[Dev Update] Farming and Loot Scaling

The point is, people farm because they have to to afford things like skills, armor, equipment, runes, kitting out heroes etc. all of which is essential.

The bottom line is - playing the game doesn't give you enough cash to do this...

that is the problem that needs solving if you abolish farming.

if this nerf stays you need to...

Give higher cash rewards for quests or useable items to equip heroes or yourself

Give skills as quest rewards in factions and nightfall and reduce the cost of cap sigs.

Give a higher droprate and better stuff if playing in a group - heroes and henchies or pugs alike so everyone has a chance to afford to play.

This would negate the need for casual farming to buy your equipment as you would make enough playing the game to support your character and heroes. As it stands farming is the only way I could get the items, runes, skills and armor I needed. Now I cannot.

If you read this Anet at least consider some of the above so you're actually doing what you say you want to do and that is allow everyone to play without the need for solo farming.

Not much point in this post Gail/Anet has left us, So our View's/Feeling's conveniantly wont get voiced to Anet!

Thank you Gaile and all the devers

[QUOTE=Gaile Gray]solofarming was at least eight times harder to kill monster and eight times slower as well.. harder + slower = so why shouldn't a solo farmer get more than someone with 7 npcs ?

Farming smites with my E/Me in the UW goes much faster compared to a 8-man balanced team. It's also much easier because I can't be killed by them.

So the reasonable solution would be making such builds imposible

I disagree with the notion that the current "nerf" doesn't affect casual players - my idea of very low level farming is to drop 2-4 henchies to improve my income. That allowed me to keep a decent cashflow going, whilst actually playing the game. I can't do that now. It's ironic that a farming nerf will actually force me to farm (or drop the goals that are keeping me playing).

I know Anet think we should shift to making money via trades, but does that really appeal to the majority? Spamming Kamadan all day? Can the rudimentory trade/chat system even stand up to the massive influx of traders, that I'm sure would arise if we did all take that as our method of money making? Hell, would there even be enough buyers?

I'll admit - I've never seen the appeal of and have, thus far, avoided player trades altogether. The impression I've always had is that power-traders are a very busy, very loud, *minority*. Am I wrong?

Seconded

I farmed the stygian veil all weekend and I got 24 golds and 30 stygian gems... Oh and holy lightbringer to boot

Yeah...I made 6 k in 1 failed and 1 successful attempt at vanquishing Plains of Jarin...Would have made more, but it was so nice out, I kept getting the "shouldn't you take the kids out? looks from my wife.

Money has never been a problem if I go kills mobs and merch what I find...

Why would noobs need to go on hard mode farming trips?

Anet clearly stated that HM is ment for experienced guild wars players. The noobs can join up in PUG groups and farm normal mode for some cash. Not much cash indd, but still money.

All you people are complaining that the experienced players are getting it all and the noobs are left to cry in the dark. Anet simply tries to reward you for becomming experienced.

If you used to solo farm and now feel ripped off, maybe make a new build and do hard mode?

*Can't do hard mode?
Finish the game and prove you are experienced.

*Can't think of new build in hard mode cuz you had to rip the previous build of the net?
You are NOT experienced if you can't think of any build to use on w/e monster in hard mode.

What should you do?
Stfu about the solo farm "nerf" and either finish a chapter and make heaps of money( And I mean HEAPS of money), or quit the game. Keep complaining doesn't help anyone and I bet Anet employees reading these treads are getting sick of all those complainers.

Anet, you are doing a good job.

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Added by Moderator: Flamebait removed. We're trying to keep this thread reasonably civil, and comments like that don't help.

Make money by selling things to other players? I don't want to spend more than three minutes in a town trying this... and there are few buyers. I usually merch the gold weapons I get. Not that I do solo farming, but it may be something I try when I run out of game. As for any greens I get, I usually give them away, if I can. I've tried selling them at just 1k and guess what... no takers.

Good point. Merching the golds works for me. i sell the really good golds on guru auction and same goes for good perfect upgrades.

I feel so bad that I was so quick to jump on the bandwagon of lots of us freaking out about the supposed ruined farming which was just the opposite; even though my farming spot soon after the update was yielding more reward than before. I think that the anet team did a wonderful job on this one. Thank you.

So after i saw the drops change i finally dusted off my 55 gear and decided to test the drops rate out in HM cos its nice to farm for gold items, took a stroll to Rock to farm hydras, farmed for 2 & 1/2 hours, got 1 gold item 2 purples out of 250 odd hydras using the zone clearance farming style, a total of 4k was made after selling everything.

My conclusion, HM does not have better drops than pre HM or i was just unlucky, thank god i farmed along time ago, i do feel sad for the new players thou as it seems the goal posts have been move further away again, time to put my farming gear back in deep storage.

You are unlucky:P This happened to me yesterday
My loot for killing 52 undead in hard mode solo farming(1 trip):


And I'm also willing to send you screenshots of the 7 gold items i found in today's farm trip.

Not to turn this in to a "heros get my drops but I have to outfit them" thread...

But, maybe therin lies a compromise. Weapons/runes/insignias/inscriptions costs for heros is one of the "costs" that will continue to burden new players. Along with skills/armor/runes/insignias/inscriptions/keys etc for your main characters.

If A-Net continues down this path of penalizing solo farmers by having 7 invisible players steal thier share of the loot, perhaps we should get our heros share of the loot. So if I solo, I get 1/8, if I go in an 8 man group of heros and hench my drops go up to 4/8 (assuming 3 heros and 4 hench). There is no way for me to get to 5/8-8/8. This efectively cuts out 50% of the gold introduction that the evil farmer is responsible for.

This allows new players or the "average jose" to outfit heros effectively. It also allows "poor" players to aquire gold to buy skills etc.

This would go a long way in satisfying both side. However would it stop bots? Nope, but then nothing tha Anet has done stops bots. That however is an easy thing to do. Anet needs to hire 4-8 "interns", college kids from a local school. Pay them to sit in the A-Net sweat shop at a GW terminal 8 hours a day. Sit in Granite, Yohlon, etc and ban bots on the spot. Every in-game ad for selling GW gold, ban on the spot. This would create a major dent in Bots, it wouldn't take any code, it wouldn't impact gameplay for honest players. Sometimes the simplest fix is the most effective.

For my part, I found the explanation sensible and reasonable. I've played five of my characters through Elona and between doing all the quests, (which I enjoy), and the mission rewards have been able to accumulated sufficient wealth to completely outfit all my heroes. High end armor requires farming, which I don't particularly enjoy, but then I'm vain so I do it. With "Hard Mode" more areas becoming interesting both for soloing and just exploration with a full team since in that context there's a more reasonable opportunity for an interesting gold drop.

IMHO, Ms. Gray's explanation is one of the best I've seen from the developers on any topic and reflects, careful analysis and thought and a sincere interest in improving the gaming experience for everyone.

Just a reminder why casual farmers are annoyed by this update, and by ANet's explanations of the reasons for it. By casual farmer I mean someone who farms occasionally, doesn't make multiple farming runs at a time, and isn't playing in hard mode. Of course, that's just my definition.

From Gaile's original post:
Got that, it's meant to be easier for normal players to make money. The method chosen to do this is to reduce the amount of money that's handed out ...

Edited to include boldface. So the game should be more rewarding for casual solo farmers, but not for advanced farmers. To achieve this they have reduced the rewards for casual solo farmers, and the rewards for advanced (or at least hard mode) farmers are just fine (here I'm only going on what I've read on this forum as I can't test this).

So Gaile, if you are still reading or reviewing this stuff, I hope you can see why the information that you have posted just does not seem to make sense.

At least if you'd said something like "ArenaNet doesn't want casual players to solo farm to make more money so we've reduced the rewards they get so that they stop doing it"* I'd know where I stood.

You've upset a fair number of your customers with this update and I don't think it unreasonable to ask for an explanation that actually ties in with the changes that the update made.

*not an actual quote

Well I feel the hard mode reward being higher is absolute bull, yesterday when doing trips from secrets we cleared the entire area three consecutive times with full party no hench no heros and hardly got any gold drops, the gold drops we did get where crap, and the loot from locked chest was not fantastic either never mind that alot of the time it was purple. I am very against this update and as people have pointed out I have 10 pve characters one for each profession with 6 finished nightfall 8 finished factions and 3 finished proph and have most of the heros which at an average of 8 heros per character thats 80 heros which need weapons, inscriptions and runes. How can you afford that with the poor drop rate or cash comming in and I find trying to trade so annoying as the comments are so fast you can bearly read what people are buying or selling so whats the point, is more annoying trying to trade than enjoyable. So I am afraid this will only make me think more of those little chinese farmers selling gold in vast quantities at real world rates rather than the nightmare of facing Kaineng or Kamadan for hours on end getting a head ache watching this text fly past so fast I can bearly read only to make a few k at the end, or perhaps I might even look for something alternative to do altogethere if this continues.....

From a highly annoyed and used to be dedicated player who is not so certain now

Quests should give rewards that give you money equivalent to the time you could have spent farming. Or at least some worthy reward. That way everybody wins.