't want all Superiors you should be fine. (Unless you're talking about Nightfall's armor bonus insignia's, which IMO was a huge mistake.)

Inscriptions: For Nightfall players only, these suck for beginners. Luckily, there are plenty of Faction collector stuff available. Despite that, Nightfall at least has end Green's if nothing else.

1.5k armor: Totally achievable by just playing the game. You should have 10k at least. Nightfall again drops the ball with no Max Collector's armor, but that's more Nightfall's problem than Guild Wars as a whole.

Collector and Drop Weapons: You've lost me here. These are the things you can easily get by just playing the game. I still have a decent Purple Hammer that dropped that I still use. You don't need Max Perfect Golds to play the game... and in case you do, there are FREE chests in Nightfall that usually drop them.


Suggestions

More Free Chests: I'd like to see Free Chests in every land, not just Elonia. This would be more fair to those that don't own Nightfall, and reward those casual players that own all three. At the same time, a few more Golds on the market won't totally disrupt the economy.

Expanded Rune Quests: I liked the Minor Vigor rune quest in Nightfall, and you can't sell it. Expand these quests to allow players to get more Minor Runes of their choice (again, not sellable). Insignia Quests would be nice, too.

Greens should drop EVERYTIME: Whew, I'll get some heat for this. But seriously, are Greens for casual players or not? If yes, then they should be much more common. Anyone who wants a Green should be able to get one. Yes, this will destroy the Green economy, but honestly, aren't Greens just substitute collector items anyway? Meh, this probably won't happen but I wanted to throw it out there anyway.

Please list other suggestions/comments for making Guild Wars more beginner friendly. Consider not everyone has access to good Guilds or friends that help them out.

YMMV. I do not like farming, so avoid it as best I can.

The premise is that merely by playing the game, quests and missions, sans farming, you will not have sufficient funds given to buy whatever you do not find as an individual character, a complete "kit" of 1.5K armor, runes, skills, etc for yourself and all your heroes.

The yardstick for a complete "kit" would be acceptance into a good PUG, not those nazi "ping your skill bar" ones, and able to carry your weight.

The point from above is that farming is required, nothing more or less. I would advocate, as others have, that making the plot-driven gameplay of quests and missions be more rewarding would benefit the game.

Once again, we do not know the full effects of the loot adjustment. The loot overall seems about the same to me, but I am not a farmer.

And yes Darksun, we can agree to disagree. If you think tictactoe is a better analogy to GW than the Sims, then more power to you.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Think this is interesting, since the less you play the game, less you need to have all the crazy skills & such. I'd have to agree with Mordakai. I'm farming 2hrs a week max and it doesn't get me ahead much. Most of the stuff I get is from doing Missions(replaying them for fun or bonus), quests, & just helping out my friends with quests & such. I don't really play the games just to get through them, I play cuz I like getting my characters the way I like them, and I play cuz it's fun. I did Vizuna square many times, because I loved the idea of the 2 groups coming together and fighting waves of afflicted. And, consequently, I got lots of "stuff" from having fun. more than I need.

We have to. No game will make everyone happy. As for the analogy, I can't help it that you made a poor one. Sometimes they backfire.

My 1st thoughts after hearing solo farming net was too: great! Finally we can get teams to play in UW!! But no. They had to turn this into a joke as well. UW and FoW remain small cookie cutter farming team zones. What a disapointment! Ectos and shards should be farmed with full teams, not by small farming teams! This way the money in game is shared more evenly, and everyone gets to play!

Yes, I sometimes solo farm UW aatxes, grasping darknesses and smite crawlers with my W/Mo, but I'd rather play with full teams, full area. And I also stand there hours with my mesmer and ritualist trying to get in teams. ToA with the small farming teams is a very depressing place to other than the cookie cutter builds!

And what's the point selling golds to the players? You can make better money waste basketing your golds and entering back to farming, than trying to sell the golds! Rare items my eye! Gold items have always been cheap, easy to buy, and a real pain to sell!

Hah! They don't even act when WE report the bots. Let alone put their own paid workers after them. But I agree this would be a good thing.

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I try to remove my own duplicate messages, thank you. It's just that this site is so darn SLOW it takes time...

I don't understand why people are so against this. Maybe some one who is adamantly against this would kindly explain why making missions and quest more rewarding be less beneficial to the game?

You got me. I do not think that any extra reward structure set up by ANet would become more profitable per unit of time than farming, so even if they made gold rewards every time a quest was completed so they could be "farmed", it would not unbalance the game.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Hmm Gaile losing temper... I think I would have done that a lonnnnnnng time ago.

For adding Hard Mode: JeeJ, good move, I like a new challenge... but there are problems. I have a feeling Anet is promoting PUGing again... Which is not a bad idea, but sometimes turns out for the worst possible parties. Hench why a Survivor rather goes Hero/Friend way then pug it? At least the fault is with the player himself then if he messes up the title. This I don't mind.

What I ponder is, how big is this professional farming group Anet constantly refers to? I can understand people don't just want collectors items... but why change a winning concept? I was delighted when I heard about GW2. I still am, but I'm afraid Anet needs to find a way for their problems somewhere else.

What was the problem with the current normal mode? Want people to stop making real life cash with Guild Wars ingame money? Let one of the beta testers run the most known farm runs, figure out a time, and put a LOCK on that character/area for about 1 hour. End of pro farming, because no bot can be programmed to log back, and start farming again on a locked char. There will be flames... I don't care.

I'm a PvP player, where I hear tons of complements... about the inaccessibility of it. HA, TA? How hard is that for the casual player to get into a group to work for the title? Yet nothing gets done about the PvP area, where I think GW still has the perfect formula. Last couple of months we sort of heard GW1 is about to die out because of the coming of GW2. I mean no more new adventures. Hard mode will keep us busy for a while, indeed. Me and my friends enjoy it. I just don't get why a casual PvE player, like there's a lot of out there needs to get 'punished' by a farming group.

There was nothing wrong with the anti farming code, and solo-ing an area in normal mode isn't worth it. And with the current skills almost impossible in Hard Mode and the money isn't worth it.

I get the idea, get less ingame gold floating around, so prices will drop. < WRONG!!! that will not happen. Ecto's and shards will replace gold then, UW will become a popular farming ground again and money will be worthless... I already see the greenfarmers. WTS Flints wand 2 ecto... << sarcasm <<

For Gaile it's hard to stand between a dev and the community and in some way she does present our voices there, but as I said earlier, you guys build a wonderful game with a lot of potential, but atm Anets devs are just trying to stretch the date of people quiting. If my guild didn't do PvP I would have quit because of all the fuss of anti farming code+ AI trying to kite. I don't see the problem if you run into an area about 3 times, make maybe 10p and spend that on a couple white dyes... Lucky I saved up from the old days and I'll just sell up my black dyes to get the money if I need something from an NPC. Think about it, 1 mission, 8 human players with 500-1p max... that's 10-60 mins of work... and you can get just 1 rare material at the NPC...

I'm not complaining, as almost 2 year old player, I'm just surprised seeing the makers of a wonderful game, scaring their own fans away. Flame as much as you want or cut out things, facts are facts. Of 50 members of my guild, more then 34 only come online to PvP. That's just my guild... I'll stay in the best untouched part of GW, Player vs Player where no money is needed to do what you like to do, play a video game...

Last quote I can remember (end of 2005ish) was about Beacons Droknars runners... "We did not think of the level design it was able to taxi un-ascended players to Droknars, but if players want to earn their money by running, it is their choice to do so" PC Gameplay I believe... but yet the Devs did change the route so badly you couldn't even teach it to a new runner... we changed out builds and they went to new AI that really eliminated the pros from the casual runners...

There's 2 sides... one says, Anet what are you guys doing? Other side thinks, well at least PvE is challenging again in hard mode...

You're postulating that the demand for game gold is so inelastic that small changes to the supply would cause the price to plummet, and that they need to ride scarcity to keep the price up? On what truly is a luxury good?

I'll give IGE some credit, but they're not masterfully manipulating the market like the diamond cartels.

Besides, even if they were, the big gold sellers aren't farming it themselves. It's being farmed by much smaller operations that sell to the gold houses - and for each individual farmer, it makes sense to maximize production. They'd just be feeding into a vault (or e-equivilent), but they're not going to be the ones holding back.

In any case if you've paid any attention to the gold secondary market post-farming nerf, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Peace,
-CxE

I wouldn't need them if I wanted to monotonously grind away with the same skill bar. If I want to be able to create and expermiment with builds which is 3/4 the fun of gw, I do.

Skill quests are sorely lacking because you only ever get the skills for one of your secondaries. Hero trainers help, but they don't even give you enough hero points to buy your primary skills with them, let alone skills for your secondaries. The number of hero skills you can get is capped when you run out of blessings.

As far as your challenge goes, I would point to anyone who has ever achieved UAS. Killing the Lich is not the end of GW, it is just the beginning.

All great ideas!
I would also like to add this one
6) Increase the XP rewards from quest and missions and allow the option to buy skills for 2 skill points and 0 gold.

If they either:

• Increased the gold you get from normal play to the point where you can afford the fixed gold sinks
• Reduced the fixed cost goldsinks to the point where you could afford them with normal play

many of the complaints would go away.

I originally started this explanation when I was short on time, and I felt that it needed more. I had originally assumed that the SWG debacle was fairly common knowledge among the gaming community as most people I talk to have at least heard of what happened. However, with the questions by lyra_song and others, I think a more detailed explanation is in order, considering how many parallels can be drawn between what happened there and what is happening here.

So for starters, my first post on the topic:
This is the main gist of what happened, at least so far as restricting the players. However, there is much, much more that went wrong.

For starters, when SWG went online, it was a pretty good game. It had some issues with travel, etc., but a lot of these were worked out early on with a couple of updates. The main problem was the proliferation of bugs. They weren't so bad as to make the game unplayable, but the bugs in the game often made it annoying, and the greatest complaint from the players was that bugs needed to be fixed.

Something on the order of a year and a half or so after launch (not entirely certain on time frame as I wasn't there from day one, so don't quote me on that one), the devs decided that PvP in the game was not "balanced." Sure, there were some players who had said this, but it was a small group, especially considering that PvP really wasn't a huge part of the game. There was supposed to be a "Galactic Civil War," but there was never really much to do for it, no real epic battles or anything, so PvP mostly ended up being one-on one duels between players. Anyway, SOE decided to release the "Combat Upgrade," or CE, which was changed a lot of the unseen mechanics of combat, as well as changing(nerfing, rather) many of the skills in the game for the sake of "balance." Guess what? After all that, no one had any illusion that combat was now "balanced," or in any way improved. On top of that, the bugs remained. SOE's PR reps made a great show of listening to the players, who had many suggestions for improvements to the game, but above all had been "FIX THE BUGS!" This whole time, the PR reps continued to keep subscriptions active and sell new expansions by promising "we're working on it and the problems will be fixed." Yet the CE came and went, many glaring bugs, no community input was used on the balance(or anything else for that matter), and many players began to read the writing on the wall. The months following the CE saw the first major drop in players, but on the whole, there was still a viable, active community with enthusiasm for the game and hope that SOE would still fulfill their promises.

About six months later, sometime around November 1st 2004, SOE announced the NGE. It was a massive overhaul that virtually changed every aspect of the game. It stripped every aspect of individuality and customization that the players had invested in their characters, and forced everyone into cookie-cutter molds. And it was set to release on the 15th, a mere two weeks away. Their was an uproar over a change this big on such short notice. Players were outraged when they discovered that the NGE had been in the works for well over a year, long before they had even begun pitching the idea of the CE to the players. SOE had been lying through their teeth about what changes were coming, and what new features were in store for the game, as they never had any intention of actually implementing them. SOE claimed that they had conducted extensive research and focus groups with players to determine that the NGE was what they wanted in the game. However, none of these so-called player focus groups could be found for comment, and nothing in the NGE was anything like what had been suggested by players in any of the official forums. Players felt they had been fed a bait and switch, they bought one product and were given another. Many felt that they had been paying to play a beta test for two years or more. SOE claimed that they made the changes to broaden their playerbase and bring in new customers. Too bad they didn't seem to care about keeping the ones they already had. Personally, I was upset, but trying to be optimistic I stayed for a few months after the NGE to try it out. It stank. And you know what? It still wasn't "balanced."

Meanwhile, throughout the existence of the game, there were the jedi. Jedi was the alpha class, the best in the game, both in terms of prestige and capability. In order to create a jedi character, it had to be "unlocked" through an intense and lengthy grinding process. There were actually two methods over the course of the game, both difficult and time consuming. A dedicated, hardcore player might unlock a jedi in a few months time. A casual player could do it, but you had to be dedicated enough that you spent nearly every moment you had in game doing something to work towards it. I decided to do this, and I spent the better part of a year working to become a jedi. Then, when it was within a couple months' reach, the NGE. The grind to become a jedi was removed. Instead, jedi were now one of the nine playable professions, anyone could start out as a jedi. And guess what? It quickly became apparent that the jedi stank like last weeks roadkill. They had become the only truly melee based combat profession, and they were horrible at it, easily being picked off at range. So much for balance, and so much for working towards rewards.

Now you may ask, what does all this have to do with Guild Wars? Other than half the title, the games are nothing alike, are they? Well, true to an extent, but this lesson is more about how the dev team handled the game than any specific game mechanics. Here's a few lessons I that think would be in Anet's best interest to learn from.

1. Be honest with your players. Don't use your PR reps to try to pacify the masses by telling them what you think they want to hear. Don't give only a partial story. Don't lead them in one direction while steering the game in another. If you're having problems, let them know, players will generally be forgiving if they feel you are being forthright with them. If they think that you're hiding something though, they'll be all over you.

2. Listen to your players. They've had a lot of experience playing your game and others, and they often have a lot of good ideas. Not all may be reasonable or even possible. If an idea just can't be done, tell them, but don't let them feel that you're not listening at all. Also, if you have a choice between one of your ideas and players' ideas, go with the players, they are after all the ones you want to keep buying your products.

3. Don't sacrifice the fun of the game for "balance." Balance is a bit of a myth, the game will always be in flux, and every player seems to have a different idea of what makes the game "balanced," so how are you possibly going to satisfy everyone with it? Yes there has to be some level of balance, but it can't be the ultimate goal of anything and everything. If a game isn't perfectly balanced, but the players still enjoy it, why bother tweaking it and risking a backlash? Beware thoughts like "this is great, but it could be better if we just add one little thing..." As they say, "if it ain't broke," and so on. If a game isn't perfect at the start, fine, it's still the game people buy and get used to. Small changes and minor adjustments may be in order, but once a game gets momentum going, major changes are going to put you at odds with a lot of the players. If new content unbalances old content, change the new rather than the old, you'll upset a lot fewer people.

4. Be careful with "end game" rewards. If you have some sort of difficult to obtain, end all, be all, ultimate item, or even lesser rewards, make sure to protect them above all else. What I mean is, you can't have something that takes players a significant investment of time and effort to obtain, and then remove it from the game, make it less than it was, or make it more difficult to get. Many players work a long time to get these items, and those who have them don't want them cheapened. Those who are striving to get them don't take kindly to having their goal snatched away, whether it's removed completely or just moved further beyond their grasp. Once things like this are in a game, they're best left alone and kept as is. When players put that much of themselves into reaching for something, they get very offended when something about it changes.

Over the past several months, with changes to skills, game mechanics, and now the loot system and economy, I've noticed a disturbing trend of disregard for these lessons. No, Anet has not made changes as drastic as SOE did, but they are gradually moving in a direction that many players are unahppy with. Skill changes in the name of balance upset the PvE base. The SR nerf was one of the biggest issues here, and even when Anet admits that their fix isn't the right one, they still leave it in place and try to come up with a way to tweak the fix rather than trying the players' solutions. And now, with the loot changes, it seems that Anet is intent to tell it's players one thing while doing another, either intentionally or through incompetence. Also, making it harder for casual players to achieve their long-term goals by this potential upset of the economy is a surefire way to bring the house down on their heads.

A lot of us have argued over the details of the effects of the recent changes, but even many of those who have opposed my opinions have agreed that the casual players are hit the worst by this update, the same players we are told it was supposed to help. And whether or not it really does cause all this harm, the fact is that there is a large perception that it is a bad idea, and Anet is doing little to allay anyone's fears. Even if it turns out that we are all wrong, the damage is done, players have already begun leaving the game. Now, Guild Wars is nowhere near being past saving, but if it is to be saved, Anet needs to turn things around soon. They need to start truly listening to the players, they need to be open with us about their intentions, and they need to seriously think things through before making these kinds of changes. They need to decide first whether or not the changes will actually do any good, and secondly if the good is worth upsetting however many players may be affected by it. If Anet fails in this, they'll have a lot of angry customers. The way the game is set up, they won't lose any subscriptions over it, but they've already announced at least two more Guild Wars products, and it's not going to be good if they destroy relations with their best group of potential buyers: the current players.

Exactly, and as far as I can tell, Anet has put themselves on the path of doing just that.

Agree with all of this, and what Lyra wrote. I am 100% for increased income for everyone, no matter what they choose to do. I am also 100% against one type of playstyle getting most of the income. Obviously, if you work harder at it, be it high-level farming, or high-level adventuring, you get bigger rewards.

lol Lyra

Ive already done that awhile ago and had even posted the results. I even made it harder to. no running no short cuts and i did it on a mesmer lol. ill tell you the results youll be surprised alittle. She finished prophecies with a little over 37k and droks armor and perfect weapons.

I 'm sorry to say that Angelic Upstart's comments pretty much sums up the effect the last "update" has had on me! I have only played once after it - because it just wasn't the same game at all. A lot of the fun was seeing what would drop, knowing something would drop, even if it wasn't great stuff. At least I could grind away and eventually get enough to buy 15k armor or that rune or purchase a green weapon from someone.

I finally finished one of my 3 campaigns (NF) but don't even waste my time in DoA because it's just too hard. Now I'm faced with three DoA like campaigns if I am going to make a few lousy K! I prefer to stay alive and take on mobs that I and my friends or heroes can actually kill. Now doing that nets me... well practically nothing.

I understand Anet's desire to nerf the bots and well they should but there must be a way to do it without changing the game so drastically. It seems like people have gone from being excited about the prospects available in the Eye of The North and GW2 to quiting all together. In the end this is a game and if it isn't fun I won't play and I'm sure a lot of people are contemplating the same thing.

I am sick of these players...If I don't show my build they kick me. Discrimination. I won't share my build at the fear of it getting nerfed. I had the best farming build ever then I showed someone by pinging. A day later it got nerfed. I am not pleased.

Nerf that stupid SKILL SHARE WINDOW!

amen to that. This game is less than fun. I log in then log back out and quit.
Where's the appeal?!? Gone with the rest of the bloody fun stuff.

I wonder how many of the grind based money sink titles are now simply not achievable.

Take the Sweet Tooth title track:

Buying sufficient Red Bean Cakes to gain the highest level title would cost 2 million gold.

If you are lucky and farmed sugary items during the events you may be able to get say 1000 items in the course of a year.

This reduces the cost to 1.8 million gold.

I don’t know the exact figures, but I am going to be generous – let us say that playing normaly through the game can now net you 100k.

That leaves 1.7 million gold to find.

Without being able to go out and farm, where on earth (or in Guild Wars for that matter) are you supposed to get that kind of money?

Yes, some people may be able to solo farm ectos. Some may be able to farm in DOA. Some people may get that one in a million ultra rare lucky drop. The less skilled (or less lucky) player who could previously achieve the title by having the pure persistence to farm lots and lots and lots of minotaur or termites or trolls now has no hope whatsoever.

The same applies to the drunkard track, the lucky/unlucky tracks, and to an extent the treasure hunter/seeker of wisdom tracks too. (Some people may be lucky and be able to make a profit from chests, but they are only there as a gold sink - so for the majority of people opening chests = lose money in the long run)

I am sure that there will be comments along the lines of “but you don’t need these titles”. This is absolutely true, you don’t need them. Not needing something is not the same as not wanting to try and get it.

If the recent changes are left as is, then there really needs to be some kind of rebalancing of the money sink titles, or some other way of obtaining these titles needs to be introduced that would enable the titles to be gained by working for them over a reasonable length of time.

Exactly my point. Gold is always going to come in one way or the other.

U say "control", but in what way is it really controlling it? The way I see it is that only money from low end farming is nerf. Cash from other sections of the game for e.g Hard Mode has been addded if not buffed. The money is still coming from other places. In other words, the economy has seen no real dramatical changes or decreases, if not more inflation. The only difference is that now money will be more availble to the hardcore farmers and casual players are left even poorer. All it does is a redistribution of riches where the poor gets poorer and Rich gets richer. In other words, while Anet say that this update was aimed at making things more available to the casual players, it does exactly the opposite.

Dun't get me wrong. I do agree there is a need to control the economy, but this is one of the worse way to do it. Buffing the rewards of quest/missions would have for one, been much more beneficial than this update. And it would be more on the spot too.

Completely agree with that part though. If their aim was to change the casual players;s main source of income from common items to rare items, then they should have added an in-game auction system to facilitate this transition.( which is highly unlikely unfortunately). But still, relying on a rare drops is still a highly unreliable source of income. What Anet should have done if they wanted this update to work was to add other means for casual players to make money, e.g buff rewards for quest/missions and then people would have at least a reason to play those quests/missions. Coz the way they stand at the moment, quests/missions are mostly a chore and with hench+ heroes feel more like a boring useless grinding than anything else.

Im doing it in Cantha with a melee char (Explosion ftl!!)

But ya...post up your results. id love to see it.

Im cataloging my results (money earned, money spent, weapons gained, skills learned, time spent)

Cantha has zero running and shortcuts anyway.

I had a friend play SWG, and he said it was pointless to become a Jedi. Evidently, and this is off of memory, he played back in the old days and was a Bounty Hunter, and he was making bank all the time off of bounties put down by players on players. He was a total ambusher from rooftops and such, and just on that premise which tickled me pink, I almost joined except for the $15 a month thing.

I totally understand your point because you phrase it so well.

To what you are describing in your post, would it be fair to say that the devs at SWG were in a proverbial "ivory tower"? I do not know about you, but the terms "willful disconnect from the everyday world" and "intellectual elitism" seem to me to apply. They are/were ignoring the player base and outright lying to them. That's a total lack of respect.

Any insular group (with the so-called "in" crowd) is in danger of that.

Since this whole thread is really about ANet, why not ask the same questions of them? If ANet is not in their ivory tower, then reading this post will not bother them, because it does not apply.

I appreciate the insightful post! I may be quoting you on other threads.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

^^ That sounds fun. I think similar ideas have been posted in sardelac for GW2.

Us included. We at fan forums are quite loud. Some of you dont understand or appreciate just how much pull you have on Anet's decisions.

However, i don't think we have all the data. No matter how good you are in this game, you can't vouch for the gameplay experience of someone else unless they directly tell you.

I wish Anet would release their figures so we can give better feedback based on hard data that we cannot obtain.

That's the situation exactly, at least as far as we players saw it.

If they are not in their ivory tower, then where are they? I won't say that Anet has distanced themselves from the players as much as SOE had, but seriously, where are they? There have been plenty of valid concerns about these updates expressed by the players in this and other threads and forums. Every day I see new posts of people saying they are leaving the game and have no intention of purchasing any more GW products. If Anet is so connected to the playerbase, shouldn't they be doing some serious damage control? At the very least, even if they don't care at all for the players, they should be concerned with future sales. I think their lack of response or efforts to allay any fears speaks loudly to the fact that there is a disconnect.

No problem, quote me wherever you like , glad I could help.

I vouch for my own personal experience, and that of my friends and guildmates who feel the same way. A lot of what we do in these forums is speculation based on our best understanding, but there's also enough people relating their own experiences to validate the points that have been made against this update, at least to the extent that it requires further consideration and explanation.

I agree, this information, or for that matter, any information at all, would be extremely helpful.

There is no data to support this phantom inflation. And it will take more than a week to see changes. Are tombs uber expensive? Of course. Every new item is. You certainly can't use that as an example. Black dye went up far before the scaling.

As I said before, It doesn't matter that cash is still coming in, it always will. You need to control the rate & how it comes in. They are trying to focus it so that people who farm get better items and sell them to players, instead of just tons of gold. That means the low end farmers that you say are getting hammered have an easier time getting rares. (since normal mode is a bit easier & rares don't scale)

This may all go nowhere but their logic is sound and I don't see this economic panic that people are complaining about actually manifesting itself.

For some reason, I found it harder to farm solo in UW now. Granted that they won't run away much when I used AoE spells but them smites can dished out huge amount of damage in shorter time than before.

Selling items to other players??? Ha-ha-ha...

As far as there is no any mass-trading system (like auction f.e.) to sell rare items to others, player need:

- figure out right price (how?)
- find the right place to spam your "WT S." to every channel.
- sit there for hours spamming and spam all this annoying "WTS" garbage to other ppl instead of playing game.

Is this the way ANet want us to play the game??? It is not fun for me.

This problem could be solved by adding traders for green/yellow items as it already done for dyes and crafting materials.

Well, I can assure you that I am not one of the better players of GW, if that is what you mean. I am very sure that I fall into the "average" category. In fact, I am not particularly interested in Hard Mode, because at times (cough*realmoftorment*cough) I have difficulty with normal mode. That, and I have so much left to do in Normal mode as well. I have not finished NF or Factions with all my characters yet.

So yeah, me being an average joe with a wife and job, I have an axe to grind---errrrrr, I mean issue that I forward when I see it. Make the game easier, more accessible. I have young relatives and kids of friends etc that quit the game, even though they can sign in again anytime no fees, because it was too difficult.

So I am arguing to buff mesmers in another thread, because hopefully any buff will make the game easier and more accessible. I am gonna bat for my home team, so to speak, anytime, anyplace.

I think pre-searing ascalon is awesome. I can run around and have fun without the constant edge-of-death challenge that ANet seems to cater to.

I would not object to such catering, were I not the one who feels he gets on the short end of the stick. I have nothing to lose by speaking my mind. And if I get flamed from fellow posters who claim all sorts of expertise in-game and connections to ANet, then good. I hope I get under their skin and rattle them, because it means that I am on to something. Like my grandpa used to say, the bees do not get too mad at ya until you whack their hive. They can get all kinds of mad at me, but I am making them think.

So as far as ANet and influence, I hope so. I hope that they listen to everyone's suggestions, regardless of their grand or humble origins. In fact, there are few suggestions that I have seen on this board that I would shoot down or attack merely because things are the way they are now so change is bad mmmmkay, and I think that is reflected in my posts, and in why I and some people keep meeting on the same side or across the virtual battlefield of this forum.

So keep on posting, be it for or against me, and take nothing I have to say as personal, because it is not. I am not always the grand orator, but I try.

And as always, we do not know the long-term effects of the loot alteration.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

As an (ex) occasional low level I don't agree with that. Most rares are not worth much (from my admittedly limited understanding of gold / purple pricing). In any case the major reward from low level farming was the gold, and the blue and white items. I don't get them anymore so I don't farm anymore.

My problem with the update is not the economic impact (which I think is impossible to predict with the limited data we have) but simply that it makes the game less fun (for me, that is, as I'm not about to start speaking for anyone else).

I'm new to this forum, so I'm curious about ANet's customer relations process. That is:

- release an update that some people don't like
- post a poor rationale for the changes (which includes statements that are incorrect),
- get upset over the criticism of it,
- leave the forum, and
- then say nothing else.

Can anyone tell me if this is standard operating procedure for ANet or is this an exception?

You're presenting a false dichotomy. There is a middle ground between having eight skills and having 300 skills, and I am fully confident that the game can be enjoyed somewhere in that range, having done so with all of my characters.

Again, there is no area in the game that requires you to have every skill available to you. UAS is an option, not a requirement.

I agree, Anet should take note of those suggestions. That said, I can't help but feel that you and other posters are presupposing that Anet isn't living up to those suggestions. When Gaile posted to explain the reasoning behind the update, she was ripped apart before anyone even tried to understand her comments. Instead of looking at the update notes with an open mind, many posters nitpicked them for any chance to accuse her of lying.

It's ironic that ArenaNet is being accused for not listening to players, while on other (more respectful) forums, Gaile has spent the last several days collecting numerical user feedback to report back to the developers so they can remedy some of the perceived problems with the loot system. Respect is a two-way street, and if certain players can't exhibit a minimal amount of self-restraint, ArenaNet has no obligation to take their criticisms seriously.

The update should not have affected normal mode drops in groups (apart from removing the "anti-farming code"). If you are noticing a significant difference, I'm sure ArenaNet would be interested in collecting specific information from you regarding that problem.

I agree that it would be interesting to see, but ArenaNet has no obligation to reveal confidential customer information to us, which is why it's unlikely to happen.

From my personal experience, my friends and guildmates have not been significantly affected by the update, except for hard mode, which many of them are enjoying.

The reality of the situation is probably somewhere in the middle. The only way to know for sure how the update will affect all players is to have access to player data, so only ArenaNet will have the best view of the big picture.

I would also caution you on your extrapolation of player opinions to the full population. With a population of 3 million players, you would need to sample hundreds of randomly selected players to get any sort of accurate picture of the situation. Choosing all your samples from the same guild or the same forum is hardly meaningful at all, as it will introduce significant bias.

Getting all the skills is a waste of time in my opinion and money burner since it cost 1k to buy a cap signet and few minutes to hours to cap the skills that you wanted.

Heh-heh, it is exactly what I'm doing now for every character's primary profession. Yeah, a bit hard for 10 characters.

I'm glad that ANet are trying to get some feedback. I agree with your comment about respect being a two-way street but I'd suggest that ANet's original explanation itself wasn't very respectful which is what led to some of the rather intolerant responses.

I don't think its nitpicking to suggest that the section I've quoted above, particularly the last sentence, is not really correct. I wouldn't, and didn't, call it a lie because that's (a) rude and (b) suggests that it was a deliberate falsehood.

I think ANet fell into the typical PR response of never wanting to tell people bad news. Their update negatively impacted a certain group of players (casual farmers). Instead of being upfront about this, explaining why, and perhaps even apologising, they decided to spin the change as being good for everyone which really isn't the case. So perhaps, everyone should be more careful about what they say, forum members and ANet representatives.

Well the skills and armor part is not true. I've had to farm ALOT before I could buy my first 1.5K armors. I had to farm even more for all the skills I wanted.

I didn't run and did most of the quests. Don't forget that ALOT of players buy better armor everytime they see it (Like in ascalon, yak's bend, Lion's Arch... etc).

'You don't NEED these armors'.

Yes, you do. Some players can play through the game with starter armor, until they get 1,5K armor, but alot can't.

Skills I don't need to explain. Before, you farmed some and could buy a skill. Now you gotta kill monsters for like 1 hour for 1 skill

And for people having 8+ chars... It'll take 64 hours for just 8 skills. People having 2 accounts, and 16 chars: 128 hours.

Wonder what effect this will have on common materials that farmers aren't getting much of anymore. Less white and blue items means less common salvage for materials.

Rare materials will probably decrease in cost as they are exempt from the loot scaling, but common materials will probably increase in cost.

I had a similar experience to you, reetkever. I am really a bit bashful to ask this, but I am just curious as to why you & I have such dramatically different stories about going through PvE storymode than manitoba?

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

The balance is: what good is the money when bots (using the same method you use, only more efficiently & consistently) ruin the prices of things in game because players just buy the gold? Also, I am confused as to what makes whites & blues more fun than purples & golds? At least the rare items can be USED if not sold.
They are trying to balance quantity vs quality because bots can take advantage of quality. I still think they have work to do (an auction system will be integral to getting this new way of looking at it to work) but this is by far the best philosophy I have seen.

These "nurfs" are much more complex then people give them credit. And having to balance stopping bots, controlling the economy, keeping the value & rarity of items reasonable, adjusting the difficulty of the game, & making sure it's still fun (which is relative to each of those points since any of them can make it not fun)

You forgot [/spin]

ANET is more attentive to it's customers than most games. All this crap about "ohh they never listen to us" is so slanted. It's NOT true that most companies do exactly what the fans want. Has anyone heard about the Shaman nerf? Makes the Paragon nerf look inconsequential. And these are fans that are continually paying for the game weather they play or not.
"get upset over the criticism of it" oh please. Making objections to personal insults is hardly getting upset over "criticism"

Tobasco, I don't think your experience is that far off from everyone else's. I just think you have a different perspective of what you value and/or find frustrating. My first character bought armor at most of the armor vendors before Droks. But with my second I was a better fighter and bought only about 3 sets before 1.5k. By, around my 5th character I used only collectors until 1.5k. As for skills I just did quests to unlock them, then occasionally bought another. I budgeted my $ & time. I still do. I don't buy a skill unless I can think of a way to integrate it into my fighting styles ahead of time. The only difference is that I don't remember farming for anything I needed except materials. I dunno. It may be possible you guys are buying way too many skills, or that you feel spending any time collection anything is a waste. I think that's part of the genre.

I'm way late to the party on this topic.

I was one of those "casual" farmers. I admit it. I farmed vermin with my ele and then sold everything I got at the merchant. I made about 1K per run. I seldom got a gold in this area, but I did get many whites, blues, and purples, and vermin hides. The only thing I would try to sell to other players were Shredders Talons, which I would take to the Monastery and sell for 300-500g to new assasins.

I would estimate the total runs I made per week was around 20. So I would make 20k during a weeks time. I used the gold I got to buy new armors, runes, and dyes for my characters and I shared a lot with 2 of my guild mates.

So ya, I am hurt by the new loot scaling. My steady method of income is gone. It is the only way I made money. I don't farm greens. I don't farm ectos. I don't farm for golds to sell. So how am I to make money now? Whatever method I use it won't make me gold near as fast.But strangely I am not all that upset about it.

My only problem with Gaile's post is the part regarding player trading. Like many here on guru I think that is just laughable. They want to encourage players to trade with each other but give us no easy, quick, reliable method of doing so. Well, I refuse to stand in towns chatting WTS WTS WTS over and over and over. Its annoying. Its extremely time consuming. I just won't do it. I want to play! not stand in town for hours.

If Anet really wants this whole thing to work and to have more player trading they need to give us some sort of passive way to do it. Let us set up "stores" that we can leave the item and the price we want so we can go play and come back later to collect the goods.

I wasn't saying that blues and whites were more fun than purples and golds (it was neat seeing the odd purple or gold in the heap of other loot), just that there were more of them, so they made up more of the total value of a quick vermin farming run.

All of the money I was getting from farming went to buying (or saving up for) fixed price items (skills, keys, and armour primarily) so I wasn't affected by the crazy prices for items. The last part may sound selfish, but I'm only trying to explain my opinion of the change. Also, for what its worth, because all my cash goes to merchants and not to other players, I can safely say that my farming wasn't contributing to inflation.
now I'm editing my reply to your edit of your reply ...
There is never a good reason for personal insults over this kind of stuff, but I did a quick review of the thread about an hour ago, and I only counted two comments that were insulting to Gaile personally. There was a lot of harsh criticism of the content of her posts (but not of her personally), which may not be fun to deal with but I don't think it's unreasonable. Now two insults is two too many, but I'm don't think it's sufficient reason to write off the entire thread.

You and I are in the exact same boat. Vermin runs were very quick to do. They dropped a large amount of low level items. Selling everything to a merchant was a fast, easy way to earn a reasonable amount of gold. I honestly couldn't care less what mods the rare items had cause I knew that I was NOT going to try to sell them to another player. Merchant money was good and free of hassle.

And like you all my money was used to buy items from NPC merchants. Especially Signets of Capture I finally reached Legendary Skill Hunter but and a HUGE cost. 290 skills=290K!! How the hell was I ever to make 290K by "casually" playing the game and buying and selling with others? I would spend all my time in town and NONE of my time hunting bosses.

I am having trouble understanding where Anet is coming from on this one. Once again they don't fix what is really broken (bots) and come up with a fix that hurts the very gamers they are trying to help. I mean if they can pull up a log of how many times I enter and leave an area they can surely come up with a way to track characters that perform the exact same movements from point A to point B in a town and ban them. Just look at granite citadel. Every bot there follows the exact same footsteps. Enter town, run to merchant, run to sign post by the gate, run out the gate. Not to hard to stop that IMO.

My point was that if what you really found fun was making money, than venues are still there.(the problem is that without an auction system people like yourself may never want to make use of those venues) GW is an online game so it's made for a society of people. that being said, the fixes being put in place need to fix everything (including things with variable prices: Runes, Dye, Materials).

what do you mean "write off the entire thread"?
thinks like: We are reading the comments, but I have to tell you, a few of them are just "skim 'n' move on" because there's nothing of value but rants and rage-quit commentary.
Are completely reasonable. If you think that most people are giving solid, tested, reasonable advice, I disagree. I don't know, Gaile has been really good about this forum. She's had things wrong more than a few times, but I kind of expect that from everyone.


um.. that's... why you get... a title? Because you are not a casual player?
I see your point. We need an auction system to make this really take hold.

Well, the majority of my time has been spent with friends and such going through missions helping them. I have been through THK more times than I can say because I will help people in it when others are like "oh heck no". The rest of it I spend running my 7 characters through the storyline and/or capping skills. My story I think is typical of GW? I have spent more time going back to where I have been then spent going through new content.

So when Lyra_song suggested making missions reward more, I was slapping my forehead. That's a good idea - and I am going to mention it a lot from now on.

I have been told by others that my expectations of getting the majority of skills is unrealistic by merely playing the game through without farming. Prophecies was not that way, it gave you skills as quest rewards and that was awesome. Enter Factions and Nightfall, and those non-core added skills are a plat a pop for my 5 Proph characters. I am pretty sure that playing through the 12 missions for the Prophecies characters in Factions was not enough money in rewards to pay for all those skills, per character. Nightfall was better, but substituted grind for hero skill points? A reasonable mechanic but not really my idea of perfect.

So the farming began. I can only take so much of it, so it is still an ongoing process. I do want all skills. It is crazy, but that is my goal. I do use the wiki, and many of my skill acquisitions are based on what it says for new areas as the skills you use to win.

I am glad that you and manitoba had better experiences, but you may be in the minority.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Fair enough. For what its worth, the fun came from earning some money, killing the bad guys and seeing the ground covered with loot afterwards (even if it was mostly low value loot). The auction system is a problem. I still have one decent (I think) gold sword I haven't sold to the merchant as it may be worth a reasonable amount of gold, but I just can't be bothered to go through the hassle of trading it.

Again, fair enough, my question about whether or not this was typical behaviour was an honest one, not a disguised dig. I certainly didn't claim that everything stated in the thread was reasonable, if it was it would be very atypical of an online forum.

But I think there is some stuff worth reading, a number of people have made what seem like sensible suggestions, and from ANet's point of view even the ranting and rage-quit stuff is feedback of some sort.

Aye, that's the rub.

Honestly, I have little reason to call that a dig. Even when Gaile said she was REALLY angry, she never went overboard.

You have to be realistic about your approach to input. Fan input has destroyed just as much as it has helped, just because people say they want something doesn't mean it good. GW is very different than other MMOs. I doubt fan input would have created such a great, unique game. You need a brain behind the scenes picking what comments work best with the project. That means some comments you need to toss out. I'd say you could do much worse than skimming rants.