[Dev Update] Farming and Loot Scaling

Normally I wouldn't care, but the lack of proper trade system(even after 2 years!) just makes this post by Gaile(I know it's not her fault) sound like a complete farce.

Then she should take care not to post such obvious contradictions. I'm sorry, but if she's been a PR rep for this long and doesn't understand the nature of the job or the community she interracts with, then something is wrong. I absolutely do not condone the actions of those who resorted to personal insults. That being said, whenever a statement of potential "bad news" is made by a company rep to it's customers/investors, they will examine what was said from every angle and find the flaws. There have been enough flaws pointed out here to raise suspicion, and even more suspicious is the lack of explanation. Even when these concerns are raised on othere sites, all I have seen is a repetition of the same statements as to what Anet's intent is, and not the why or how of it. They are basically saying, "trust us, we know what we're doing, even if it looks completely opposite." I'm sorry, not good enough, if you want my trust, you're going to have to stop insulting my intelligence and give me some sort of explanation.

While I agree that respect both ways is absolutely necessary for truly meaningful dialogue, a lack of respect shown by a few in no way absolves Anet of obligations to paying customers. As far as I'm concerned, Anet threw the first punch by feeding us a half-baked story about how good their intentions were without giving any real substance that could stand up to scrutiny. It's insulting to suggest that we could not see the blatant contradictions and fallacies, and even more insulting that since then, they have remained silent, which as far as I"m concerned only reinforces my opinions about their disconnect from the playerbase.


I do the best with what I've got. I take in what Anet tells me, what I see with my own eyes, what I'm told by people I trust, and I add it all up. That's the best I have to go on since I don't have the resources to conduct a massive polling effort of players. The simple fact is that a massive, in depth study should not be required to tell the players, "hey, guess what? You're game is still good!" If my perception of the game is that it is no longer as fun as it once was, then Anet has done something wrong. If I were just one lone voice complaining, I could be ignored and written off as an anomaly. However, in as much as forums like these are a semi-decent sampling of players, I think there are enough with the same concerns that Anet has some serious explaining to do.

Who said that whites and blues were "more fun?" They may not be fun, but whites and blues are the bread and butter of the casual farmer, while the occasional rare is the filet mignon. It's nice when you get it once in a while, but you can't live off of it alone, it's too rare of an occurence to be fulfilling. I realize that the problem is that this is the same method that the bots use to make money. From this though, it should be inherently obvious that any attempt to control bots through loot rates will have a significant impact on a large portion of the players as well. If Anet felt that the sacrifice of those players' experience was worth it to make a hit against bots, fine, that could be considered a valid decision. But don't make a change like this and then come here and tell us that it was done to make things easier for the casual player when it's obvious that the opposite is the actual effect.

Others have cautioned me about making generalizations based on the words of a few. Anet would do well to do the same. Automatically categorizing all complaints as "rants," and statements of leaving the game because of disinterest as "rage-quit commentary," means that they are throwing out a lot of rational well thought-out statements about what's wrong with their actions. This attitude only results in Anet deceiving themselves into believing that the situation is not as bad as it truly is. Going back to my SWG analogy, SOE continued with the NGE by telling themselves and the players that "sure there's opposition, but it's only a vocal minority." They minimized the problems in their own minds to the point that they ignored what the community had been screaming at them. Well, it didn't take long after the NGE for events to prove that the problems were a whole lot bigger than SOE pretended they were.

(boldface added for emphasis)

Which is exactly why many of us are cautious about simply taking her word on this one. Given the past history, you can't blame us for our skepticism.

And I would say that 300 skills is about the right amount for a character has been played casually for 6 months (1-2 hrs/night being spread out accross 10 characters). It allows for most primary skills and ~5-20 skills from your secondary professions. I am equally confident of this because without changing skills after clearing an instance or two GW gets very old very fast.

Short answer, Nomen Mendax. But that was a discussion with him.

Since she never categorized all complaints there should be no problem.

Maybe, just maybe she's talking about people who really are contributing nothing. This is silly. Insulting comments, personal attacks & "uninstall successful" images hardly constitute well thought-out statements. There is nothing proving they don't like feedback. There are way too many reasons for them not adding features people request to assume that they just ignore us.


I can if your skepticism is unrealistic. There is alot more crap dumped from this forum than from ANET. You honestly think Gaile has no good reason to be skeptical of the garbage that come from some people here? You gotta be kidding me. This thing goes both ways. Gaile's track record might not be perfect, but it blows away the collective honesty/accuracy of this forum.

I never said that there was going to be a huge inflation. What i was saying if you read carefully , instead of trying to hear what you wanted to hear, is that the economy is going to be about the same. You are reading too far in the "if not an inflation" bit. In no way, did I say that there was going to be a certain inflation. The possiblity of an inflation or recession is still there, and will still be there whether the update is here or not. The previous incarnation of the update ,on the other hand, is something different and did ,in fact, incline more towards an inflation. Hence, the "if not an inflation". But I have to agree that this was poorly written and was open to misinterpretation. Apologies on that.

You mention "tombs". But who are getting those items? As far as i know, they only drop in hard mode. It's not really where the casual gamers are. That means that you are infact proving how right my argument was in the 1st place. The poor gets poorer and rich gets richer.

So, no, that did not cause a huge recession in prices or even a huge inflation. So, what was the purpose of that update then? Was it not to make things more available to casual gamers? And how is it making things more available to casual gamers?

As I said before, for this update to work as intended, Anet should add alternate way of revenue for the casual players. Suggestions are plenty on this thread. But, on its own, this update does nothing in helping the casual gamers as it claims to do.

This is also what I said. The one that said otherwise was Arcanemacabre, not me.

What you are missing is that most of the time, "rare" as you say, does not even warrant their status of rare. Most of the time, the rare are crap. 90% of the rare drops are useless. The perfect one or rare skin are way too erratic to really be considered as a good source of income. That's like relying on a lottery to sustain your basic need.

That's the problem. It does not fix the economy nor makes it worse. There is going to be no real change in the economy as far as I see. It will always fluctuate. New drops when they are 1st found will always cost a lot, and their prices will drop during the following weeks if not days.

The people who brought the economy in the discussion in the 1st place was in fact those who favoured the update. Saying that there is going to be a huge recession due to that, which I have yet to see. The whole statement that the economy is going to get worse is nothing more than a direct response to the claim that there will be a huge recession. IMO, both are far-fetched. Prices are going to stay about the same, but the purchasing power of rich people will increase while those of the casual/poor people will decrease.

What you dun't understand is that people are not panicking because of the imaginary argument "the economy is going to get worse". People are worried because they will have to grind even more to even afford the basic need. More Grind = less fun.

PvE is already broken as it is. Teamplay is almost inexistant with addition of heroes. Increasing the grind for casual gamers is just like kicking the casual gamers right where it hurts the most.

Wait, I said what now? In regards to the slowing of inflation? Look, there will be less cash coming in on the whole - meaning a slowing of inflation. I never said it would stop, nor turn around and head in the other direction. In fact, I distinctly remember saying that, like in real life, you cannot stop inflation, only slow it down. A sign of a good economy is one where inflation is at an all time low.

When comparing an online game's economy to a RL economy, there is that one big factor that changes things - the constant "creation" of money. It's true that it exists in real life, as well, but at a very manageable and slow rate. However, unlike RL, there are gold sinks. This is generally designed to counter-act the creation of gold. There are a lot of gold sinks in GW, granted, but like I said before, very few of them are required. This includes merchant items like ID kits/Salvage kits, and of course, skills.

The point I was making is that now the creation of gold will slow down and get near the gold sink rate. When that happens, very little gold is actually produced on the whole. Sure, the botting agencies can "just operate 8x the bots to meet the demand", but guess what: 8x more bots everywhere make them a heck of a lot more conspicuous and easier to trap and ban via Anet. I'm comfortable with that.


Anyway, I'm in agreeing with others as far as an overall increase in wealth among all players - via better rewards for questing, etc. This should be done, definately. If inflation is going to happen, at least give everyone a chance to keep up. The keyless chests in Nightfall were a great first step, IMO.

I also agree that there is a huge issue with the [lack of a] trading system. This seriously needs to be fixed, as well, so that everyone has a chance to be a trader, rather then just the very shrew, or those with too much time on their hands. These things need to be addressed to compliment this "farming nerf", if it's to be even considered as a good idea. Right now it's a half-assed mind fart at best, ya know, like most of the things they do.

What inflation? Superior Vigors cost about half compared to 18 months ago, other runes and dyes are cheaper too and mods - at least the ones I am interest in - seem more easily available and cheaper.

How do you measure 'inflation' to come to the conclusion that there is inflation?

The only thing I have to say on the whole issue of runes and the supply of them is that all runes should drop with equal frequency. No one rune should be rarer than the next.
All runes should cost the same amount too, preferably 100g.
Having to gimp your build because you can't afford that superior vigour or superior death magic rune just sucks, especially when other superiors are dirt cheap by comparison.

If ANet really were serious about the co-existence of PvP and PvE, they would make this so. Making it so that certain runes are rarer than others and cost more than others creates an unbalanced playing field from the very start.

I think you have a really good point. About prices and rarity, the following is not an authoritative statement merely an observation, that ANet has already shown that prices on the trade channel can be influenced in the time span of a weekend with double drops for greens halving prices.

If the drop rate for runes of all types was to simply double, then I do not think I am going out on a limb to say that prices at the rune traders would go down. Since I do not know the price algorithm for the traders, who knows how much it will go down.

Would that put more money into the economy? For a short while, there would be a spike while the super-expensive runes are sold to the traders. Once their prices go down, then Sup Vig will no longer be like winning a lotto ticket.

I think that would smooth out the flow of money from the traders into the economy, and allow the poorer players greater access to the better runes.

I know there is another negative in there somewhere, and I am sure that someone will come along and explain it to me. Other than runes becoming more common and an initial spike in currency from the traders as the expensive runes decrease in price, I see no negatives.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Actually I said they were the "major reward" from low level farming. I meant in terms of the total gold earned from a single run, though the sentence wasn't as clear as I'd have liked which is what led to the misunderstanding.

I haven't been around long enough to discuss Gaile's track record but I'd tend to agree with what you are saying here. But I still have a problem with her leaving the thread because:

• There is no ANet moderated forum to post on where we can assume that they read the comments, and where they can moderate it as they see fit.

• I'm assuming part of her job is to comment on these forums, which means I'd expect her to put up with a certain amount of flak (how much is too much, is of course, a reasonable question).

• I don't agree with ignoring the whole thread just because you object to the comments of a few people.

• Part of it, is that I don't see the thread as a collective voice, so I'd like to see ANet deal with the posts as each post deserves (which may well mean skim and ignore most of them).

On a different point, does anyone know the effect of the loot scaling on going out with a smaller party? I think ANet have stated that solo farmers get somewhere in between 1/8 and 1/2 of the expected loot drops (but it seemed pretty vague). What happens if you go out with 4 or 5 people in an area designed for 8? If anyone knows or has heard any specifics I'd be interested in hearing them.

Why dont you just go to the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing roots of the problem and prevent gold farming?!

From a local chat on April 25, Gaile said the following:

To quote Gaile in her "Farming and Loot Scaling" post:

all emphasis added


The nerf to the gold drops meant that people would be relying on selling to merchants and other players, as Anet intended. The fact that ArenaNet is not planning/going to have an Auction system while saying that casual farmers should still make similar amounts of money is ludicrous, in my opinion. Over the past week, I've become very disenchanted with GW as I watch the titles I've been working for become more and more out of reach (and my required farming time go up). I don't see anything easier, fun and/or rewarding about that at all.

I've never really considered breaking the EULA and making bots to farm, but over the past week, it's become a lot more tempting. (Now, I have not and never would actually make bots, so please don't start reporting me to Anet.) On that note, from what I've seen the number of bots has only INCREASED since the farm nerf, not to mention the increased price of GW gold on Ebay.

I'm not ready to give up on Guild Wars yet, Anet has usually responded to the outcry of their customers. I hope the current lack of info from Anet means they're looking into this and not saying, "This is how it's going to be from now on. Tough luck." If the latter is the case (and I'm worried about GW2), I might switch over to LotRO or another game... or I might just get a real life.

Methinks that ANet and Gaile could use some "Mistake!" opera singers.


See "Scrubs" the TV series for more information

Maybe I'm "trying to hear what I wanted to hear" or maybe now you're just covering your butt.

No It means exactly what I said it means. It's not a good gauge of inflation.

How can people not see this even after I keep pointing it out. Talk about hearing what you want to hear:
"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)"


That's true, it is like relying on the lottery in a sense, but I don't think it's that drastic. As for what I am "missing" here; 1 good purple item can bring in more gold than 50 blues.


But the update effects solo farmers more than anyone. Those aren't casual.

I know, I didn't even want to bring you into this because we actually understood each other. That's why I said "short story" ie:me being lazy and not wanting to explain the whole story.

Honestly, she rarely posts more than 3 times in a thread. So there only being 1 post in a thread isn't really "her leaving".

2 things:
1) the number has not gone up since the nerf. It's been bad for a few Months. It was still WAY worse in Elona Reach.
2) If the price is going up that means it's working. They only charge more if the gold is harder to get.


LoTRO is pretty lame. This is coming from someone who loves the LoTR. It's SO generic.

With this drop in drop rates of more common items, I now find myself WANTING to farm ecto. Since the common drops whites worth 50g etc are no longer profitable for me. I no longer get enough of anything common to make runs worthwhile. So now im going to have to do ecto farming. Or i could give up playing the game....No, i dont like PvP, but i was saving to buy fissure armor. But now it takes four hours to get 10k when it used to take under an hour. Totally not worth it. (argue the worth it/not worth it nature of 10k in under an hour all u want, i cant farm fissure or UW or tombs, nor do i like to)

Thanks for completely ruining it for me. :-)

1) Yes, I understand that it has been bad for several months, but I've personally seen an increase in the number of bots in certain areas over the past week. I suppose Anet would be the only ones who could say for sure either way about this.

2) According to the laws of supply and demand, if supply (of gold) goes down, then the demand (for gold) will go up and the prices will go up as well. This being the case, I believe that the bot farm owners will not only continue to operate, but thrive -- since there is more real world profit involved. The bots don't care if they get 1/5 or 1/8 the amount of gold that they used to on each run, the owners can just buy more accounts and farm, farm, farm. It is my opinion that the farming nerf did more to help bots than the legitimate players.

Also, thank you for your opinion on LotRO. However, I tested the game during the free beta, and it looked pretty cool to me, although it was a bit WoW-ish.

Off-topic: Is the LotRO Free Beta officially over? I was gonna check it out...

I believe the beta ended on April 24th.

Slightly off topic, and more of just an FYI, but there are "gold sinks" in RL as well, they're not as obvious or prominent, just as the creation of new money is not the same in RL as in GW. Once again, in the U.S., the Federal Reserve uses a variety of tactics to keep economic growth stable. One such tactic is the use of what could be called "gold sinks," by issuing bonds and other methods, the Federal Reserve can remove currency from circulation for a period of time, thereby affecting the strength of the dollar.

Actually, I wasn't thinking strictly of Gaile or Anet with this comment. I'm sorry if I misunderstood, but it seemed to me that you were the one implying that there was nothing meaningful or worth considering in these forums based on a few posts out of many.


What is so unrealistic about my skepticism? If someone has been wrong not once, but repeatedly, why should I automatically accept what they say? As far as I can tell, you're categorizing most of the comments in these forums based on a few loud voices, who are by no means the majority. And the "collective honesty/accuracy of this forum" is irrelevant to Gaile's credibility, even if every poster here is 100% wrong, it doesn't make her or anyone else any more right.

If this is the assumption on which you base your arguments, I can see why you're having trouble understanding our complaints. Yes, there are solo farmers who do nothing but farm. There is also a large number of casual players(and there have been many posts to this effect) who mainly just play through the game, but who also solo farm occasionally as a means of earning gold to supplement their gameplay. It is these solo farmers (who are in fact casual players) who have the greatest complaint against Anet over this update. Anet said that the changes would make the game easier for us, when as you've pointed out, it has made it harder by damaging solo farming. If Anet wants to limit or remove solo farming, fine, but they need to understand what effect it really has on their casual players. If they truly want to make things easier on the casual player, they can't remove their source of income without at least replacing it with something else. And no, Hard Mode doesn't count, that is most definetely moving beyond the realm of the casual player.

Anet has attempted and failed once again.

I'm sorry but this is the truth and I just cannot stand it where people just leave the game/sell their accounts/every other action possible because this game gets consistantly nerfed over and over.

This is a problem, I had a method to nerf solo farmers, although increase the rewards for group farming. Which ANet has decided not to do. You want to make the game profitable for casual players? Then why did you take away their white/blue drops? A point was risen before, that the players who HAVE accumulated wealth beyond belief doesn't have the chance to get at that stage anymore. This whole loot system... did nothing but ruin it for all your new customers, and casual gamers. Only the hardcore, full-time players now have rewards and a game they can enjoy time-cost free now. My proposal: Solo farming gets half of what they originally got one week ago, and team farming(more active people in the party) gain 4-5 times as much, depending on party size. This only makes sense.

Otherwise everyone just uses henchies+heroes in North Kryta and its the same as solo'ing underworld.

All ANet did was give ebay, and their loyal customers more problems.

I'm not buying GW2.

Then by your own admitting you are biased. Perhaps somewhat of a hypocrite for appreciating what Anet has to tell you unconditionally about their updates, while at the same time claiming not having to accept anything they have to say "automatically" out of your skepticism? I'm assuming you're caught in a serious contradiction, or following these things is getting old real fast.

Farming has never been better, Good job Anet. < I'm 100% serious

Sorry no more garbage picking in game for gold.

Not biased, just using whatever information I have available. It's not complete, it's not perfect, but it's what I have. What's wrong with that? I wish there were more complete studies, but since there's not, what am I supposed to do about it? If you're telling me that as a consumer I can't use my best judgement and analysis to decide whether or not a company which want's my business is being honest or has my best interests in mind, then what's the point of a free market economy anyway? Where is the contradiction?

Btw, as a note to you and others who quote mine and other posts, could you please at least quote enough to finish the complete thought so that points aren't taken out of context?

Holy crap this thread is still going?

I suppose it hasn't occurred to most of the people here (read/lurk and respondents) that just the length of this thread and statements from both side represents a de facto admission that there IS a problem?

Just because the problem isn't shared by the whole community (ala Soul Reaping nerf, those that don't like Necros are for it, those that do like Necros are against it) doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.

I suppose its an issue akin to politics and religion, both sides can yell til they're blue in the face, but no amount of fervent belief, logic, immunity to reason, slides and bar graphs (thanks blackbird!), or flat our proof will convince one side or the other of the other's viewpoint.

In my efforts to make an argument, I suppose I assumed too much too quickly. Heck, ectos are down to 8k even, of course, my gold drops are down by 800% but who cares?

Anyways, I hope one thing we all can agree on is the fact that changes to the game need to be considered more carefully, and not implemented akin to a "scorched earth" strategy of changing the face of the game two years in.

In my humble opinion, this whole issue reminds me of the "Mission Accomplished" Bush debacle with regards to the Iraq war. The war on bots in this game is similar, broad and grandiose rhetoric, with little if any real net effect. As has been stated, it may be that ANet's efforts have only strengthened the botters and their ability to engage in Ebay-ing gold. Only time will tell, but if even 5% of the playerbase is unhappy with said changes, that's a huge amount of potential sales of EotN and II that may be lost.

Bottom line, make the game fun, and people will play. Make it inaccessible, convoluted or otherwise intimidating, and people will buy WoW instead. And as forums like these have shown, the perception on either side is enough to convince a person, rather than the subtle reality.

But remember, farmers are players too! Once you start ostracizing an entire group for their playstyle, and your game acquires a certain reputation for "linearity" then you may find that negative press via word of mouth is much WORSE than any bad marketing campaign. Especially those who are intelligent enough to see the hypocrisy behind ANet's saying one thing and doing another.

But, I've said too much already. C'est la vie.

yes yes..we understand that your a human being blah blah blah we understand that you MADE a real good game...that lasted awhile.. blah blah all that good stuff

don't get me wrong gaile i have nothing against you but lets face it.. your so called DEVS( yea the chimps that are supposed to listen to the people) aren't really doing their job.. YOU might be.. and like i said you do a pretty good job at it.. but the fans have been putting their 2cents in to this whole game too don't you forget. if you fail to listen to the fans numerous times... they will fight back in your case attacking the only link between us and anet..YOU

after factions came out only FEW of the updates were even worthwhile...
and i hope you dont have the trump mentality that "oh this game is free so why should they cry" don't forget we do keep your company alive...if you keep down this gloomy path im afraid many of your fan base will die out



dont worry.. i still love you gaile ...

I've had a week to adapt to this new system and my opinion is still the same. Its just plain bad. I'm in the ranks of the casual farmers and my drops have drastically dropped in quanity. I've experimented with parties of different sizes: solo, me + 3 Heros, and me + 3 Heros + 4 Henchmen. The solo and 4 man drop rates were like 3 drops in an entire cleared area(Arjok Ward, starting and ending at Yohlon Haven). Even with 7 NPCs my drops were horrible. Tomb seemed pretty much the same, though the gold drops were noticibly diminished. I'd try UW or FoW but I don't have the equipment(nor will I ever now) for it. I was willing to be skeptical and willing to give the system the benefit of the doubt. But now my doubts are gone and I just want things to be the way they used to be. *le sigh*

Gaile, I'm not angry at you and neither should anyone else be. But you're the public face of GW on the web. When an unpopular update occurs you're the one who comes and explains and so you're the only target for people's scorn. Does that make it right? No. But from our point of view your pronouncements are usually extremely inadequte(mostly due to lack of information) or sort of condescending. It would be nice if some of the developers took some time to write an article about the recent changes(i.e. SR nerf, Auspicious Incantation, etc) and perhaps tell us what is and is not going to happen in GW1. We deserve the truth(as much as we can get w/o spoilers for GW:EN and GW2) and you deserve better treatment.

well, for me, i will not continue to play gw...a shame really...i hate selling and was happy just to earn gold farming so i could get armor, etc. I won't be recommending gw to anyone and won't buy expansion or gw2. I think you just don't try hard enough to keep bots out, which is really the issue...since you can't then i will pick up a different game...LOTR here we come!

Simply the smartest post I have ever read on a forum.
/signed

does that mean you will stop bothering us with I AM LEAVING posts?

go to WOW/LOTR and be happy but for once simply shut up and go without the GW sucks now so i am leaving................just............go

i agreed with 100% of what my mate was saying, gaile please read that if you havent already.

I agree.

This is my input as of now:

-ArenaNet deserves respect for trying as hard as they can on the game to make it better for us, their loyal customers. I'll definitely agree that they made a bad choice in loot scaling, because it just forces us to do less fun things to make money, or even limits the amount of money we get. They should have had a dev poll across multiple forums to make sure that this issue would not come at the community as an unpleasant suprise(which is what it is), but perhaps they thought it would be well received. I'm not going to bash Anet, but rather try to lead them on the right path. It's worked out this way fine before, and there's no reason it won't now.
-The designers' notes would have been extremely beneficial to this whole mess. Gaile probably wouldnt have lost it (which I feel bad about) if there was more clarification. I dont really know what Anet was thinking with this one.
-Extra benefits for more people is a no brainer now that we survey the info. Arenanet is trying to rebalance the economy, but I think they may have acted too late.

My point is, ArenaNet and Gaile should have come to us more directly with this matter instead of letting this issue get moldy. Only together, as players and developers, can we solve this problem.

Hey, take this advice, it works well:
"The thing trolls hate most is lack of attention. Make 'em starve! XD

Loviator, leave that guy alone and he wont come back. The only people giving him ammunition are the people that respond to him. Just ignore him and he'll go away.

Why don't we all go cool down with a few rounds of Rollerbeetle racing or Dragon Arena? That's always fun.

is seems to me that the guild wars economy is being screwed. everyone complained that they couldnt make money. that is total crap, anyone can make money all u have to do is come up with the right build. the scaling thing needs to be taken away. ANet says that the bot farmers ruin the econamy, when acutally they keep it going. they sell money to people that have none. most people made money off of the white weapons that dropped from there enemies. i know i used to. but now we cant, and no one is making money. i spent 7 hrs farming tonight, and made 8 or 9k. usually by that time i would have made about 100-150k. Anyone else feel the same way?

They already "fixed" scaled loot.
Alot of rareties... actually... All rareties are excluded.

* Skill Tomes
* Scrolls
* Dye
* Rare materials, such as Ectoplasm
* Gemstones from the Domain of Anguish
* All other rare (gold) items
* All unique (green) items
* Special event items

The economy does go up and down, but Guild Wars does have one. It is just different from many other games.

7 hours farming for 8 or 9 k? Ha, I make about that much just playing the game. Sorry you think it's unfair that people can make as much money as you without grinding endlessly.

If you spent 7 hours farming for 8-9k then you're not farming properly.
I can make more than that, in less time.

So the loot was scaled to preserve means for the high-end farmer and that, at least ANet thinks that, will automactically mean the loot is more "rewarding for casual players, including casual solo farmers".

Aha.

Okay, so doing the math here... 1.5 hours a night times about 180 nights is 270. Spread among ten characters that's 27 hours per character. That's (300/27) or about eleven skills an hour. Just to get this straight, is that what you are suggesting?
That is by design, and it happens in most every RPG. The point of giving so many "useless" drops which are merchant fodder is that it makes the occasional good one seem that more exciting. It's a lot more interesting to get a hundred 10g drops and one 10k drop than it is to get a hundred 110g drops, because the unique one is much more memorable. It's a psychological effect that keeps people interested in the game.

As an aside, this is one of the arguments against simply upping the quest and mission rewards. If everyone gets used to having a higher money supply, then expensive stuff loses its value. blackbird said a while back that you have to be careful about changing end-game rewards. This goes both ways: if 15k and FoW armor become easily accessible by everyone, it completely devalues the sets that people worked for in the past. Depending on the magnitude of the adjustment, increasing quest/mission rewards could have a more dramatic effect on the economy than this update did, simply because it affects everyone.

I don't think you're applying that correctly... demand should go down when prices increase.

Remember, demand is how many people are willing to pay for the item, not how many people want the item.

These statements seem contradictory. If casual players are merely using farming as an occasional, supplemental income source, then this update should not be drastically affecting them, as their primary income comes from other sources.

If they are using farming as a primary income source, I agree with Darksun that they are not casual players.

And then complain about WoW once they realize that they can't get an epic flying mount on a casual player's schedule?

Darn good point, and I completely agree.